Eight Ball Grifter
Eight Ball Gifter are the boys your mamma warned you about. With irresistibly catchy immortal classics like, “She Left Me For A Girl,” this electrifying punkabilly trio will get your ass moving and leave your ears bleeding.
Incredible crisis
Video games are often a sublime release for aggression — a priceless tool for fist-o-matics to channel their violent behavior. Yet some games defy this unwritten rule. Plunge into the unruly PlayStation 2 world of AquaAqua, for instance, where little dewdrop demons with lollipop smirks and childlike peculiarity wander freely among a broken landscape. Mountains…
Human rights and Royal Oak
On May 1, Royal Oak is going to vote on a human-rights ordinance which includes the words “sexual orientation.” The city is more than likely going to be torn apart over this thing.
The roar restored
A unique animal voice returns as the classic Japanese anime Kimba the White Lion is rereleased on video.
Join the club
Record recommendations for Buena Vista Social Club fans – a further exploration of traditional Latin roots….
Small Craft Sighting
Small Craft Sighting crafts sincere guitar strains of darkness, regret and doubt with just the right hint of sweetness and aggressive crash that’ll lift your thought-drunk broken heart out of even the muddiest pothole puddle of sorrow. It’s the perfect combination of waffle-cone punk crunch and emotional soft-serve rock swirl. Sigh.
Captains of video
Local underground film, audio and video production studio Chrome Bumper turns that hip earful into an eyeful.
The invisible movement
Are 50 million agents for change about to remake the nation? Maybe. Maybe not….
Eating with the fishes
Dinner at Sindbad’s is roadhouse fare, with an emphasis on steaks, chops and fish. Seafood appetizers include Snug Harbor mussels or Campeche Bay shrimp, and the clam chowder was the thick New England variety. The all-you-can-eat brunch buffet is a great way to spend Sunday morning.
Cutting up femmes
Artist Mark Laliberte stages acts of terrifying gorgeousness….
Are you a Cultural Creative?
This checklist from authors Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson can give you an idea.
Encore, encore
If Mozart were alive today, he’d probably be making electronic music. And for all we know, Tadd Mullinix is one of Wolfgang’s reincarnated protégés. With his debut release, Ann Arbor’s Mullinix proves that he is an exceptionally hypertalented virtuoso of circuitry. Winking Makes a Face is a deeply personal statement, which makes the 22-year-old seem…
Prosperity dividend?
Bush the Second is looking for a good reason to do a bad thing. The thing he wants to do is to give a fat tax cut to America’s wealthiest families, including his own — an elite class of people who have grown enormously wealthier in the Wall Street boom of the ’90s and who…
Down ‘n’ dirty in Royal Oak
The second annual “Dirty” art show … The Buddha Bar’s perfect mix of off-the-charts cool … Museum of New Art moves downtown … & more.
Water torture
If Damon Gough — the British folkie studio tinkerer who turned out The Hour of Bewilderbeast, one of last year’s most endearing records — can call himself Badly Drawn Boy, John Frusciante should dub himself Badly Drawn Madman. Like Gough, Frusciante (better known as the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ flaky guitarist) is introverted to the…
Letters to the Editor
Left out In “Striking Out” (MT, Jan. 24-30), Jim Dulzo missed the mark several times, which was odd considering the many interviews that he did not reference while writing. (I was one of the ones interviewed). The most glaring problem is the omission of five of the six striking unions. Leaving them out of the…
Pattern and practice
Benny Napoleon fails to submit jail-deaths report to City Council….
Sonic rocking chair
I’m sitting on the porch of a honky-tonk at dusk, watching the tumbleweeds continually bumping into the screen door as I sip my Corona and rock back and forth to the rhythm of the moment. No, I’m not. I just have my eyes closed while listening to Japancakes’ latest, The Sleepy Strange, a selection of…
Under cross examination
Orlando’s newest theme park, the Holy Land Experience, doesn’t have a Dead Sea log-flume ride … but it makes 4 hours feel like 40 days and 40 nights.
Funny business
Freep edits “Doonesbury” punch line (again)….
Trailer park signifying
There are moments when Mr. White’s hazy backroads vignettes play like David Lynch — as on the sly cut, “The Wound That Never Heals.” In these moments, his narratives and mixological cocktail of country, noir, rock and sound collage hit the bone. But then there’s a nearly equal number of times when he dallies overly…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Hi, I’m from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Aries. For weeks, I’ve planted subliminal signals in the horoscopes of the other signs, covertly persuading them to be extra nice to you during the astrological month of Pisces (February 19-March 20), which every year brings you Rams face to…
Taking cues
Local dailies follow MT’s lead in soil contamination story….
Bluegrass Betty
Little Sparrow bubbles over with the glorious mountain music we always knew Dolly Parton had inside, tucked underneath the tacky platinum wigs, rhinestone studs, glitter, neon and a cartoony theme park. Gorgeous fiddle, accordion, bouzouki, mandolin and guitar arrangements do-si-do with clog dancers, enthusiastic yee haws and the sincere ’n’ sweet country gal’s trademark trembling…
Spring into shopping
Get ready for the long-awaited spring and hide February’s ugliness with some of these must-have items….
Ride along
Citizens can oppose MDOT’s billion-dollar plan to “improve” I-94….
Hi-fi short delights
In the introduction to Speaking With the Angel, editor Nick Hornby wrote parenthetically, “I’ve pinched the title from Ron Sexsmith, whose first album contains a song of that name which seems to me to be heart-meltingly relevant.” Relevant to the stories contained in the book? Not really. What makes Hornby’s heart melt is the fact…
Made with the shades
These sunglasses are ugly, but you will look like an ugly celebrity if you wear them.
Go girls
Detroit organization for homeless girls wins award….
Extreme puzzle busters
Video games are often a sublime release for aggression — a priceless tool for fist-o-matics to channel their violent behavior. Yet some games defy this unwritten rule. Plunge into the unruly PlayStation 2 world of AquaAqua, for instance, where little dewdrop demons with lollipop smirks and childlike peculiarity wander freely among a broken landscape. Mountains…
Desperately seeking perfection
Q: I am turning 42. I am married to a great guy, but sex with him is like sleeping with my dad. We haven’t had any activity in three years. I am not too hard on the eyes. Recently, my daughter’s friend’s dad hit on me. I have never cheated in my life. I found…
Second helping
Excess gore? Deadly inertia? Metro Times arts editor George Tysh wonders why all the other critics are fussing over Ridley Scott’s Hannibal.
Asian Cinderella
What makes this 18th century Korean folk tale more than a nicely photographed storybook fable is that it’s narrated by a Korean pansori singer, who often crops up in voice-over describing the action we’re seeing. It’s a picturesque love story with a sound track whose raw emotionalism will swamp the casual listener.
Young and healthy?
The average American consumes lots of unhealthy junk food. We’d probably feel a lot better eating whole grains, vegetables, nuts … but, like anything good for you, macrobiotics takes a lot of discipline.
Criminal Lovers
Hansel and Gretel kill: Some myths and fairy tales are our collective nightmares, safely entrapped in the dream language of highly symbolic prose. Director François Ozon (Water Drops on Burning Rocks) translates some of that prose into horrifyingly explicit cinematic flesh and blood.
Keepin’ vinyl alive
Ron Murphy’s Sound Enterprises is cutting records the good old-fashioned way for the cognoscenti.
Monkeybone
Two Tim Burton-collaborators, writer Sam Hamm (Batman) and director Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), have managed to create a perky film about night terrors that gets increasingly silly and shrill — with Brendan Fraser and Bridget Fonda.
Sounding it out
Slum Village lays it down rough and easy… in the studio with T3, Baatin, and producer RJ Rice, as they experiment with new sounds and make music for themselves first.
3000 Miles to Graceland
A muddled theme-park ride through scenes of action, romance and comedy played out by latter-day cowboys and Jezebels, cops and robbers — maybe this is what male "menopause" looks like — with Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell and Courteney Cox-Arquette.
Practice, practice, practice
But first, beers and talk about haircuts….
See Spot Run
The catchy title is one of the few charms of this irredeemable pile of steaming dog crap, a movie so rife with warmed-over slapstick and hoary clichés that its utter uselessness becomes almost fascinating — with David Arquette and Paul Sorvino.
The Good Good
London’s Dego has always made adventurous music filled with mind, body and soul, and that’s exactly what he presents on his new compilation entitled The Good Good … plus, Ann Arbor’s got the electro-goods.
