Cover Story
Moore and More
Back in September 2008, poet-performer jessica Care moore (the unusual capitalization is deliberate) appeared on the cover of this very publication. At the time, she had just returned to her hometown of Detroit from Atlanta. Before that, she had been living in New York City and, during her 12 years away, moore earned her fair…
Review: The Impossible
B- On a visceral level, Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Impossible delivers an astounding feat of cinematic action and disaster. With a budget far below Hollywood’s tent-pole standard ($45 million), this Spanish production puts to screen one of the most horrifying and intense natural disasters sequences I’ve ever seen. It’s 2004, and we’re by the pool…
City Slang: SayItAintTone leak
Detroit rapper SayItAintTone, a member of Finally Famous, has leaked a track from his new 500 Million mixtape. Hosted by DJ Green Lantern and DJ StephFloss, the tape will have guest appearance from Big Sean, MGK, Doughboyz Cashout, and more. The leaked track, “ADBOMD”, can be viewed here. Follow @City_Slang
City Slang: Stewart Francke and Carolyn Striho warm up for Ferndale
On Friday, January 25, Stewart Francke and Carolyn Striho will play the Magic Bag in Ferndale. Francke is warming up with a release show for his new Love Implied album at the Pit and Balcony Theater in Saginaw on January 19. Meanwhile, Striho is excited about the Bag show. “The show features the cool Jeff…
City Slang: New Anybody Killa video
Psychopathic Records family member Anybody Killa has a new video for the song “Peace Pipe” According to the press release, “One of America’s most acclaimed Native American rappers, Anybody Killa has just released the new video for “Peace Pipe” from his most recent album Medicine Bag. Heralded by AllRovi critic David Jeffries as “the Psychopathic…
Gong Show: Wasabi Dream
I love it when a band’s start isn’t actually it’s genuine start, but even though it’s still kind of a start it’s now prefaced with an enticingly ominous assessment: “I feel as though it could go really well or fall flat on its face…” Wasabi Dream (Adam Cox on the moog/vibraphones/string-synth and lead vocals, Noah Eikhoff…
Review: Gangster Squad
C+ Though it tries mightily, The Untouchables it ain’t. First of all, screenwriter Will Beall is no David Mamet. And as stylish as director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) can be, he just doesn’t have the cinematic chops to match Brian De Palma. Finally, while Sean Penn’s cartoonish scenery-chewing is good for a chuckle or two, it…
Daily Show’s Ambassador Bridge yuck up
A recent Daily Show segment on cable TV’s Comedy Central about opposition to the new publicly owned bridge across the Detroit River that Gov. Rick Snyder wants to build is a perfect example of why we love the show. Serious journalists (and even the semi-serious here at the MT) have, at last count, printed exactly 4.35…
The Kick: Red Pill and Hir-O (1.15.13)
Producer Hir-O surmised (over twitter) that The Kick paid an “homage to the pillars of what we call the Michigan/Detroit vibe.” . What The Kick came down to, revealed rapper Red Pill was: “we were setting out to prove to the Michigan hip hop scene at large that we were good enough for them to pay attention to…” ~ What The…
City Slang: Kem nominated for four NAACP Image awards
If you’re anything like us, you’re currently thinking “what the fuck are NAACP Image awards?” Honestly, who cares? They’re awards and our man Kem, the mega-selling Detroiter signed to the current incarnation of Motown, has been nominated for four. According to a press release, “Two-time Grammy Award®-nominated Motown artist KEM leads all nominees for the…
Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters
There is no shortage of documentaries that obsess over the personalities and psyches of celebrity artists. Most fawn over their subjects, eager to distill and define their brilliance by playing a game of biographical connect-the-dots. The narrative arc of these films is often the same: Upbringing begets inspiration, which, after personal setbacks, instances of hubris…
The Thornbills Wake the Dead – 1.12.13. (Magic Stick)
Winter’s such an apt time to be rockin’ a Thornbills jam. There’s is an enlivening chill… beautiful to behold, but biting in their icy evocations… I think of some subarctic cavern’s glistening bouquet of icicles, iridescent in the faint orange glow of a fogged sunrise… Something like that…via their own blend of autoharp-amped traditional folk,…
City Slang: Juggalos say ‘We are not a gang’
There has been much murmuring from the ICP camp following the FBI’s decision last year to label their fans, the juggalos, as a gang. It was an odd call; no musical fan base has had these issues before, and we all know how badly some of those Dead-heads behaved. Well, the juggalos are pushing back.…
Lazy sings of Party City
Punks make friends too! The three acts in this show, ostensibly of the punk, (or “psyche-rock” variety, or whatever kind of rough-hewn, lo-fi aesthetic suggestive of aggressiveness) all are quite friendly to each other. For instance, the most formative recordings of the Johnny Ill Band were done in the same Detroit basement, beneath the house that serves…
City Slang: Pre-order Muggs from Bellyache
Bellyache Records is offering Muggs fans the opportunity to pre-order the blues rockers’ new double album online. Bellyache says, “The Muggs have recorded their first ever live album at their home turf of the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit, Michigan! The fellas wailed through 2 lengthy sets featuring tunes from the bands “Self Titled”, “On With…
Predicting the Oscar Nominees
Start your engines, it’s awards season time! The nominations for the Golden Globes, the Screen Actor’s Guild, and all of the other guilds have already been released, the Golden Globes are this Sunday, and the Oscar nominations come out tomorrow. What will they be? I’m so glad you asked In each category below, everything is…
Unchained riff
I don’t go to a lot of first-run movies, but since I was hearing so much chatter about Quentin Tarantino’s, I thought I’d check it out myself. Seemingly in recognition of the film’s controversial subject matter, director Tarantino and lead actor Jamie Foxx got out in front of the criticism and released an hour-long promotional…
New swingers
New swingers A generation of young Detroit jazz musicians is on the go by Charles L. Latimer Tenor saxophone legend Benny Golson was set for a three-night run at the Dirty Dog Jazz Café back in April and he needed a pianist to round out his band. Word got around to one of Golson’s longtime…
Michigan’s wrong direction
"Michigan’s current tax system is broken and must be reformed. It cannot consistently raise the revenues needed to invest in Michigan’s future, create economic growth and maintain needed public services. As the state’s economy has struggled and evolved, its tax system has not kept pace." So begins a scathing report just released by the nonprofit…
Crime and injustice
Crime in Detroit made big headlines (again) last week when it was announced that the tally for homicides during 2012 topped out at 411. That grim figure represents a 10 percent increase over 2011, and is the highest number of killings in the city since 2007. "We’ve just lost respect for each other," Mayor Dave…
Zero Dark Thirty
Zero Dark Thirty | A- For more than a decade, the War on Terror has been relentlessly waged at any cost in lives, time or resources, though as posited by director Kathryn Bigelow’s electrifying and gloomy Zero Dark Thirty, there has been no higher cost than the notion of liberty. While mostly fought in distant…
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012
The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012 Mariner, 432 pp., $14.95 The foreword to The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, the 11th edition of the series, is very short because, as editor David Eggers puts it, "No one reads forewords written by editors, especially given this is the tenth foreword I’ve written." He goes on to…
Cold Men Young – You Should Be a Fan (self-released)
There are a lot of cooks in Cold Men Young’s kitchen, but the resulting rap goulash, You Should Be a Fan, is neither overwhelming nor overcrowded. The rap collective is sustained by its four main writing and rapping emcees, but for their second album they included a pair of producers and half-dozen cameos contributing to…
Food Stuff
Vodka and happiness — We’re looking out for you. You want to attend this year’s Vodka Vodka event. We want to offer you a discount. Just come to our Official Vodka Vodka Happy Hour, where they’ll be on sale for just $40 cash. It happens 5-9 p.m. Friday, Jan. 11, at Fifth Avenue Royal Oak,…
Not Fade Away
Not Fade Away | B- God save us from boomer nostalgia and its endless idealization of the ’60s. Look, I get it. It was an important time for rock and roll, politics, and the upending of American social norms. But that decade’s narcissism and self-indulgence wore thin two decades ago. Isn’t it enough that the…
Cut to the Chase
Through a career that has spanned more than four decades, TV writer, producer and director David Chase has taken viewers to locales as disparate as small-town Alaska (Northern Exposure) and L.A.’s underbelly (The Rockford Files), but it is his home state of New Jersey that will always claim him. As the creator of the groundbreaking…
Japanese aisles
Fuji Japanese Buffet 32153 John R Rd., Madison Heights 248-616-8868 fujibistro.info Buffet: $10.99-$23.99 depending on day and dinner Say the word "buffet" and most people think of steam tables heaped with trays of chicken legs and roasted potatoes. And sadly, the connotation may be one of quantity over quality, as many buffets offer food…
Gay panic attack
Q: I’m a straight male, 21 years old. I love women, I’ve always loved women, I’ve always loved having sex with women. However, in the last year, here and there, I’ve jerked off to transsexual porn. One night, after drinking with a friend and smoking some hash, I arranged a date with a trans sex…
Tunde Olaniran – Second Transgression EP (self-released)
Atop arrangements of sequenced beats and synthesized bass blips, our vocalist-narrator seeks catharsis for his twentysomething anxieties. With a voice arcing from high syrupy R&B crooning down to lower, sneering half-sung rapping, Tunde Olaniran covers a lot of ground in just five songs — relationship nightmares, self-confident anthems and confrontational tell-offs belted over rhythmic blends…
Hounds Below – You Light Me Up in the Dark (Slimstyle)
The Hounds Below are striving to strike up that great American indie-pop ballad on almost every track of their debut full-length. The quartet heaps in all the right ingredients for a rock anthem (big booming drums, blazing guitars, rumbling bass grooves underneath urgent, arcing vocals), but this sustained marathon of impassioned balladry risks wearing the…
It’s all about crime
Last week I spent an hour with Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, probably the odds-on favorite to be the next mayor of Detroit. Napoleon, who has an appealing personality and a ready grin, is a lifelong Detroiter. He grew up on the tough east side, one of a Baptist preacher’s seven kids, before going to…
East meets West
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Café Sushi 1933 W. Maple Rd., Troy; 248-280-1831; cafesushitroy.com; $$$: When you walk into Café Sushi you are greeted by a sleek sushi bar topped with black tile. The focus is for those who want to try Japanese food but are scared away by raw fish — no daring is required…
Letters to the Editor
The real squeal I used to think that Jack Lessenberry had a grudge against Jennifer Granholm. He always dismissively referred to her as "the haircut." I can’t recall him ever using such terminology against any male politician. After reading his latest Metro Times column item "Democrats: In need of a facelift," (Jan. 2), however, I…
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…
