Food Stuff
Chinese soul food "What in the world is that?" I asked about the steaming plate of food my gracious host placed before me. "Chop suey. It’s Chinese." Here I was, fresh from a visit to my birthplace in Taiwan, being schooled on Chinese culture by someone who’d never left Wayne County. "Chinese, huh?" I stared…
Slinging sludge
It looks as if the head of Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality got caught spreading some toxic misinformation about one of the agency’s premier critics. At least twice during the month of February, DEQ Director Russ Harding stated that the founder of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) had been fired from a government job…
MOTOR CITY SKANK
The Basiks, while solid, have some growing to do. Guitarist and former Nomad Ron Rutherford — who also contributed to Baaqi’s cover art — makes the historical connection for this trio. The recording covers two songs, Rutherford’s “Dem Never Know” and Kamau Bashiri’s “Revolution,” and includes dub versions of each. While the grooves move, the…
Peterman’s passing
"The order line is now closed. The retail stores will remain open until all merchandise is liquidated. Thank you for calling." –recorded message at J. Peterman catalog order number. Remember that scene in The Great Gatsby, when Nick goes over to Gatsby’s house – Gatsby, whom he doesn’t know from Adam but has heard plenty…
Saturn uprising
It was a stunning blow to the world’s best-known example of labor-management cooperation – Saturn, the "different kind of car company." With a voter turnout of 85 percent, UAW members removed from office the union leadership caucus that had ruled in Spring Hill, Tenn., since Saturn was founded in the mid-’80s. The incumbent "Vision Team"…
RUMINATION FACTORY
Uncomfortable and beguiling sounds converge to conspire in an act of rainy day seduction in the grooves of this tiny little package of nearly gloomy reverie. Galicja takes the sound of a love affair — or perhaps a near-affair crush — and sets it to an intimate confessional backdrop of strummed-but-muted guitars and cello neatly…
A chat with Le Grand Magistrey’s Matthew Jacobson
Metro Times: What’s the story of Le Grand Magistery? Matthew Jacobson: A few years ago, I had graduated from Parsons School of Design and I was working as a graphic designer in New York City. What got me through 12-14 hours a day (for about three years) what sustained me, was this wonderful music. It…
Dailies still guilty
In another legal victory for locked-out newspaper workers, the National Labor Relations Board has refused to reconsider last year’s ruling that Detroit Newspapers, the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press illegally provoked a nearly 4-year-old labor dispute. It does not mean, however, that workers will soon return to work. A spokesperson for Detroit Newspapers…
FUTURE SO BLEAK, I GOTTA WEAR SHADES
This robot doesn’t fuck around telling you how you’re gonna get killed, either. There’ve been plenty of bleak musical projections of an impending doom on the horizon — from the whacked out mutations of Devo’s “De-evolution” to nearly the entire canon of punk’s great lost hope to, more recently, bands such as Six Finger Satellite…
Boomin’ system
What sets Ann Arbor’s Ground EFX apart from other area bands is how unrock the outfit is. Scaling the limits of dub reggae, dancehall, even jungle, the quartet fearlessly looks outside of rock ’n’ roll for the perfect beat. And it’s working. In only a handful of shows since its forming three months ago, Ground…
Local Music Issue 1999
Boomin’ system by Hobey Echlin A chat with Le Grand Magistrey’s Matthew Jacobson by Chris Handyside Lasting Imprints by Chris Handyside Pretty muthafucka by Khary Kimani Turner Queen machine by Chris Handyside Sights on-scene by Chris Handyside So long division by Norene Cashen Songs in the key of life by Khary Kimani Turner Starry knights…
DAMNBIENT!
Signpost up ahead: “Welcome to Tomorrowland. Population three: You, Me and the Music.” Check your baggies at the gate. Entering from across the Atlantic, you can see the Krautrock feel of Can, the mechanical loops, two hundred years of industry lost in a whimpering daze. From over the Pacific, liquid ambient meditations unknown, welcome organic…
Pretty muthafucka
"I’m one of them pretty rappers/ Buck if I really have ta/ I’ll really slap ya/ King of Detroit/ who they namin’ the city after./ Scantless partners whose grammar hammers the hard shit/ Enter your heart with content you don’t wanna start with." –Royce the Five-Nine, "Scary Movies" This being 1999, the ‘last but not…
TV dinners
America loves to eat. Just go to any mall food court and you’ll see troughing like nowhere else on earth. And what, pray tell, are the hungry and harried jamming down their gullets? Comfort food, the very stuff that makes the surgeon general and the American Medical Association swoon. Even that bellwether of food neuroses,…
METAL HUMAN MUSIC
From the fine folks who brought you the now-sadly-defunct metalloid performance genius of 7,000 Dying Rats comes a full-force blast of distorted, extended sonic mayhem for the thinking-man’s-hard-rock-kids. Thoughts of Ionesco may sound, upon first aural glance, like it fits neatly into the thrash metal bin, but that’d be a mistake in attention span. Sit…
Sights on-scene
"Jack Bruce is God!" Mark Leahy, the live-wire bassist of power-punk-pop-soul trio the Sights, is wearing his Cream idolatry on his sleeve. In fact, his unabashed declaration is crucial to understanding what sets the Sights apart from other young rock guns working Detroit’s musical rumpus rooms. Leahy, 17, and guitarist Ed Baranek, 17 – who’ve…
Queen machine
Queen Bee, by the band’s very nature, is the stuff of legend. That is, the kind of legend that three people, focused on making a difference for performance-starved rock audiences, can concoct to explain the sexy, stompin’ brew they embody on stage – an androgynous fantasy trio of sexually-charged rock animals. Turn back the clock…
3 CLOSE 2 CALL
To quote Third Kind’s Dr. Soose, “the joke’s on you jack!” Anyone who sleeps on this hip-hop trio is slipping. Where a lot of groups don’t have enough material to complete an entire album, or are so unfocused that their LP sounds like a scattershot compilation, Third Kind manages to avoid both of these pitfalls.…
So long division
In the burgeoning tradition of making music, as DJ Spooky says, "with fragments of the world," Detroit funk careerist outfit, Soul Clique, made its throbbing ambient paste-up debut in ’98. The crossbred CD, Only One Division (Small Stone Records), was pure alchemy: molten funked rock whipped up light and airy with electronic junk. Since then,…
DEVIL WORSHIP
Along with Ebeling-Hughes, Isis and Werewolves, and C3, Medusa Cyclone offers some of the most innovative Detroit art rock around. Under the Medusa Cyclone moniker, Keir McDonald has created a varied catalog of moody avant-garde rock and forbidding electronic soundscapes in a consistently brilliant fashion since the early ’90’s. If you’re lucky, perhaps you’ve caught…
Analyze This
There’s a wonderfully telling scene in Analyze This, when psychiatrist Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal) has a dream about his mobster patient, Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro), and they’re recast in a scene from The Godfather where Don Corleone stops to buy fruit from a street vendor and is shot in the back while his…
Songs in the key of life
Many local soul music aficionados will argue that, despite public perception, the sound still lives in Detroit. They may, in fact, wager that it’s taken residence in the body of one Kem L. Owens. Kem is one of those rare musicians whose music really is a reflection of his life, whose melodies are just as…
ILLER THAN ILLBIENT
Monaural’s instrumental music crosses space jazz and dub with remixology, turntablism and electronica, creating some hypnotic interference patterns. Never falling into complete electronic abstraction, this Detroit trio reinforces its musical structures through repetition. The motifs are captivating, especially on “A,” which combines Jah Wobble-style bass, scraps of Jamaican dub poetry, ghostly electronic flourishes and a…
September sky
Al Oakes is the stuff of local legend. A founding member of the Volebeats, Al left the band about a decade ago and has been pretty much a musical recluse ever since – until now. For this recording, his brother Brian, another ex-Volebeat, and John Nash – who actually just joined the Voles – have…
Speaks with his hands
Remember that old DJ sample, where the artist says to the crowd, "Can the drummer get some? ’Cause the drummer ain’t had none in a long time!" DJ Marquis is that drummer, and the "some" he hasn’t had are the props he truly deserves. DJ-producer-artist Marquis is a quiet fixture in Detroit’s hip-hop and club…
FREEWAY BLUES
In case you thought the modern-day blues scene was being overrun by blues-rockers, you need to hear this. Not that blues rock is necessarily a bad thing, but if you prefer your blues a little closer to the roots — particularly the Detroit roots — then the Hastings Street Blues Band is the sound of…
The Bicycle Thief
The plot is simplicity itself. A man needs a bicycle in order to secure a job which will save his family from encroaching poverty. He makes a sacrifice in order to buy one, only to have the much-cherished item stolen during his first day at work. With his son in tow, he searches the city…
Inch-by-inch
Ferndale native is at the center of off-Broadway gender-bending phenomenon Hedwig & the angry Inch–a sweet transsexual tale of rock ‘n’ redemption.
An interview with Spectator Records’ Aaron Warshaw
Metro Times: When and why did you start Spectator Records? Aaron Warshaw: Sometime last summer. It was something that I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. But there’s only so much thinking you can do before you jump in. My first two releases were the Galicja 10-inch and 57 Waltz single over the…
POST-MODERN ACID FOLK
Led by vocalist-songwriter Steve Leggett, the loose confederation of musicians that is Ann Arbor’s Buzzrats has hand-delivered the goods with Cartoon Twilight, the group’s sophomore release. Cartoon Twilight is a rough, inspiring ride, skillfully traversing the craggy course between deliberate orchestration and the first-thought-equals-best-thought spontaneity of rock’s most immediately affecting work. The songs here breathe…
Cruel Intentions
In this version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos’ novel of high-stakes seduction, writer-director Roger Kumble can’t seem to decide what kind of movie he wants to make. This is reflected in the film’s sexual dialogue, which flip-flops from coyly suggestive (concealing) to shockingly blatant (revealing). Unlike a pair of recent screen adaptations –…
Lasting Imprints
Detroit-based record labels are starting to flourish in a cultural climate that’s ever more fertile…
Starry knights
Old school might just be the perfect description for hip-hop group Binary Star. Not old school in the sense of dated or played out, but old school meaning the constant honing of skills and originality, as well as pure love for the music. Failing to exhibit the inflated ego so common in their industry, the…
STONE BOOGIE
There aren’t many spots along the rock spectrum that, when done well, are as universally appealing as good, old-fashioned bar rock ’n’ roll. You know, the kind the Rolling Stones perfected, then have seemed to deliver part-and-parcel over the last few years to aging rockers who were “there when”? The kind of guilt-free guitar boogie…
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
For the first 10 minutes, writer-director Guy Ritchie’s first feature film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, looks like yet another cross between Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting. But as the main characters of this shady world are introduced – Eddie (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham) and Soap (Dexter Fletcher), all best mates…
Motor City breakdown
Rumor has it that Meadow Brook Theatre playwright-in-residence Karim Alrawi gleaned the idea for his most recent work from an article in Hour, the local lifestyle magazine. Reading about the relationship between wealthy arts patron and Ford Motor Company president Edsel Ford and Communist painter Diego Rivera, Alrawi saw the seed of a play. Unfortunately,…
The sum and its parts
From city to city and state to state, Detroit’s Combined Individuals DJ crew is making its presence felt in the relatively new musical genre known as "turntabilism." Simply put, DJs use turntables to play music while turntabilists use ’em to make music. Manipulating records, turntabilists can create bass lines and more while interweaving complicated scratches…
UP NORTH BLUES
Motor City Josh has earned a name around town as one of the most tasteful and talented young blues guitar players. His sound has always been far ahead of his years, giving evidence of someone who’s done some living, some paying attention, some paying dues and has learned how to put it all to music.…
Life of Jesus
Sporting one of the all-time misleading titles, Life of Jesus is actually about a small group of young provincial louts in Northern France, slouching through their empty and aimless existence during one particularly long, hot summer. It’s an impressive debut from writer-director Bruno Dumont, audacious and original, yet ultimately falling short of its intention. Its…
The tell-all tale
Wednesday night, and even if 70 million other people are watching their televisions too, I still feel like I have to hide in the closet. It’s not that there’s anything inherently shameful about watching "20/20" (not usually, anyway), but since it’s the one where Bahbwa interviews Monica (we’re all on a first-names-only basis, now, right?),…
We must not threepeat
When you think about it, They Come in Threes singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris McInnis’ first bandmates were chickens – literally. When McInnis first began the project that would become They Come in Threes, he was making bedroom recordings of songs he had written. In the process, one of the chickens in his Southwest Detroit neighborhood made it…
OVERDUE BLUES
If you say you know about Detroit blues but you don’t know about Willie D. Warren, then it’s time for you to re-evaluate what you claim to know. Of all the old-time Detroit bluesmen still around today, Warren is the one most deserving of the national recognition that he should have but never did receive.…
The modern sorrows of Young H.
Now that Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the rock musical, is in CD format and (Ha!) brimming with promising singles – will all the irony of a former East German, currently almost transsexual rock star be lost forever? You can bet yer sweet Berliner that it already is. So breathe a sigh, and be glad…
In concert with the Volebeats
COUNTRY AND MIDWESTERN Audiences around here know that they can rely on the Volebeats for strong sets of Midwestern AM-radio melancholy, and last Friday’s snowbound set at the Gold Dollar was no exception. Mixing older material with a sampling of destined-to-be-classic new tunes from Solitude (the forthcoming LP due to be released next month on…
The case for shadow schools
Maybe the time has come to give up on public education. The hell with it. The old saying goes that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it is broke, and can’t be fixed, replace it with something that works. During a barely publicized conference last month at the University of Georgia in…
Roadkill shrimp?
The Roadkill Café’s products are delivered and prepared fresh daily — there is no raccoon, no dog, no possum anywhere on the extensive menu. Just cow, chicken, shrimp and mozzarella, like any self-respecting sports bar. The wise diner is advised to stick to more traditional offerings and to take advantage of the bargain prices and…
Monica and the homeless
Fifty million. That’s how many people have been driven from their countries or uprooted within them in the 1990s, and cast adrift, usually with little or nothing. Fifty million – and that figure may be low. Hundreds of thousands have been killed; hacked to death in Rwanda, blown away in Somalia, died from artillery fire…
Painful proposal
They had the look of hostages forced to make a statement while captors off camera pointed a loaded gun at their heads. And with good reason. Facing down the barrel of Gov. John Engler’s fast-moving legislation that would take over Detroit’s public schools and put them under the control of Mayor Dennis Archer, the Board…
SWEET TEASERS
Get yourself acquainted with Jack and Meg White. “Let’s Shake Hands,” the A-side of this, the duo’s first recorded foray, is a raucous invitation to do so. The crunched-out, Cramps-worthy riffage that the song is built upon is segmented by Jack White’s plaintive, natural-as-breathing falsetto and the crashing waves of Meg White’s cymbal, snare and…
Pitch’d
MY NAME IS RAVE As reported in last week’s metrotimes.com edition of Pitch’d, a Detroit rave promoter has secured rapper Eminem – the 313 rap underground’s most conspicuous graduate – for Em’s first hometown appearance since the his current ascension to MTV poster-boy status and the resulting platinum-shipping, Dr. Dre-endorsed, Interscope-Aftermath debut LP Slim Shady.…
Is professor fucked?
A professor who remains suspended from Macomb Community College says he might lose his job over something he’s been doing more than 30 years – using profanity when the subject matter calls for it. "I say fuck," says English professor John Bonnell, who has taught at Macomb Community College for 32 years. "I talk about…
MOTOR CITY SKANK
Detroit’s reggae family tree has developed a multitude of branches and these two recordings represent two of its strongest roots. Vocalist Baaqi, a former member of Onxyz and the Nomads — two ’80s groups — has flowered with this star-studded collection of strong songs. While the songwriting shows skill — “Listen to My Heartbeat” is…
