DIY for dames
Want to start your own band? Here are some helpful tips.
Freaky (in a good way)
If Disney’s The Kid was all about the positive aspects of coming face-to-face with a nearly forgotten childhood, then Chuck & Buck is its evil twin. A creepy cautionary tale about what happens when one guy grows up and gets on with his life
The ordinary, out
It’s a horrible trend – ordinary people are suddenly stars. “Survivor” is just a popularity contest with body odor; Liz would rather watch something more interesting, like boy bands stranded without hair gel.
Music mag of the moment
It’s hard to say whether music sales have gotten over their mid-to-late-’90s slump, but if they have, the folks at Revolution are clearly in the know about what’s driving the industry — and us — now. Old stereophiles will complain that these folks don’t know equipment or sound quality from dirt, and music-mag purists may…
Waiting for god-awful
Here’s some news on the local political scene to tide you over until the Republican National Convention – Why Mike Duggan doesn’t deserve to be Wayne County prosecutor … Green Party updates … & more.
Pocket-sized bloodshed
Finally, Game Boy has incited a new dimension for handhelds, successfully creating what will be known for years as the Starcraft that fits in the palm of your hand. Enter Warlocked — the most complex, utterly captivating baby cartridge to ever target the portable gaming market.Playing as humans or beasts, controlling your own army of…
Sonic tonic and booming tunes
From a gorgeous vintage fashion show at the Detroit Opera House to the Sonic Boom lineup at so-crappy-it’s-cool Old Miami, our stylish reporter celebrates her birthday weekend (with a bunch of other fun stuff in between).
Pocket-sized bloodshed
Finally, Game Boy has incited a new dimension for handhelds, successfully creating what will be known for years as the Starcraft that fits in the palm of your hand. Enter Warlocked — the most complex, utterly captivating baby cartridge to ever target the portable gaming market.Playing as humans or beasts, controlling your own army of…
Testing the spirit
The Detroit Newspaper strike is about values — not wages. Looking back over five years of struggle, former Free Press columnist Susan Watson shares a bittersweet lesson.
Chef’s secret
When The New Yorker excerpted chef/writer Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential in two issues over the past year, the magazine committed the crime of many movie previews–it gave away all the money shots. “From Our Kitchen to Your Table” and “A Day in the Life” served up all of Bourdain’s best stuff: the contempt chefs have…
Return of the living movies
When was the last time you saw The Stepford Wives, Rebecca or Repo Man? A local video company is giving new life to these and other pop culture film favorites.
He made it!
Aaron Timlin finishes his walk to New York (milk carton and all).
Sad clown
In the lovelorn, war-torn world of Stephin Merritt, all is not well. In fact, judging by his impressive collection of heartbroken battle scars, it couldn’t get much worse. Drafted lovers come back in body bags; nights are sleepless and soberless and romance ain’t even worth the fight.So it’s lucky that, for a crank like Merritt,…
Speaking the tooth
Gold caps and fake fangs.
Art worlds collide
Rick Manore leaves C Pop (and new blood arrives)
Sodium deficiency
Continuing in the “embrace your melancholy” vein comes Ida’s fourth LP, Will You Find Me. Possibly the quartet’s most beautifully sad album to date, I dare anyone to make it halfway through without shedding at least one tear. Salty droplets actually are free-falling onto my keyboard as I type this. Let’s jump back to childhood…
Improve-mints
Mints to cure bad breath and stress.
Cross-country clubbing
Digital bar-hopping from Santa Monica to the Blind Pig.
Revolution baby
If you were a hip musician in need of a remix artist, wouldn’t you look for someone who made smooth, funky rhythms out of found sound clips? It’s no secret Fila Brazillia became one of Europe’s most astoundingly popular remixers because FB’s own output uses rare groove classics (read: obscure funk and Motown sounds) to…
Post no bards
One-page Shakespeare plays.
No room
More than 1,000 homeless Detroiters may have HIV or AIDS. So why are there only 18 beds for their care?
Morning after
Each time jazz reinvents itself, we want to trace it all down to one player at the root: Monk, Coltrane, Ornette, etc. But in this quintessentially communal music, that “one” is the eye of a hurricane.Last month, when Greg Osby’s quartet blew into the SereNgeti Ballroom on Woodward for two nights of spontaneous redefining, the…
Razing issues
Build your own Berlin Wall.
Letters to the Editor
Cell to cell
If you think that the cellular phone craze is nuts in Japan ("The future is there," MT, June 1…
Hippie + Indie = Hindie
Released by Thalassa (HQ = Neptune Records, Royal Oak), Ampday starts proud with “Supersonic Kid,” a tune which matches a brightly damaged guitar riff with a steady Bonhamlike drum rhythm and a gentle penchant for mysterious drones and loops. The song sets up the rest of the tracks on the record, dropping its melody early…
Bags and Bubba Q
Monica’s handmade purse and Bubba Brown’s barbecue sauce.
Sonic relief
Highlights of the incredible local music emitted from the Sonic Boom… from the swanky swagger of the Witches to the head-turning grooves of Kelvin Larkin.
Midwestern angst
It would be hard for any band to follow up a near-perfect album such as Midwestern Songs for the Americas. With said album being the Dillinger Four’s 1998 full-length debut, these four Minneapolis natives proved to the Hopeless Records audience that pop-punk can be equally fun, snotty and intelligent at the same time. And for…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In many non-Western cultures down through the ages, shamans have believed they possessed the po…
Bernie’s world
Who is State Fair racetrack spokesman Bernie Schrott?
Come, come ye sons of art
It wasn’t so long ago that countertenors were considered a rare breed. No longer. With the likes of Brian Asawa, Jeffrey Gall, Derek Lee Ragin, Bejun Mehta, Andreas Scholl, Jochen Kowalski and David Daniels, this vocal category is flowering. The efflorescence may be attributable to opera house managers who no longer harbor reservations about booking…
Tough and tender
Famed New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl’s memoir is a bounty of interesting stories, but skimps on the spicier emotional details.
REAL unrelenting
How can you help stop the riverfront casinos?
Judah Johnson
These guys used to practice in a space next to my basement bedroom. I would hide away in my room, pretending to be cleaning or reading, but really I’d be leaning against the wall listening to what sounded like Jeff Buckley in my leaky, musty basement. Oh, how my heart ached that he was gone…
A ticklish situation
Q: My 52-year-old wife is the secretary to the only female executive at a financial firm, who, according to my wife, is the o…
Dying for dollars
When will the Detroit Police stop ignoring sick inmates?
Mutant generation
Dark and brooding, director Bryan Singer’s exploration of reluctant superheroes is bound to appeal to the outcast in everyone. It’s sharp and focused, but there’s a distinct feeling that the need to be reverent to the comic series (created in 1963) keeps
Gallic playboys
The French are deservedly famous for their playboys. Revisit these classic French films featuring sunny scenarios of sex, summer and St. Tropez.
Yuppie style
In the mood for a sip of style? The upscale mock-1940s jazz martini and cigar lounge is a dimly neon-lit atmosphere, confined to a cozy narrow space that’s commonly crammed full of stylish locals. For nostalgia and conversation over jazz and laughter: ‘dahhhling – you’d look mahhhvelous in Goodnight Gracies.’
Sex, violence and sci-fi
A hypothetical: You hold in your hand two black boxes, each of which contains identical electronic information stored as ones and zeros. These bits (and bytes) add up to an artificial intelligence that the social codes of your time and place have legally deemed a person. The information in the boxes is identical – when…
Smokin’ in the girls room
Detroit musicians let us know what it’s like being “the chick” in the band.
An interesting failure
Idiosyncratic director Alan Rudolph has made another interesting failure with this film about an erstwhile private detective, Trixie Zurbo (Emily Watson), and her would-be mob connections. Filled with goofy wordplay, it gets annoying despite Nathan Lane’s
