Last Minute addition to Blowout
RenCen: http://www.myspace.com/RENCENROCKS He’ll be performing at 10 p.m. on Saturday, March 7th at the New Dodge. Go FLY NERDS!!!
The Silent Years: 17-piece band for Blowout
We were extremely excited to learn that The Silent Years will have a 17-piece band for Blowout. Apparently they are bringing a CHOIR and a horns section. God love The Silent Years.
A hurdle she can’t jump: The IOC
Unable to see beyond the tips of her skis because of a blizzard, Michigan native Lindsey Van still flew to a world title last week in the first-ever women’s world championships for ski jumping held in the Czech Republic. She joins two other Michigan-affiliated young women who have reached the tops of their respective sports…
Unshielded: Reporter ordered to testify (again)
For the third time, U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland has ordered Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter to testify in a former federal prosecutor’s civil suit against the U.S. Department of Justice. In an order issued Thursday, Cleland rejected Ashenfelter’s argument that testifying about his sources for a 2004 article that revealed an internal investigation…
REMEMBERING LYMAN WOODARD
He was a house-rocker on the Hammond B3 organ, and when you heard that he was inspired by Little Richard and Chuck Berry before he encountered the giants of jazz, particularly the revolutionary organist Jimmy Smith … well, it all made sense. Out of influences including the aforementioned, he became a singular voice and presence…
Couch Trip
Days and Clouds Film Movement I haven’t seen a more devastating and sober reflection of our recessing economy than Days and Clouds, the latest work from Italian director Silvio Soldini (Bread and Tulips). Michele and Elsa (Antonio Albanese and Margherita Buy), the husband and wife in Soldini’s naturalistic drama, are positioned perfectly between the barely…
Lay of the Cid
When this EP from Lay of the Cid arrived on the doorstep of Metro Times towers, there was little to suggest the delights that lay within. We were, in fact, suitably underwhelmed, at first. The band members are spread between Grand Rapids and Waterford … and the cover art looks like a 5-year-old was let…
The ‘northernmost Southern city’
In his award-winning The Origins of the Urban Crisis, historian Thomas J. Sugrue used Detroit as the ultimate case study of what happened in the industrial North. Sugrue reconsidered the history to challenge what has often been presented as a simple three-act drama: ’60s black unrest, white flight and municipal decline. Sugrue starts his story…
A fresh start
A sedate trattoria with a sophisticated Northern Italian kitchen, Due Venti’s dining room seats around 50, with walls painted a warm yellow hue and decorated with several paintings. The small room and the fact that Due Venti is open only for dinner make reservations a must. Emphasizing local produce and preparing everything from scratch, including…
Hot hot heat!
So, did you hear the one about the gang that walked into a corner Hamtramck bar and then changed it, bitstream by itty bitstream, into a hotspot for Detroit techno, funky house and whatever else is bubbling below the surface on the global electronic dance scene? That same group then worked its transformative magic on…
Pop goes the hero
It’s a Wednesday afternoon in Bloomfield Hills and 20-some fidgety schoolkids snake their way through the Cranbrook Art Museum. You can tell they’re getting bored. They’re getting bored fast. The unruly ones linger behind, waiting discreetly for a chance to slip away from chaperones and chase each other in circles. There’s wiggling, tickling and an…
Gomorrah
Matteo Garrone’s riveting Gomorrah is a bleak pseudo-journalistic study of organized crime in Naples. Opening with an unexplained massacre at a tanning salon, Garrone’s film casually unspools five sordid stories of scams, thefts and killings perpetrated by the Camorra “System” in neo-reportage fashion. There’s Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), a master tailor struggling to escape the mob’s…
Night and Day
FRIDAY-SUNDAY • 27-1 CIRQUE ELOIZE: NEBBIA THE ART OF THE BIG TOP Those masters of the pendulous, the performing-arts powerhouse of Cirque Eloize swings into Detroit for Nebbia (or fog), the final installment in their Sky Trilogy. Cirque Eloize began thrilling audiences in 1993 and has since brought their high-art circus to 30 different countries…
Anatomy of a story
Using spare, elegant prose, Charlie LeDuff delivered a lead that landed with all the force of a mule kick to the gut, at once breathtaking and devastating. “This city has not always been a gentle place,” wrote the star reporter for The Detroit News, “but a series of events over the past few, frigid days…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Fired Up!
Sporting unruly blond curls (Willie Ames style!) is Eric Christian Olsen (as Nick), a smarmy twit whose high-powered camera mugging soon makes one long for the subtle understatement of Sean William Scott. In the Scott Baio role, Nicholas D’Agosto (Shawn) is a habitual snark factory, but comes off marginally better as he’s allowed to reveal…
Days of future passed
With thirtysomethings losing their minds over My Bloody Valentine reunion shows and nostalgia for early ’90s indie music growing, it’s fitting that Detroit’s own Majesty Crush is about to get the “best of” treatment. With an output of one full-length, two EPs and a few 7-inchers, it’s easy to think the mixed-race band is undeserving…
War in waltz time
Ari Folman is a vet of the Israel Army’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, an event he can only seem to recall in dreamlike glimpses. He has one especially potent vision of emerging from the bay as the silent city is lit by the phosphorescent glow of flares, but he can’t slip it into context. So…
…For the Whole World to See
The story: In the 1970s, three black brothers from Detroit saw a Stooges show and became so inspired that they formed a punk band called Death. Those three brothers — David, Bobby and Dannis Hackney — began recording a full-length album, but the project was dropped when Columbia Records grew rather squeamish over the band’s…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Helter to the skelter, with our speedy music crit
Doll parts
Is Dollhouse more like a house of cards?What monumental hype. What resounding disappointment. If you saw the same episodes of Joss Whedon’s elaborate new future-shock action series I’ve watched the past two weeks (9 p.m. Fridays, FOX2 in Detroit), you have to wonder big-time about this show’s blueprints, foundations, and how high this shaky structure…
Market maker
Tom Violante on how he built Holiday into a Royal Oak fixture
Sure bets
Let’s get this straight right off: Millions of Brazilians have big ambitions.Cool?It’s the eve of their first EP release, two of the band’s members — drummer Chris Gruse (aka Zoz, a nickname he’s had since childhood, not some pretentious stage moniker) and vocalist-guitarist Nick Cicchetti — are sitting in Woodbridge Pub. The band’s third member,…
Motor City Cribs
In the kitchen with Detroit emcee Moe Dirdee
Nearing the cliff
State’s human services chief sees trouble ahead
Greens and greenbacks
What can Detroit learn from Cuba? Plenty!
Letters to the Editor
Shout-outs, beat-downs and sugary resentment
Buddy-buddy
The birth of Motown isn’t the only 50th anniversary pop music is noting this year: 2009 also marks the 50th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death. It would seem the perfect opportunity for the release of that long-awaited CD boxset that Holly’s estate (i.e., his widow Maria Elena) has held up for far too long. And,…
Supporters in the court
Reporter Diane Bukowski’s day in court
A Taste of Gay?
For her, a post-oral kiss is just a kiss; for him it’s a mouthful
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
DRINK AS MUCH AS YOU WANT AT BLOWOUT…
…and still keep the roads safe for the rest of us. Just got this from Ms. Doster Knepp via Facebook: Stay safe! Drink as much as you want! Attention all Royal Oak, Ferndale and Detroit Blowout goers! If you are worried about getting down to Blowout (or making it back alive), we just made life…
