Cover Stories
Nathan Phillips
Nathan Phillips Albums 1 tUnE-yArDs w h o k I l l (4AD): Merrill Garbus, the hero we need, stretches herself out with world-saving body music. 2 Das Racist Relax (Greedhead): Good jokes, bad jokes, non-jokes and immensely wry pop smarts. 3 Shabazz Palaces Black Up (Sub Pop): Digable Planets’ Butterfly returns…
Charles Latimer
Charles Latimer Albums 1 James Carter Caribbean Rhapsody (Emarcy): This is Carter’s first masterpiece in what’s shaping up to be a hall of fame jazz career. 2 Christian Scott, David Sanchez & Stefon Harris Ninety Miles (Concord): For serious acoustic jazz lovers this is the equivalent of comfort food. 3 The James Carter…
Brett Callwood
Brett Callwood Best local albums 1 The Blueflowers In Line With the Broken Hearted (Analog Terror): Simply beautiful. Kate Bush meets Joni Mitchell. Or something. 2 The Ashleys Can’t Take It (self-released): Noisy, ragged and so very DE-troit. 3 Black Jake & the Carnies Sundry Mayhems (self-released): Old-time punk rockers with stunning…
Doug Coombe
Doug Coombe’s Detroit Top 10 1 Chris Bathgate Salt Year (Quite Scientific) 2 Dennis Coffey Dennis Coffey (Strut Records) 3 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. It’s a Corporate World (Warner Brothers) 4 Elzhi & Will Sessions Elmatic (The Jae.B Group) and Elmatic Instrumentals (Fat Beats) 5 Mayer Hawthorne How Do You…
Bill Holdship
Bill Holdship Albums 1 Lady Gaga Born This Way (Interscope): Beneath the facade and pop bombast (which managed to produce a slew of hit singles in 2011, including "The Edge of Glory," this year’s finest), Stefani Germanotta really is one of the great talents of our time, even if everyone doesn’t yet recognize it.…
Serene Dominic
Serene Dominic Albums 1 St. Vincent Strange Mercy (4AD): I love the creepy way Annie Clark sings passionate passages with her eyes wide open — not since the Hitler lookalike in Sparks has rock had such an effective Sphinx. Her singing "this is our champagne year" to the most depressing dirge anyone’s come up…
Jeff Milo
Jeff Milo Favorite local songs of 2011 1 Pink Lightning "Why I Drink Fancy" 2 Prussia "St. Elmo’s Fire Pt. II" 3 Glossies "Let’s Get Awkward" 4 Passalacqua "Bridge Card Hustle" 5 Zoos of Berlin "Movie On August Ray/Tamarind" 6 Johnny Ill Band "Good Posture 7…
Jonathan Cunningham
Jonathan Cunningham Albums 1 Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop): Lead singer Robin Pecknold ascends to a higher level of songwriting. 2 Shabazz Palaces Black Up (Sub Pop): The former Digable Planets frontman and crew focus on making unapologetic and futuristic black music. 3 Adele 21 (XL): Power-lunged Adele has come straight…
Travis Wright
Travis Wright Top 25 (missed the memo about Top 10s) 1 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. It’s a Corporate World (Warner Bros.): The record that reigned over my year. 2 tUnE-yArds w h o k I l l (4AD): The record I couldn’t stop talking about. 3 Danny Brown XXX (Fool’s Gold Records):…
W. Kim Heron
W. Kim Heron Oustanding Jazz of the Year 1 Sonny Rollins Road Shows Vol. 2 (Doxy): His serial soloing on "Sonnymoon for Two," his meeting with Ornette Coleman, justifies the whole live disc, and pretty much its placement here. 2 Miles Davis LIVE in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 (Sony Legacy):…
Megan O’Neil
Megan O’Neil Best Albums of 2011 1 PJ Harvey Let England Shake (Vagrant) 2 Lady Gaga Born This Way (Interscope) 3 Gillian Welch The Harrow & the Harvest (Acony) 4 St. Vincent Strange Mercy (4AD) 5 Smith Westerns Dye It Blonde (Fat Possum) 6 Laura Marling A Creature I…
Top 10: The Year of Danny Brown
Talk about your international branding. Sure, Danny Brown has been a wet dream for bloggers and Internet music critics for months and months, but this year he began to transcend his "Internet sensation" tag and is headin’ toward some version of "mainstream" fame — you know, famous in the kind of way your mom will…
Brian Smith
Brian Smith albums 1 Anna Waronker California Fade (Five Foot Two): Moving like a hazy sunset over Pacific Ocean blue, Waronker’s sun-warmed voice sways delicately between the breathy and the intimate, whether she’s serenading a newborn, nursing another’s self-destruction, or cutting loose from a fucked-up scene. 2 Danny Brown XXX (Fool’s Gold): The insanely…
City Slang: Nuge is Simpson-ified
Anyone who saw the Simpsons last night will have been treated to the sight of a yellow version of Detroit’s Ted Nugent. Nugent played himself in a story which saw the right wing guitarist endorsed for President by Homer. Ted spent the episode throwing a dead elk on Marge’s dinner table, using the local children…
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy B+ Gary Oldman has earned such a reputation for his explosive, scenery-chewing career that when the now-53-year-old actor quiets down and turns inward, critics herald his performance as revelatory. But while his poised approach to George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy may seem like a tour de force of…
Split screens
Joel Landy, owner of Cass City Cinema, is a blond-mopped hippie built like a noodle; his thick mustache completely encloses his lips, and his hands are discolored in a car-mechanic-for-life kind of way (he was for 25 years) that suggests he’s not kiddin’ around when he says he’s a workhorse. The 59-year-old Landy owns the…
Grand Old Panderers
The first time Republicans really, really scared me was in 1964. I can’t remember where I got the idea, but in my then-11-year-old mind I believed that if Barry Goldwater won the election against Lyndon Johnson he was going to send all the black people back to Africa. Back then, I thought of Africa as…
City Slang: Michigan Humane Society has Seven Year Itch
MotorCityBlog and Most People Are DJs will host a fundraiser for the Michigan Humane Society at the Jazz Café in the Music Hall Detroit on February 3. According to the press release, “Seven Year Itch will feature Phantom Cats, I Love Lightning Bugs, FUR and Legendary Creatures filling the Jazz Café with an array of…
City Slang: Vigilantes doing it for the kids
Bands appearing include Mound Road Engine, Medisin Wheel, South Mad Sabs (a Black Sabbath tribute band), Through Our Eyes and Macarthur Street Mafia. According to the press release, “This event is open to the PUBLIC. Doors are at 6 p.m., and a donation of $5 is being accepted at the door. A cash bar will…
Miz Korona — “The Whole City Behind Me” Featuring Marv Won & Nametag
A few days ago, Detroit rap celebrity Miz Korona gave me the good news that she’s finally got a release date for her upcoming album. In comical fashion, the album is called Sealy Posturepedic (The Most Slept On) and refers to the fact that despite being one of the better lyricists in the city, people…
Brand new Denmark — “Fall in Life (Luv)”
With a new year comes new changes, right? Former Detroiter Denmark — who used to perform under the name Denmark Vessey — just released a new single/video this week and it already gives me hope for 2012. This is the same Denmark of the Crown Nation family and a key, longtime collaborator with Quelle Chris…
City Slang: Brendan Benson prepares to launch new album along with label
Brendan Benson has launched his own record label and publishing company, called Readymade. The first releases on Readymade will be Benson’s own What Kind of World album on April 21, and an album from the first artist signed to the label, Young Hines, weho will be putting out the Give Me My Change record. According…
City Slang: Jack White is an American picker
According to a statement from his Third Man Records label, Jack White will be appearing on the History Channel TV show American Pickers on Monday, January 9. The “pickers” in the title actually has nothing to do with playing guitar. Rather, the show follows two dudes as they scour junkyards and basements looking for rarities…
City Slang: “State of Shock” revisited
Urrgghh, there is so much that I detest about Ted Nugent. I hear the man speak about any issue bordering on serious, and I want to bury my own face in concrete. He’s obviously an imbecile, and his recent newspaper editorial, in which he basically said that poor people are poor because of their own…
Food Stuff
More Mexican As we go to press, we hear tell that downtown Detroit has a new taco joint. It’s called Hot Taco, and it’s just a few blocks north of Cliff Bell’s and Park Bar. The address is 2233 Park Ave., Detroit; 313-963-4545; hottacodetroit.com. And good news for those leaving the bars, they’ll be open…
Body vs. soul food
My mom made some of the best Southern-style fried chicken I ever ate. After church dinners that featured her crispy, golden yard birds, Mom would often have to pass her recipe on to other church ladies. Growing up, I ate all the staples of the soul food diet — pork chops, pig feet, ham hocks,…
Letters to the Editor
Mourning in America As much as I appreciate the sentiment stated in the latest column by Jack Lessenberry ("How this came to pass," Dec. 28), the premise behind it is flawed. As Mikhail Gorbachev says in a post I read online in The Nation, "Since the breakup of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, Western…
Nonmonogamous couples speak out
Why do most people assume that all nonmonogamous relationships are destined to fail? Because we only hear about the ones that do. If a three-way or an affair was a factor in a divorce or breakup, we hear all about it. But we rarely hear from happy couples who aren’t monogamous, because they don’t want…
Shogun Bistro offers Asian fare with flash
Shogun Chinese & Japanese Bistro 23195 Marter Rd., St. Clair Shores 586-350-0927 Handicap accessible Japanese dinners: $13.50-$22.75 Shogun management knows its clientele. In my two visits, I didn’t see any diners of Asian origin, but I met a friendly east-sider who claimed to visit twice a week. If you want chopsticks, you have to ask.…
Films of 2011 (Take 2)
Tweenage Wasteland Hollywood and teenagers have been going steady since the ’50s, but there were troubling signs this year that those fickle youngsters are thinking about straying. While Harry Potter’s curtain call was still the biggest box-office grosser, the third Twilight film was just gross. The red flag is that teenybopper flicks with no intention…
Winter’s Harvest – crop forecast
Winter’s Harvest — crop forecast Hello to Don Cheadle and 302 Alcatraz inmates Primetime television is breeding a nation of schizophrenics. More than 80 new and returning series will bombard us over the next three months, TV’s so-called "winter season." Just focusing on January’s first half (we’ll deal with others as their launch dates grow…
Ryder’s Wheels keep on turnin’
Mitch Ryder really shouldn’t need any introduction: Hamtramck-born, he came to the attention of the public in the ’60s, first in Detroit, then the larger musical world, with his rockin’ R&B band the Detroit Wheels. He went on to play in a harder rock ’n’ roll band simply called Detroit, before all but disappearing in…
The films of 2011
Action goes artsy-fartsy It was bound to happen — action flicks that have more on their mind than just explosions and macho posturing. In the case of Hanna (beautifully played by Saoirse Ronan), Ms. Kickass just happens to be a backwoods teenager longing for her first kiss. Joe Wright’s twisted coming-of-age thriller is long on…
Year of decision
Compared to the high hopes we had, [the president] is a bitter disappointment. —Joseph Rauh, of the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action Mitt Romney, whose wife Barbie affectionately refers to him as Ken, got something right the other day. Campaigning in Iowa, he said this election would determine what kind of nation we would…
Rochester Hills pol pushes new curbs on gay rights
In a recent interview, state Rep. Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) described himself to citizenlink.com as someone who’s been “somewhat active throughout the years in trying to stop special-rights ordinances for homosexual behavior.” Perhaps he’s too humble. The purpose of his interview with CitizenLink — an organization self-described as dedicated to inspiring men and women to…
Wait … Matty Moroun doesn’t call shots for Ambassador Bridge?
For anyone wondering about that odd squishing noise emanating from the courtroom of Wayne Circuit Court Judge Prentis Edwards, we’ve discovered the source: It’s the sound of Detroit International Bridge Co. President Dan Stamper being thrown under a fast moving bus. You may recall that Edwards, back in November, ordered Stamper and the man widely…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
