Nate Young’s brother burned.
Pitchfork has a breakdown of the situation with Nate Young’s brother Peter, who was badly burned when a fire consumed his apartment Saturday, Feb. 24. From Nate’s email: I am asking for donations to help my family with some of the medical bills and the rebuilding of his apartment. I have set up a paypal…
Detroit in the muthafucking building.
Black Milk, “Sound the Alarm” (feat. Guilty Simpson, one of my favorite local emcees, who you’re going to be hearing a lot about.) My favorite part is Milk and Guilty in front of the train station as Apache choppers hover in the background.
Hey, Eddie Marriott!
We dig the Sights. We dig Humble Pie. We also know the Sights dig Humble Pie. And Humble Pie woulda no doubt dug the Sights. Shit, the Sights frontman, the gloriously impish Mssr. Eddie Baranek, claims openly that he cops Pie frontman Steve Marriott’s moves left and right, up and down. We happen to think…
Icky Thump – the Icky Shuffle of 2007.
From the White Stripes’ Web site: “Hello to all the Candy Cane Children in the Land, The White Stripes have completed the recording and mixing of their sixth album. It is entitled: Icky Thump. The record was recorded in Nashville at Blackbird Studio. And word around the sewing circle is that many of your favorite…
SXSW you & me.
Scott Allen of Thunderbirds are Now! gives you the creeper at SXSW 2005. REMEMBER Detroit metro area bands, artists, merch guys, etc.: If you’re going to SXSW, I want to know about it – where you’re playing, where you’re staying, how you’re getting to Texas, and who you’re excited about seeing at the festival besides…
Saturday Looks Good to K
Saturday Looks Good to Me have signed to OG indie fave label K. Fill Up the Room, the combo’s new record, is slated for a Sept. 11 2007 release; tour dates below. Take it away, SLGTM (from the press release): “We’re beyond thrilled to be working with K, a label all of us have loved…
Second chance
How a murder victim’s cousin became an advocate for sentencing reform.
The Autumn Defense
Nose-raised indie attitude inevitably leads certain musicians to reclaim musical ground irradiated by disdain or indifference. And so it is that the Autumn Defense (Wilco bandmates Pat Sansone and John Stirrat) join singer-songwriters from Joe Pernice to Josh Rouse in supping on the dulcet, narcotizing sounds of 1970s soft rock. They don’t pussyfoot around. The…
Revenge of the nerd
Mainstream rap looks a lot like network TV — all reality programming and crime dramas. Perhaps that’s why rap sales were off 20 percent last year. But as the commercial landscape has grown so barren that even Nas is kicking its corpse, the underground is still eclectic and thriving. Indeed, in one low-lit corner, hip-hop’s…
Double trouble
When it comes to battered women, don’t blame the victim.
Radio Free Detroit
On the I-75 service drive at Casmere, it’s a pulsing, multilayered FM soundscape that throbs from your car radio speakers, momentarily displacing the cheap pitchmen hawking their goods at 107.9. Be warned: If you’re moving too fast, you’ll barely notice it, even if you’re looking. Near Tillman Street and Michigan Avenue, the static is broken…
Handmade’s tale
Another clue that time, like the universe’s matter, is accelerating: Music subcultures from only a decade ago now seem culled from ancient history. In the 1990s, albums of experimental music — cassette tape often being the low-cost, DIY format of choice — wound their way through an underground connected by post office boxes and zine…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You’re facing a classic Aries dilemma: You can either run away from demanding responsibilities towards an illusory freedom that might allow you to cling to a false sense of pride . . . or else you can gleefully embrace interesting responsibilities that will build your self-confidence as you fight for a…
Our dearest Departed
Maybe it was all the alcohol. Or maybe it was presenter Gwyneth Paltrow’s weird, asymmetrical hair and the patterned, see-through gown that looked like one of those optical illusion paintings you’re supposed to stare at until you see something that isn’t really there (in her case, a pair of breasts). Or maybe it was the…
Hoods & hitmakers
Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror Xenon Pictures Finally a cryptkeeper that has actually rolled with Crips! Snoop Dogg presents a three-installment anthology of cautionary tales calculated to send fershizzles up your spine. Up front you should know that none of this is actually scarier than the video for “Thriller” or even Soul Plane and the…
Motor City Cribs
Chris Bathgate’s Ann Arbor space.
City lights
Stepping into Ferndale’s Lemberg Gallery these days means taking part in an intimate, wordless conversation on the state of America’s urban soul. There, a small but powerful show, Contemporary Urban Landscape (bumped up in the gallery’s schedule to coincide with Cranbrook Art Museum and MOCAD’s collaborative Shrinking Cities exhibition), brings together scintillating works by seven…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
White History 101
Whatever happened to James Blake? He is probably the most famous bus driver ever. And yet when he died at age 89 in March 2002, the few papers that bothered to note his passing in an obituary ran just a few hundred words of wire copy and moved on. Given that February is Black History…
Home slices
As in most older pizza palaces, the kitchen first made thin-crusted round pies and only added the deep-dish variety around seven years ago. Both come in four sizes from 10 inches ($5.35-$5.95) to 16 inches ($10.50-$11.95) with the 10-inch mini suitable for two. The price structure here and throughout the menu is quite reasonable, another…
Art Bar
Class acts — Wayne State’s Center for the Study of Citizenship is holding its fourth annual Conference in Citizenship Studies, themed “Race and Citizenship.” If the papers presented live up to their titles, the conference will be a serious examination of the nation’s past, present and future. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a leading scholar of race, ethnicity…
CINEMA REVIEW
For their second feature-length film the Quay Brothers, identical twins and stop-action animators, have chosen a live-action narrative to showcase their obsession with all things antique, decaying, dehumanized and obtuse. Exquisitely detailed and meticulously crafted, this nightmarish tale of a beautiful opera singer, a mad scientist and a beguiled piano tuner is as visually audacious…
Ladies first
March is National Women’s History Month, and, like February’s Black History Month, this celebration was created to honor the too-often overlooked people who have dedicated their lives to leveling the American playing field. Here’s a short but (we hope) sweet overview of some of femme-positive events taking place around town: Thursday, March 1 Grace Lee…
Number 23
Joel Schumacher’s glossy and persistently bizarre thriller sure looks pretty. Jim Carrey struggles mightily to keep his twitchy performance in check in a genre far beyond his comfort zone. Even this failed effort is more engaging than some “serious” actor’s best stuff. His manic energy and quirky magnetism keep the films watchable long after the…
Letters to the Editor
Conyers’ cowardice? Jack Lessenberry calls U.S. Rep.John Conyers a “wise old bull” with “all the right reasons” for not moving to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush (“Tales from two fronts,” Metro Times, Jan. 31). There are too many other issues to focus on? Health care and the economy are voter-friendly, safe issues that are talked…
Flannel Pajamas
This relationship-under-a-microscope drama has nothing to say. For two overly long and chatty hours, writer-director Jeff Lipsky drags us through the highs and mostly lows of New York couple Stuart and Nicole’s courtship, marriage and prolonged disintegration. In the end, we’re drowning in second-rate banter, in tears of boredom and wishing we could sign the…
Double vision
Billie’s scream got her siblings to the window. It was a shocking sight: soft, pastel-colored balls of light about a foot in diameter, radiating from within, rising and falling on Mt. Elliott Cemetery across the street. The children tried counting them but couldn’t keep up. They just kept coming in blue, pink, yellow, orange, purple…
Reno 911!
Comedy Central’s cops spoof has made the wholly unnecessary but occasionally hilarious jump to the cinema. The premise is utterly simple: The inept cops of the Washoe County Nevada Sheriffs department have been invited to a national cop convention in Miami. Their exasperated leader is LT. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon), who has lately been thinking…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Astronaut Farmer
Billy Bob Thornton builds a rocket ship in his barn, an entirely functional, full-scale Mercury-style rocket on his downtime from tending to his sprawling Texas ranch. He slips on a space suit and his most earnest smile to star as the conveniently named Charlie Farmer, a former NASA candidate who had to abandon the stars…
Absolute beginners
Q: Serious question: I have always had a thing for Anna Nicole Smith and frequently masturbated to her Playboy photos. I’ve always felt some guilt about masturbation to begin with, but since her death, I now feel a little creepy doing it. Do you think it’s OK to continue now that she has passed away?…
Amazing Grace
William Wilberforce’s (Ioan Gruffud) tries to abolish the English slave trade. The script smartly steers clear of dwelling on the horrors of the slave trade and focuses on the politics and morality of those who held the reins of power. Unfortunately, his characters are terribly opaque. There are no personal epiphanies or internal conflicts for…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
This being the 65th anniversary of Archie Comics, I thought I’d ask musician Andy Kim for his recollections on writing the legendary rock ‘n’ roll hit song “Sugar, Sugar.” Here’s what he had to say: “The year was 1969. America took a walk on the moon and I was performing at ‘Broadway’ Joe Namath’s Bachelor’s…
Surviving Death/Alive Why?
“One Step Forward, Two Steps Back” fades in on a whine of feedback, and also the tinny waver of what sounds like an electric guitar played with a violin bow. It’s the opening track on the live disc of Surviving Death/Alive Why?, and, at first, it’s what you’d expect from Bill Brovold and his fellow…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 28 Michigan Impossible: All Laid Off and No Place to Go COMEDY Take that economic turmoil and turn it into fodder for hilarity — that’s what those wacky cats over at Second City are doing. Comedians Brett Guennel, Quintin Hicks, Tara Nida, Tim Robinson and Megan Wilkins call it Michigan Impossible: All Laid…
Sex Change
Washington, D.C., instrumentalists Trans Am have made a career out of being Kraftwerk-obsessed indie rockers who, instead of disco-ing out their rock urges, rock out their disco urges. The trio has always drawn on New Order as much as ZZ Top or even the spazzy soundtracks of Atari 2600 games. But on Sex Change, they…
Nukes and NIMBY
So … do you think our area needs a new nuclear power plant? You may have missed this little item, what with all the hot Anna Nicole news and all. But DTE Energy (the company that sends all of us those cheery little letters every month asking for money to keep the lights on) wants…
The Destroyed Room
Their no-wave noise-punk 1980s pioneering was Chapter 1, and their early ’90s attempts at grappling with pop stardom in a post-Nevermind world was Chapter 2. Those have been lauded. But it’s Sonic Youth’s recent oeuvre with Jim O’Rourke — Chapter 3 — that’s proven most difficult to contextualize. As this set of B-sides, compilation tracks…
