Cover Stories
Back to Au Sable: Freshwater traveling among the salts of the earth
For the second year in a row, my Hamtramck friends and I went on an early-season canoe trip in the Huron National Forest. Up around Mio, a 23-mile segment of the Au Sable (oddly, pronounced ah-SOB-bow) River is a designated “scenic river” with campsites for canoers. Last year, I went with my friends Steve Cherry…
Girls of Summer
It was never an option to not saddle up and not go it alone in the rain, cold and wind, or in 100-degree heat with a group of toned and mad-eyed masochists. You hit an 80-mile training ride before strolling late into third-period chemistry class with no notebook or pencil, nor any interest at all…
Summer Guide 2012: Girls of Summer and other seasonal pleasures
Summertime, and the living is … well, never easy here (see News Hits this week on Detroit economy). But all of us need some seasonal pleasures, and MT’s Summer Guide is here to help with yours. Editors Michael Jackman and Brian Smith reflect on memories (recent and not-so-recent) of canoeing and cycling. We’ve got summer…
Currently Listening: In-Fact’s “Bad For Me” (ft. SelfSays)
New sounds coming out of Ypsilanti, readers. An effective way to make your debut? Have SelfSays slew some sinewy rhymes over the bridge of your single – “Bad for Me” – an already impressive blend of shadowy dream-pop drifts, softly shimmered slams of trip-hop and soulful/sultry vocals pirouetting over sonorous chimes, buzzy…
City Slang: Mayaeni to show HEART at the Berkley Front
Mayaeni will bring her HEART (Hear Art) project to the Berkley Front on July 7. The event combines art and music, and more information can be found here. The night will also feature local Detroit singer/songwriter Pato Margetic and artist Alphonso Cox will be doing a live painting at the show. It’s $5 dollars at…
Phases: Jamaican Queens / Six and the Sevens / Boy Wonders
“Music scene is crazy / bands start up / each and every-day / / I saw another one just the other day / …a special new band” -Pavement – “Cut Your Hair” . Old concepts die hard, I guess… It’s 2012. Bands are dead, Jeff, get over it.…
City Slang: We Came As Romans at Rockapalooza
Post-hardcore titans We Came As Romans are just one of the locally-based bands appearing at this year’s Rockapalooza Festival at the County Fairgrounds in Jackson, Michigan on June 23. Other local bands on the bill include Ballz Deluxe, I See Stars, and It Lies Within. They will play alongside national bands like Puddle of Mudd,…
Photo Gallery: Detroit @ Bonnaroo
This year Bonnaroo invited a handful of Detroit’s finest including Alice Cooper, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. and Danny Brown to make the trek down to Tennessee for the annual 4-day music festival that draws nearly 80,000 people each year. Check out photos from this year’s festival highlighting some of the Detroit bands that made the…
City Slang: Brunch at the Jazz Cafe
On Sunday, June 24, CJAM/WDET DJ Judy Adams will host a brunch at the Jazz Café. All of the info can be found here. Adams is known for having a wide and expansive knowledge of music across the genres and ages, and she promises that her set at the Jazz Café will be loaded with…
City Slang: ICP prepares the Mighty Death Pop
As the Insane Clown Posse prepares for its hometown show at the Emerald Theater on June 23, the group has announced details of its next album, to be called The Mighty Death Pop. Seriously. ICP has recorded an infomercial, which can be viewed here, and the album is due to drop August 14, just after…
EM repeal measure clears hurdle for ballot
An air of jubilation filled the auditorium at the AFSCME building in downtown Detroit on Thursday as members of the Stand Up for Democracy coalition celebrated a victory in their fight to have Michigan’s emergency manager law overturned. “Rumors of the death of democracy in Michigan are somewhat premature,” announced coalition attorney Herb Sanders. The…
City Slang: Detroit Jazz Fest announces competitions
The Detroit Jazz Festival is now accepting submissions for two national competitions, in the saxophone performance and jazz arrangement categories. Both will be judged by prominent jazz gurus, with prize money totaling $5,000 and the chance to perform at the festival itself. “The inaugural jazz saxophonist and arrangement competitions help seek out talented artists that…
That’s My Boy
That’s My Boy C- Look, I sorta kinda get the comic appeal of Adam Sandler — at least his early work. Sure, movies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore featured the kind of juvenile jokes and retro stunt cameos that are low hanging fruit for comedy. But they also had a scrappy, energetic, good-natured quality…
Fawn’s Coastlines with Fur and Jamaican Queens- Tonite
Fawn /w: FUR, JamaicanQueens Thursday, June 14th @ The Loving Touch in Ferndale A bit of an interview with half of this Detroit quartet, regarding their debut full length: ~ ~ Fawn’s going places. Right after they get through this cluster fuck of a traffic jam. It’s zero-hour, the start of…
City Slang: Citizen Zero return with Crofoot show
Local hard rockers Citizen Zero will play the Crofoot in Pontiac on Sunday, June 24, the band’s first show since the tragic death of guitarist (and brother to two of the members) Matt Dudley in April. Also on the bill is Tripp N’ Dixie and Red Stone Souls. All of the good will in the…
International blend
Indo Fusion 44175 W. 12 Mile Rd. Suite F-143, Novi 248-946-4804 www.indofusionmi.com Handicap accessible Most entrées: $11-$12 Open 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and till 3 a.m. Friday and Saturday in the summer, till 11 p.m. the rest of the year. Say what you want about imperialism, it has produced some fabulous additions to…
Angie Bowie
It’s our summer issue so we figured who better to comment on summertime than one Angie Bowie. Why Bowie? Well, we don’t exactly know why, seeing as how she likely spends zero time in the sun. But we do know that the still-fetching Ms. Bowie was once frau to the Thin White Duke and parlayed…
The real Sterling Coopers at work
Mid-Century Ads: Advertising From the Mad Men Era Jim Heimann, editor Taschen, $59.99, 720 pp. Advertising is evil and terrifying, a system of mind control imposing upon the unsuspecting masses a brutal basis of artificial needs and desires, satisfied only through unnecessary and illogical consumption of goods and services. The hell, you say? No, it’s…
Herzog the Hypnotist
Every Night the Trees Disappear Alan Greenberg Chicago Review Press, $24.95, 224 pp. When Hollywood adapts a beloved book, inevitably people say, "I want to read the book first." Alan Greenberg’s new book about Werner Herzog’s 1976 film Heart of Glass inspires the opposite reaction: You want to see the movie first. For one thing,…
Conventional thinking
As if the crew here at News Hits didn’t have enough to be depressed about already, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia rolled into town last week for its annual convention, towing clouds of gloom. Sure, there was much frivolity and a river of free booze for conventioneers. Laughs were also plentiful, especially when Baratunde Thurston…
What’s normal?
Cybertrybe could well be the biggest band in Detroit that you’ve never heard of. In the 17-year existence of the band, it has led the way for industrial music in the metropolitan area, in the process winning a trashcan full of Detroit Music Awards which, though a dubious honor, at least highlight the fact that…
Big decisions
Nobody’s dancing around throwing buds of their favorite cannabis strains into the air, but marijuana activists across Michigan are feeling a little less discriminated against after a couple of state Supreme Court decisions favorable to their cause. Most folks who pay attention to the legal wrangling over the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA) expected the…
Letters to the Editor
Presidential resentment I read with great interest the May 30 article "Why they hate Obama," and I would like to add my opinion, for what it’s worth. The reasons they — the likes of a Joseph Farah — hate Obama include the fact that a black man was elected to and is sitting in the…
Food Stuff
Pop-up eats You may not have heard of it yet, but Chartreuse is Detroit’s twice-a-month, gourmet raw vegan pop-up supper and brunch club. The person behind the club is Corinne Rice , a certified raw and vegan chef who aims to create "a memorable culinary and social moment that exists briefly and disappears immediately, as…
Age of consent
Trying to write about the insanity that is Detroit these days is risky business. I am fully aware that, by the time you clap your eyeballs on these words, an emergency manager could be in the works, the city could be out of cash, Charles Pugh could be demanding we buy him a pony of…
We win!
Metro Times won the alternative press equivalent of a double-header last week when Jack Lessenberry’s "Politics and Prejudices" and Larry Gabriel’s "Stir It Up" took first places in the political and general column categories, respectively, in the annual awards of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. Those were two of five wins for the paper when…
Dent May – Do Things (Paw Tracks)
If you never heard The Good Feeling Music of Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele, you missed a delightfully oddball pop debut, but you won’t necessarily feel left out of the sequel on which May drops the uke and concentrates on the essence of his gifts. It’s pop song idiosyncracy writ large in the grand…
Hysteria
Hysteria C- Snicker, titter, tee-hee! See, it’s a period piece about the invention of the vibrator. Set in Victorian times! Think: Merchant-Ivory meets Benny Hill. You know, the kind of movie that’d make your auntie giggle and blush. What, you thought Hysteria might actually have something to say about female sexual autonomy or the repressive…
Gossip – A Joyful Noise (Columbia)
Until snapping into focus with 2009’s exhilarating Music for Men, flamboyant Olympia glam-dancers Gossip always seemed to be indistinctively hanging back. Curiously careful, formalist arrangements hampered their dynamic frontwoman Beth Ditto, whose breathless pulse was a free-flowing resource beyond most indie bands’ wildest dreams. Sadly, these problems return on the labored, clunking A Joyful Noise.…
Pickletown
Topor’s Pickles Location: Detroit Founded: 1960 Although it isn’t one of the younger upstarts in the Detroit pickleverse, Topor’s cold-pack blue-label pickles are the gold standard: no sodium benzoate, no potassium metabisulfites, no artificial coloring, no artificial flavorings or additives — just natural ingredients packed and chilled in a jar. Their blue label natural…
A Sample of Summer Cycling Fun
5th Annual Taco Tour. 17 mile bike ride to Ypsi’s best taco joints. Price includes meat or vegan tacos, Taco Tour swag, a beverage at the Corner Brewery and the ride. See bikeypsi.org for details and registration. Corner Brewery, 720 Norris St., Ypsilanti, 734-262-4040. (9/16, 1 p.m.) Americane Vintage Track & Road Bike Festival. A…
Breaking it off
Q: I’m a 28-year-old guy who was broken up with via text by a girl I had been dating for two months. She is dealing with the loss of a family member and some other personal issues, and she sent me this message while out of state for a week or so. Two months is…
Summer Highlights
June Scott Gwinnell Dectet June 14 The pianist-bandleader-arranger salutes one of Detroit’s cultural wellsprings in his new release The Cass Corridor Project, forthcoming on Mack Avenue records. This is part of the 25th annual Music on the Plaza series, a presentation of the Grosse Pointe Village Association, every Thursday through Aug. 2 at the corner…
Turn Me On, Dammit!
Turn Me On, Dammit! A- The notion of a mainstream sex comedy where the lead character is a 15-year-old girl who calls phone-sex lines, reads porn mags and has a vivid erotic fantasy life entirely on her own remains as foreign as pickled herring in America. Teen sex movies in this country are almost always…
Moonrise Kingdom
Moonrise Kingdom B- Look, either you like Wes Anderson’s thing or you don’t. Over the last 14 years, he has established himself as a filmmaker that both enchants and frustrates audiences and critics in equal measure. His detractors see his films as precious, fussily schematic, mannered and monotone. His supporters praise them as inventive, heartfelt,…
Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man in the Universe (XL)
Time has done wonders for Bobby Womack. The 68-year-old Cleveland native and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has never sounded so ingrained with the music as he does on The Bravest Man in the Universe, his first album of new material in almost 20 years. Producers Damon Albarn (who recruited Womack for the last…
Canvassing The Hood
Change of Pace 2012 What: A juried fine art photography exhibition. Where: Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography inside the Russell Industrial Center, 1600 Clay St., Bldg. 2, Fl. 1, Detroit; detroitccp.org. When: Opening reception from 6:30 until 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 16; displays through July 14. Change of Pace 2012 offers an eclectic display…
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…
