City Slang: Closing the Belmont, filming a Detroit music war
Welcome to the first blog from City Slang. I’ll be posting daily from now on and, each week, the seven blogs and the column in the MT paper will all make up what City Slang is – a thorough examination of Detroit music across the genres and the eras. Every Wednesday, I’ll be posting a…
Indie pop duo Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s New ESPN Blog?!
Move over, Mitch. Step aside, Terry. Daniel Zott and Joshua Epstein — perhaps better known as break-out indie pop stars Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. have put down their guitars and taken to the Web with a new Detroit centric sports blog on ESPN’s wesbite. Awesome. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.’s debut LP It’s A Corporate World…
Jack White and Karen Elson ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’
Jack White’s becoming a Tammy Wynette song! Just received this note today from a Jack White spokesperson, grammatical errors and all: To whom it may concern: karen elson and jack white announce today that they are getting divorced. “we remain dear and trusted friends and co-parents to our wonderful children Scarlett and Henry Lee. We…
Super 8
Super 8 GRADE: B When you think back on Amblin Entertainment’s (Steven Spielberg’s production studio) indomitable reign over the summer movies of the ’80s and early ’90s, it plays like the ultimate hit parade for adolescent wish fulfillment. E.T., Back to the Future, Gremlins, Jurassic Park, and The Goonies were formative movies for teenage audiences…
Tree of Life
Tree of Life GRADE: A- Terrence Malick has only made five films in 38 years. Most of them have been viewed by cinephiles and film geeks as important, iconoclastic and influential movies. Only The New World, his last film, struggled to find the accolades heaped on his other efforts. It’s therefore understandable that so many…
Don Was, Bettye Lavette headline Concert of Colors
No word yet on who’ll constitute his Detroit All-Star Revue*, but Don Was is set as the headliner for this year’s Concert of Colors on Saturday, July 16, at Orchestra Hall. Bettye Levette is the main attraction for the closing night, Sunday, July 17. Others appearing in the festival — whose 19th lineup was announced…
Food Stuff
Yellow and green — Wayne State’s Wednesday Farmers Market opens its season this week. The student-friendly green market is back for a fourth year, and it now accepts Michigan Bridge Cards, as well as Project Fresh and Senior Project Fresh coupons. It will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every Wednesday through Oct. 26,…
Public offense
In 1905, George G. Booth, son-in-law of newspaper publisher and philanthropist James E. Scripps, donated his land and house to the city of Detroit with the stipulation that it be used for a branch library and public park. Booth’s house existed as Scripps Park Public Library until 1966, when it was demolished so that a…
Soul of a man
No matter how far wrong you’ve gone, you can always turn around. —performed by Gil Scott-Heron on I’m New Here, written by Bill Callahan It’s all about redemption. Gil Scott-Heron, the philosopher, poet, musician, author and rapper prototype, turned his incisive, uncompromising vision to himself for his last album, last year’s I’m New Here. For…
In Defense of Gaga
"I just can’t get over the fact that so many intelligent people don’t get the Gaga." My friend Hudson Marquez, the great artist, sociopolitical provocateur, TV producer (Dylan’s Hard Rain), and co-creator of the famous Cadillac Ranch art project (which inspired a Bruce Springsteen song), posted those words on my Facebook page a few weeks…
Motor City Five
Golden Once dubbed Captain Jerry & the Mermaids, the band Golden shines a kind of darkness on Detroit psych-folk. Featuring the sweet sound of the sisters Drinkard (Bonnie and Caitlin), they strum out songs of living ghosts and dying love. They’re a band to keep an eye and ear on. On June 16, they’re sharing…
One educator’s dream
She beat the odds. Now she wants to help Detroit high school kids facing the same sorts of challenges do the same. Growing up poor in Los Angeles, Natasha Baker was surrounded by trouble, as she tells it. When she was just 12, one of her brothers was murdered. Another brother is a recovering crack…
Midnight in Paris
Midnight in Paris GRADE: B It’s somehow appropriate for Woody Allen to make a movie about nostalgia at this point in his career. In Midnight in Paris, he returns to the rain-soaked blue notes and nervous, bourgeois babble found in his best films. Owen Wilson plays Woody stand-in Gil, who’s on a pre-wedding trip to…
When sci-fi goes retro
It was a punk rock, fantasy, time machine affair over Memorial Day weekend for the World Steam Expo at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn. An estimated 2,500 Victorian-era cyborgs showed up to celebrate all things steampunk, a genre and a scene that fuses history with science fiction in a sort of latter-day send-up of Jules…
Stay fierce!
This past Saturday night, the Wonder Twins headed to the Royal Oak Music Theatre with a throng of sweaty pop addicts to see dance-music maven Robyn rock the house. With perfectly symmetrical hair and spot-on late ’80s dance moves, she easily proved she’s Sweden’s greatest export since ABBA. Mamma mia, indeed … D’Anne: Robyn’s Detroit…
Dark entries
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Armando’s 4242 W. Vernor Hwy., Detroit; 313-554-0666: Armando’s opens at 10:30 a.m. daily and stays open until 4 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays (until 2 a.m. the rest of the week), and the post-bar crowd that spills over from Dearborn and downtown Detroit’s clubs can choose from the regular Mexican fare or…
Sure bet
Wolfgang Puck Grille Inside the MGM Grand Casino, 1777 Third St., Detroit 313-465-1648 Wolfgang Puck is the most downscale of the MGM Grand’s three upscale restaurants. Bourbon Steak is way steeper and quality is reputedly high. Saltwater and Wolfgang don’t charge as much, but Saltwater is rated by everyone, including me, as one of the…
Fucked Up – David Comes to Life
Fucked Up – David Comes to Life Matador Who could have guessed that a band named Fucked Up would have the ambition, let alone the stamina, for a 78-minute concept album? On their follow-up to 2008’s breakthrough The Chemistry of Common Life, the Toronto sextet created a four-act punk opera with more scope than Green…
X-Men: First Class
X-Men: First Class GRADE: B In the argument of nature versus nurture, X-Men: First Class stands as an interesting test case. Director Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) and his team get so many things right you can’t help but be impressed by the boldness of their concept, casting and characters. The movie’s 1962 setting is…
The meaning of Dr. K.
Very few people knew this, but a wealthy woman from California fell in love with Jack Kevorkian soon after he finally got himself convicted and sent to prison back in 1999. Her name was Fuensanta Plaza, and while her name sounded like a shopping mall in Los Angeles, she was actually a Venezuelan who had…
Letters to the Editor
Rest in peace Kudos to Jack Lessenbary for his tribute to a most extraordinary local citizen, Al Fishman ("Farewell to a hero," May 25). Al’s sudden death earlier this month was a stunning blow to the countless men and women who tried to keep up with him in his devoted commitment to peace with justice,…
Holes and poles
Q: I’m a 22-year-old FTM. I will become a legal male this summer. WOOT. Useless hole but still no pole. My friends — all straight — don’t know I’m FTM because I don’t feel it matters. I don’t know any other FTMs, and I really don’t care to. However, I like men. I have never…
Spun
FRIGHT FROM THE BINS Co-Star — The Record Acting Game Cesar Romero Before interactive media, before people thought of yelling at TV and movie screens, before fans stalked celebrities for fun and profit, you had curiosities like Co-Star — The Record Acting Game, which allowed you to drop a needle on an album and act…
When in Florence
Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, has been one of the most beautiful cities in the Western world for almost a thousand years. Now considered one of the most desirable tourist destinations of all, especially for its art, architecture and cultural heritage, the city features elegant plazas, palaces, churches, monasteries, museums, art galleries and magnificent…
13 Assassins
13 Assassins GRADE: B+ Takashi Miike’s infamy as Japan’s leading exploitation fiend precedes him; he’s proven the ability to splatter screens red with the best of them, and in his perversely gory quasi-classics, such as Audition and Ichi the Killer, he set new standards for onscreen carnage. Sometimes called Asia’s Tarantino, the provocative and staggeringly…
Cheat Code
Portal 2 Valve/EA Xbox 360, Windows, OS X, PS3 In late 2007, the world of first-person gaming was given a sweet gift: You all remember the commercials for the legendary Orange Box, right? For those who don’t, it was a life-changing deal that included, among a couple others, Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and the…
Paolo Fresu A Filetta Corsican Voices – Mistico Mediterraneo
Paolo Fresu A Filetta Corsican Voices – Mistico Mediterraneo ECM There are many challenges to describing the music here. Jean-Claude Acquaviva has directed and composed for the Corsican male choir, A Filetta, for three decades. But without a familiarity with a clearly deep-rooted choral tradition, who can say what’s new, what’s old, what’s conservative, what’s…
Fenced out – no more
There were no pitchforks, but there were bolt cutters and power tools and shovels when residents of southwest Detroit rose up last week to take down a fence that has long served as both a physical barrier to public property and a symbol of a politically powerful billionaire’s arrogance. The chain-link fence was erected shortly…
