BELGRAVE KICKS OFF NEW SERIES & OTHER JAZZ NOTES
Some jazz notes from here, there and everywhere around town: • Tickets are now on non-sale for a special Black History Month musical celebration, featuring the Detroit International Jazz Festival Orchestra, the Second Ebenezer Majestic Voices, the Christian McBride Quintet and a number of narrators, including Bishop Edgar L. Vann II. Bassist McBride has composed…
John Bennett ready to make waves (air waves, that is)
Detroit Police Officer John Bennett has been making waves ever since he took to the Internet in a big way to call attention to the problems he saw with former Chief Jerry Oliver. That exercise in free speech cost Bennett his job — at least until the courts ordered that he be reinstated. Along the…
L.A. PAYS TRIBUTE TO ASHETON
If you happen to be in Los Angeles next week — and looking outside my window at the moment, it’s probably not such a bad idea — you may want to stop by the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood on Wednesday night, January 13th, when the musical denizens of that fair city finally pay tribute…
PSST: MONEY FOR MUSICIANS WRITERS, PERFORMERS
Last summer we featured the work of 18 visual artists who — from a field of more than 350 applicants — had been designated Kresge Artist Fellows, and honored with $25,000 fellowships to go along with the title. The grants are part of a program funded by the Kresge Foundation and administered by the College…
Metro Times makes the connection
After we asked everybody to share their worst New Year’s Eve stories, we had a ball reading through them. One of the funniest came from former Metro Times staffer Jen Lumpkin, who shared this doozy: One New Year’s Eve, I was a “Kiss Sandwich” — it’s true and tragic! I thought a guy was coming…
Aughts in play
The decade ends so of course there are countless, boring "Best of the Decade" lists. Problem is, video games are difficult things, even to categorize. Was it fun? Was it groundbreaking? Do you just go console-only? What about the PC and arcades? Ah, screw it: If you could play it, it was up for consideration.…
Aughts for naught
I sit in one of the dives/ On Fifty-second Street/ Uncertain and afraid/ As the clever hopes expire/ Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear/ Circulate over the bright/ And darkened lands of the earth,/ Obsessing our private lives. —W.H. Auden Nothing like calling on one of the world’s great poets to sum…
What a year!
D’Anne: Just what people want — another 2009 recap. Laura: Well, this one will be different. Or at least peppered with more sarcasm and inappropriate comments than most. And less Animal Collective exaltation. D’Anne: How do you know I’m not going to fawn all over Animal Collective? I loved Mayflower Picnic Pavilion. Isn’t that what…
Aught not
SPIN Magazine seemed to be only half-serious, I think, when its writers chose "Your Hard Drive" as the No. 1 album at the end of 2000 — right above Radiohead’s Kid A and our own Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers Album. But it turned out to be one of the more astute musical observations of our…
Ten years after
At the end of another decade we asked a cross-section of locals — as in, once you’re tied to this area, you’re always tied to this area — about their experience of the last decade. What mattered? What did we learn? What gives hope for the future? What follows is a sampling of the responses.…
Letters to the Editor
Paging Mulenga Harangua … Larry Gabriel: Forget about those other cases written in the article "Fighting athlete abuse" (Dec. 30). Chris Henry (not Chris Brown) was killed when he fell out of the back of a moving vehicle being driven by the mother of his three kids. There is a major problem here, because if…
Beyond bubbles
The last two decades have been economically characterized by bubbles. The 1990s brought us the tech bubble. You remember that don’t you? That’s when all your computer-savvy friends were walking around with smug grins making all sorts of pronouncements about the dawn of a new era and claiming to be millionaires — on paper. They’re…
Motor City Cribs
MT photographer Doug Coombe has covered a lot of musical real estate under the heading of Motor City Cribs & Rides in the last year. He’s hung out in the Ferndale bungalow-rehearsal spot-studio of Chad Thompson, keyboardist and vocalist for Johnny Headband. He’s hung out in the Go bassist-guitarist John Krautner’s grandfather’s Berkley basement, which…
Votes and doubts
News Hits isn’t exactly ready to jump down the rabbit hole Tom Barrow wants to lead us all into, but we’re interested enough to peer over the edge of it and look into the depths of how elections are conducted in Detroit. The question is: Will any of the many officials Barrow wrote last week…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY JANUARY 6-10 Boeing-Boeing STEWARDESS HOTTIE ALERT This ’60s slapstick French comedy was a bust when it premiered on Broadway back in ’65, but a recent award-winning revival has birthed new respect for the farcical tale of sky-high sexual entanglements. A swinging bachelor makes the most of his time by carrying on affairs with an…
Detroit International Comedy Festival
For those who haven’t heard, Detroit sports a real and worthy live comedy festival, now heading into its third year. This doc — shot during last spring’s festival — serves as an extended advertisement for the 2010 event, and in that regard it excels. Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle hosts the fest, and the jovial Ridley…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Pour taste
The state’s second oldest microbrewery began serving food in their taproom in 2006. Over time, chef Jodi Laney expanded their offerings to make it possible for quaffers to put together a nice little meal along with their Ghettoblaster, the brewery’s most famous product. The tiny kitchen behind the bar precludes elaborate culinary preparations, so the…
Death of the new
Without the benefit of hindsight, we can only begin to guess how the decade from 2000 to 2009 will be remembered. In Hollywood, though, enough quantifiable trends have emerged that it doesn’t seem hasty to label the Oh-Ohs with such pejorative descriptors as the Recycled Decade, or, How I Stopped Creating and Learned to Love…
Rollin’ in dough
You can smell the doughnuts half a block away. The strong, sugary scent drifts out from Dutch Girl Donuts on Woodward near Seven Mile, 24 hours a day, into the neighborhood around it. It’s done that for 63 years, wafting past houses where the shop’s customers once lived before moving away, past the empty spots…
The decade’s best in film
JEFF MEYERS If the ’70s were under the influence of angry cynicism and artistic rebellion, the rah-rah ’80s an era of blockbuster egos and muscular populism, and the ’90s consumed by ironic navel-gazing and fear of technology, how do we summarize the aughties? Virtual reality, the fragmentation of the psyche and a need for family…
Food Stuff
Bad year, good year — In this part of the country, the year 2009 will be remembered as one of the hardest years to produce wine, despite a warm and sunny late summer. But the good news is that tough growing conditions often produce excellent wine, giving liveliness and character to Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay and…
Role-playing games
Q: I am a queer lady in my 20s. My boyfriend and I recently discovered that we are both into BDSM. We started with some light bondage and spanking, added some role-play, and are moving toward some heavier stuff. I’ve spent some time reading online BDSM erotica, and here’s what’s stressing me out: I tend…
Of al-Qaeda & Grammys: ‘Baby, it’s cold outside’
’Tis still the season for “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” — at least until the chill of winter finally leaves us. And in the American songbook classics, it’d be hard to find a song whose backstory goes as far afield as this one. Its Grammy Awards nomination — for the Willie Nelson-Norah Jones version as Best…
AL KOOPER DIGS THE SILENT YEARS
In case you’re not totally sick of year-end “Best of” lists yet, Detroit music fans might get a kick out of the fact that the Silent Years placed on a very prestigious list that ran in the Boston Herald this past Sunday and was compiled by the legendary Al Kooper. “Legendary” is, of course, an…
