Never mind the bollocks …
Brian Olive “See Me Mariona” Fitzrovian Phonographic Debut solo slab from this former Greehnorne/Soledad Brother. A-side is crystallized low-key ’60’s UK psych like early Pink Floyd with punch-packing bass. The flip, “Calling All Around,” syncopates sax into a Sgt. Pepper-ish mash of ideas that actually succeed. Essential. Jay Reatard “I Know a Place” Goner…
A Detroit essential
A Detroit essential This was probably the first live jazz band I ever saw, part of my sentimental education as a late 1960s Chadsey High School student. Now this Blue Note single-disc reissue of the first two Contemporary Jazz Quintet (CJQ) LPs, under the first record’s title, is an essential Detroit jazz document. The CJQ…
Shit-talker
It’s one of those ideas that probably sounded great at a party: a book about poop that pinches off puns but contains an overview of where the stuff actually sits in pop culture. Dave Praeger, author of the new Poop Culture: How America Is Shaped By Its Grossest National Product is no novice to such…
Era Vulgaris
Just when Mr. Homme and Queens were slipping, they go off and record this sometimes hypnotic Era Vulgaris (Latin for “common era”), an album that pumps up low-register guitars and shuns the dark, Kyuss-like tunes common on the band’s last record, Lullabies to Paralyze. The drum thuds relentlessly on opener “Turning on the Screw,” and…
Cheap Trick vs. All Four Original Members of Asia!
In adolescent terms, we all owe Cheap Trick a couple of year’s worth of summer allowances for a job well done. Of all the American bands that first reached out to us from the pages of Circus and CREEM, Cheap Trick is the only one that hasn’t ever soiled its checkered pants so bad that…
‘Give it to me straight, doc!’
Heartfelt, entertaining and often eye-opening, this blistering but scattershot portrait of the corrupt, cruel and crazy U.S. health care system demonstrates the obscene challenges for those seeking basic health coverage while presenting an engaging argument in favor of universal health care.
Consuming passions
Q: I’m a 29-year-old married man. My wife and I are both active people (rock climbing, cycling, kayaking) and our sex life is good. However, since high school I’ve been turned on by thick, big-butt, big-tit, ugly, trashy girls. In my 20s, I would secretly go to bars in the suburbs to pick up these…
Buffy: Once More, With Feeling
Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator-producer-head writer Joss Whedon’s ability to intertwine the emotional with the irreverent, kept the show fresh for years. By its sixth season, Whedon started to push the envelope with regard to the show’s tone, and style and “Once More, With Feeling” was his most audacious conceit yet: an all singing, all…
Driving to the brink
Happy Fourth of July, y’all! They don’t tell you this in history class, but after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia 231 years ago this very week, Benjamin Franklin turned quietly to John Adams. “Someday, if we win our freedom, I predict we will develop into a mighty power capable of sending millions…
Ratatouille
Writer/director Brad Bird’s Ratatouille is sublimely inspirational. With its underlying message of savoring the unknown, following your passion and striving for excellence, it’s difficult to imagine his characters peddling Happy Meals. In fact, this tale of a rat who yearns to be a chef pointedly criticizes the crass exploitation of personality and talent. And this…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Evening
Everybody hooks up at weddings. But in the annals of bridesmaid booty calls, few are as doomy as the one in this film, a morose new chick flick from some of the same people who brought you the mother of all mopey, multigenerational estrogen-fests, The Hours. For a movie obsessed with memory and regret, you’d…
Head Cheese
Rasputina is two chicks wielding amped-up cellos and a groove-heavy dude drummer — a many-headed beast of baroque pop, rock ‘n’ roll and classic songsmithing. Its songs slide gracefully from gentle refrain to coarse exhortation. Harry Nilsson and Dorothy Parker would’ve been fans. Lovely Kansas-born bandleader Melora Creager’s too smart to go for the musically…
Triad Election
Director Johnnie To is a Hong Kong action workhorse, cranking out sometimes two or three high quality action pictures a year. Now he offers a sequel that delves even deeper in to the violent, shadowy realm of his 2005 gangland thriller Election. The follow up finds icy-veined HK boss Lok (Simon Yam) coming to the…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Battery dead? Good thing Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #126 is here to give you a boost! Live in Your Way — Waking Giants (Solid State) :: I wonder if the singer could scream louder if he had a pair of jumper cables clamped to his balls. OK, try it now. Michael Moore — Sicko (Dimension)…
Quick tastes
Yup, it’s time for Michigan’s oldest taste festival — now christened Comerica Cityfest — which means tons of food, free shit, sweaty man-tit, bald-spot burns, day drunks and the best free live music assembled in one place all year. Here are a few staff picks of must-sees. Demon Days — An Official Planet E…
Punk pairing
It’s not easy being a Shithead. Especially when you’re the Godfather of Canadian Punk, Joey “Shithead” Keithley. Then the demands will really keep you hopping. As the nucleus of early punk band DOA and founder of Sudden Death Records, Shithead has been a punk rabble-rouser and activist since the 1980s. A two-time candidate for the…
Corpus rumpus
Civil liberties groups to lawmakers: Restore habeas corpus.
Letters to the Editor
Don’t buy it I appreciate and agree with Jack Lessenberry’s suggestion that we contact our representatives and express opposition to the proposed legislative gifts to Michigan’s factory farm owners (“Let’s pollute our water!” Metro Times, June 27). However, even if the bills fail, CAFOs will continue to ruin our water, air and land, contributing to…
Wheelin’ and dealin’
Defendants’ seized cars to hit auction block.
Sage fire
Imagine if Eminem never met Dr. Dre. If Marshall Mathers as we know him never became the mainstream rapper as capable of corny club hits — the guy did a cameo on a track for Barney rapper Akon last year, after all — such as the confessional if occasionally cartoon-y cuts like "My Name Is"…
The heat is on
Like all good scientists, Scudder Mackey was skeptical 15 years ago when he began hearing predictions that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would lead to global warming. “You want to have an open mind, but you also need to question things,” explains the University of Windsor geologist and…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Motor City Cribs
More Kenner booty than you can shake an AT-AT at
Re-introducing Kenn Cox
This could be the picture of a guy enjoying retirement. Kenn Cox is sitting in the family room of his west side Detroit home, dressed casually with a cold beer and a burning cigarette at hand. He’s surrounded by his history and jazz history: the piano that his mother purchased for him is in the…
Get fresh
Real surprises … Two exhibitions opened this month with virtually the same title. Lemberg Gallery advertises FRESH while David Klein is pushing (fresh). Both shows seem to focus on younger, emerging artists. I’m one of them. I’m represented by Lemberg Gallery and my work is featured in FRESH. Just because you name a show fresh…
E-I-E-I-O
Isolation Lionsgate There’s been a spate of films about putting a small community under quarantine in recent years, but none has combined as many different phobias in one closed-off area. Check it: fear of seclusion. Fear of farms. Fear of mad cow disease. Fear of genetic tampering. Fear of science run amok. Fear of childbirth,…
Night and Day
Tuesday • 3 IndepenDANCE PARTY You gotta wonder what our Founding Fathers would say if they knew the hallowed signing of the declaration would, in fact, annually provide Americans an excuse to get shit-faced. And yet, Independence Day excess has become a social norm — be the venue a back yard barbecue, a dank back…
Opposable Thumbs
Turn 10’s new racing game is the optimal driving simulator game for … the mechanic? That’s right; it’s a grease monkey’s wet dream — featuring real-life manufacturers of upgradeable parts. With a mammoth stable of available tweaks and overhauls, it’s easy to forget that Forza 2 is a racing game — albeit one far more…
Pier none
Jayson Blair wasn’t the first New York Times reporter to fabricate his stories. In 2002, one of that distinguished newspaper’s staffers described the Ivanhoe Café, aka the Polish Yacht Club, as being located “along the Detroit River.” The venerable Polish restaurant on the corner of Joseph Campau and Frederick is more than two miles from…
