Sweat for a cause
No matter how you want to change the world, there’s probably a volunteer travel opportunity to go with it — from renovating apartments in a poor New York City neighborhood, to repairing damaged rain forests in Central America, to providing health care in Calcutta. Whatever the project, you’ll experience something beyond the traditional Fodor-guidebook vacation.…
Orbitones, Spoon Harps & Bellowphones
In this, Ellipsis Arts’ second book-plus-CD compendium of experimental musical instruments, editor Bart Hopkin demonstrates how one person’s percussive pile of rubble can be another person’s Zgamonium. With 16 entries, Hopkin presents a variety of examples from the ever-spouting fount of musical creativity. In each of these instruments one can detect the musical personality that…
The source of the nile
Last century, colonialist European explorers spent decades looking for the Nile’s headwaters. Today, they are less than an hour’s ride from Kampala, Uganda. And yet Ahmed, a shy driver who has lived in the city all his life, has never been. To go, just for the heck of it – to see Lake Victoria funnel…
Serial Girlfriend
From the quintessential, prolific indie artist, this, Holly Golightly’s most recent album, is stylistically adventurous with elements of blues, country, punk, pop and ’60s garage rock in the mix. The two most evident styles are a Courtney Love, girl-guitar, rhythm rock and an acoustic-vocal production simplicity, reminiscent of bands such as Hefner or Syd Barrett…
Working as you go
France in the mid-’60s was a real shock to my college boy-beatnik system. When the boat train from Le Havre dropped me at the Gare du Nord in Paris, I could see that just about everything was going to be different and that francs, even in the smallest denominations, wouldn’t be easy to come by.…
Nostalgic turns
Among influential English guitarists such as Richard Thompson, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, Martin Carthy is an icon who first injected traditional elements into the contemporary folk milieu 40 years ago. His version of "Scarborough Fair" predated Simon and Garfunkel’s interpretation by three years and there’s little doubt where Rhymin’ Simon procured the arrangement for…
Alternative Travel 1999
Cheap trips by Larry Kaplan All’s fare in the travel discount game. The emperor’s new shoes by J.B. MacKinnon Tired of walking the same old trails? Next time, try them barefoot. See more travel less by Melinda Clynes Pick a home base and delve into the local culture. Sweat for a cause by Melinda Clynes…
Not your parents’ reggae
If you’re not already aware of the Jamaican-American overlap in urban music or simply want to scratch beyond the usual pop offerings, Strictly the Best 21 is a must-buy. Featuring some of the best reggae hits of the past year, STB 21 brings together a nice crosssection of styles that should satisfy lovers, rude boys…
Price of zero tolerance
When Michigan’s zero-tolerance-for-school-violence law went into effect in 1995, Ruth Zweifler expected the worst. According to "Access Denied," a report recently released by the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan (SACM) in Ann Arbor, which she heads, her suspicions were correct. "No one is safe with this kind of law," which allows public schools to permanently…
Chippendales of the heart
The Prince Charming emotional striptease that is emo-core or post-hardcore draws carefully measured amounts of testosterone from its underlying male frustration. The delicate Pop Unknown – with one famously added former member of the now-defunct Mineral – has enough of this juice o’ toughness to balance out and not float away like bee pollen on…
Dues of the blues
Detroit’s unquestioned queen of the blues Alberta Adams knows where she’s been and where it’s at….
Gripes against Graimark
City residents directly affected by the pending Graimark housing development on Detroit’s east side continue to complain that their views are being ignored by both the project’s developers and city officials. "So much of the stuff is already outlined and brought to us," says Ken Walker, a member of the Graimark Citizens District Council. "They…
Virus
We’ve seen it all before: a Russian ghost ship looming ahead; a nightmarish storm; a crippled salvage tug approaching; a crew in desperate need of assistance. For a moment, in the midst of clumsy opening shots and choppy dialogue — as “abandon ship” sounds like a really good idea — we entertain the mad thought…
Millennium bugged
The Lizard of Fun, in a rare moment of downtime between episodes of unbridled hilarity, is flipping through one of those Cosmo-type quizzes. "Here," it says, "you’re supposed to figure out your millennial personality type. Are you informed, stocked up and thoroughly prepared for the Year 2000, or are you a sniveling, head-in-the-sand Luddite who’s…
President Hoffa? Not yet.
James P. Hoffa wasn’t president of the Teamsters union as the Metro Times went to press Monday — and it wasn’t yet clear when he would be. Michael Cherkasky, the government monitor who oversaw the union’s November-December vote, expected to install Hoffa’s slate in early January. But Cherkasky’s office is looking into protests by Hoffa’s…
Hooker list revealed!
The night the big story broke last March, I was home, cutting pictures of Linda Tripp out of the newspaper with plastic scissors and taping them up to frighten the roaches. I remember the moment the phone rang; it was one of the few times since I stopped placing personal ads that a call began…
You go, grille
You fill your bowl with meat, veggies, sauce and spices. Hand it to the cooks, who prepare your food on a grill. You add spices and extras, from rosemary, cilantro and paprika to peanuts. What you mix-and-match is what you get, and if it’s not good, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Pitch’d
FRESH VINES The skittering, paranoid energy of jungle just may be the perfect sound track for a Detroit winter of slippery roads, salt-bleached sidewalks and icy blasts, which explains why Friday’s "Step" at downtown club Labyrinth continues to heat up — a sign that, while once relegated to side rooms of raves and off-night club…
The Hi-Lo Country
The strength of The Hi-Lo Country is the way it captures the raw beauty of a particular landscape and an atmosphere of resentful nostalgia as the life of the cowboy drifts from reality to mythology. Set in northeast New Mexico during the 1940s, the film follows the friendship between Pete Calder (Billy Crudup) and Big…
Food Stuff
GOING GOURMET In this age of budget vacation packages, the tourism industry has largely succumbed to lowest common denominator programming — particularly distressing for the traveling gourmand who likes to eat well without being accompanied by the crush of rabble escaping for two weeks from the secretary pool in Des Moines or Dayton. However, there…
Playing By Heart
In a movie, what does it mean to say “I love you”? It was one thing in the heyday of screwball comedies or two-hanky romances, but today those three little words are just as likely to be loaded with fear or pain as heart-lifting joy. That the newly minted couples in Playing by Heart, written…
Heavy D
If Bill Clinton’s August 17, 1998, grand jury testimony was the nadir of his presidency, January 21, 1999, must certainly be one of its peaks. During the day, the President’s counsel began the scorched earth decimation of the case presented by the House managers. In the evening, Clinton delivered a stellar State of the Union…
In Dreams
Claire’s nightmare is always the same: a boy, screaming, chained to his bed — water flooding the streets, pouring into empty staircases, breaking through the windows, settling in his room — the boy’s eyes wide-open, his hands pulling at the chain. His name is Vivian and he was left to die alone, in a town,…
Stone-cold destiny
"I tried to be invisible," Sam Raimi says about directing his latest film, the elegant, minimalist thriller, A Simple Plan. From another filmmaker, this statement might not seem so unusual, but from Raimi, it’s a radical shift in perspective. When the Detroit-born filmmaker unleashed the low-budget — but highly influential — gorefest Evil Dead (1983),…
The Thief
Writer-director Pavel Chukhrai’s The Thief opens with a young woman, Katya (Ekaterina Rednikova), giving birth on a muddy, country roadside in Russia in 1946. Her husband was killed in the war and now, with her newborn son Sanya (Misha Philipchuk), she must fend for herself in a country which has been devastated both by the…
Cass appeal
Never has the devastation of the lower Cass Corridor been more visible than during the Great Blizzard of 1999. With sidewalks buried under snow, the homeless people, prostitutes, addicts and wanderers who populate the neighborhood took to the streets, making it impossible to so much as pass through a green light without quite literally staring…
A Simple Plan
Simplicity is one of the most difficult things to get right, but A Simple Plan demonstrates beautifully how it’s done. Employing a visual style that’s stripped down to the bare essentials, director Sam Raimi sets the stage for a devastating Pandora’s box morality tale of submerged desires.
Cheap trips
Got an itch to travel but not a lot of scratch? Discounts abound if you know where to look. Metro Times sought out several options to make your vacation more affordable. BEST FARES More than a million people a month visit Best Fares, Tom Parsons’ online magazine. The guru of discount travel, he’s got a…
Future Dub
For a quarter-century the dynamic duo of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare have cranked out hits as session musicians, writers, producers and artists in their own right. Their success is founded on their unique interpretation of Jamaican music. Rather than following traditional styles, they have used tradition as a more generic type of musical canvas…
The emperor’s new shoes
It’s an unlikely day for hiking, but this is an unlikely hike. It is early January, a damp 40 degrees; my body is wrapped in three layers, my hands stuffed in gloves, my head amply fleeced. And my feet? Bare, naked as the day I was born. I am thinking of Tyvek. Not the industrial…
Inna City Pressure
Education is an enlightening thing. Hearing Dr. Israel’s new musical experiment for the first time is like Woody Harrelson trying to "hear" Jimmy. It’s a combination of dub, dance hall and jungle which my outer ear received as inspired, but my inner ear processed as unfocused. Ironically, enlightenment comes in the form of a published…
See more travel less
The grocer down the road from your motel knows your name. And the mechanic who checked your radiator pointed you toward a well-hidden, way-cool hiking trail. You savored the best green chili in town at a dumpy storefront diner and whiled away the afternoon at a bookstore learning about Navajo legends. All this you’ve experienced…
Super Supergroup
Who are Los Super Seven? They can be described as "The Mexican-American All-Stars" or "The Tex-Mex Social Club." In the wake of the recent, award-winning Buena Vista Social Club CD – which was spearheaded by Ry Cooder and featured an incredible lineup of Cuban musical legends – it seems as if virtually every record company…
