Oh, mother
We’ve been hearing some of these songs for a few years now: “Ginger,” “1771.” But they’re coated with new grease for the Cyril Lords’ full-length No Fun debut, and Motherland ends up being a real good time. It’s cranked to efficiency. The herky two- and three-minute blasts of three-piece impatience emphasize Marty “Mother” Morris’ torn…
Alright, This Time Just the Girls Volume 2
Is there anything sexier than a chick playing a guitar with the vim ‘n’ swagger of someone who was born to strum? Or a gal at the mic, strutting and confident in her knowledge that every eye in the room is upon her? That’s what you’ll take away from the second volume of Sympathy’s celebration…
Sun, Sun, Sun
Elected leader Blake Sennett recorded most of Sun, Sun, Sun while on tour with his other band, literate indie darlings Rilo Kiley. Appropriately, it has a travelogue quality, from the tourist brochure artwork to the way supporting players come and go. (Contributors include Eisley vocalist Stacy Dupree and Rilo Kiley auxiliary member Mike Bloom.) Sennett’s…
The most important job
“We can’t wait any longer. The perfect storm is heading toward Michigan — the pressures of the global economy that our current system is not set up for, and the belief that the old auto industry will come back and everything will be fine just the way things were. Well, those days are over and…
Wake-up call
The “always low prices” of Wal-Mart economics often mean turning a blind eye to the social and ecological costs of labor exploitation and environmental abuse, here and around the world. But some consumers and proprietors are beginning to wake up, and to search for a more a more holistic approach to the link between production…
Gentle Ben
When Cathie Hubers was pregnant with her singer-songwriter son Ben Cyllus, she was gigging in a lounge act with Ben’s natural father, entertaining bleary Holiday Inn clientele throughout the Midwest. And you can picture Cyllus’ folks too, on Nebraska drives between hotels, under yawning starry skies, at once hopeful of the future and frustrated with…
Rail break
As a student earning his master’s degree in urban geography at Ohio’s Kent State University in the mid-1970s, Marsden Burger thought it could be just a few years before technological advances would move innovative modes of transportation from the realm of futuristic visions to a concrete-and-steel reality. By 1980, when Burger came to Detroit as…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Knock you out
It’s a freezing cold December day at a Romulus Mickey D’s, and local hip-hop sensation P.L. is slouched in the back near a window. He’s wrapped snug in an Al Wissam hooded bomber coat, watching patrons eat value meals. It’s a scene he knows well. With hands in his pockets and hood over his head,…
No Ordinary People
There’s nothing overtly Christian about the songs on No Ordinary People, the debut of local trio Schaeffer. But the search for direction and a sense of meaning are common themes for the brothers Rossi throughout , and their crisp, firmly melodic pop is well in line with CCM sensation Jeremy Camp or crossover acts like…
Blasé boobies
Directed by Stephen Frears, the movie is based on the story of a real London nude revue in pre-World War II London and its stodgy proprietor, Mrs. Laura Henderson (Judi Dench). No need to get all hot and bothered, though: The gorgeous cast of English roses prances around for most of the film showing plenty…
Tristan & Isolde
Based on a Celtic legend from the Dark Ages, this tale of doomed love is set in the years following the Roman Empire’s fall, it charting the tragic life and love of English knight Tristan (James Franco), the adopted son of Lord Marke of Cornwall (Rufus Sewell). A kind and just ruler, Marke struggles to…
Hoodwinked
A badly drawn and disappointingly uninspired rehashing of what’s become the standard fare for children’s movies: the fairy tale with a twist. It seems everybody in Hollywood is looking for the next Shrek, so much so that reworking classic tales has become as played out as having someone say “fo shizzle.” Regrettably, this movie does…
Last Holiday
So, who thought to cast a movie starring hip-hop heavyweights Queen Latifah and LL Cool J alongside renowned French dramatic actor Gérard Depardieu, garnished with a cameo from Emeril Lagasse? Whatever the inspiration, the unlikely casting combination works for director Wayne Wang’s update of the 1950 comedy Last Holiday. Aside from some unfortunate attempts at…
Head Cheese
This dude Blueprint hails from Columbus, Ohio, where he started Weightless Records as a vehicle for himself and his Greenhouse Effect crew. Print has appeared on albums by Atmosphere, Murs and RJD2. But some of his best stuff still hasn’t seen light of day. (He’s mentioned the unreleased Orphanage album which features himself, Slug, Eyedea,…
Glory Road
You’ve seen this movie before: A fiery, inspiring basketball coach convinces a headstrong team of underdogs to overcome their differences and win a championship. Glory Road is just the latest derivative, heart-tugging sports drama from super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer. “Based on a true story,” Glory Road recounts one team’s rocky rise to stardom at Texas Western…
Delectable deco
Sandwiches and coffee at the new Rowland Café are first-rate, but of necessity they take a back seat to the setting. The café’s small black tables and chairs sit in the middle of the magnificent arched mezzanine of the 1929 Guardian Building, an Art Deco splendor — and National Historic Landmark — that was re-opened…
Random acts of kindness
With a name like Capella Genia Fahoome, you just know this TV producer has some stories to tell. “Capella is the name of a star in the sky,” the former Detroiter and Osborn High grad explains. “My parents were hippies. I’m a flower child. My middle name is from the midwife who helped give birth…
Night and Day
Thursday-Sunday • 19-22 Tesserae One-Act Play Festival THEATER Teenagers tackling Molière? Don’t run for the door just yet — the Mosaic Youth Theatre in Detroit swears their young actors have risen to the occasion, taking on difficult one-act plays such as Molière’s The Flying Doctor, Chekhov’s The Bear, William Inge’s The Bobolink, David Ives’ The…
Fake some noise
Drive, he said This past week, Hit Singles charmed its way into Camilo Pardo’s annual party for the international auto design community held in the Ford GT design chief’s Woodward Avenue loft. The cerebral Pardo made himself scarce, but there was plenty for a jaundiced fish out of water to see and hear. Men with…
Faces & frogs
Artist James Brutus, a recent grad of the College for Creative Studies, is a big fan of Nostradamus. And like the 16th century prophet, who concealed his insights in quatrains, Brutus crams his sketchbooks with symbols and metaphors. The 25-year-old artist has obsessively filled more than a few journals with frogs, known for centuries as…
Backslash
Here, kitty kitty — Cats are such dignified, graceful, timeless creatures. So leave it to us humans to torture the poor creatures by making them look as stupid as possible in the pursuit of our own amusement. Take, for example, the self-explanatory stuffonmycat.com. The Web site’s motto? Stuff + cats = awesome. The site is…
Caged in
There’s a little known form of folk art called paños that comes from a pretty unlikely place. Paños, which are little more than paintings on handkerchiefs, are made by Mexican-American prisoners in jails and penitentiaries in the Southwest. The tiny canvases contain a variety of cultural imagery — from religious icons to low-rider trucks —…
Hang on
Last summer at Detroit’s Gallery 4731, artist Beili Liu created a “Great Wall” of toast, 40 slices high and 20 feet across the floor. Liu’s ambitiously obsessive installation in white bread made for an engaging synthesis of American and Chinese cultures. In Aline, a show of three distinct yet conceptually linked pieces on display at…
Proactive
Think Detroit is looking for volunteers to help coach and manage Little League games for young Detroiters. The group seeks to build character in young people through sports and leadership development, and organizes baseball, basketball, flag football and volleyball games for city youth to achieve that end. You don’t have to be the next Ben…
Letters to the Editor
Detroit, by the book I really enjoyed your cover story article “Storefront Salvation” (Metro Times, Jan. 11, 2006), both the article and the photos. Camilo José Vergara has been mining the beauty of urban spaces for decades, examining a structure over the course of years to study a building’s initial grandeur, neglect, abandonment and rehabilitation…
À la dualmode
It’s an intriguing vision, but as it is now you can’t get there from here. At least not the way Francis Reynolds wants you to do it. And how he wants you to do it is through a transit concept called dualmode. The idea is that you’d have an electric-powered car that would allow you…
Helter shelter
Macomb County cuts will freeze out homeless
Civil wrongs
Are Michigan Civil Rights Initiative supporters deceiving the public?
A real dicktator
Joe Wilson comes to town, talks about Saddam’s hand jive
Art Bar
Here is a poem by David Bengtson, a Minnesotan, about the simple pleasure of walking through deep snow to the mailbox to see what’s arrived. But, of course, the pleasure is not only in picking up the mail with its surprises, but in the complete experience — being fully alive to the clean cold air…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In my book *Pronoia*, there’s a 1,500-word piece extolling a few of the many ways in which I feel that living on this planet is a glorious privilege. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when it makes perfect sense for you to write something similar. To be in maximum…
24-hour potty people
Q: I have a sexual interest in the sounds of men using the toilet. There are several restaurants very close to my home, and I hide a wireless telephone headset in an inconspicuous place in the bathroom. I can then record, from my home, the sounds of men farting and defecating. My husband is aware…
Honor King, but not with symbols
This November we’re to see the groundbreaking for the $100 million Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. Something called the Stone of Hope is supposed to be the centerpiece of the memorial. I haven’t seen any artists’ renderings, but I’m sure it will be big and impressive, the way these monuments are supposed to be.…
Free the BPM!
Your night-crawling options lately come down to this: Stay home and watch today’s Auto Show highlights and another warm, fuzzy featurette on the upcoming Super Bowl or get your asses out to one of the many free regular rotations hosted by vet Detroit DJs. Yes, that’s right, free. At several locations around town you can…
Classic approach
Some 2,400 years ago, the Greeks invented modern drama, and just a few days ago, Hilberry Theatre revived Sophocles’ Electra. One of a trilogy of plays about a ruling family that comes to grief just after the Trojan War, it is about mankind’s lust for revenge and revenge’s failure to resolve human problems. In this…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Standing up straight, it’s MB58! Cab Calloway Minnie the Moocher and Me (Crowell) The Professor of Swingformation could teach all the crude dudes a thing or two about being cool. How cool? Cool enough to play poker with Steve McQueen and Edward G. Robinson in The Cincinnati Kid, that’s how cool. Days Like These Inventure…
7″ pop shots
Terrible Twos Plunderball b/w Spitting Image X! Records OK, no time to waste. Notes for a review: Side A equals three minutes of plunging down a waterslide listening to a spy theme for a spy too anxious to remember anyone’s name or face. With a title like “Plunderball,” there may be something to that. Willfully…
The fiddling punk
There was always that guy in school. The one with the weird, hair-sprouting mole, the huge Mickey Mouse ears … the headgear. He was endlessly taunted and ridiculed because kids can be so cruel. That’s sort of what it’s like to be the kid who plays violin in a punk rock band. “We were all…
