Marquees and Magic Bags
If you’ve ever spent a hot summer night in the throes of loud music and a crowded Magic Bag, you already know just how popular this place can be. And with a shining marquee that over the years has proudly sported the names of world-famous artists and doe-eyed hopefuls, plus the best sound man in…
Opium addicts, invisible men & English Lit
Put simply, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 1 pushes the boundaries of the team-up formula into new territory. Eighteen years after his groundbreaking Watchmen first appeared, Alan Moore is looking toward the future of comics by, oddly enough, looking back. In LXG (to borrow the theatrical acronym), Moore collaborates with some of the best…
Bearing witness
“The abuse that goes on is too much to bear,” says Huwaida Arraf, a University of Michigan graduate and former Roseville resident who now lives and works in the occupied West Bank of Israel, striving for a peaceful resolution to conflict in the Middle East. A founder of the controversial International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Arraf…
A Bronx tale
Together only nine months, LA riff-and-clank quartet the Bronx blew straight out of the gate in a downpour of record-deal offers and foamy accolades. After only the band’s second gig, a heady record-company bidding war ensued — the likes of which hadn’t been seen in Tinseltown since the Knack drew every shaky-handed major-label checkbook to…
Loud and raw
Catch loud, raw rock from Troubleman at Punkfest 2003!
All Your Summer Songs
Sixteen months ago I spent two or three hours recording in Fred Thomas’ Ann Arbor bedroom. During the afternoon I played a handful of Motown-sounding vibraphone riffs into his four-track and that was that. I was paid for the session with a slice of pizza. Considering the overwhelming stats about the making of All Your…
The Rites
Dear Mysterious Members of the MacArthur Genius Grant Selection Committee; Given your thing for secrecy, I figured this was as good a way as any to get in touch. If this is a faux pas, please don’t hold it against my man, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, on whose behalf I seek to pull your esteemed coattails.…
Tommy Boy Classic Cuts
Seminal hip-hop label Tommy Boy has earned the right to cash in on its back catalog. As one of the more adventurous rap labels of the ’80s and early ’90s, the Tom Silverman-led imprint counted techno classics from the likes of 808 State among its early releases as well as, as this comp shows, most…
A Lot To Forget
Some might call Atlanta’s Subsonics long-suffering. But while it’s true the trio has labored in relative obscurity for more than a decade, even going on a five-year recording hiatus (their previous album, Follow Me Down, appeared in 1998 on Get Hip), there’s no denying their pioneer status relative to the current rockisback! revival. Like a…
Bean spasms
Geezer: 2 stars Weezer: 2 stars Rowan Atkinson, affectionately known to TV audiences on both sides of the Atlantic as Mr. Bean, stars in 88 minutes of PG summer silliness as a British secret agent with an exceptionally lame brain. But he’s not the only one: Director Peter Howitt (AntiTrust) and the writing team…
Amen
It’s hard to do anything original or even captivating with a Holocaust-themed movie. Much like the action genre, there comes a point where it starts to feel like the same thing over and over again — i.e. Nazis are bad, bad people — but unlike in an action movie, there are rarely any big-budget special…
How to Deal
If the young adult section of your local bookstore had a self-help shelf, How to Deal is the kind of title you might find there. But, even though this teen romance was adapted from two popular young adult novels (Someone Like You and That Summer by Sarah Dessen), our high school heroine, Halley Martin (pop…
Bad Boys II
It takes a pretty big explosion to impress in these days of $100 million action movies, and Bad Boys II makes every effort to please the in-laws. Laden with pyrotechnics worthy of the Fourth of July at the White House and featuring enough scattered, anonymous bodies to fill a mass grave, the sequel to the…
The Bread, My Sweet
In writer-director Melissa Martin’s inauspicious debut feature, Dominic (Scott Baio) and his three brothers work in a small Italian bakery in Pittsburgh that’s owned by an elderly couple, and between the five of them they reach a sort of critical mass of clichéd characterization. The old couple is bad enough. Massimo (John Seitz), the grouchy…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): For last year’s Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert, artist David Best constructed the Temple of Joy. Made from recycled wooden pieces of dinosaur puzzles, this magnificent pagoda-like sanctuary took him weeks to perfect. Visitors were encouraged to write blessings and prayers on the walls as they meditated. At the…
E=MC Honky
Eels’ Mark Everett uncovers the man behind the letter….
Blues bonanza
This weekend is almost embarrassingly full of riches for southeastern Michigan blues fans. Start with 12 smoked turkeys, a 150-pound roast hog, a dozen whole chickens and 60 pounds of chicken quarters. Add 150 pounds of hot dogs, hamburgers and sausages, four whole pork loins and four hams, 20 kegs of beer, more than 40…
Opps…she did it for real
Dear Tiger Beat reader: Whassup, girlfriend? We don’t always get the chance to chew the fat together, you and us. But this is one of those times when a heart-to-heart seems totally necessary. Which is why — after mucho soul-searching, we promise — we decided to take one page away from our hunkalicious Ashton Kutcher…
Paranoia strikes deep
Rest easy, America. Your fellow citizens are on alert, with eyes peeled for the smallest sign of a potential terrorist at work. And those intrepid gumshoes at the FBI are apparently eager to follow up on tips dutifully submitted. That, anyhow, is the message of a recent story in Creative Loafing, a kindred alternative rag…
United Sneaks of America
News Hits is still reeling from the secret deportation of Rabih Haddad. Talk about sneaky. Earlier this month, the U.S. government deported the Muslim cleric, who was arrested in December 2001 for overstaying his tourist visa and kept behind bars for more than 18 months. As a final blow, Haddad was prohibited from telling his…
So not cool
OK, this whole “cool” cities thing has got to stop. It was bad enough when Gov. Jennifer Granholm donned sunglasses and dredged up a song from way back in the 1980s to promote her “cool cities” initiative. Now the media are getting into the act. But they all need to grab a clue. As all…
Open for viewing
Abandoned Shelter of the Week A sticky July breeze blows through the open windows at 7557 Morgan. A likely summer scenario if it weren’t for the fact that every single window is open — permanently. This house, built in 1918, now stands abandoned. The front door opens with a simple turn of the handle. The…
The East Side Chedda Boyz look beyond bootleggers and strip bars
Chedda Boy Permanent Frown’s (P. Frown for short) hood vernacular might scare the hell out of the average suburbanite. If you come from the part of town where neatly manicured green lawns and gleaming SUVs govern the landscape, be careful not to judge the man by his linguistics. Otherwise, you may miss out on the…
X-Tina’s do-me manifesto
Despite fierce competition from Wacko Jacko and Whitney “crack is whack” Houston, no pop figure has proved as gloriously over-the-top this past year as Christina Aguilera. From her infinitely mockable bore-to-whore makeover in last fall’s “Dirrty” video to, most recently, her becoming a street-savvy, pup-feminist slut-goddess, the 22-year-old ex-Mouseketeer has made MTV more refreshingly unpredictable…
Ain’t talkin’ ’bout love
Nothing screams summertime quite like an all-American rock ’n’ roll concert. I’ll never forget my earliest concerts in Detroit. Many a fun night was had at Cobo Arena, absorbing the sights and aromas that are so bright and exciting in one’s youth. One standout show was undoubtedly in 1981, the first occasion I experienced David…
Letters to the Editor
Craig Covey responds Thank you for the fascinating, well-written, and in-depth feature story on Detroit’s gay bathhouses and their relationship to health concerns and sexually transmitted diseases (“Steamed,” Metro Times, July 16-22). We at the Midwest AIDS Prevention Project (MAPP) have advocated for many years for more discussion and debate on this topic that can…
Is Saddam winning the war?
Forget the foreplay. Here’s the bottom line: How long will the American people put up with having one or two of our soldiers shot in the back in Iraq every day? That’s what the White House is thinking about. You better believe that’s what the president’s re-election campaign is worrying about. And deep within some…
Lines from the sand
I’m on vacation, on the beach as I write these words, watching my boyfriend’s tan lines come in. But I’m still thinking about you and your problems. Isn’t that just like me? Your problems don’t take two weeks off every summer. So despite being on vacation, despite my impaired state (it’s 11 a.m. and I’m…
July 23-29, 2003
24 THU • COMEDY Larry Campbell — You just want to give him a bear hug. Former member of Detroit’s Second City and current co-star on ABC’s “According to Jim,” Larry Joe Campbell is just adorable. He returns to Detroit with his one-man show, “Terry vs. the Towel Lady,” the story of a social outcast…
Au plaisir
When you go to La Cuisine, here’s what to do: Order a starter of foie gras (a feature, not a regular menu item). Although it’s not a huge portion, $18 Canadian is not really a lot for this taste sensation that everyone ought to try at least once in their lives. Bused in from Quebec,…
