The threat to the net
Who owns the Internet? If you think the answer is "nobody," you’re right – for now.That’s why it has been such an astonishing innovation that has flourished so vibrantly at the grass roots. But this pioneering era may end badly, with an all-too-familiar finish: Big business tames a giddy and experimental phenomenon and turns it…
Ahh ahh
On its ninth official record release in 20 years, The The continues to defy all expectations and create unusual music that’s both deeply personal and exceedingly appealing. Although The The mainman Matt Johnson does his level best to fill this record with crashing guitars and his emphatic vocal discourse, he never ventures too far from…
Pro-pot petition
Greg Schmid has high hopes. With no financial backing, the Saginaw attorney is banking on 1,500 volunteers to help place a measure on Michigan’s November ballot that would decriminalize posession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Schmid, 39, launched the drive last month and has a June deadline for gathering the 302,711 valid…
Wishes unfulfilled
The Dayton, Ohio drum-and-guitar duo, Swearing at Motorists, have been releasing singles, EPs and compilations tracks since 1994, so this, their debut full-length, is long overdue. However, if you’re familiar with the accidental masterpieces, Bee Thousand and Vampire on Titus by lo-fi titans Guided by Voices, then you’re already aquatinted with Dave Doughman and Don…
Questioning tests
Think back to the sweaty-palmed morning of the Big Test, one of those fill-in-the-circle-with-a-No. 2 pencil nightmares. It could have been the college application SAT, or the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) in grade school. As much as we agonized over them, it turns out that in the real world there’s no need for "test-taking…
Rights fight for inmates
U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, says he plans to seek U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno’s opinion regarding the constitutionality of recent state legislation that excludes prisoners from Michigan’s civil rights laws. Beginning March 10, the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act and the Michigan Persons with Disabilities Act will no longer apply to anyone detained in Michigan’s…
Snappy tapas
Spanish cuisine is underrepresented in the metro Detroit area, making Sangria most welcome. The featured dishes, tapas and paella, require a leisurely schedule. With a pitcher of sangria and a good friend, you have the ingredients for an enjoyable evening.
Soul set free
The authors of The Black Chord use interviews, history and personalities as examples of how black music has influenced lives worldwide to tie the African diaspora together.
Warn Defever
We’ve heard Livonia’s Warren "Warn" Defever’s words and music, and we’ve witnessed the many accolades and international attention that his main focus, His Name Is Alive, has received, yet we’ve never really heard his voice – until recently. Taking an Anton Fier approach to his craft, he’s embraced the age-old adage of "better seen than…
Steamed ‘n’ venting
Taking an eclectic sociopolitical-aggro-rap-goth-Middle Eastern musical approach, System of a Down wields a musical message of hardcore, universal catharsis.
Multifaceted purist pop
Turn that frown upside down; drop your musical preconceptions and assault your senses with Pedals, the third album from Chicago’s ultralounge, modern-pop outfit, the Aluminum Group. This is the jazziest and most seductive confection of purist pop gems I’ve heard in a long time – sunshine shimmering guitars, classic crooning, peppy horn arrangements, breezy bossa…
Attention Span
KIT, NO KABOODLE At first the Home Depot Storage Rack Kit at Toys ‘R’ Us looked pretty simple. According to the package, it is intended for kids age 8 and older and only requires a hammer for assembly. However, I am more than 8 years old and I had a hell of a time putting…
Eye of the Beholder
Surveillance is the perfect activity for someone like a British intelligence agent code-named Eye (Ewan McGregor). A recluse and voyeur, he likes to watch. By making the action of Eye of the Beholder unravel under Eye’s unwavering gaze, writer-director Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) has both fetishized and eroticized surveillance…
In One ear
MUSICAL MYSTERY TOUR Denizens of the "Woodward Village" scene and fans of Detroit rock ’n’ roll have a dilemma on their hands this Friday. On one hand, you’ve got R&B legend and former Fortune Records recording artist Andre Williams who, as of late, has reinvented himself as the dirty old uncle of Detroit and Chicago’s…
The Acid House
The Acid House is a good movie for people who like to be pummeled about the head, kicked in the yarbles and then thrown out with the trash. It consists of three stories adapted by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh from his collection of the same name. Welsh came to fame as the author of Trainspotting,…
Shadows on Groundhog Day
"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there." –George "Dubya" Bush, El Presidente-in-waiting, January 2000 They certainly is. Now…
American Movie
Mark Borchardt of Menomonee Falls, Wis., is nothing if not ambitious. An amateur filmmaker since the age of 14 – and now pushing 30 – he has, for years, been trying to make a serious feature, a dramatic slice of Middle American life called Northwestern. The project has been start-and-stop, and money, always elusive, has…
Ading up the ads
It would be a typical Sunday, filled with the usual chores of tidying up after the Lizard of Fun’s Saturday night exploits, except for one thing: It’s the Super Bowl. A few minutes before game time, the Lizard of Fun emerges like a groundhog seeking sunlight from an enormous bowl of lime-flavored nacho chips. "Is…
Zen travails
Writers on Zen tend to fall into three groups: teachers (e.g. the late master Shunryu Suzuki, author of the modern primer Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind), scholars or interpreters of ancient texts (see Japanese authority D.T. Suzuki or translator Katsuki Sekida), and first-hand reporters on the trials of Zen training (a highly readable example being Lawrence…
Loose Lips
MEDIEVAL FASHION The Players, the snug 1925-era theater and "gentleman’s club" on Jefferson Avenue, hosted a fashion show / silent auction / benefit for Arts & Scraps on Saturday night. As we approached the medieval-like old theater, a shocking royal blue runner out to the street announced that big doings were indeed going on inside…
Pop rocks
A send-up of ‘60s-era Marvel Comics, The Atomics is Michael Allred’s version of the Fantastic Four. Six beatniks are exposed to alien spores that make them monstrous until they discover that it’s a side effect of new superpowers. Time to give crime fighting a shot, even if they just want to be popular. With little…
News Hits
Cutting-edge trash TV You probably don’t remember the name Robert Nitz, but you might recall his story. Nitz was featured in a 1998 Metro Times article that investigated the state of mental health care in Oakland County. At the time, Nitz was struggling to deal with both a severe psychological condition that compelled him to…
Isn’t She Great
A terrific movie could be made about the life of pulp novelist Jacqueline Susann. Isn’t She Great isn’t it. Director Andrew Bergman (Honeymoon in Vegas, Striptease) and screenwriter Paul Rudnick (In & Out) have neutered a wildcat, turning Susann’s lively, raunchy, bittersweet and just plain messy life into bland pabulum. For a woman whose taboo-shattering…
Food Stuff
VOGUE VEGGIES When Amy Jean Thompson makes a vegetable tray, she doesn’t rely on the usual carrots, broccoli and celery. Thompson, a vegetarian who owns and runs Creative Catering in Huntington Woods, goes way beyond basic veggies; her trays push the veggie experience to a new level. Thompson, who is often the first to introduce…
Troika
The genesis of Troika, filmmaker Jennifer Montgomery’s second feature, was her reading of an interview with Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in Playboy magazine. Zhirinovsky is one of those post-Communist creatures who seems to have emerged from a textbook on Fascist pathology, a barely closeted homosexual who surrounds himself with robust young male admirers he refers…
Choice nuts
It’s already earning comparisons to "The Simpsons," but can the dark-side-of-suburbia shtick of "Malcolm in the Middle" stick to prime-time television? Linwood Boomer’s ("3rd Rock from the Sun") new Sunday-night sitcom on Fox doesn’t only pose this question; it also leaves us digging between the sofa cushions, in search of twisted domestic comedy’s lint-speckled charm.…
Dream of consciousness
Legend has it that beat poet William S. Burroughs couldn’t remember writing his definitive work Naked Lunch. Apparently, he went to Tangier, blacked out and woke up several days later with the finished manuscript sitting on the typewriter stand. The Past Was Faster might have been similarly channeled to songwriter Kelley Stoltz’s four-track. Recorded at…
Natural-born rhymers
Outlaw Bible of American Poetry Ed. Alan Kaufman Thunder’s Mouth Press, 685 pages $34.95 hard cover, $24.95 soft cover Move over, ye canon of English literature. Roll over, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. The outlaws of American poetry have rolled into town like Brando on a hog. The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry…
Product addition
Once again, you gotta hand it to the record companies. They manage to find astonishingly inventive ways to rip off consumers. In the tradition of such commercial farces as The Very Best of Sting & The Police(!) comes what appears to be a new Perry Farrell solo release unimpressively titled Rev. But wait a minute,…
