Cover Stories
Here are a half-dozen local artists to check out at Movement Festival
Movement Festival is back, and you can feel it in the air. “Techno Christmas” is officially happening, and after multiple false starts and years of pandemic-induced limitations, it’s almost hard to believe that we will once again be gathering this year in Hart Plaza over Memorial Day Weekend to celebrate the city that birthed techno.…
A selection of Movement Festival afterparties and auxiliary events
Select events happening in metro Detroit this week — a special Movement Festival edition. Submit your events to metrotimes.com/calendar. Be sure to check venue websites for COVID-19 policies. Underground & Black Pretty much as soon as it opened just in time for last year’s scaled-down “Micro Movement” Festival, new venue Spot Lite established itself as…
This year’s Movement Festival features more back-to-back DJ sets than ever
This is clearly the Movement festival’s year of the back-to-back. The back-to-back DJ set — hereafter, b2b — has been around as long as DJing itself. But only in the past decade has that specific term come into widespread use. It’s not the only term floating about — a number of promoters are now using…
Detroit techno pioneer Juan Atkins reflects on 40 years of music
The year was 1979, and Juan Atkins knew he was onto something special. Credited as one of the founders of Detroit techno, the genre pioneer was making music on a synthesizer bought for him by his grandmother. “I was going to high school and there were no other musicians around me,” he recalls. “So I…
Jeff Mills talks about his early beginnings, new music, and mind control
Jeff Mills, aka The Wizard, is a techno music DJ and producer from Detroit. During the 1980s his nightly radio feature as The Wizard helped further and cement Detroit’s legacy in techno music. Mills has gone on to release more than 100 different projects and receive recognition and acclaim from all over the world. Metro…
Movement Festival returns to Detroit’s Hart Plaza for the first time since 2019, with a sixth stage and new underground layout
This year’s Movement Festival was the most difficult to produce since Paxahau began organizing operations for Detroit’s Memorial Day electronic music festival in 2006. That very first Movement fest saw its own share of challenges, but Paxahau director of operations Sam Fotias says the 2022 iteration was just as tough, if not tougher, to produce.…
Michigan AG joins coalition fighting to protect school admissions policy that promotes diversity
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined a coalition of 15 other attorneys general in supporting a Virginia school’s admissions policy aimed at boosting diversity. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the highest ranked public schools in the nation, planned to use a new admissions policy intended to increase enrollment from…
Downtown Detroit Plum Market set to reopen
Plum Market’s downtown Detroit location will reopen Thursday morning, after being closed since March of 2020. The quick-service market is located on the first floor of the Ally Detroit Center at 500 Woodward Ave., near the Spirit of Detroit statue, and originally opened in 2019. During the closure, the shop was reworked to focus on…
‘Benediction’ winds a path through a wartime poet’s radical life
In Terence Davies’s Benediction, poetry’s treated as alive a medium as any. That’s as it should be, for the biographical film, which tracks the real-life English wartime poet Siegfried Sassoon, accounts for the weight and passage of time and the enduring vitality of artistic expression without caving to nostalgia. Written by Davies himself — who,…
Detroit’s African World Festival returns to Hart Plaza this year
We’re dubbing 2022 as the year of “return to Hart Plaza,” first with the Movement Festival and now the African World Festival. After being hosted at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History for the past several years, Detroit’s biggest celebration of African culture will return to Hart Plaza this summer. The 39th…
Pro-Israel PAC spends big money in campaign to unseat Tlaib in congressional race
A pro-Israel political action committee (PAC) has pledged to spend up to $1 million to unseat U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first woman of Palestinian descent to be elected to Congress. The Urban Empowerment Action PAC, made of Black and Jewish leaders, is supporting Tlaib’s opponent, Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey, ahead of the Aug.…
Anita Baker announces Detroit show at Little Caesars Arena on Twitter
Anita Baker is bringing her sweet love back to her hometown of Detroit. The soul singer announced an upcoming performance at Little Caesars Arena early Tuesday morning on Twitter. Well, she didn’t announce an actual date, and the tweet doesn’t say much other than the venue and that tickets go on sale next week. Seeing…
Yes, this is about guns
I can’t bring myself to watch the news out of Uvalde, Texas. As a father, the sadness of parents grieving the preventable murders of their children is too painful to even contemplate. I can’t imagine having to live it like 19 families are being forced to right now. There’s little I can write that hasn’t…
Audio: Mayor Fouts allegedly mocks person with disabilities in latest leaked recording
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts mimicked a person with disabilities in a phone call with a telemarketer, according to the source of a newly released audio recording. “I want trip now,” Fouts allegedly tells the telemarketer, speaking in a stilted voice. “I got letter. It say I get trip now.” The source of the audio recording…
Detroit’s first recreational marijuana license awarded to a brand from Oregon
Detroit has finally awarded its first recreational cannabis license. But what’s giving us major side-eye energy is that the license went to Doghouse Farms, a brand originally from Oregon, with a grow facility in Detroit. After a two-year clusterfuck of trying to allow recreational weed in the city and a lawsuit over giving lifelong Detroiters…
Tlaib, Dingell to speak out about Texas elementary school massacre at candlelight vigil in Detroit
U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Dingell plan to speak at a candlelight vigil on Friday evening in Southwest Detroit to honor the 19 children and two adults who were killed in Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The metro Detroit Democrats will join state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, at Detroit Southwest Pride at 6021…
A tiny home eviction, a birth control ban, and still paying for Trump: The top 10 Metro Times headlines of the week
Our readers were interested in the story of a Detroit woman who faces eviction from a nonprofit that was supposed to provide her with a tiny house as part of a program to build generational wealth. They were interested in why PETA’s president felt compelled to explain that humans are primates. A Michigan GOP House…
Detroit’s Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant damaged in fire
Midtown’s longstanding Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant suffered extensive damage in a Friday morning fire and could be considered “a total loss,” according to Detroit Fire Department public relations officer James Harris. He tells Metro Times that the two-alarm fire started just before 2 a.m. and was contained within two and a half hours, but…
Michigan U.P.’s Camp Cannabis music fest announces initial lineup with The Floozies, Afroman, Joe Hertler & the Rainbow Seekers, and more
A music festival that bills itself as the first licensed cannabis event in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has announced its initial lineup. The “Camp Cannabis” music festival, sponsored by The Fire Station Cannabis Co., announced a first round of artists, including national acts like The Floozies, Asher Roth, Afroman, Joe Hertler & the Rainbow Seekers, and…
Michigan leaders must confront digital redlining
The following op-ed was written by Rev. Lafayette Price, Ph.D., of Detroit’s Antioch Church of God in Christ. The digital divide has deservedly gotten significant attention since the beginning of the pandemic. As countless Americans have relied upon the internet during the pandemic to function remotely for work, school and telehealth services, far too many…
New poll spells trouble for Michigan Republicans peddling conspiracy theories and opposing abortion rights
Republicans could be in trouble in Michigan because they are out of step with voters on abortion, former President Donald Trump, and conspiracy theories about the election, according to a recent poll on statewide races and Roe v. Wade. In an EPIC-MRA poll of 600 likely voters between May 11 and 17, 63% of voters…
Former state Rep. Sherry Gay-Dagnogo takes lead in crowded field of Democrats for 13th Congressional district primary in Michigan
School board member and former state lawmaker Sherry Gay-Dagnogo jumped to the front of a crowded field of Democrats in the August Democratic primary for the newly drawn 13th Congressional District, according to a new poll released Tuesday. It’s the latest shakeup in a race that could be a nail-biter. Of the 400 people surveyed…
My laptop is dead, my phone is broken, and my thumbs are bloodied — but I got this week’s column done
My laptop died last week. My laptop couldn’t die when I was in the office, with capable tech support people close by. Oh, no. My laptop lost its will to live when I was thousands of miles away, in a country where I don’t speak the language. So, I wasn’t able to access my Savage…
It was a good day for progressives — but the waters are getting choppier
Last Tuesday saw a slate of primary elections in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, critical national battleground states, as well as in Oregon, Idaho, and Kentucky. For progressives, it was a good day. They saw key victories in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and more. But Tuesday also highlighted some troubling trends on the horizon — including the continued…
America will be stuck with the consequences of Trump for the rest of our lives
In 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged George R. Jarkesy Jr., a Houston-area hedge fund manager and Republican donor, with defrauding investors. Jarkesy sued, arguing to a federal court in Washington, D.C. that the SEC proceedings violated his constitutional rights. No dice. He appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Same result. As…
At Detroit’s Freya, Chef Doug Hewitt creates a whole new experience
Among the many pitfalls to opening a second restaurant is failing to create a new identity. Some notable chefs and restaurateurs in Detroit and beyond have opened second spots that have felt like an extension of their first, which is OK, but it leaves one with a sense of wanting. Freya chef Doug Hewitt says…
Thirty-five years ago, in a race-based tempest, the Pistons’ ‘Bad Boys’ trash-talked the Boston Celtics’ star
When I entered the crowded Boston Celtics’ locker room in the dingy old Boston Garden, I saw the big scrum of television cameras and reporters crowding around Larry Bird, the great star of the Celtics. So I joined the back row of the growing semi-circle by his locker and stood on my toes to see…
Detroit’s newest art gallery isn’t where you might expect to find it
Detroit’s latest art gallery doesn’t keep regular business hours. It doesn’t have the typical white walls. There’s also barely even any art in it, either. But techno fans visiting Detroit for the Movement Festival might be interested in checking out the new 1364 gallery once it officially opens on Thursday. The project is the brainchild…
Free Will Astrology (May 25-31)
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In defining the essential elements at play in a typical Aries person’s agenda, I’m not inclined to invoke the words “sometimes” or “maybe.” Nor do I make frequent use of the words “periodically,” “if,” or “ordinarily.” Instead, my primary identifying term for many Aries characters is “NOW!!!” with three exclamation points.…
