Cover Story
It’s gotta be the shoes
Cars are zooming past a gray, stucco apartment building tucked away on a residential street in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood. Up two flights of stairs, posted inside of a one-bedroom unit, a former Detroiter and a current Angeleno, House Shoes, is sitting on the floor doing what he loves to do most in this world…
Nightlife – A lot of dancing and awkward banter
Scrolling through the line up of this year’s Merrick-N’ Summer Fest, one band stood out to me -and it wasn’t merely because I saw them staning very little chance, really, of standing-out to anyone who tried to Google their name, but more so because this duo put out a batch of splendid, subtly-glitzed, tastefully-synthed, all-out-dreamy-pop last year…
Big changes for Opus One
After 25 years downtown, Opus One is going to close at 11 p.m. this Saturday, though it’s apparently not closing for good. An announcement today said the management plans to make some changes, renovate the interior, and re-open in November under a slightly different name. The reasons cited include declining corporate accounts and changing tastes.…
City Slang: Infinity Hour prepares for Stars & Stripes
Local teenage alt-rockers Infinity Hour are preparing to open for Buckcherry at this weekend’s Stars & Stripes Festival, on June 29 at 6:45 p.m. On the Budweiser National Stage. Rather amazingly, the band formed when vocalist Jena Asciutto was 12 years old. She’s 15 now. “The band had previously honed their skills playing covers of…
Brave
Brave B Should critics grade on a curve? There are so many things to like about Brave that — were it the product of any other Hollywood film studio — one might be inclined to forgive its shortcomings and sing only its praises. In fact, this supposedly feminist corrective to the typical Disney-fied view of…
City Slang: James Tatum to be celebrated
Music and jazz educator <James Tatum will see his life, and his birthday, celebrated on July 28. Tatum has been teaching in the Wayne County Community College District, Oakland University and in the Detroit Public School System for more than 30 years. “Tatum has performed with Coleman Hawkins (minor Key of Detroit), Mercer Ellington, and…
Hi-Speed Dubbing “2012” (Stone Calendar 7″)
The teased feedback opening up side-one evokes chaos: groovy, gnarly, shake-n-surge, gut-punched chaos. “2012 just could be the end ” a breathless Justin Walker yowls over the tumult of pedal-torched guitars wringing break-neck hooks and herky-jerking drum beats slewing the pillars out the foundation. This tune’s got one of the most irresistible hooks I’ve heard…
City Slang: Lightning Love has blonde ambition
Ypsilanti’s favorite indie-pop darlings Lightning Love are preparing for the release of the Blonde Album on August 28 through Quite Scientific Records. One of the great privileges of covering music in Detroit over the past few years has been watching Lightning Love grow. The band’s two records up to now, the Girls Who Look Like…
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter C With a title like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, you should have a pretty clear idea of the narrative going in, though apparently the filmmakers had murkier notions. Directed by Russian action maven Timur Bekmanbetov (Wanted), and incomprehensibly adapted by Seth Grahame Smith from his own hit novel, the film takes…
The Sights Tour Diary Entry No. 14: “It’s 8 hours north of Detroit, on the right”
The final stop on the first leg of the tour has us at Skip’s parent’s cottage in Marquette, Michigan. Or near Marquette. Or kinda by Marquette. Or somewhere on the way back from Marquette. We gave Skip shit all day in the van because he never gave Shades a real address for the cottage. Apparently the…
City Slang: Katie Grace to play Smalls
Local outlaw country bad girl Katie Grace will headline Smalls in Hamtramck on Saturday, July 7, at 9 p.m. Fellow member of the Inside Outlaws collective Matt Dmits opens the show. Cover if $6 for 21 and over, $10 for under 21. As I said around the time of the Blowout, Grace is a self-proclaimed…
Where Do We Go Now?
Where Do We Go Now? C Nadine Labaki’s Where Do We Go Now? is a tragicomic, feminist musical from Lebanon, which means it is about as naturally graceful as a feathered fish. It makes for a bizarre, sometimes moving, often irritating watch, and thanks to this odd bit of cultural rubbernecking, we can get a…
Just Music… Just Musicians
You get ’em all into the studio and nothing else matters. There’s just the dialogue of musical minds. Conversation in melody; ruminative crescendos. Nothing and Everything and Anything can make sense. With so much music behind us, “…such lineage,” as singer/songwriter Jeff Howitt put it; with …
What if you went to high school with a serial killer?
A key component of any high school social circle is the strange friend. For most us, the worst that happens is that “friend” goes on to send the occasional Facebook invite to their embarrassing art installations. For graphic novelist Derf Backderf, that friend went on to become one of the more infamous killers of the…
City Slang: Introducing the Detroit Sound Conservancy
A music history group, the Detroit Sound Conservancy, has been formed to preserve and share Detroit music history. The DSC has been founded by local oral historian Carleton Gholz with the aim of facilitating connections to conserve Detroit’s musical history through physical archiving, digital outreach, and collaborative fundraising. “First and foremost an organizing effort, the…
Icelandic Jazz comes to Detroit
Jazz pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs will play Cliff Bell’s in Detroit on June 22. She was supposed to perform at the Harlequin Cafe in 2003, but that summer’s big black out forced her to cancel the show. Gunnlaugs and her trio are promoting their latest release, Long Pair Bond, and are touring coast to coast. “The…
Fighting against EM law, trying to save democracy
Scores of angry people don’t usually show up to watch an attorney file paperwork with the Michigan Court of Appeals. But then again, what’s going on right now with the attempt to have voters repeal Michigan’s emergency manager law in November is anything but normal. Were things operating as usual, the question of repealing Public…
Is It Overwhelming?
Six months until the latest doom-fever strikes its pitch. Read it on every wall, our screen-addled-brains are collectively buzzing louder and louder with a nervous-chuckling curiosity at what will happen when the Mayan’s stone calendar runs out. Has it settled in, truly, that we’re in the middle of an election year? Four years is a…
City Slang: The Juliets to play the Lager House
The Juliets will play at PJ’s Lager House in Detroit on July 2, with Mick Bassett & the Marthas, plus New York band Conveyor, also on the bill. When pushed to describe the sound for a Metro Times feature a couple of years ago, frontman Jeremy Freer simply called it chamber pop, a term often…
Boobs on the brain
Q: Is it normal for my man to be so attracted to boobs that even though mine are beautiful and perfect, my boyfriend still wants to look at every other woman with a set of big boobs that he can? Aren’t mine enough? —Boyfriend Ogles Other Breasts A: You sound like a new reader,…
Royal music
Anthony Heilbut’s The Fan Who Knew Too Much (Knopf) isn’t officially out until June 20, but advance copies have generated headlines and some controversy for its exploration of tensions in African-American churches between the long tradition of closeted, but quietly accepted gays (from the local choir to some gospel stars, a sort of don’t-ask, don’t-tell…
Food Stuff
Wheel base The good people at Ferndale’s Woodward Avenue Brewery have put together an event called the Ferndale Truck Stop. It’s a kind of food truck rally and pop-up beer garden, taking play along East Troy Street between the WAB and the Emory. Food trucks will include El Guapo Fresh Mexican Grill, the Mac Shack,…
Letters to the Editor
Flaws on Krystal I got to know Krystal Crittendon when I worked at the City Law Department some years ago. I think some of Jack Lessenberry’s comments were unfair. My personal view is that political, as opposed to legal, considerations led to the filing, and I am not surprised the suit was tossed as quickly…
Rock of Ages
Rock of Ages F The unholy marriage of show tunes and hair metal gets sanctified on the altar of Hollywood clichés in Rock of Ages, a tedious slog through MTV’s late ’80s catalog that manages to conjure the worst of all possible worlds at once. Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray) and adapted by Justin Theroux…
Blueflowers are family
One of the most common statements we interviewers hear from bands as we go about our work is, "We are just like a big family." Sometimes, a musician will try to strengthen the statement by saying something like, "I know a lot of bands say that, but we really are." In the case of the…
The black market
The grocery store owner mentioned one day to a customer that sales were down, and said his business might not be around much longer. That customer decided something needed to be done. She made phone calls, spread the word and organized a big tailgate party on a spring afternoon in Metro Foodland’s parking lot on…
Full plate of Detroit
Mulenga Harangua was so excited, he was practically dancing in his seat as we drove across town. I was helping him move some furniture that one of his relatives gave him. We were eastbound on West Grand Boulevard with a couch, a table and a couple of chairs in the back of a borrowed pickup…
Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (Epic)
What’s less surprising: that Fiona Apple’s new album reads like a diary of a very scarred girl, or that its title is a whopping 116 characters long? They’re not mutually exclusive, as anyone who’s followed the 34-year-old singer-songwriter over the past 16 years can tell you. Her first album since 2005’s excellent Extraordinary Machine peels…
Charting a future
Sheila Cockrel paused thoughtfully over dinner last week, considering something she’s realized in recent years. "Today’s young adults — those in their 20s and 30s and 40s — have grown up with a Detroit in decline. They’ve never known anything else." That’s sad, especially to someone old enough to remember the excitement of shopping downtown.…
Bridge fight hardly over
The presence of the Minister Malik Shabazz and fellow members of his New Black Panther Party outside Cobo Center on Friday was just one signal that the desperate fight against the publicly owned New International Trade Crossing won’t end until the new span is completed and traffic is moving across it. And even then, we’re…
Safety Not Guaranteed
Safety Not Guaranteed B- Podcast wiseacre Adam Carolla recently coined the term "quirkedy" for a film that attempts to smooth over any gaps in comedic punch or dramatic heft with ample doses of quirky behavior and clever film craft. That definition nails the humbly likable Safety Not Guaranteed, a movie that is never as funny…
Where it buzzes
Union Woodshop 18 S. Main St., Clarkston 248-625-5660 www.unionwoodshop.com Handicap accessible Prices: $15-35 Hours: Mon-Thu: 4-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 4-11 p.m. Friday, noon-11 p.m. Saturday, noon-9 p.m. Sunday What’s not to love about heaping platters of meat, big bowls of mac and cheese, and pizzas that spill over the edge of your plate? It’s a hedonist’s…
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World B- The apocalypse is hardly where you would expect to find a surplus of whimsy, but the wryly amusing Seeking a Friend for the End of the World makes the end times seem relatively pleasant. Not so much a disaster picture as low-key romantic comedy with…
Check Yourself (Checkers’ Collective)
Bandcamp can be a beautiful thing, most of the time. If anything, its effective. The song’s done, the song’s ready, put the song up – its an easy-to-remember link and people can start streaming. Go. Still, though, it’s an airless, 2-dimensional glowing screen, no razzle, no dazzle, not even an LED-light cascade or iTunes “visualizer” action.…
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…
