The search for Heaven
This story is the fifth part of our Century of Sound series, tracing Detroit’s musical heritage over the last hundred years. “When the sun goes down they hit the streets, to the bars to try and meet, some other stranger, to ease the pain of living alone, till it drives them insane, the…
Concert of Colors Metro Detroit’s Diversity Festival
Concert of Colors is a three-day celebration of music from around the world. The festival happens at Chene Park (located one mile east of the Renaissance Center, at Atwater and Chene) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, July 16 through 18. Call 313-842-7010 for info or go to concertofcolors.com. Here are select highlights from the many…
Paint for the people
According to Dan Robbins, the roots of conceptual art can be found in the American homemakers and aging hobbyists of the 1950s who spent $3 on a kit of canvas and oils and — without pretense or apology — appropriated someone else’s artwork as their own, hanging the results in their rec room. Robbins should…
Letters to the Editor
A moving declaration Re: “Driven to destruction” (Metro Times, June 16), while I am not a native Detroiter (I grew up in Flint, until my move in 2001), I am quickly learning about Detroit’s history. From what I’ve heard, the riots in the ’60s were what began the “white flight” to the burbs. Because we…
Gibbs’ big organ
Gerard Gibbs isn’t convinced the organ is obsolete. “A lot of people have declared the Hammond B3 organ dead, but right now I think it is experiencing a serious resurgence be it in popular music, rock, R&B or jazz,” says the 36-year-old organist and keyboardist. See, Gibbs considers himself a crusader of sorts. During the…
Mammary quandary
Q: My fetish is pretty unoriginal, but has been lacking attention in your column for as long as I’ve been reading it. I have a breast fetish. More specifically, I like bigger-than-your-head breasts. Could you find out why all the huge-breasted porn stars of the mid-’90s (Tiffany Towers, Wendy Whoppers) left the industry and why…
Top five local films
Here are Jim Olenski’s top picks for local films available at his store, Thomas Video: 1. Deathbed The epic tale of a bed that eats people. 2. Tainted Not your average vampire movie. 3. Ouch Stars artist Glen Barr as a man who obtains a potion that deadens his nerves, and decides to “experiment.” 4.…
Odd delights
Don’t you ever get sick of the same old bar/band/alcohol-drenched tango? Don’t you wish for something new, something off the beaten path? Don’t you occasionally yearn for, say, a trapeze artist, a creepy comic puppet show and a theremin, all under one roof? Well, boy, you sure are in luck! The Tingle Tangle Menagerie is…
Screening your film
So you and your buddies finally scraped up the cash, crew, resources and time, and actually finished your movie. Congrats! You’re already one step ahead of the game, according to Main Art Theatre manager Chene Koppitz. “People talk a good game,” says Koppitz. “People start films all the time, just like they start bands and…
N&D Center
Friday • 16 Bag o’ Books Sale SHOPPING It was Henry David Thoreau who said, "Read the best books first or you may not have a chance to read them all." That’s a great concept, but who can afford to stock up on all the books they would like to read? If your home library…
The Clorox Girls
Now that the Ramones are history, it’s timely that these three guys from Seattle should step up to the abandoned punk plate and hit a grand slam out of the pop music park on their first try. And because the twelve tracks here clock in at a mere 17:16, you don’t have to wait long…
Waiting for the man
It’s 3 p.m. on Thursday and nobody’s called back yet. Damn. There was so much I wanted to ask him, too, and that’s not me being snotty or smart-assed. I wanted to ask him about rock ’n’ roll and gospel, and how he bounced back and forth between God and the devil’s music all those…
Kiss of Death
Jadakiss realizes he’s as driven by fame, women and cash as any other emcee whose creative spur stems from the gritty concrete jungles of Yonkers, N.Y. So he attempts to soften his image with “Why,” a thoughtful lament that canvasses Kobe Bryant and Bush, drug laws and snitches (with Anthony Hamilton guesting on vocals): “Why…
Look, Ma, I made a movie!
Tall, lanky, a tad shy, Dan Casey seems your typical college student, and the CCS senior’s apartment in Detroit’s Cass Corridor bears all the trappings of your typical college bachelor pad: piles of laundry, the occasional battered movie poster, a coffee table full of cookie crumbs. In Casey’s bedroom, a rumpled mattress on the floor…
Hopes & Fears
If you’ll indulge the crass stereotyping for a moment, there’s one thing the Brits do better than anyone else bar the Swedes. Blighty is a bottomless wellspring of massive, dramatic pop music (see: Radiohead, Oasis, Queen, Manic Street Preachers, Coldplay, Smiths and on and on). It’s in the water. That’s sometimes easy to forget in…
Schoolyard brawl
Technically, the attempted recall of three Hamtramck School Board members is about an alleged violation of the state’s open meetings act. The Wayne County Clerk certified the upcoming July 20 vote based on a complaint that a November 2002 board meeting was illegally closed to the public. In reality, though, that dispute is merely the…
Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands and Censored Songs
Think that the Lambada was the forbidden dance? Consider the widespread ban of such seemingly inoffensive Roaring ’20s gyrations as the Grizzly Bear and the Bunny Hug in numerous American towns. Think people overreact to racy music now? Let’s not forget the Romans who actually made public displays of bawdy music an act punishable by…
Running again: Mahaffey
Detroit’s City Council President Maryann Mahaffey should have been tired when I went to see her last week. It was Friday afternoon; she had been to the doctor for a nasty sinus infection, and had been running around the city all week. But here she was, on the phone at almost 6 p.m., when the…
America is Godzilla!
To launch its upcoming season, the Detroit Film Theatre is showing the original, 1954 Japanese version of Godzilla. Shot in noir-ish black and white, the tone of Godzilla the original is often somber; its explicit theme is the danger of nuclear weapons in the devastating aftermath of U.S. bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To see…
Chock full o’ festivals
If the question on the docket this week is “What do you want to do?” the answer is simple: Get out of the house! If you were planning on a relaxing weekend swinging in the backyard hammock or getting some of that much-needed garden work done, you might want to reconsider. This is the weekend…
Anchorman
What better fodder for Saturday Night Live vet Will Ferrell than the evening news, with its “action teams” posturing and strutting about? Ferrell delivers commentary on subjects like water-skiing squirrels in a tone so deep it’s hilarious, and he’s almost upstaged by a tremendous supporting cast. The big TV news team fight scene is worth…
Local heroics and histrionics
David Manchel Welcome Back To The Same Old Me Mapo As many of them do, this one floated in from basically nowhere. And upon first impression, what misery: The plain cerulean-hued cover emblazoned with the title, Welcome Back To The Same Old Me, under some guy’s name suggested just another “solo” dude from some nameless…
The Corporation
People with a natural interest in business should add a fourth star to this review. People who hate big business might want to add a half-star. Easy to watch despite its serious subject matter, the documentary’s general message is that corporations are screwing up the world even if they do have some good people working…
Red-less rainbow
As of Monday, the folks over at Revolution Books Outlet were still trying to storm the barricades in order to gain access to this weekend’s Concert of Colors, which is staged annually by the civic group New Detroit. The Cass Corridor bookstore is as red as red can be — as in Marx, Lenin and…
Flavors
This comedy from Ypsilanti software engineer/filmmaker Raj Nidimoru bills itself as a “new age Indian film.” It tells the inter-connected tales of about a dozen people of Indian descent and their experiences in America. The focal point is the impending “mixed” marriage of an Indian computer specialist to a blonde. Lessons from mom and dad…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Two years ago, scientists discovered a secret underground river running more than 800 feet below a Mauritanian town in the Sahara Desert. With a flow rate of 8,450 gallons per hour — enough to supply the needs of 50,000 people — it is the biggest unnamed river in the world. I…
Noise and naps
Sans the screaming and finger-pointing, it was a typical meeting last Friday for the Detroit City Council, which briefly discussed a proposed amendment to the city “noise” ordinance. Well, not everyone was there to discuss it. Councilwoman Kay Everett missed it since she sauntered into last week’s meeting late. We suspect Everett’s tardiness may be…
The Clearing
If Helen Mirren, Willem Dafoe and Robert Redford can’t save a movie, then it isn’t worth saving. Such is the fate of The Clearing, a dull film about sad and lonely people caught in a kidnapping scheme. The Clearing is a waste of a leading role for a woman over 40, and a waste of…
Fresh market finds
Last weekend I paid my first visit of the season to Oakland County Farmers’ Market in Waterford Township. I usually go every Saturday just to observe the scene, sometimes not needing any fruit or vegetables but coming home with so many that I either must have a party or distribute the bounty among friends. I…
Burning Bush
As the name implies, the crew here at News Hits is all about news, so we are a little out of our depth offering a movie review. Nonetheless, after finally catching a showing of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 this past weekend, we are moved to sing this film’s praises. We laughed, we cried, we squirmed…
Cosby’s new cause
Back in May, Bill Cosby got a lot of attention for chastising poor black folks, saying they didn’t know how to talk right and a lot of other stuff. Some folks — black and white — stood up and cheered, saying it was about time somebody told the truth. Others, such as myself, were pretty…
Back in black
This week our ASS (not an actual anatomical part, but rather the Abandoned Structure Squad) landed, figuratively speaking, on a charred mattress along the 14200 block of Eastwood just off Gratiot on Detroit’s East Side. Actually, we’re not being completely accurate when we say the aforementioned bedding was outside the house because, technically, there is…
