Shea’s Lounge on free lunchers and trash collecting in the Cass Corridor.
It’s a windy first day of spring. I’m doing my little job, picking up considerable trash outside my building. Two groups of squeaky-clean young whites are carrying armfuls of bag lunches up Second Avenue. They say “Want lunch?” to Sunday sidewalkers. People ten blocks down might want their charity. Oh — they must be Christians.…
Top 5 Shows of SXSW ’11
Now that there’s time to reflect on the mega music fest that is SXSW, it’s not easy to figure out which performances were the best over the five day stretch. Most music festivals around the country take place on the weekend and thus you’ve got three days of incredible concerts to recollect. But at SXSW,…
Book of DAG
Detroit-born and -bred, a graduate of Cass Tech, comic David Alan Grier has brought Motown energy and ‘tude to everything he’s done in a long, varied showbiz career. He began as a serous, Tony-nominated stage actor, before exploding into the mainstream as a valuable member of the groundbreaking smash sketch show In Living Color. Since…
SXSW’11: Alex Winston, Third Man Rolling Record Store
Blogging from an iPod Touch with a Bluetooth keyboard. The future has arrived, and it is goofy. Arrived in Austin Friday morning for a brief two day music binge. I’m wishing I came earlier after hearing Jack White played a brief solo show at his Third Man Rolling Record Store. No Jack White was to…
SXSW ’11+Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill ‘Em All + Video
So, after three days of telling myself that I did NOT want to watch teenage hip-punk group Odd Future perform here at SXSW, I finally relented and watched them play a show. Goddamn if those kids aren’t the livest group performing in Austin right now. And that says a lot considering how many red-hot bands…
Shea’s Lounge! New Poem!
Welcome back to Shea’s Lounge. Here’s an old-time serious poem, commenting widely on the situation from my narrow perspective. DETROIT ??? I remember five years ago riding my bike dwarfed through downtown. The machines at twilight were building up or destroying a building in yellow light like a filmy movie drinsed with piss. Now no…
SXSW ’11: Jon Connor Rolls Deep
I ran into Flint rapper Jon Connor on the streets yesterday here in Austin Texas and the only way that I recognized him was by the size of his crew. Just as I was walking away from a huge day party hosted by FADER and Fiat USA (yay Michigan), I saw a rapper that I…
Lots of mazel!
On Sunday, March 27, downtown Detroit’s fledging Jewish community will gather at the historic Gem Theatre to celebrate a milestone. No, Passover is still another month away. Coming off a year that jump-started its heart with an invested and energized congregation, the city’s last standing, still-operating temple, the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, is celebrating its…
Paul
Paul GRADE: C+ The premise of a foul-mouthed, sarcastic extraterrestrial running amok on earth is certainly workable; it was enough to keep ALF on TV for years, but it has to be delicately finessed in a big-budget screen comedy. Paul prefers to throw pop culture references, swear words and anal probe jokes out to see…
Kaboom
Kaboom GRADE: C- Like a club kid alarmed to find a gray hair in his goatee, Gregg Araki has been hanging around the darkened back wall of the indie film-fest circuit, nervously shifting his weight and hoping nobody notices he’s still there. He’s been making variations on the same theme since the late ’80s: hot…
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Lincoln Lawyer GRADE: B+ Matthew McConaughey rebounds from career oblivion after a half-decade of hanging ten over the abyss of dismal rom-com beach-bum roles that scarcely required him to don a shirt. While his turn here as a Crisco-slick, smooth-talking, ethically shaky attorney isn’t a huge stretch, it does come in a taut, well-made…
Limitless
Limitless GRADE: B+ Limitless is an unabashed paean to better living through pharmaceuticals, a film about the thrills and dangers of pushing boundaries, while the film travels well beyond the comfortable parameters of thriller orthodoxy. Bradley Cooper rides an upward career crest to a dream role that calls for every ounce of his breezy blond-dude…
It’s all Hebrew to me
From his home in the Christian farm town of Grass Lake, which sits outside of Ann Arbor, research scientist Jack Zaientz is one of the Midwest’s most prolific purveyors of Jewish music. His blog proves it. Raised in Connecticut, Zaientz spent much of his youth hanging out in the punk clubs of New York and…
SXSW ’11: Dispatch From Austin Day 2
Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr perform during SXSW. Yesterday in Austin felt like the first true day of SXSW. The amount of shows swarming all over the city was far more intense than Tuesday. On a national level, artists like Odd Future, Lil B, Raphael Saadiq, Das Racist, Yelawolf, and Bad Brains, all played amazing shows…
SXSW ’11: Michigan Made The Mixtape
Regardless of if you’re in Austin right now, Detroit-based show promoter, Six Two along with the folks at Detroitrap.com just put together a mixtape of music from a large number of the Michigan-based hip-hop artists that are performing at SXSW this year. The mixtape is naturally called Michigan Made and was created in support of…
SXSW ’11: Happy Birthday Danny Brown
If you didn’t already know, today is rapper Danny Brown’s 30th birthday. I’m currently sitting here in Austin watching him rap his guts out right now as a birthday present to himself. Ace photographer Doug Coombe is a few feet away snapping photos. We’ll post a few once he’s edited everything.
SXSW ’11: JYoung The General and Red Pill — “Austin F#%@ing Texas”
Here’s a track created by two Lansing-based artists that are coming to SXSW for the first time. The tune is appropriately titled “Austin F#%@ing Texas” and emcees JYoung the General and Red Pill of the Blat! Pack did a good job summing up the anticipation and excitement that lot’s of musicians feel when they head…
SXSW ’11: Dispatch From Austin — Invincible at Victory Grill
The sights and sounds of South By Southwest are officially underway. This intrepid music reporter is currently in Austin, Texas spending time checking out as many Michigan based bands as possible. It won’t be easy as acts like Danny Brown, Dennis Coffey, Will Sessions, Black Milk, Waajeed, Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., Terrible Twos, Big Sean,…
True to himself
Ryan Allen is an oxymoron. Dude first came to public attention drumming with alt-pop-rockers the Red Shirt Brigade, a band that formed in 1998, earned a healthy following, dashed to Seattle, made a record with Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, then split before they could reap rewards. Later, from 2002, he was fronting Thunderbirds…
Letters to the Editor
Incredible sax I applaud Dennis Bowles for his book, Dr. Beans Bowles ‘Fingertips’: The Untold Story, and W. Kim Heron for reviewing it ("Out of the Motown shadows," March 9). Beans Bowles was an incredible sax man. Like many other notable Detroit musicians, however, he never received the acclaim he deserved. To hear Beans wail…
Neighbors – Puros Exitos
Neighbors – Puros Exitos 2011 self-released Seattle’s Neighbors sound like an anomaly for 2011; no freakout jams, no epic dance floor fillers, no "weird" instruments (not that we’re against any of those things). Just four dudes writing solid songs. Somebody once said "comparisons are odious" but similarities to the Wedding Present are inescapable, especially on…
It takes three
Q: I am a 36-year-old straight man, blissfully married to my 34-year-old soul mate. We have explored and enjoyed each other for a decade now, and we recently started exploring BDSM and D/s fantasies. Everything was going great sexually — until last night. Two years ago, my wife expressed an interest in an MMF three-way,…
Game-changers ahead
As I wandered around the house setting my clocks forward this past weekend, I contemplated Republican-led efforts to turn the clock back on collective bargaining rights across the nation. The big deal that most folks have been focused on is the protest in Madison, Wis., where as many as 100,000 union supporters reacted to Gov.…
Bonobos, germs and the Kama Sutra
The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us by Sheril Kirshenbaum Grand Central Publishing, $19.99, 272 pp. The year is still young, but Sheril Kirshenbaum has already written a standout among nonfiction titles of 2011. As a science writer, Kirshenbaum has penned thoughtful and engaging articles about science literacy, environmental science and education…
Motor City Five
Representin’ Detroit’s United States of Mind crew, D. Allie and Eddie Logix’s splinter group, Progress Report, is schooling us with neck-break, golden-era rap. Here the dudes offer lessons on their craft: Hip-hop is full of dynamic duos, what’s up with that? D. Allie: One is the loneliest number, three verges on ego overflow. Grade Detroit’s…
Over the Rhine – Long Surrender
Over the Rhine – Long Surrender Great Speckled Dog After 23 years under the radar, Ohio’s Over the Rhine have earned the right to relax a bit. Multi-instrumentalist Linford Detweiler and guitarist-singer Karin Bergquist’s tenth album is less overtly passionate than its predecessor, The Trumpet Child, but no less pleasurable. As ever, the band crafts…
Spun
FRIGHT FROM THE BINS Mister Rogers You Are Special (1970) Uriah Heep ripped off the cover idea for their 1971 Look At Yourself LP from this album, which has a mylar mirror glued onto the front that makes anyone gazing into it look like a distorted troll. Anyway, if you still doubt after this visual…
Budrus
Budrus GRADE: B+ Timing is everything, and just a few months ago a story about an organized, effective nondenominational and mostly nonviolent protest in the Middle East would’ve seemed as much like fantasy as the latest teen vampire heavy-petting drama. Yet Budrus is the exceptionally rare documentary that peers into the deep, impermeable quagmire that…
Life on the road
Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! I’ve just successfully completed my 30th consecutive Carnival Time in New Orleans and am now getting ready to head North by way of Oxford and Holly Springs, Miss., and Little Rock, Ark., to Chicago and then to Detroit by the end of the month to make the Hash Bash in Ann…
From Belfast to Blackthorn
Blackthorn is a band that almost wasn’t. It’s the summer of ’84, and the Detroit Tigers are in the midst of the pennant race, on their way to win the World Series, when 34-year-old high school teacher Richard McMullan got the call-up. But it wasn’t Sparky Anderson on the other end of the line, rather…
Ill beats
It’s midway through a slushy March, 10 weeks and change away from what is probably the world’s biggest dance party on concrete. You say it’s too early to begin talking trash about Movement, the three-day electronic music festival (May 28-30) that celebrates Detroit techno and the multitude of electronic subgenres that came in its wake?…
Food Stuff
Berry interesting — The Detroit urban garden education series is offering another class for the city’s gardeners this weekend. It’s called "Berry Beautiful: Growing Grapes and other Small Fruits," and it takes place from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 19, at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, 2750 Selden; for more information, see detroitagriculture.org or…
TV dinner
Less than two hours before our interview, ominously, I see a TV commercial announcing IHOP’s menu launch of chicken and waffles, a popular breakfast combination in the South and at the celebrated string of Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘n Waffles restaurants around Los Angeles. Clearly, if Detroit’s Jamawn "Jay" Woods realizes his dream of obtaining…
We should be ashamed
For increasingly the America rendered today in the American media is illusionary and delusionary disfigured, unreal, disconnected from the true context of our lives. —Carl Bernstein, The Idiot Culture That’s how things looked to one of America’s most famous investigative reporters back in the long-vanished, more rational world of 1992. Poor Carl had no idea…
Consent and dissent
An impressive group of people gathered at the Wayne State University School of Law last week to talk about the two federal consent decrees the Detroit Police Department has been under since 2003. In the room were one current and two former U.S. attorneys, ranking members of the city administration and Police Department, current and…
Real food
Beezy’s 20 N. Washington Ave., Ypsilanti 734-485-9625 beezyscafe.com Simple, honest food: That’s what the sign promises at Beezy’s in Ypsilanti. Oddly, a simple but delicious sandwich seems almost novel in a world populated with both an abundance of chain restaurants and expensive foodie hotspots. But when someone at Beezy’s calls you to the counter to…
Wye Oak – Civilian
Wye Oak – Civilian Merge St. Vincent and Beach House fanatics hankering for a dynamic, spacey mood piece, this Baltimore duo’s third album advisable listening. The Wye Oak vet may be taken aback at the straightforwardness here; it’s not that Civilian is overly slick, just that it homes in on specific elements of the band’s…
When album was king
He’s something of an odd format, but we’ve come to expect the unusual from Robyn Hitchcock. The quirky British rocker joins famed American record producer Joe Boyd in revisiting some of the music and events from Boyd’s colorful life: He tour managed Muddy Waters, stage managed the ’65 Newport Folk Festival (where Dylan went electric),…
