Cover Story
Jessica Hernandez on the verge
Conventional wisdom says that the days of the big major label contracts are over, that the only way to "make it" (whatever that means) nowadays is to "do it yourself" — to spend hours talking to potential fans on Facebook, to be your own manager, booking agent, secretary, janitor and bus driver. The labels just…
Lettercamp’s second kiss
Detroit electro-outfit Lettercamp recently fell into a second groove: -streamlining into a quartet, -putting out a couple of kicking singles (bulging with remixes), -getting signed to a label (an electronica-haven over in Sweden), -and setting down to sync up what will be their second album. Said-album’s not out for a while, yet, but you can…
City Slang: Dick Wagner book signing
Former Frost and Alice Cooper guitarist Dick Wagner will be signing copies of his book Not Only Women Bleed at the Udetroit Cafe this coming Wednesday, July 25. Detroit radio legend Bob Bauer will host the show, and Wagner will be there to play an unplugged set, be interviewed and sign books. Of the book,…
City Slang: Motown Museum extends summer hours
The world-famous Motown museum has extended its summer hours in order to accommodate more visitors. The Museum’s new hours, in effect until Labor Day, are Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m.to 8 p.m. “We want as many Motown fans to visit our Museum as possible,” says Motown Museum interim…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 25: Megadeth and the Russian Winter
Megadeth and the Russian Winter… I just cut my right foot loading in to the Austin Music Hall. It doesn’t hurt, but it’s a little bloody. The venue is very clean, newish almost, but the soap that dispensed backstage was the weirdest shade of brown I’ve ever let drop into my hands. It smelled fine…
City Slang: Amy Gore news
Amy Gore & Her Valentines play One Eyes Betty’s in Ferndale tonight (Saturday, July 21), then the Michigan Summer Beer Festival in Ypsilanti next Friday, July 27. The gig in Ferndale is a no cover show, and it kicks off at 9 p.m. Ghost Wolves open proceedings, and a limited edition CD-Video Single will be…
Weekend Hit List
Friday 20th The Ann Arbor Art Fairs It’s almost time for the annual migration of more than 500,000 visitors to the Ann Arbor Art Fair. A collective of four unique fairs spanning the course of four days, the event encompasses everything… [READ MORE] Liars From their beginnings as art students and record shop employees in…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 24: I Got Me A Rock ‘n’ Roll Nurse
I Got me a Rock ‘n’ Roll Nurse… We arrived in Memphis at the Hi-Tone early and loaded in. After gorging on an excellent pizza on the house Kyle, Dean, Shades, and I went over to Jack Yarber’s a few blocks away. Jack is a Memphis institution– the Oblivians, Compulsive Gamblers, Cool Jerks and whatever other…
City Slang: Cobo documentary planned
Local film makers Douglas Akers and Jake Hall are looking to raise $45,000 through a Kickstarter.com campaign to finish their documentary film The Legendary Cobo, abou Cobo Hall. According to a statement, “The project, having just gone into production three years ago, has no current workable budget – in fact, the two are running a…
The Dark Knight Rises
The Dark Knight Rises B+ Despite the self-conscious grandiosity, Christopher Nolan’s Batman films are more doggedly grounded in realism than any other superhero movies I can think of. Unlike, say, the perfect bucket of popcorn that is The Avengers, The Dark Knight trilogy is an attempt to present a dramatic, metaphorical, and action-packed banquet of…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 23: Lick On, Levon
Lick on, Levon… Today is Wednesday, and as Exile on Main Street is coming through the speakers of Jerry Sprinter, it feels like a good time to write. What doesn’t feel so nice is the lack of A/C in Jerry (the rear is out and the front alone won’t do the trick). We’ve toured the…
City Slang: Easy Action hooks up with Fang
Easy Action, featuring John Brannon of celebrated local hardcore veterans Negative Approach, will play with fellow old schoolers Fang at the New Way in Ferndale on Tuesday, July 24. Also on the bill is Death in Custody and Golden Torso. It’s a battle of the titans, as three of Detroit’s finest face off against Sammytown’s…
More Mania (7.22.12 -> Loving Touch)
Gawkers-all, …swaying aloof in the apocalyptic heat, faint beads of sweat caked at the corners of our eyes and our ears reddened by the burning sun. Amassed at the large boxy stage on Troy Street, the shores of whirling Woodward, the waning hours of the Pig & Whiskey Festival on Sunday night and this crowd needed…
City Slang: Battlecross on the road with Killswitch Engage
Detroit metal-heads Battlecross are currently out on the road as part of the Trespass America Festival with Five Finger Death Punch, Killswitch Engage, God Forbid and Trivium. “Is this real? I was just watching Killswitch Engage’s soundcheck and I kept asking myself, ‘Is this is really happening?'” comments vocalist Kyle “Gumby” Gunther. “We’ve got food on…
Psychedelic revenge
Infinity People play July 21, at the Park Bar (2040 Park Ave., Detroit; 313-962-2933) and July 22, at the El Club Lounge (4114 W. Vernor Hwy., Detroit; 313-841-0400). Calling the Infinity People a band is kind of like calling a David Lynch film a "flick." It applies, but we all know that there’s far more…
Smoky treats
Red Rock Barbecue 207 W Michigan Ave., Ypsilanti 734-340-2381 redrockypsi.com Handicap accessible Prices: $10-$30 Open 11 a.m.-2 a.m. daily Ypsilanti is oozing with genuine (occasionally gritty) charm, replete with endearing historical quirks and beautiful brick buildings. Situated in one of those structures is Red Rock Barbecue, a new addition to the burgeoning set of local…
A real corporate choice for VP
While Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney slogs through the long hot summer, much of the speculation is on whom he will chose as his running mate. He’d have a hard time doing any worse than John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 (she is depicted as painfully disconnected from then-current events in the HBO…
A real corporate choice for VP
While Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney slogs through the long hot summer, much of the speculation is on whom he will chose as his running mate. He’d have a hard time doing any worse than John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 (she is depicted as painfully disconnected from then-current events in the HBO…
Here come the globovores!
"If our modern food system is so bad for us, why do we now enjoy dramatically longer and healthier lives than our ancestors?" This question is one of four that locavores have yet to answer satisfactorily, and should, according to the book The Locavore’s Dilemma: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet. Answering it is a…
Sign of the times
It wasn’t the daily raids on his yard by the neighborhood’s thieves that did it. Nor was it the pyro who firebombed his equipment trailer. No, what drove Andre Ventura over the edge was the drive-by shooting that had kids on the playground diving for cover as bullets pinged off the swing-set posts. When that…
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild B Benh Zeitlin’s first feature (a Sundance hit) is the kind of ethnocentric indie I wanted to like a lot more than I did. Yet I still feel compelled to go easy on it. Why? Because Beasts of the Southern Wild displays such a persistently ambitious cinematic vision (despite obvious…
Seeds of defiance
The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era by Shawn Peters Oxford University Press, $34.95, 416 pp., hardcover Born in Catonsville, Md., 18 months before what has been called "the single most powerful anti-war act in American history," Shawn Peters has spent most of his life working on The…
Skuzzy stuff
"It’s a complete mess." Those words, spoken by attorney Robert Day, don’t come close to describing the clusterfuck of problems swirling around a bankrupt company and the Detroit Police and Fire Pension System. Part of the story has received some media attention, especially from reporter Robert Snell over at The Detroit News. Snell has done…
Food Stuff
Think inside the box Some folks relish rising before sunrise to feed the chickens and harvest the fields, but if you’re like us, you’d rather hold out for the sun and have farm-fresh food waiting on your doorstep. Door to Door Organics understands, and that’s why they’ve created the Farm Box — a customizable collection…
Time to Mann up
When News Hits got an offer to interview author Thomas Mann, we were more than a little bit surprised. As far as we knew, the great German writer and Nobel laureate has been, shall we say, not among the living for more than a half-century. Silly us. We had the wrong Mann. This Thomas Mann…
Bored by blow jobs
I am desperately in need of your help. After eight years of marriage, it turns out that the blow jobs I give are "good but not great" and are now getting "boring." My husband is unable to tell me anything specific that he wants me to do, just that I should do something different and…
Rights, reading & race
Nobody, I suppose, would be surprised to learn that children in what remains of the Highland Park public school system aren’t getting anything resembling a decent education. Most of them are residents of what amounts to a horrid, largely burned-out slum. More than three-quarters of Highland Park seventh-graders utterly fail state reading tests. By 11th…
Letters to the Editor
Legalize hemp Re: Larry Gabriel’s Higher Ground column "Hep on hemp" (July 11), the United States is one of the few countries in the world that denies farmers the right to grow industrial hemp. Apparently drug war bureaucrats can’t tell the difference between a tall hemp stalk and a squat marijuana bush. Before passage of…
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…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 22: The Ol’ Switcheroo
The Ol’ Switchero… The start of the third leg with Tenacious D has me in a bed by myself, alone in a room. That is highly unusual. What is the norm is bumping into five other dudes in cramped quarters, trying to shut out their potty mouths and overall immaturity (which I am a part…
