Sweetwater
Sweetwater, Tres Chicas’ 2004 debut, settled nicely between impromptu and professional. Of course, it was impromptu — though longtime friends Caitlin Cary, Lynn Blakey and Tonya Lamm had never recorded together. But with their rich experience in such alt-country groups as Whiskeytown (Cary) and Glory Fountain (Blakey), the trio ended up with something really exquisite.…
Jamming with aliens
From old-school to outside, organissimo finds its groove
Carnival of Sins: Live
Early into this two-DVD set, Nikki Sixx informs the assembled Crüeballs that, out of all the places in the greater goddamned universe they could’ve shot the Red, White and Crüe tour, the band chose Grand Rapids. The band’s last live DVD (the Tommy Lee-free Lewd, Crüed and Tattooed) was shot in (wait for the yawn)…
Ask the Food Dude
Spice grinders and fish heads.
Garden of Eden
Drummer Paul Motian defines a unique kind of cool among jazz drummers, a sort of Zen nonchalance; he’s anti-marching to his own beat. His solos can sound like collapsing shelves; rather than driving the band, he sounds like he’s just another cat hanging out with the cats. He nailed his place in jazz history at…
Sam & Frodo get it on
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there were two hobbits named Frodo and Sam. They had a very serious mission — destroy a magical ring that could end the world. But along the way, they fell in love. Frodo was beguiled by Sam’s strength and loyalty, not to mention the way…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
A grizzled space marine recalls the dawn of Doom
A gay old time
To poor souls who think Jay Leno’s nightly monologue is the state of the art, it may come as a bit of a shock to find there’s more to “gay comedy” than Brokeback Mountain jokes. Though there have long been gay comedians on the scene, for decades they were confined by an informal closet, an…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Dung beetles were considered sacred and lucky by the ancient Egyptians. In fact, the seemingly lowly insect, also known as a scarab, was worshiped as a symbol of transformation and resurrection, in part because it derives its nourishment from the waste matter of other animals. Since it also pushes balls of…
Bouncing reality check
City borrows to stave off red ink
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Trading races
Abreact Theatre, situated in a Greektown loft, half living space, half theater, deserves applause for trying to put on an ambitious project on a shoestring budget. Unfortunately, it comes across as a failure of imagination. The original Watermelon Man is a 1970 film directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge. Its plot turns…
More troubled waters
Detroit water board seeks rate hike
Italian history
Maria’s leans towards traditional, heavily sauced Italian dishes, but often with unexpected and welcome touches. Although the complimentary focaccia is filling and the entrées are generously proportioned, it’s hard to pass up the distinct and equally hefty appetizers ($6.99-$11.95). It won’t be a low-carb adventure. As for the “comes-with” soup or salad, go for the…
Trains, planes and (fewer) automobiles
March 1, 2026: Gathering speed on the immensely popular light rail line from downtown Detroit to Metro Airport is a car full of executives on their way to Manila. It’s a beautiful sky-blue day. As the train leaves the station stop in Taylor, passengers gain an eye-level view of the Detroit area’s newly built, ultra-modern…
Bad news day
Detroit daily paper loses neighborhood beats
Enduring love
There is deep, alarming beauty in Lajos Koltai’s Fateless. It’s not surprising, considering Koltai is a cinematographer-turned-director, but it’s not necessarily what one would expect to find in a Holocaust movie. Koltai’s poetic imagery fits, however, with Hungarian Nobel laureate Irme Kertesz’s screenplay. Fateless, which ranks among the best film depictions of the Holocaust, is…
Hairless and bearless
Q: I’m a 22-year-old gay male. I’m thin and “traditionally” good-looking enough to have done some modeling. So what’s the problem? I like bears. Big, hairy men with beards. I live in New York, and this city is full of cute, skinny, boyish guys, but there are some places to meet bears. The thing is,…
Head cheese
Mason Proper gives a timeline of sorts
The President’s Last Bang
Im Sang-soo’s The President’s Last Bang presents the 1979 assassination of South Korean President Park Chung Hee with all the court intrigue of a Shakespearean drama. A military leader who oversaw South Korea’s postwar economic boom, Park became a corrupt puppet of big business; he rewrote the constitution at personal whim, employed thug tactics against…
Art Bar
This fine poem by Grand Rapids poet Rodney Torreson looks into the world of boys arriving at the edge of manhood, and compares their natural wildness to that of dogs, with whom they feel a kinship. On a Moonstruck Gravel Road The sheep-killing dogs saunter home, wool scraps in their teeth. From the den of…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 8 The Art of Dr. Seuss ART You know you loved him as a child, And please be sure, Dr. Seuss was wild. He loved to paint and draw and write, He did it morning, noon and night. He made it silly yet austere, Bring the kids and moms and dads right here!…
Manderlay
With Manderlay, writer-director Lars von Trier goes after America’s racism and white guilt. He brings Grace — the fiery offspring of a cutthroat mobster — down South to a plantation called Manderlay, where she’s shocked to discover its black inhabitants are still being held as slaves well into the 1930s. Like Dogville, Manderlay is shot…
Son rise
Ason of Haitian immigrants, born in New York City and currently living in California, Marc Bamuthi Joseph has traveled the world with his art, including Broadway gigs and spots on HBO’s Def Poetry. His Word Becomes Flesh deals with the longest and hardest road he’s traveled: his unplanned journey into fatherhood. It’s a powerful and…
With God on our side?
Who says the right has a monopoly on religion?
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
It’s surprising that Dave Chappelle would willingly relegate himself to the back seat in his latest big-screen venture, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. The comedian had a pie-in-the-sky idea to throw together a dream line-up of hip-hop entertainers (among them, Mos Def, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli and Kanye West) and throw a big-ass block party in…
Model cru
The Detroit music scene has always had its share of coulda-woulda-shoulda stories. The artists with all the talent, the labels with all the right artists that, owing to a lack of funding, distribution, industry-savvy infrastructure — or just bad luck — never got off the ground. Quality, of course, has never been an issue. From…
Blowout roundup ’06
“My dick hurts!” said a young and tubby drunk on a crammed-beyond-capacity Blowout courtesy tram. He teetered on his feet and fisted a quarter-full Molson. “It’s got a dingleberry hair caught in it, whoo-hooooooooo … Owwwweeee!” Pop punk matriarch Nikki Corvette, sitting sniffing distance from the galling goob, lifted her thin eyebrows and chirped, “Yeah,…
16 Blocks
Director Richard Donner has dished up a number of easy-to-digest movies over his career. From Lethal Weapon to Superman, his best films successfully balanced entertainment with spectacle. However, his missteps were bloated bores. 16 Blocks, a modest chase thriller with just enough spice to hold your attention, falls somewhere in between. Burned-out New York City…
Calling out mama
Has the avalanche of mail started? Well, throw another snowball on the pile. You have got to be kidding me with your response to The Good Son. Anyone who fucks his mother when he is 15 years old is lucky not to have put a bullet through his brain by the time he’s reached 30.…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Aquamarine
This is naught but a plastic, bubbly reworking of the mermaid legend that goes like this: Two best friends about to be separated by a move find a lost mermaid, named Aquamarine, who wants to find love. The girls try to hook the mermaid up with the hottest lifeguard on the beach, hoping the favor…
Just minimal, dude
There’s one word on techno street: Minimal. But we’re not talking about your beatnik-cum-hippie mother’s kind of minimal, long associated with such modern classical composers as La Monte Young, Philip Glass and Terry Riley. Yes, there are droning stretches of static, buzz and hum, harmonies that don’t cohere and a hypnotic pulse to hold it…
Roads not working
7/5/06 Across the great divide by Keith Schneider Woodward Avenue as a link to regional cooperation. 5/3/06 Transportation’s new direction by Keith Schneider Lansing lawmakers reach accord to increase support for mass transit. 3/29/06 Back track by Michael Jackman Fifty years after the Motor City rode the rails. 3/29/06 Momentum shift by Keith Schneider High-stakes…
Superwoman
Does Alison Goldfrapp dream of electric sheep? Because Supernature must be what it sounds like when androids become aware. Together with Will Gregory, her usual synth partner, she’s made what might be the ultimate expression of Goldfrapp’s wickedly sultry electro pop. The album’s parts mesh seamlessly, from computerized glam to eight-bit disco and hints of…
Letters to the Editor
Let ’em eat Cole Re: “Juan’s world” (Metro Times, Feb. 22), Juan Cole is both wise and brave. I knew that already. I never expected to see such an excellent (and wise and brave) interview with him in a U.S. newspaper. I do wish you could sell it to, give it to or force it…
Idol Tryouts Two
In releasing Idol Tryouts, a genre-bending 2003 comp that put synth pop, indie rock, experimental techno and hip hop back-to-back on the same page, the Ann Arbor-based Ghostly International label signaled that a bold new world in music was on its way. They were, of course, right. Three years later the world is your own…
Backslash
Squid wha? — The Internet is chock-full of people who think they know it all — or, as squidoo.com puts it, “everyone’s an expert on something.” Do you know everything there is to know about the digestive habits of liver flukes? Now, instead of being just a dorky social outcast, you can be a dorky…
Ballad of the Broken Seas
Here’s a contrast of heaven and hell, of whiskey and water. The soft, wispy vocals of former Belle and Sebastian singer Isobel Campbell and the snarling of former Screaming Trees/Queens of the Stone Age vocalist Mark Lanegan kick up a winning blend of haunting folk. The pair’s divergent vocals come off all Lee and Nancy…
The economy: Things fall apart
How corporate America is outsourcing away our future
