Smoke Break, vol. 8: Honeybus.
In this installment of Smoke Break, Smith and I try and figure out what Jesse Malin means for America. Smith also dismisses nearly 40 years of pop music and declares 1960s British baroque pop darkhorses Honeybus as the past and future heroes of pop songwriting. In response I make a cheap joke about street fights.…
$ for ?
Good news: there’s talk of a benefit concert for Question Mark, the garage rock icon who as you’ve probably heard lost pretty much everything in a fire recently. We’ll keep you posted on any benefit show developments, but in the meantime you can give a little bit at the Sights/Siddartha/Porchsleeper show this Friday at Magic…
The song remains the shame.
Post-Hung, it’s not even a big deal when a weirdo grabs a few seconds of fame for being an impossibly shitty singer. Last night’s American Idol had those kids, the ones who were coddled in their Nowheresville bubble with coos of “My little angel can sing,” right up to the second that Randy or Simon…
Raising a stink
Driving a reporter around his Delray neighborhood in southwest Detroit, John Nagy points out the obvious. “I’m not going to pretend this is Grosse Pointe,” he says. He says this without irony or rancor. The point is this: Sure Delray isn’t a place where you’ll find any 10,000-square-foot mansions, but just because it’s an inner-city…
Stomp the Yard
From the moment the credits roll, you can tell Stomp the Yard is determined to prove that it isn’t just another dance movie churned out for 13-year-old girls with nothing better to do on MLK day. In a decrepit, Thunderdome-like warehouse, a bunch of multiracial thugs gather together to throw down on a dance floor…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "When are your cats old enough to learn about Jesus?" asks *The Onion,* America’s finest newspaper. Think about that question for a while, Aries. Then, once you’ve worked yourself up into a riddle-solving frame of mind, move on to these other, more pressing brain-teasers: When will you finally be old enough…
Letters to the Editor
The educated get it Now that I am a simply a visitor to the DIA, one who happens to have a lot of background knowledge, I must say that the article by freelance writer Christina Hill was clearly one person’s viewpoint on a subject about which she is very uneducated (“Lowering the barre,” Metro Times,…
Vital Vidal
Gore Vidal’s second memoir will make you laugh hard, even when — especially when — it shouldn’t. Vidal has had as many careers as any American pop-star intellectual might want: activist, novelist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, expat observer and all-around celebrity whore. In his prime, Vidal was known for his historical novels, such as Lincoln and…
Art Bar
While many of the poems we feature in this column are written in open forms, that’s not to say I don’t respect good writing done in traditional meter and rhyme. But a number of contemporary poets, knowing how a rigid attachment to form can take charge of the writing and drag the poet along behind,…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Although many an obit opined how James Brown got his second wind after he appeared in The Blues Brothers, few — if any — mentioned just how marginalized his mainstream career had actually become by that point. Building on the heady heights of the ’60s, Soul Brother No. 1 released a steady stream of steamy…
Chen Taijiquan: Lao Jia Yi Lu & Straight Sword
There are many who believe that performing tai chi is an all-natural key to maintaining health and boosting energy and healing powers. In fact, supposedly it can make you forget yourself, make you think you were someone else — someone good. That’s probably reason enough for Lou Reed to study this meditative martial art. He’s…
Hero worship
In 1971, Steve Wood was a senior at Grosse Pointe North High School, just a kid playing tenor sax in a rock ‘n’ roll band called the Invisible Circus and dreaming of rock stardom. Then a record-buying trip changed his life. Wood had only been playing tenor sax for a little more than a year…
Budget watch
City releases budget, but won’t give forecast.
Berr Kerkey Sessions Vol. 1
The Dollfaces wore the blush of youth like a merit badge, and since every show was like a recital, you could forgive the Detroit teen rockers for the occasional rough patch. It’s the same with Berr Kerkey, the first collection of solo demos from ex-Dollface Mick Bassett. These songs are great more for their feel…
Stick these in your iPod
Yusef Lateef made records in an era when “hip” was still an organic state, and Detroit was a cool city from the ground up instead of from the government on down. The tenor saxophonist-flutist’s 1950s albums for Savoy and Prestige exude an almost intangible coolness, something you feel instead of hear; even better, you feel…
Guantanamo no mo’
Protesters demand trials for terror suspects.
What Ann Landers won’t tell you
Q: I recently met the straight cousin of a good friend. On the night of our first meeting, I ended up rimming, blowing and getting fucked by him. And he blew me — badly. Since then, I’ve given him another blow job. That night he slept with his arms around me and he repeatedly muttered…
More Gitmo
Official urges corporations to shun groups aiding Guantanamo inmates.
Strange brew
Jolly Pumpkin brewmaster uses wild yeasts and oak barrels.
Book beat
This story won’t leave the head. Years ago, at a gallery show in Chicago, an installation featured a large ramp made from a pile of books that almost filled the space. At the opening, after a few beers, a disgruntled young writer stomped out. A few seconds later he returned, stood in the doorway and…
Longer nights
With the holiday dance season over — topped by an off-the-hook “One Man Spaceship” DJ performance by Jeff Mills at Fifth Avenue Downtown Friday, Jan. 5 — this is the time when Detroit’s clubbers and ravers take a few months off to recharge. But this year, even in the dreary Detroit winter, a flame still…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Killers, fools, jailbait & twins
Crank Lion’s Gate Alright. Listen up, kiddies and deviants — it’s no rules cinema time and do we have the flick for you, because just released to DVD is this writer’s No. 1 flick of ’06, Crank. So what’s the big beef? The premise is simple — Jason Statham is Chev Chelios, a poisoned hitman…
The art of motion
Little-known Detroit fact No. 1: Henry Ford built the first automotive assembly line right here in Detroit, thus ushering in the age of the automobile and the age of automation. Little-known Detroit fact No. 2: The North American International Auto Show is in town. The back-slapping navel-gazing garish glitz and hype terminus of the world…
Hard bodies and hard questions
“You don’t faint easily, do you?” Actually, yes, I do. I’ve blacked out before breakfast on more than one occasion. But no need to make the doctor nervous. On the way to the plastination laboratory, the one place that could be considered creepier than a morgue, where I’ll soak in the sight of fresh human…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Boiling under
When the Sonic Lullaby Festival debuted last June at Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), it offered a discount on the door price to anyone who showed up in sleepwear. Organizer Paul MacLeod had booked acts with an affinity for ambient textures and the vagaries of experimental music — encouraging comfort seemed apt for a…
Elegant touches
With tasteful art for sale on the brick walls, large picture windows fronting the colorful pedestrian traffic on Washington Street, and, in season, a sizeable outdoor patio, Café Zola is one of the more comfortable restaurants in Ann Arbor. The most expensive entrée, at $29, a whole fish of the day baked in parchment, is…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 17 Detroit Tigers Winter Caravan SPORTS Few things put the world in perspective as delightfully as an old-fashioned underdog story. And when our Tigers became unlikely Mr. Octobers last fall, the city became, once again, smitten. This week, giddy baseball fans can meet up with (and give thanks) to the boys of summer:…
Fluff ’n’ snuff
Nick Cassavetes’ Alpha Dog is a long, hard march toward the pointless execution of a 15-year-old by teenage drug dealers, essentially an emotional snuff film. Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) is a mid-level pot dealer in 1999 who is more poseur than gangster. When he falls out with raging speed freak Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster) over…
Ready to swim in sulfuric acid?
What do you think of this idea? Kennecott Minerals Co., a huge multinational firm based in Utah, whose parent company is in England, wants to dig a highly dangerous nickel and copper mine underneath an environmentally sensitive trout stream in Michigan. This is off in the Upper Peninsula, in a picturesque part of Marquette County…
Alpha Dog
Most of Alpha Dog’s music is film composer Aaron Zigman slumming with tracks that bite from Beck, Cali hardcore, Audioslave and contemporary R&B. And like a nerd trying to fit in, Zigman’s attempts at writing “what the kids listen to” are glaringly bad. If the lowlife hedonists and party girls that populate Alpha Dog put…
Powdered wigs
University theaters are strange places. While Detroit’s small professional venues eke out an existence mounting modest productions of technically simple plays with small casts, the city’s university companies routinely produce plays with casts of two dozen, full costumes, glossy handbills and demanding technical direction. Of course, it makes sense: Their mission is to make a…
Pan’s Labyrinth
Known for his stunning visuals in exciting genre vehicles like Hellboy and Chronos, del Toro throws everything he’s got at screen with a realist style that’s rich and unbelievably imaginative. Its vision resembles Tim Burton’s at his best, or what Peter Jackson did in Heavenly Creatures. Pan’s Labyrinth is a masterwork, the sort of passionate…
Motor City Rides
Video maker Anthony Garth loves his Caddy.
The Curse of the Golden Flower
When Empress Phoenix (the ravishing Gong Li) discovers that her husband (Chow Yun Fat) is slowly poisoning her into madness, she puts into motion an elaborate plan to overthrow the Emperor and secure the throne for her two sons, Prince Jai (Chinese pop star Jay Chou) and petulant teen Cheng (Qin Junjie). Things get complicated…
Jew jitsu
A strobe light is pulsating. Bass-heavy rap blares. It’s dark, you can’t see a thing, and someone puts his hands around your neck. What do you do? Pull the attacker’s hands apart to break the chokehold, then: “Imagine you’re grabbing their ears,” barks Krav Maga instructor Paul Cichowlas to a packed Thursday night class. “Now,…
Arthur and the Invisibles
With Arthur and the Invisibles (formerly titled Arthur and the Minimoys), director Luc Besson has all Pixar’s blockbuster elements in place: A-list celebrity voice work, eye-catching animation, a fantastical adventure and ambitious action sequences. But little of the film gels. Arthur (Freddie Highmore) has been left to live with his grandmother (Mia Farrow) while his…
96 Tears is right.
Terrible news out of Clio. Below is the email I received about the fire verbatim.–JTL A terrible tragedy has befallen our good friends ? & The Mysterians. This past Tuesday evening, the home of ? and his manager and manager’s wife, burned to the ground. They have lived in this house for the past 30…
