Strands of tradition
Olayame Dabls has a vision for Detroit. It’s a dream he’s cultivated for the better part of 23 years as a local historian and collector of all things African. Standing in front of the brightly decorated two-story row houses he owns on Grand River Avenue near West Grand Boulevard, it’s easy to see the African…
Head cheese
Florida native Adrienne Young has come a long way since her 2003 debut, Plow To the End of The Row. Playing banjo and backed by her band, Little Sadie, Young fashions a mix of old-timey Americana, bluegrass and folk, much like Alison Krauss. With her latest, The Art of Virtue, Young continues to mine her…
Backslash
I won, bitches! The results of the Detroit mayoral election were an upset to say the least — and just plain upsetting to many — but humorists can find a silver lining (and some pocket-lining) in knowing they’ll have no shortage of material. The folks over at kingkwame.com are selling shirts with a photo of…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
MB53 for me, see? • Orgy — Trans Global Spectacle 1997-2004 (D1 DVD) :: Whether they’re falling down stairs in stages or eliciting stares on stages, this modern stoned-age family has a gay old time for over two hours. Whether you laugh with them or at them is up to you. • Emery — The…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty designed to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and thereby slow global warming. Though 157 nations have ratified it, a notable exception has been the United States, which is the planet’s leading polluter. To their credit, millions of American citizens have launched a grassroots…
The Impossible Fantasy meets Buck Angel
Q: My boyfriend let me experiment on him with a strap-on. At first he didn’t like it, but now he loves it. Now I want to have sex with another guy and watch him suck a real cock. How can I get him to try this? —Pretty Eager Gal A: Jesus Christ, PEG! I have…
Bush’s faith and frauds
A factitious picture of the world built up by the Bush administration over its five years in power is now going to pieces before our eyes. Great jagged spikes of reality, like the crags of the iceberg that ripped open the staterooms of the Titanic, are tearing into it on all sides. The disrespected world…
Gothic revival
If post-punk goth can be traced back to one brooding monolith, it’s Northampton, England’s Bauhaus. A quick history lesson: Formed in 1978, Bauhaus appealed to those left tragically long-faced after the collapse of punk and glam, but also gave a faction of misjudged, often literate, cellar-dwelling U.K. kids a subculture all their own. Bauhaus’ debut…
Heaven’s gate
October took a heavy toll on African-American culture. In addition to the death of Rosa Parks, acclaimed African-American playwright August Wilson died on Oct. 2 at age 60. It is a fitting coincidence, then, that a posthumous staging of Wilson’s Fences, set in the 1950s, should roughly coincide with the death of Rosa Parks and…
Roads not working
Brent O. Bair is a highway and car guy. Tall, silver-haired, earnest and big enough to have played tackle on a college defensive line, he’s been with Oakland County’s Road Commission for 28 years, 12 of them as the agency’s managing director. That career, marked by engineering discipline and certainty, has spanned much of the…
Art Bar
Emily Dickinson said that poems come at the truth at a slant. Here a birdbath and some overturned chairs on a nursing home lawn suggest the frailties of old age. Masterful poems choose the very best words and put them in the very best places, and Michigan poet Rodney Torreson has deftly chosen “ministers” for…
In The Flesh
His Name is Alive Sunday, Oct. 30 Cake Shop, New York City Promoted as a Devil’s Night, Detroit-only showcase, the diverse sounds (His Name Is Alive with Living Flames and the Wolf Man Band) did well to satisfy a notoriously tough Lower East Side crowd. In a neighborhood frequented by such multi-culti art rock stars…
Man hunt
Stand-up comedian Jason Stuart is looking for Mr. Right. So far, he says, he’s met “Mr. Right Now,” “Mr. Maybe,” and even “Mr. Mom.” But he’s hoping a visit to the Motor City will change all that. “I love Detroit men,” Stuart gushes over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “There’s such a…
A lost city
It is unlikely that there is a city, other than Athens or Rome, that has celebrated its ruins as much as Detroit. Painters, photographers and installation artists have thrived on — even built careers around — calling attention to the derelict condition of Detroit’s urban industrial landscape. Without guilt, artists have pilfered materials from a…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 16 Vincent York’s Jazzistry MUSIC/ISSUES & LEARNING Looking to improve your jazz aptitude? Join saxophonist and aficionado Vincent York for a multimedia educational experience that’ll help you toot your own horn. York’s one-night class includes a lesson in jazz terminology, an overview of the music’s roots as well as live performances. Free, no…
Embellished tale
British artist Tom Phillips began working on his illustrated version of W. H. Mallock’s Victorian novel in the ’60s, and has spent the four decades since laboring on what is best described as an eternal work-in-progress. A Humument is 367 pages of Phillips’ contemporary visual art that blasts over the text by way of collage…
Metro Retro
23 years ago this week in Metro Times: Laurie Townsend covers a conference targeting union concessions to employers. It is held by 700 Canadian and American activists and officials questioning whether concessions save jobs and are essential to prevent corporate bankruptcy. Conference coordinator Bill Parker, who was laid off from Chrysler in 1979, points out…
Proactive
Store lore — If you’re looking to stock up on building and home improvement materials at a reasonable price, Habitat for Humanity can help. The group celebrated the grand opening of ReStore, its retail outlet for new and used building supplies, this week. ReStore will be offering discounts of 10 to 50 percent off selected…
Letters to the Editor
The future is ours Re: “Detroit’s future, and ours” (Metro Times Nov. 9), Jack Lessenberry was dead-on about the impact of Detroit on Michigan. Wherever I travel in the world, Detroit is my identity. My home is in St. Clair Shores. No one outside of southeastern Michigan knows St. Clair Shores. But when I tell…
Chill pill
The recent disclosure that Target allows pharmacists at its stores nationwide to refuse to dispense emergency contraception on religious grounds got News Hits to wondering if that’s actually legal in Michigan. We checked into it and were told the law here isn’t clear one way or the other. But this much is certain: Conservatives in…
Give ’em shelter
With less than three months to go before the Super Bowl hits Detroit, there’s been a lot of news about how the city’s been getting into shape. After all, the event is expected to bring about 125,000 regular people plus about 3,000 journalists to town. Much has been made about the celebrities expected to attend…
Behind the scenes
The films Good Night, and Good Luck and Capote — in different ways — provide significant insight about the world of journalism. If that sort of thing interests you, News Hits recommends a visit to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Web site, where you can find a series of profiles that reveal how reporters went…
A view askew
“My hat’s off to Steve Earle,” says prolific songwriter and fellow dust-disturber Rodney Crowell. “He’s found an effective way — a beautiful way, really — to throw bricks through the window. Maybe my nature is a little more forgiving, though.” Crowell gives a low, good-natured laugh, as he often does. “I like to think of…
Unforgettable lines
Metro Times: I often talk to my fiction writing students about the importance of place in fiction. It’s essential that they find a place — be it a city block, a bowling alley, a river, a bedroom or a barn — that they can own outright on the page. Joan Didion says, “A place belongs…
No girl-girl play
It’s hard being faux lesbos — just ask t.A.T.u. Throughout late 2002, Russian teens Lena Katina and Julia Volkova worked overtime to prove their Sapphic love by swapping spit onstage, pawing each other in photos and making music videos that verged on soft porn. All their efforts were for naught, however, once news broke that…
Canadian snakin’
Sometimes, rock ’n’ roll can speak volumes without playing a single note. When the members of Toronto’s Deadly Snakes ambled up to the poolside hipsters at Las Vegas Grind in 1999, it was like the Rolling Stones had come to rumble with Herman’s Hermits. The lean and hungry soul-punks weren’t invited to play the annual go-go-booted…
Ear-bleeds and turkeys
The pre- and post-Thanksgiving party calendar includes bits of everything for everyone, especially for those inclined to dance, and maybe schtup the holiday blues away. So, the call goes out … Metalism for kids Detroit club kids love getting beat on. At an after-party for Movement 2004, one of the bloodiest assaults came at the…
Swept away
Ghastly as it may sound, you have to believe there was a Detroit TV station executive who yearned, if only for a fleeting moment, “Holy Rosa, if only we could get an exclusive on the Parks funeral.” Then a local sponsor could have been recruited (most likely the ubiquitous Rock Financial) to present the historically…
The great tapping machine
If you thought that tap dance as a popular art form was dead, before you go to the funeral you may want to catch Savion Glover in Classical Savion at the Detroit Opera House this weekend. Glover — rhymes with lover — has been infusing tap dancing with new life. This 90-minute show of virtuosic…
Geometric shapes
Pulled equally by ’60s ringing psych pop — more California than London — and sleepy ’80s minimalists such as Galaxie 500 and Felt, Londoners the Clientele are a lazy push-me-pull-you of jangle and melody. Their music sways gently and melodies move like an autumnal breeze. The trio’s core, guitarist Alasdair Maclean and bassist James Hornsey,…
All aboard
We want to begin the conversation in earnest, without the historic recriminations, obeisance to special interests, disregard for what we see and experience every day, and foolish refusal to recognize that the train coming down the tracks can either destroy us or give us an easy ride. The issue in question is how we can…
Horses: 30th Anniversary Edition
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” remains a startling opening line for a debut album, deliberately announcing someone who sees her role not to be a pop star and hit-maker, but to shake whatever complacent vibe might be lingering in the room. Smith would never top her debut album. She’d certainly have her…
Shop stories
Lolita Hernandez isn’t the first Detroit writer to turn our eyes and tune in our ears to the poetry and song lurking behind the gates of a Motor City assembly line. Poets Philip Levine, Lawrence Joseph and Jim Daniels (all native Detroiters) have put their pens inside those places of disquiet and given voice to a…
Vertically Challenged EP
Vertically Challenged is too slim, especially with the remixes excluded. "Cha Ching," for all its loopy ardor, is nearly a year old — a lifetime in this Internet galaxy. But the EP suitably reps Lady Sovereign’s ample cockiness and lyrical zing, at least until her vaunted Def Jam debut drops in 2006. As an emcee,…
Thinking inside the box
At first look, one of the most intriguing things on the menu looks like it’s a $60 choice. But look again. The multi-course “Bento Box for Two” is an unbelievable bargain. The $30 tab is for both diners. The menu is long and complex, and it includes Korean specialties, such as bimbimbap and bulgoki.
Sympathy for the devil
Filmed in the West Bank in 2004, the movie follows the final 24 hours of Palestinian mechanic Said (Kais Nashef) and his friend Khaled (Ali Suliman) as they prepare themselves for “martyrdom.” Much of Paradise Now is constructed like a heist film, devoted to the characters’ psychological and strategic preparations. We watch as soft-spoken Said…
A Toute de Suite
French director Benoît Jacquot sure loves the cinematic stylings of Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jean-Luc Godard. With his latest film, the director wears his New Wave sensibilities on his sleeve. Set in 1974, and adapted from Elisabeth Fanger’s memoir, the film centers on 19-year-old art student Lili (Isild Le Besco), a bored Parisian whose…
You Could Have It So Much Better
The album everyone was waiting for felt much better waiting for than actually hearing. Granted, the deck was stacked against FF — their self-titled debut was damn undeniable; every song could’ve been a single. With this, each song sounds more like a conscious effort to sound like “Franz Ferdinand” than a band that actually flowered…
Where the Truth Lies
The latest offering writer-director Atom Egoyan (Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter) looks intoxicatingly promising at first: The film’s seductively rendered poster, with its half-naked pinup and smoky sepia tones, suggests steamy noir intrigue, à la L.A. Confidential. Then there’s the controversial rating; because of several graphic sex scenes, the film was slapped with an NC-17 rating,…
He loves me not
There’s a reason no artist brags on leaving his or her lover in the lurch for 12 songs. Try imagining sensitive coffeehouse singers accrue their weekly chump change hawking CDs with such titles as I Used You, Baby or Kiss Ya Now, Dump Ya Later Tonight! It’s a rule in pop that listeners love the…
Loggerheads
The gay-themed melodrama Loggerheads is like a really good community theater production, or something you might see on Canadian television: earnest, mundane and humanistic in a drab, politically correct way. But there’s enough genuine emotion in the film — and so little grandstanding on the part of the actors — that if you’re in the…
Mosaic Select 16
Always intriguing, Andrew Hill’s performances can seem oddly constructed. Or maybe it’s that they’re so well put together, but from such unexpected pieces. They could be pictures assembled from different jigsaw puzzles, or elephants built from the descriptions of the five blind cats. He can be bold and declarative, but don’t expect simplicity very often.…
Zathura
Adapted from the book by Chris Van Allsburg (Jumanji, The Polar Express), the film is essentially Jumanji set in outer space. As a matter of fact, the plot is almost identical: Walter (Josh Hutcherson) and Danny (Jonah Bobo) are a pair of bickering brothers. When their father (Tim Robbins) has to work on a Saturday,…
Derailed
Charles (Clive Owen), a mild-mannered ad exec and family man who takes the train into Chicago every morning from the suburbs. He meets the leggy Lucinda (Aniston), a cool, composed financial planner who begins a tentative flirtation with him. She plays somewhat hard to get; although he’s a bit sheepish and ineffectual, his stressful home…
Aerial
Aerial is cleaved in two, separated into one disc of song-type pieces and another that examines the continuum of a day with spiritual verve. It has cryptic cover art, elliptical lyrics, unpredictable arrangements, and at its center is Bush herself, art-rock queen, who really just wants to sing about … suburbia? Well, not the suburbs,…
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Part film noir murder mystery and part send-up of film noir murder mysteries, this marks Black’s first attempt at directing. He succeeds in making a rather droll and fairly entertaining film, albeit one that involves a plot so complex you almost need a PowerPoint presentation to make sense of it.
In a word: classic
From the neo-Phil Spector production touches to the reverb-soaked British Invasion-styled guitars to the lush Everly Brothers-esque vocal harmonies, Like Her is a classic pop album from start to finish. Maybe reviewers will finally retire the term “alt-country” from their Volebeats vocabularies. (Granted, the band didn’t help its case by titling — jokingly — its…
Tanglewood Numbers
In the four years since the last Silver Jews release, reclusive leader David Berman has weathered a suicide attempt, kicked the habit, and assembled a veritable Drag City lovefest (Will Oldham, Azita Youseffi) for the Jews’ latest, and lushest. (Pavement alums Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich return to round off the star-studded cast.) So those…
Best in showbiz
Billy Connolly slept it off in a phone booth because he was too drunk to find the door. Laurence Fishburne was raised by an all-the-world’s-a-stage mom from hell — with an assist from puffing-daddy-o Dennis Hopper as babysitter. Richard Rodgers and his wife Mary were, in the apparently accurate eyes of their daughter, “quite crazy,…
