Good Vibrations
A half-day steady rain is coming to a halt as I start to write, while one of the loudest parties on Earth rolls to its conclusion. Rain only brightens a young raver’s heart, especially if you were wearing water repellent-clothing or burned up the previous two sunny days inside fake fur, feathers and leather festival…
SUNDAY HIGHLIGHTS
Robert Hood Main Stage Derrick May Will Sessions and Phat Kat K Hand DJ Godfather Recloose
Shocker: Modern life not rubbish
To say Plastikman’s performance on Saturday was a supersonic meditation on what we’ve all become is a bit rich (pardon the pun). To call it right might be to say that it was many things. It was ambitious and spectacular, no doubt about that, a bold communication from the first digital bleep to its last,…
SATURDAY HIGHLIGHTS
Plastikman Theo Parrish Rick Wilhite on Made in Detroit stage Kirk Degiorgio Kyle Hall (with Carl Craig watching) Scion Made in Detroit aka Underground Stage tech crew Mark Ernestus Diego Rivera Mural, Detroit Institute of Arts
QUESTIONS ABOUT POT LAW AFTER COPS BUST A CLUB
Michigan’s medical marijuana community was abuzz with the news that a so-called “smokers club” in the Lansing suburb of Williamston had been raided by police on Wednesday. The Lansing State Journal reported that the club’s owner, an ordained minister, the Rev. Ferderick Wayne Dagit, had previously claimed the Green Leaf Smokers Club was a place…
TIMELINE at MUSIC HALL FRIDAY
Timeline Live at Music Hall / “2010 A Detroit Odyssey” from Carleton Gholz on Vimeo.
Detroit in the news: Deep thoughts and drive-bys
Like it or not, Detroit is in the national spotlight in a way it hasn’t been in years. The good news, however, is that much of the coverage is inspiring, thoughtful and positive. Take, for instance, this week’s piece in Atlantic Monthly. The editors interviewed John Hantz, who hopes to turn parts of Detroit into…
ANOTHER MOROUN SLAP DOWN: BRIDGE CO. LOSES APPEAL
This is shaping up to be a particularly bad week for Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun. First the Michigan House approved legislation that kept alive the prospect of a competing, publicly owned bridge being built downriver from the span connecting Detroit and Windsor. Then, Friday morning, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled against Moroun and…
Not so fast: Villalobos has visa trouble, cancels appearance
The bad news: Ricardo Villalobos’ scheduled performance this weekend at the Movement Electronic Music Festival has been canceled. The good news: Richie Hawtin will perform in his place on the BeatPort Stage Sunday, May 30, 9 p.m. until midnight. Villalobos did not receive his work visa back in time due to unexpected bureaucratic obstacles, to…
Matty’s angst: DRIC bridge gets House approval
That thunderous, angst-filled groan you might have heard yesterday was coming from Grosse Pointe billionaire and Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who saw likely competition from a new, publicly owned span take a big step closer to reality when the Michigan House voted to move forward with what’s known as the Detroit River International…
Food Stuff
Hot dog! — Gourmet hot dogs? It would have been a punch line a decade ago, but today, with comfort food ascendant and fine diners wary of expenses, it just could be a winning recipe. And this new dog stand, in the old location of Good Girls crêperie, offers dogs for all appetites, including Cleveland-style…
Welcome to his nightmare
Whether you love or hate Bizarre, it’s tough to say that the man doesn’t leave a distinct impression. The Detroit emcee’s deliberate delivery and dark, twisted humor made him a standout member of Eminem’s group, D12, and his fans have remained loyal throughout his subsequent solo career. But in interviews leading up to his latest…
Comes in colors
GABE REAL From: Detroit Sounds like: Solid, party-kid-tested Detroit techno from a mega-promoter turned meta-producer who knows how to throw a party (Sunday night’s "I ©? You But I’ve Chosen Techno" afterparty at the Works with SF’s Claude Vonstroke) as much as spin one, as his work on his two-year-old Detek label and crew prove.…
Take a Ride
Marshall-Williams is imaginatively named after the band’s two members — vocalist Brett Lee Williams and guitarist William Marshall Bogue. But if that Southern-esque band name for a Detroit-based band generates ideas of whiskey-soaked outlaw country or brawl-fueled cow-punk (as it initially did with this writer), then think again. Marshall-Williams play the sort of radio-friendly country…
Wanna be a millionaire?
Twenty-seven batters up, 27 batters down. That, my friends, is baseball’s perfect game. Taking the no-hitter to the ultimate height is one of the rarest accomplishments in sports. In fact, since 1880 there have been only 19 perfect games in major league baseball. Oakland A’s starting pitcher (and Alex Rodriguez’s best friend) Dallas Braden is…
Party on, soldier
So many parties, so little time, to skewer an old cliché. Movement is organized insanity and then multiplied — but at least it’s all taking place in one central location at Hart Plaza. The after-party scene is another animal entirely and even harder to tame. So we recommend you don’t even try. Simply map out…
A summer heartbreak soundtrack
Oy! What a last couple years it’s been for Brian Burton and James Mercer. Mercer, one of current pop music’s better lyricists, is the founder of the Shins. Darlings of the Sub Pop imprint for nearly a decade, in 2008, Mercer took the fate of his band in his hands (as if it hadn’t always…
Motor City Cribs
Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant owners and Bronx Bar co-owners Scott Lowell and wife Carolyn Howard are a veritable midtown redevelopment army. In addition to running three great midtown dining/hang-out destinations, Lowell and Howard have taken to rehabbing run-down apartment buildings in the neighborhood. The couple has already turned around the Blackstone and the Aronda…
DREAM deferred
Mohammad Abdollahi knew he could be sacrificing his future in America — and maybe even his life — when he participated in a protest at the office of Sen. John McCain last week. The 24-year-old former student — known as Mo to his friends — has been living in Ann Arbor since the age of…
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Toxic influence
As News Hits listened in on a press conference held by the Detroit International Bridge Co. last week — holding a phone to our ear and biting our tongue — company President Dan Stamper and Matthew Moroun, son of company owner Manuel "Matty" Moroun, did their mightiest to spin the unspinnable. Now that Canada is…
Night and Day
THURSDAY MAY 27 MOCAD Opening Night KICK OFF THE ART PARTY The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit celebrates three fresh-to-the-walls exhibitions with an opening reception featuring performance, music and, well, art, of course! Exhibits include Woodward Avenue, a Detroit-specific installation by acclaimed Belgian artist Jef Geys that explores plant growth along Woodward Avenue from downtown…
Time to get involved
Last October, I participated on my neighborhood radio patrol’s special Angel’s Night crew. A Channel 7 news team rode with neighborhood activist Sheila Ward and me as we drove slowly through Detroit’s Green Acres area. The reporter asked me about the importance of patrolling that particular night. I said that every night was important: If…
Band of brothers
After Mike Sand returned home from Vietnam in the early ’70s, his dad took him to the local VFW Post. The old man had been a commander in World War II, and now that his son had served overseas, it was time to join the other vets at the hall. "When I came home, my…
Idol thoughts
Leave it to John Waters to write what is perhaps the first loving, learned homage to outsider pornographers. In one chapter of his new memoir, Role Models (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 320 pp.), Waters introduces Bobby Garcia, "the Almodóvar of Anuses, the Buñuel of Blow Jobs, the Jodorowsky of Jerking Off." Garcia — who…
In these pages
Aladdin Sweets & Café 11945 Conant St., Hamtramck; 313-891-8050; $: On the corner of Commor and Conant streets, in the extraordinarily diverse city of Hamtramck, there is not one dish on Aladdin’s menu that costs more than $8.99. In fact, a large mixed fruit shake costs more than any of the appetizers and even a…
Southwest breezes
Prickly Pear which has been serving Southwestern grub since 1991. (Southwestern in this case means Tex-Mex plus.) Perpetually crowded, the cafe takes no reservations but will outfit you with a pager so you can stroll along Main Street until your table is ready. Many of the main dishes are familiar Tex-Mex items, such as burritos,…
Metro Retro
23 years ago in Metro Times: Robert del Valle looks into Hart Plaza’s Horace E. Dodge fountain, talking with Isamu Noguchi, the fountain’s architect. "I wanted to make a new fountain, a fountain which represents our times and our relationship to outer space," Noguchi says of his new fountain in Hart Plaza, or as Noguchi…
Backwash
Paul Revere & the Raiders featuring Mark Lindsay The Complete Columbia Singles Collectors’ Choice It has to be those silly Revolutionary War outfits. That’s the only conceivable reason why, especially in retrospect, Paul Revere & the Raiders haven’t been accorded the respect they deserve as a terrific rock ‘n’ roll band. Not that we care…
Electronic muse No. 2010
At least for five days and nights, the party doesn’t end. Movement 2010 and all its associated events unofficially kick off a summer season of frolic in the sun after months of mid-north gloom; officially, it’s a celebration of the music that snares the world with repetitive rhythms made expressly for maximum joie de vivre. …
Song of Argentina
Set in modern-day Argentina, with lengthy flashbacks to the time of military rule, Secret follows retired justice department investigator Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin), who decides to write a novel about the case that’s haunted him for 25 years — the rape and murder of Liliana Coloto, a beautiful young school teacher. Transporting us back to…
From hot trannies to BDSM nannies
Q: Where can a straight guy find a transsexual woman who is not a hooker and just wants to be friends (with benefits)? I know of one club where they hang, but they are mostly hookers there. I would like to go someplace where I could meet one and see if we could hit it…
Shrek Forever After
Allegedly the last of the franchise, Shrek Forever After isn’t as scattershot as the last installment, but it does labor through a mostly laughless setup before settling into a familiar groove. Living with his wife Fiona (Cameron Diaz) and his trio of tykes, Shrek (Myers) discovers that happily ever after isn’t all it’s cracked up…
Nature betrayed
Old Teddy Roosevelt oughta be angrily looking down and shaking his fist at those who run his Republican Party today. Bill Milliken is sitting up in Traverse City, presumably shaking his head. Once upon a time, Republicans like these two men were leaders in the conservation and environmental movement. TR, for example, established the U.S.…
MacGruber
MacGruber (Will Forte) is a parody of the ’80s mega-cheese action idol MacGyver. He’s a secret agent with a bizarre knack for improvising elaborate weapons out of household objects, but in every other respect he’s a huge screw-up. This not-so-super spy is a seething mass of macho bluster concealing insecurity, cowardice, incompetence, a potty mouth…
