All hail Jimmy McCarty
Photo: Leni Sinclair Not to get all blowjobian but … A few years back I was working on Metro Times story about the Rockets and its singer Dave Gilbert and I had the pleasure of meeting the band’s guitarist Jimmy McCarty. I’d read about this guy when I was a little kid, his days in…
Icky Sticky Thump!
Record of the year. Okay, it’s like 11 a.m. on Wednesday and the new issue of Metro Times is out. Already I’m fielding emails and calls about Nate Cavalieri’s review of the White Stripes Icky Thump. Some say Cavalieri nailed it, perfectly. Others say the dude couldn’t find his own ass, much less a good…
Frills & thrills
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: Extra Frills Edition MGM The Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert may be the greatest drag-queen comedy ever, but really, what’s it up against? To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar? Girls Will Be Girls? If the competition were as fabulous as…
Collecting the edges
Consider this: What do you get if you cross OK Computer-era Radiohead with a kind of excursion into the mind’s inner darkness where things exist that can never be articulated? That is, a journey to the center (and back) of the mind of a stroke victim? Here’s one explanation: a program called Headcase and Radiohead,…
Head Cheese
There are many reasons to dig Piebald, that popping guitar-crunch quartet from outside Boston. Its songs take a wonderfully powerful yet decidedly literary tact. Its fourth album (Accidental Gentlemen) was recorded on analog tape and features real songs (hey, remember those?). It covers sweetly the Kinks’ telling “Strangers.” The band’s so unselfishly world-aware as to…
Letters to the Editor
Take the bridge What I don’t understand about the Ambassador Bridge situation (“Bridges falling down,” Metro Times, June 13) is why the federal government doesn’t invoke eminent domain and take it over? I am surprised I’m saying that, since I generally hate when government entities use eminent domain to take over private property. But the…
Family reunion
I confess, I confess. I was one of those dork critics 35 years ago who dogged the soon-to-be-revered There’s a Riot Goin’ On. And of late, listening to the six-CD collected works of Sly and the Family Stone, I’m revisiting the error of my ways. OK, I made a bunch of mistakes: I wrote the…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Jimmy McCarty, Guitar Hero
Cactus One Way… Or Another Cactus Wounded Bird Let us all praise Jim McCarty. Since the ’60s his respective band tenures — Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, the Buddy Miles Express, Cactus, the Rockets, Mystery Train — have borne the twin marks of diligence and class. Among a certain generation of heavy-rock fans, he…
Spoiled in style
Each month the chef’s specials star a different region of Italy, giving regulars plenty of reason to return. In June, it’s Abruzzo, on the Adriatic and known for its use of hot red pepper; in July, it’ll be Campania, hardly in the north, but famous for Naples pizza. One of Gratzi’s most popular offerings is…
Upper story
Local design fiends will recall Mezzanine from its Main Street Ann Arbor location — an expansive showroom full of artful furniture and decor by mostly European designers (especially of the Northern and Scandinavian ilk, with a few American lines thrown in for good measure). Owner Joe Posch has recently relocated and set up fresh digs…
Food Stuff
Slow beer, weekly wine and dining for scholarship.
Motor City Cribs
Fenkell crib is like “Snoopy’s house.”
Air superiority
First-time director Alexandra Lipsitz’ feature documentary Air Guitar Nation is surprisingly compelling. The film traces the efforts of American friends Kriston Rucker and Cedric Devitt who are determined to unearth the first American capable of shredding alongside the Europeans in Finland’s annual air guitar championship.
Not what you’d expect
It hasn’t been daytime for a while in contemporary Japanese fiction. Novels such as Haruki Murakami’s recent After Dark and 2005’s award-winning Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara depict nights with streets glistening silver like light’s giving its last gift to the surface. At midnight, a Tokyo “salaryman” locks himself inside his air-conditioned office, staring…
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
So far, the film series about the first family of superheroes has been less than stellar. Given a shot at redemption, director Tim Story doesn’t exactly knock the cover off the ball, but he manages to find the ball park. The improvements are obvious, the effects are cooler, the storytelling is tighter and the global…
Folkies on the side
There’s nothing special about any particular diner. They all seem to have the same basic elements: counter, cheap food, smoke-stained walls and, inevitably, one gravelly voiced waitress who’s been there way too long. And Steak Hut, the little greasy spoon near the corner of Lafayette and Trumbull, doesn’t seem to be any exception. That is,…
Fantastic Four: The Unreleased 1994 Roger Corman Movie
When New Horizons Films couldn’t raise $40 million to tell the Fantastic Four saga, they scrambled to get anything onscreen so they could retain their rights. Natch they tapped Roger Corman, the emperor of parsimonious moviemaking, to bring this puppy in for less than what two of Jessica Alba’s hair extensions would’ve cost. The result…
In sickness & health
Q: I’m a 47-year-old man and my wife is 49. We got married four years ago. Two days ago, she came back from the doctor and told me she has genital herpes. I am floored. She said she just found out. She said she must have contracted it years ago and never had an outbreak…
Crazy Love
If you’re looking for another reason to hate lawyers or put off getting married then let the demented relationship of Linda Riis and Burt Pugach be your cautionary tale. Though directors Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens call their tabloid documentary Crazy Love, it isn’t just a cutesy title celebrating the affections of two lovable eccentrics.…
Moore’s grand slam
I went to the tiny town of Bellaire in northern Michigan last weekend to see the world premiere of Sicko, Michael Moore’s new movie about health care in the United States. I didn’t go to the press showing; I bought a regular ticket, to see what the audience’s reaction would be. Frankly, I was prepared…
Wet Hot American Summer
This breezy spoof is set on the last day at Camp Firewood 1981, a Jewish youth retreat facing the threats of dangerous whitewater rapids, raging hormones, too-tight cut-offs, and a burning chunk of SkyLab falling on the talent show. The movie has slowly built its rep in true cult fashion. Constant Comedy Central showings and…
Sound conflict
Timely coincidence that Peter Oundjian’s initials can either stand for his name or for pissed off. Serendipitous, really. He’s a nice guy, but the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor is also serving as the artistic director of a festival partially designed to celebrate music’s ability to agitate. The festival, called 8 Days in June,…
Faith & lies?
Well you’re in your little room and you’re working on something good but if it’s really good you’re gonna need a bigger room and when you’re in the bigger room you might not know what to do you might have to think of how you got started in your little room —The White Stripes, “Little…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Sonic’s Rendezvous Band – Live, Masonic Auditorium, Detroit, January 14, 1978 (Alive/Rock A Rama) :: It’s been 27 years and counting since rock ‘n’ roll was officially pronounced brain dead due to terminal unimportance at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1979. One wretched look at Live Aid will…
Hentch-Forth. Five
It’s 2007, and with Jack White having signed off on his Motor City divorce (an acrimonious split, rumor has it, but court documents are sealed), it’s cash-in time for those he left behind. That’s the cynic’s view, of course. Yet on this 14-song collection cut by Mike, Tim and John, plus Jack, circa ’98 (nine…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 20 Ryan Adams MUSIC He’s still got that patented smirk. Those deliberately mussed locks. That cigarette cocked, ‘twixt dangling fingers. It’s seven years after his breakthrough album, Heartbreaker, and Ryan Adams, the prolific, temperamental one, can still write tunes that make you want to drink alone. Performing with his band, the Cardinals, Adams…
La Vie en Rose
This Edith Piaf biopic is a breathless recap of the life and times of French chanteuse. Like the best biopics, it’s splashy and sumptuous, but director Olivier Dahan and lead Marion Cotillard — in a career-defining performance — never let you forget the grim, grimy details of her life. Far more conventionally beautiful than Piaf,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): We’re almost halfway through 2007. It’s time to take inventory of how well you’re capitalizing on this year’s unique opportunities. So let me ask you, Aries: Have you been making reconnaissance missions into previously forbidden territory? Are you seeking adventures beyond the borders of your known world? I hope so. I…
Heads up!
When Ken Dibner looked at his helmet after one of his motorcycle accidents, it had scrapes going in eight different directions. Without the lid, it would have been his head skidding on the pavement of Interstate 75 when he laid his bike down going about 95 mph near the Holbrook exit. Dibner, a Grosse Pointe…
DOA: Dead or Alive
This B-grade adaptation of a third-rate video game franchise is stocked with a stacked cast of ass-kicking babes. It’s one noisy, brain-rotting hunk of junk-food cinema, but damn if it isn’t satisfying.
Glass cages & big ideas
Standing in her modest suburban kitchen, a concerned scowl on her face, it’s clear that Sami’s mother is less than pleased that he’s taking a job on the graveyard shift in a Detroit gas station. Actually, she’s kind of pissed. “Why the night shift?” she yells in Arabic. “Why would you do that? It’s Detroit.”…
What the muck?
Critics gleeful over Steve Wilson probe.
Broken classes
The AMC kicks off Friday at 9 a.m. with an all-day symposium on popular education. Based on a model developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in his 1968 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, popular education emphasizes more a more participatory, flexible curricular approach than, well, than is generally considered wise by traditional in American standards.…
Fields of dreams
Real estate sector sees green in brownfields.
A Moment of Silence for Schoolkid’s
Are many of you idiots? You gotta be. I mean, why would any self-respecting music fan into (proper) music formats such as vinyl, CD, DVD-a, SACD, cassette, 8-track — that which isn’t downloaded invisible and shitty-sounding — not support your local record store? Why, why, why, why? Why give your money to community-killing corporations? Why…
Reinvent The Wheel, Chapter 29…
Photo: Doug Coombe Or, download this, punk Okay, the White Stripes UK vinyl version of its latest single (“Icky Thump” – No. 2 on the UK charts) sold more than a whopping 10,000 copies in its first two days of release, which is more than the single’s CD and download sales combined. It’s been a…
