City Slang: Whitey Morgan To Perform With Skynyrd
On Monday, July 4, Flint’s Whitey Morgan & the 78s will perform at the DTE Energy Music Theater (or Pine Knob, for the old timers) with Lynyrd fuckin’ Skynyrd. Now, before anyone starts hootin’ and hollerin’ (see, I’m gettin’ into the spirit) about how this ain’t the real Skynyrd, and that the genu-Ine article hasn’t…
American: The Bill Hicks Story
American: The Bill Hicks Story B Bill Hicks is finally sort of famous in America; at least in the sense that since his 1994 death from cancer, a generation of young comics has had time to absorb and disseminate his style, if never really understanding his gift. Instead they internalized his jokes and aped his…
Concert Gallery: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Album Release @ St. Andrews
Saturday night the Ferndale duo of Josh Epstein and Daniel Zott , better known as Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. returned home to usher in the release of their debut album It’s A Corporate World. If you’re unfamiliar with the Jr. Jr. then check out MT Arts & Culture Editor Travis R. Wright’s profile of the…
Electric Forest Festival (June 30th – July 3rd) Preview and Schedules
For all the updating posts on this year’s Electric Forest check back here at the Electric Forest on Metro Times Music Blog. After a year off, the Double JJ Resort (home to 2008 and 2009’s Rothbury Music Festival) will re-open this Thursday for a smaller scale, first go-around called the Electric Forest Festival. Similar…
City Slang: Theater Bizarre – The Movie
The Theater Bizarre has become an institution in Detroit, a chance for the many alternative artists, fetishists, performance artists, perverts and degenerates to gather and collectively turn an area near the State Fairgrounds into some sort of Hellish interpretation of a carnival. It’s a spectacular thing, all the more special because it’s been operating outside…
City Slang: SRC Turns Back The Clock At The Magic Bag
The Magic Bag in Ferndale was full to bursting on Saturday night, as Detroit rockers young and old turned out to celebrate the fact that the SRC was playing its first show together in four decades. The Grande Ballroom cats were spread around the Bag, including artist Carl Lundgren (who designed a poster for the…
Remembering Mike Montgomery, local pianist and expert on piano rolls
Jazz scholar Jim Gallert dropped me a note asking that we note the passing of the pianist, piano roll collector, fellow jazz researcher and more Mike Montgomery, who passed away the other day at age 77. Montgomery’s passing is, by all means, worthy of note. Chris Handyside (if memory serves me) was responsible for the…
City Slang: Sound & Fury and Telecollision At Smalls
The lineup of bands on Friday night at Smalls in Hamtramck was impressive to say the least. Sheefy McFly kicked the night off and the whole thing came to a close with the last ever performance (apparently) from Derelikt Kraft, the oddball solo project of Jaye Thomas from the Rogue Satellites. In between was the…
Bad Teacher
Bad teacher C+ Like a fifth-grader mangling a punch line he overheard his big brother kill with, Bad Teacher feels a bit like a rehash of better, funnier works. This starts with the title. Invoking the far superior Bad Santa is only going to set the bar higher for your movie, a bar Bad Teacher…
Angel of Evil
Angel of Evil GRADE: C+ Another retro Euro gangster movie — only not quite as good. With Un Prophet, Gomorrah and Carlos setting the bar, Michele Placido’s Italian shoot ’em up prison flick pales in comparison, boasting period style and action verve but lacking context, insight and character. Real-life pretty-boy bank robber Renato Vallanzasca (Kim…
Cars 2
Cars 2 D+ It was bound to happen: the unstoppable hit machine Pixar, the little studio that essentially revolutionized animation and the movie business, has finally produced an outright dud. The first Cars is generally ranked lowest among Pixar’s catalog, yet it moved scads of merchandise, and sadly the follow-up is the company’s first effort…
Spotlight on ex-locals: JD Allen, Colin Stetson, Sheila Jordan, etc.
It’s gratifying to see former Detroiters getting their props in the national jazz and general press. For example, it was good to see James Carter again on the cover of Downbeat a a bit ago in conjunction with the release of Carribbean Rhapsody. (A great disc, by the way, including the Concerto for Saxophones and…
Mr. B: Here comes our Michigan-by-cycle tour
Hello everybody, let me introduce myself. I’m Mr.B, Ann Arbor-based blues pianist and founder of Mr. B’s Joybox Express. The Joybox Express Quartet are making final plans to ride 300 miles across our great state, hauling our drum set in a suitcase, our solar-powered guitar and amp, our doghouse bass, and our 352 lb. piano…
City Slang: “Out of the Closet” Revisited
Oh yes, the fuckin’ Trash Brats. Born in ’87 when guitarist Ricky Rat and singer Brian O’Blivion discovered a shared love of the New York Dolls, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, T-Rex and trashy underground Brit bands like the Dogs D’amour, the ugliest hookers on Cass (only just, mind) put out a debut album…
App-titude: 3 great new tools for iPads, iPhones and Droids
Every month there are thousands of new mobile device apps as software evolves to match increasingly powerful hardware. This summer the pace continues with release dates set for some exciting new technologies across various carriers. They range from useful tools to mere time-killers. Here are three already available apps that caught our attention: • Earlier…
City Slang: The Return of the SRC
Between 1966 and 1972, the Scot Richard Case (or SRC) were a major player in the Detroit rock ‘n’ roll scene. Often found at the Grande Ballroom on bills with the likes of Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Wheels, the MC5, the Stooges, Seger and the rest, the SRC looked to have made the jump to the…
Here we go again
It’s not often that you see Detroit Rep. John Conyers, one of the most liberal members of Congress, lock arms with someone as far to the right as libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. But last week, these two strange bedfellows (along with a handful of others) puckered up and slipped beneath the sheets without…
Drawing the lines
What do people in the leafy, upscale Oakland County town of Sylvan Lake have in common with the Asian immigrants and heavily pierced and tattooed young artists of Hamtramck? What do any of those groups have in common with the soccer moms of Farmington Hills, the mean streets of Motor City’s east side, the poor…
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop GRADE: A- Have you heard about that whole late-night war that went down last year? Director Rodman Flender presumes that you have, and skips most of the gory details of the ugly, very public Jay vs. Conan battle that resulted in O’Brien being forced from his dream job behind the desk…
Food Stuff
Buddy’s Day — Buddy’s Pizza will celebrate the 65th anniversary of its original Detroit deep-dish square pizza. What’s more, the day will forever belong to Buddys, because, thanks to the support of Detroit Mayor Dave Bing and Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, June 23 will become Buddy’s Pizza Day in Detroit. The celebration takes…
Far from City Hall
Young Chris and Denise were taking turns playing the small wooden xylophone at the table sponsored by the Detroit Disability Justice Coalition. While the kids were banging away at the instrument, I couldn’t help pulling out my mandolin, strumming along with them and dancing a bit. It was the highlight of my time at the…
Undone
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace Little, Brown and Company, $27.99, 560 pp. It is impossible to read the late David Foster Wallace’s unfinished, posthumously published novel The Pale King without feeling pangs of terrible sadness. Wallace, haunted his entire life with debilitating, sometimes paralyzing depression and for whom medication had ceased to be…
Take a Look: Aretha Franklin, Complete on Columbia
The whole of Aretha Franklin’s recorded work at Columbia Records — from 1960 to 1965 — is compartmentalized in this lovely little box: the seven stereo albums released during her tenure, all with bonuses including mono mixes, out-takes, vintage radio ads, some studio chatter, and non-LP sides. Three additional CDs see all the Clyde Otis…
Spun
SCHOOLYARD VERSE Everything in its Right Place (after Radiohead) Livin’ large live large Everything is in a separate cage When yesterday I woke up So good up in that room. Everything is in a shark cage. There are colors in my head. Why did she try to say try to save Everything everything everything. —Kacey…
Letters to the Editor
Vote them out! Speaking as a retired Bath Township detective, allow to me add some light to the fine column by Larry Gabriel. My profession believes that in the war on marijuana, God is on our side. We are doing his work. No matter how much death, misery and destruction we bring upon citizens, we…
Down in metal land
It’s a cool Friday evening in April at the Hayloft in Mount Clemens, and Trixter is playing, the New Jersey cock-rock band that formed in ’83 but didn’t put out its debut album until 1990, and is now long past their statute of limitations. Often, when nostalgia acts such as Trixter, Stryper or Ratt play…
More than pizza
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Amici’s Pizza and Living Room 3249 W. 12 Mile Rd., Berkley; 248-544-4100; amicispizza.com; $$: This isn’t your typical Italian eatery: Pizza crust made with bran, biodegradable dishes, soy candles, no smoking, no TV — Amici’s manages both to be virtuous and to pull it off without a hint of self-righteousness. It…
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
Bon Iver – Bon Iver Jagjaguwar Justin Vernon’s trajectory from isolated bearded folkie to pliable Kanye West collaborator is one of modern music’s most surprising stories. But without it he never would have been able to make Bon Iver’s terrific second album, a rumination of sorts on rural America. Almost all of the songs are…
Smear job
Speaking of Juan Cole, who has twice graced the pages of this rag with long interviews regarding issues of war and Middle Eastern politics, The New York Times last week disclosed allegations that the Bush White House twice tried to get the CIA to target him with a smear campaign. As respected national security correspondent…
Submarine
Submarine GRADE: A- Submarine should quickly become every smart, alienated high schooler’s new favorite movie, which is no slight, as most jaundiced adults would do well to reconnect with our pouty, awkward inner teen. Like its hormonal lovers, the movie brims with insecurity, imagination and promise, loaded with the kind of fragile and overpowering feelings…
Motor City Five
Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Record Release with Danny Brown, Prussia, Phantasmagoria & Self Says Since we last caught up with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., they inked with Warner Bros., were featured by MTV, Rolling Stone, Spin and ABC News, they killed at SXSW, booked Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits Festival, and started blogging for ESPN.…
Dr. Feelgood
Q: I’m a single 24-year-old gay actor-singer-comedian who’s going to be a doctor in a few years — I have varied interests — and I think being in a porn flick would be really hot. I don’t know what the ramifications of ramming on cam could be with regard to my future career. The field…
Marianne Faithfull – Horses and High Heels
Marianne Faithfull – Horses and High Heels Naïve Battle-scarred British singer and Stones survivor Marianne Faithfull has traveled this territory before. But on her latest collection of (mostly) cover songs featuring cameos by other wrinkled veterans, she sounds tired and disconnected from the material. Of course, that’s been her selling point since she reignited her…
A classic returns
La Shish 22039 Michigan Ave., Dearborn 313-582-8400 Search Metro Times’ database for "La Shish" and you’ll find that the chain that closed in 2008 was the gold standard against which all other Middle Eastern restaurants were measured. For good reason: Quality was outstanding and portion control nonexistent. Unless you limited yourself to one item, you’d…
Turning back time
When I got back to Amsterdam last week and checked into my headquarters at the 420 Café, I received an urgent message from the proprietor, Michael Veling, in response to my last column, which talked about attempts to restrict access to cannabis in the Netherlands: Mike has owned and operated the 420 Café (formerly Café…
Seven days a week
Those stalwart cop heroes of the heartland, Detroit 1-8-7 and The Chicago Code, have been discharged, denied second chances despite promising rookie seasons. Spinoffs spun out: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior and Law & Order: LA failed to make the cut. S#*! My Dad Says never stood a f#%& of a chance, even with (or maybe…
LMFAO – Sorry for Party Rocking
LMFAO – Sorry for Party Rocking Party Rock/will.i.am/Cherrytree/Interscope You can say one thing about LMFAO: The group knows its audience. A quick scan of song titles on these L.A. jokers’ second album tells you all you need to know about them: "All Night Long," "Put That A$$ to Work," "Sexy and I Know It." The…
City Slang: Weekly Music Review Roundup
Friendly reminder peeps. If you send Detroit-area music over to me, I will review it right here in this weekly record release roundup. No matter the genre, regardless of whether the media is vinyl, CD, MP3, cassette, or anything else – if the artist or label is local to the Detroit area, it’ll get reviewed…
