Growing all over
Creeper Lagoon fertilizes pop with a world of sounds.
DETROIT-HOP
Detroit’s rap scene has always suffered from a sort of identity crisis. While the city’s technoindustry has long bedazzled the world’s hippest areas, it boggles the mind how Detroit’snegative hype may have deterred its rise in the hip-hop realm. Now, with an assist from producer Jay Dee, groups like Slum Village are balancing the scales…
Multi-kulti crossroads
Africa Fete brings the musical news from a rich continent.
Seeds of delight
Poets teach an art of wonder in metro area libraries….
NOT JELLY
A tradition of sorts has been continued here, call it an aural yearbook. United We Jam III is a document of bands associated with the Detroit Musicians Alliance, an organization that has dedicated itself to doing the yeoman labor of fostering bands and creating a fraternity of artists within a bar scene that can sometimes…
ELWOOD’S BLUES
Aside from John Mayall, Alexis Korner and the Yardbirds, blues music, as hard as practitioners may try and as technically proficient as they may be, has never really seemed to work for the white, suburban guy. Playing 13 covers ranging from Frank Zappa’s “I’m the Slime” and Ray Charles’ “Unchain My Heart” to ZZ Top’s…
Armageddon
When it was first announced that Touchstone Pictures was going to release an asteroid-doomsday flick just two months after Deep Impact’s release, it seemed fitting. At last, the Hollywood machine had outsmarted itself with get-rich doomsday scenarios and opening-weekend blitz fanaticism. Well, stop the presses, ’cause Armageddon rocks. Its first strength is a credible premise.…
Beyond Silence
Beyond Silence, about the hearing daughter of deaf parents who becomes a musician, has “uplifting” and “life-affirming” stamped all over it. What’s most surprising, then, are the ways that director Caroline Link makes this formulaic story not only idiosyncratic but deeply felt. In the opening scenes, 8-year-old Lara (Tatjana Trieb) is seen interacting with the…
Greatest Hits: The Riverside Years
Alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s always impressive virtuosity never obscured the emotional content of his music, his essential and boundless joie de vivre. He was one of the few modern (post-Bird) musicians (pianist Oscar Peterson is another) who possessed an extraordinary improvisational fluidity and yet never seemed to suggest the darker side of introspection. That,…
EPIC LO-FI ROCK
Having its pop and eating it too, local lo-fi foursome Outrageous Cherry steers tube amps and two drums through 11 tracks of velvet undergrounded, pet-sounding originals on this follow-up to last year’s album of covers, Stereo Action Rent Party. The sound on Nothing ranges from scribbled, low-rent pop (“I’ve Never Seen Your World”) to flat-out…
Dr. Dolittle
Whatever happened to Eddie Murphy? Once, not so long ago, the star enjoyed the luxury of being able to morph into sex symbol or funny man whenever the appropriate role presented itself. Now, in his career’s later stages, he seems more than happy to latch onto whichever old movie concept the studios choose to dispense.…
I Went Down
I Went Down opens with a quote from Plato’s Republic and ends with a sexual reference more commonly associated with the film’s title. What takes place in between is a heady, raucous mixture of these two extremes: a film that’s literate, lyrical and insightful, yet still fueled by very basic instincts and a playful sense…
Come Up and See Me Sometime
Erika Krouse’s first collection of short stories, now in paperback, makes great beach reading — especially if you wear a black bathing suit and stub out your cigarettes in the sand. Unlike the husband-hunting, body-image-obsessed single gals of much current popular fiction, Krouse’s protagonists don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of them. The collection…
Out of Sight
When Jack Foley (George Clooney) first lays eyes on Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), he’s just crawled through the muck of a tunnel leading from a Florida minimum security prison. He’s dressed in a pilfered guard’s uniform, but she gazes at him with unflinching suspicion. Wearing sleek designer clothes and high heels, Karen is calmly, confidently…
