In one ear
HELPING HEARTS It’s another case of an all-too-familiar tale that nevertheless hurts like hell to hear each time it has to be told. Too few working musicians have adequate health care; many have none at all. Such is the case with Rick Hudson, the man behind the drum kit providing the funk for Detroit acid-groove…
Mod-ern Popsounds
The very lighthearted and sophisticated pop of The 3 Way is the culmination of the Lilys’ seven-year love affair with the best of the British music scenes – from the coolly grooving Mod days of the mid-’60s to the circa-1991 shoegaze days best mimicked in their debut, In the Presence of Nothing. The group’s founder…
Dreams of future, past
Why, then, did we all care so much? What had he ever done to inspire anyone to anything, except maybe to be born handsome, rich and with a famous name? Wasn’t this another Diana, a summer tragedy seized upon and inflated by the media when little else was going on? Wasn’t this the death, shocking…
Caveat Emptor
The best way to critique Missy Elliot’s sophomore album may be to test it against the principle of polarity. Since everything has two sides, negative and positive, there are two ways to look at this project. The positive: Missy’s album is good. The woman has outstanding talent and vocal ability, and willingly displays them throughout…
Food stuff
WHEN BAD FOODS TASTE GOOD Why do foods that are bad for you taste so good? Lots of people like salads, sure, but you don’t hear them talking about "cravings" the way people wax eloquent about Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, DoveBars or Mom’s macaroni and cheese. When it comes to comfort foods, we’re talking starch,…
Bluesy Big Beat
Once he was America’s rave-anthem king and now he’s America’s, well, Fatboy Slim, leaning on old vocal samples – read: public domain and therefore royalty-free – to find his bluesy, big-beat sound here. Moby’s MO is to fashion his tracks around vocal snippets from pre-blues warblers, going back to the dusty choruses of old 78s…
Boarders push for park
Chris Kime, an 18-year-old Dondero High School graduate, had just been kicked off the parking lot at First Federal of Michigan on Main Street in Royal Oak. He and Dustin Wells, 21, say they were able to get in about 30 minutes of skateboarding on the bank’s smooth blacktop lot before being shooed away. It’s…
Pick Your Pattern
Clearly, the Pastels and Derek Bailey have little to do with each other. The Pastels are a Glasgow-based indie-pop band who were known and loved for an engagingly gawky string of amazing 45s – and a few tuneful CDs – in the late ’80s. Derek Bailey, on the other hand, is an internationally acclaimed free-jazz,…
Delivering complaints
Tammy Paul usually delivers mail in Clawson. Two weeks ago, however, she was part of a contingent taking this message to an arbitration panel in Washington, D.C.: Automation is making the job more difficult and dangerous for the U.S. Postal Service’s 315,000 letter carriers. "There is an increase in trips, slips and falls," she said.…
Pick Your Pattern
Clearly, the Pastels and Derek Bailey have little to do with each other. The Pastels are a Glasgow-based indie-pop band who were known and loved for an engagingly gawky string of amazing 45s – and a few tuneful CDs – in the late ’80s. Derek Bailey, on the other hand, is an internationally acclaimed free-jazz,…
Corporate roast
How do you commemorate a four-year labor dispute? With a pig roast, naturally – sans the pork. Several hundred locked-out Detroit News and Free Press workers and supporters cheered as they pretended to barbecue a man dressed in a pig suit, calling him their "corporate pig." The group gathered downtown before the Detroit News and…
A Bomb Squad
The Beat Junkies is a fitting name for two cats such as J-Rocc and Babu who are no doubt addicted to finding the perfect beat. Check out their new compilation-mix tape and not only will you finally remember to forget Funkmaster Flex and his commercial, corporate mixology, but you’ll hear something extremely satisfying, a record…
Mythical noir
Film noir, the 1940s cinematic genre distinguished by shadowy lighting, alluring femmes fatales and wisecracking private eyes in fedoras, translates to "dark film." But the darkest of them all doesn’t emanate from the period that spawned these moody films. Chinatown, made in 1974, is not an imitation of noir; rather, it transcends the genre. Certainly,…
Brit-Hop
They survived the genre-formerly-known-as-trip hop, that rambling, ambling chapter of British hip hop where producers who knew British MCs couldn’t rap for beans instead made kickin’ tracks that, no matter how good, made you yearn for a little Rakim to go with their Eric Bs. Now the Herbaliser (Jake Wherry and Ollie Teeba) has forged…
Couture cameos
The first time I met 33-year-old Cedrick Johnson – everyone calls him Cedi, pronounced said-ee – was outside FashBash in ’97. He doesn’t remember me; the night was a blur. But I was so impressed by the attire of his entourage that I inquired where the clothes were from. Of course, they were Cedi’s. "Is…
Le Bien Et La Mal
Here are 25 cuts, recorded live on two CDs, that present the case for hip hop’s overseas viability. Sadly, the jury has come back hung; and sadly there aren’t enough standout tracks on this record to make you part with 20 bones. On the flipside, when Solaar doesn’t come across like "Le Will Smith" ("Galaktika"…
Living large
On a summer night in June almost every seat in the bar at the Ramada Inn in Warren is taken. Bowls of chips, half-full glasses and left-over name tags garnish the tables. Everyone in the room is huddled in a conversation of some sort, and it seems like a regular night at any bar. The…
Dysfunction junction
To understand the dysfunction that plagues Hamtramck city government, it is helpful to know the story behind the Hamtramck 2000. The saga began in June 1998 when Mayor Gary Zych, the young city councilman who edged out 18-year incumbent Robert Kozaren by nine votes in November 1997, proposed to spruce up the city’s decrepit downtown…
Oodles of strudels
At the Fiddler, they make their own strudel dough. What a treat! We had a slice filled with sour cherries and another with apples. Sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar, the dough is paper thin and many layers thick. It is perfect
Swingin’ Techno
Newcomer Jason Hogans is an anomaly among Detroit producers, an auteur capable of reminding us what Detroit techno was all about in the first place (exploration) while also reminding us of the limitations of a music that is more programmed than played. On this EP, Hogans blends echoing, rounded synth tones over jazzy, inventive beats…
Eyes Wide Shut
Stanley Kubrick’s long-awaited adaptation of a 1926 Arthur Schnitzler novel about corrosive sexual jealousy and the persistence of temptation has arrived on the screen in a protracted form which seems at once both strikingly avant-garde and oddly quaint. The story’s trajectory is the inward odyssey of Dr. William Harford (Tom Cruise), an upscale physician whose…
Clear the decks
Berlin’s Atari Teenage Riot brings the noise to burn….
Lake Placid
There’s a passage in the work of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges that quotes “a certain Chinese encyclopedia,” a list of sorts which breaks every rule we’ve been taught to obey. It goes like this: “animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous,…
Revenge of the Mohawks
Packaging punk rock for post-punk mass programming….
The Wood
Thanks to American Pie, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and She’s All That, 1999 can strain, push and grunt its way into movie history as the year of random pubescent sex and raunchy pranks. But don’t toss The Wood onto that pile just yet. Its title isn’t just another sexual reference (gasp). And…
Prospecting prosperity
A loud clanking comes from the kitchen, where the Lizard of Fun is digging around in my pots and pans cupboard. "Hey, freak girl," it yells, "you got any pie pans? Aluminum ones, glass ones, whatever?" "Do I look like Martha Stewart?" I ask, wandering in to see what carnage is being wrought upon my…
Who cares?
Just get any activist started on the topic of apathy. Environmentalist, union steward, soccer dad – their biggest gripe is always the indifference of everybody else. "Don’t these people care?" they fume. Apathy is indeed rampant, and many political scientists assume it’s normal; it’s the politically engaged who are weird. Left-wing sociologist Nina Eliasoph takes…
