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…
Feelings: New 7″ Now, New Album Later
“Some-times-I-just-feel-too-much–and-I-don’t-wanna-feel-at-all! ” (Feelings – new 7″ single on Urinal Cake) “Thumbs Off/Appliance” is an enlivening jam. Put it on and it’ll feel like 1992. Jitter-strut rhythms that pogo and punch, guitars that growl but also jangle, vocals that spit, soar and throatily sear. “Fun With Mantras” may come off a bit more garage-y to your ears:…
Film Review: Incredible Burt Wonderstone
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone | C Actually, he’s not all that incredible. Here’s a movie that should take its own message to heart: That doing something by rote, without passion or creativity is unsatisfactory for all involved. I expect this kind of half-assed workmanship from a March studio release, but not from Steve Carell. In…
City Slang: The Contours to play Southfield
Motown heroes the Contours will play the Tapestry Banquet Hall in Southfield on Friday, March 29. The venue is located at 24580 Evergreen, doors are at 6 p.m., and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $45 in advance and $55 at the door. That includes an open bar and an appetizer buffet. Joe…
City Slang: Trinosophes show
Trinosophes just keeps coming with the great shows. Sunday sees an appearance by Lotte Anker and Fred Lonberg-Holm Duo. They say, “Danish composer/saxophonist Lotte Anker works with equal parts emotive abandon and controlled investigation. She is comfortable in a range of contexts, as shown by her collaborations with such diverse artists as Fred Frith, Craig…
City Slang: Circus Boy, etc, Saturday
Wondering what do to this weekend? Here’s a hint: SATURDAY 16 Circus Boy Lager House What we have here is actually one hell of a kick as rock ’n’ roll lineup. As well as filty punk rock degenerates Circus Boy, we have sex-obsessed riff punks White Shag, psychobilly biker punx Nuke & the Hellriders, and…
City Slang: Whitey Morgan prepares for Chelsea
Flint’s outlaw country heroes Whitey Morgan & the 78’s will play at the Inverness Inn in Chelsea on Saturday, March 30. The all-ages show will kick off at 9 p.m., and the venue is located at 13996 North Territorial, Chelsea. They say, “Since the release of their first album Honky Tonks and Cheap Motels, Whitey…
City Slang: Suzi Quatro is all better and ready for the DMA’s
Suzi Quatro headlines an impressive lineup of entertainment at this year’s Detroit Music Awards, one year after being forced to pull out due to a leg injury sustained when exiting a plane. Thankfully, Quatro is fighting fit again, and likely desperate to give Detroit fans the show that we missed last year. Also on the…
Film Review: Stoker
Stoker | B No matter what the Hollywood vehicle, Mia Wasikowska always makes for good company during the ride. In Korean filmmaker Chan-Wook Park’s moody American debut, the young actress plays India Stoker, an aloof yet keenly watchful teen mourning the death of her father while experiencing the first stirrings of an sexual awakening.…
Park Chan-Wook: Coming to America
At 42, Park Chan-Wook is one of Korea’s most commercially successful directors. Starting out as a philosophy student before starting a career as film critic then filmmaker, the Seoul-based filmmaker has come to be known as a master craftsman, creating aesthetically inventive imagery and brutal dream-like narratives. But when it comes to the thematic and…
White Shag is on a mission
White Shag is on a mission. A crusade, if you will. You see, White Shag believes that there aren’t enough bands in Detroit carrying the raucous rock ’n’ roll torch originally lit by the likes of the MC5 and the Stooges, and they believe they’re the guys to carry on that grand tradition of filth…
Rocking in the Streets
On the afternoon of March 20, the first day of spring, a procession of guitarists will take over the streets of Detroit. Outfitted with portable amplifiers, they’ll create a sonic stew while walking through the Cultural Center, Wayne State University and the Cass Corridor, before circling back up Woodward to the Detroit Institute of Arts…
Film Review: Emperor
Emperor | B- In late summer 1945, with the Empire of Japan on the brink of total collapse, and with a devastated Tokyo still smoldering, Supreme Commander of Allied Powers Douglas MacArthur, with an absurdly large corncob pipe jutting from his prominent jaw, struts off the plane and begins stomping around like he owns…
The shadow’s large loom
“Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.” –Adlai E. Stevenson I think it interesting that certain professions, perhaps recognized in an ethereal sense as laudable, are pilloried in the practical. Journalism, unfortunately, often bears this scarlet moniker in the public’s mind. The late Adlai Stevenson,…
Letters to the Editor
Jack attack I wonder whether or not Jack Lessenberry reads The Nation. If he did, then he might not have written his most recent love letter to Gov. Rick Snyder (“Immaturity on the left,” March 6). An article on The Nation’s website, written by John Nichols, titled “Rick Snyder’s Detroit Takeover Is Not What Democracy…
Film Review: West of Memphis
West of Memphis | B How you receive the new documentary from Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil) depends a lot on what you already know. Those who have never heard of the West Memphis Three, a trio of Arkansas teenagers who spent nearly two decades in prison for a crime they clearly did…
Best foot forward
Q: I’m an actor in New York City. A lot of people think actors are whores, but last week I almost became one. I responded to a casting call for a film project called Sniff. The ad — on Playbill’s website — called for two male actors to film a short scene. The pay was…
Where in the green?
$=$5-$10; $$=$10-$25; $$$=$25-$50; $$$$=$50+ Ashley’s 338 S. State St., Ann Arbor; 734-996-9191; ashleys.com: For a $10 cover, pub-goers get a breakfast of eggs, sausage and hash browns and a host of drink specials starting at 6:30 a.m. They’ll also have a limited menu of traditional Irish foods throughout the day. The pot of gold at…
Film Review: Dead Man Down
Dead Man Down| C+ If you watch as many movies as I do, there is nothing more agonizing than the endless repetition of tropes, formulas and clichéd scenarios that seems to plague B-grade genre pictures. Yet, every so often, a movie comes along that so defiantly rejects the conventions of plotting, pacing and simple…
Kwamegate update
As we were preparing to go to press on Monday, a verdict was returned in the federal corruption trial of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, his father Bernard Kilpatrick, and “FOK” (friend of Kwame), contractor Bobby Ferguson. After two weeks of deliberation, the jury found all three men guilty of various felonies. The former Hizzoner,…
Snyder’s Detroit shuffle
Here at the Hits, we can admittedly be a little slow on the uptake. Eventually, though, we tend to get where we need to be. What set us rambling down the particular path we’re writing about this week was a bit of confusion. In following the coverage of the state’s planned takeover of Detroit’s city…
Food Stuff
Wide open mics — Yeah, we know: Coffeehouse open mics can evoke dingy Dylans singing to walls of an empty room, or just to other musicians there waiting for the stage. But on a recent night at the Bottom Line coffeehouse, a new entry into the field, the chairs were full, and enthusiasm was high.…
The Senator and Sugar Man
Three years ago, I needed to do long interviews with two prominent people: University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman and U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, both of whom I knew. Setting up an interview with Coleman took weeks or months, was conducted in her office, and while friendly and candid, had a bit of the…
Parrilladas Patagonia
Parrilladas Patagonia 4314 W. Vernor Hwy., Detroit 313-551-0235 parrilladaspatagonia.com Bathroom upstairs Entrées: $10-$19 I worry that the word “Pazatagonia” brings to mind expensive down jackets before what it used to mean, the land at the end of the known world, the last before Antarctica. Chile and Argentina share the remote bottom tip of the…
City Slang: Blowout prepares to blow minds at SXSW
The expansion of our Metro Times Blowout continues this week at SXSW. On Thursday, March 14, at Ten Oak in Austin, Texas (located at 409 Colorado Street, between West 4th and West 5th Street, in downtown Austin), the first Metro Times Blowout Stage will kick ass at SXSW, with five awesome bands representing Detroit music…
The Man Behind the Curtain
There’s a line from the movie The Wizard of Oz that birthed one of my favorite quips. It’s the scene where Dorothy, et al., have returned from snuffing out the Wicked Witch and are looking to get what was promised to them by the Wizard. To the best of my recollection, the Wizard responds by saying…
Pot and the “Big C”
Cannabis and cancer? That concept is becoming more and more common these days, and it’s not because smoking the plant causes cancer as some people erroneously claim. In fact, the clinical evidence that we do have suggests that cannabis could be very helpful in fighting many forms of cancer. In the Petri dish, and in…
