Technical difficulties
Maria Diaz and Brittaney Seward sit before a computer screen reading about Nicaragua for a school project on Latin-American history. The 13-year-old girls say they come to the Bowen Public Library on Detroit’s southwest side nearly every day to do their homework on its computers. "When I don’t have work, I just come for fun,"…
Xiu Xiu: The Send Down Girl
One of the most devastating Utopian convulsions, in a century which has had several, was the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Part of this doomed attempt to create a largely classless society involved relocating millions of young people from urban centers to remote and rural provinces where, presumably, the taint of idle…
Wired Detroit 1999
Detroit may have freeways galore, but more people in the metro area are traveling the information highway than ever before. In this, MT’s third annual Wired Detroit issue, we look at how people in our part of the world are participating — or not — in an increasingly global community. From those who are leaping…
The Battle of Los Angeles
Even though Rage Against the Machine’s last outing, “Evil Empire,” had several blockbuster tracks, the record failed to live up to the group’s revolutionary – and now classic – first album. With “The Battle of Los Angeles,” Rage recalls the power and the fury with a potent, precise batch of riot-starters that set a new…
Attention Span
YOU’RE GOLDEN The Willy Wonka candy company has teased us with its Gobstoppers, but these little pellets don’t look anything like the Everlasting Gobstopper that served as the Holy Grail of the candy world in the 1971 film, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So finally, the Wonka Bar itself is available for 99 cents…
Black and bold
When one record label simultaneously releases albums by two heralded MCs from two different eras in hip hop, "buzz" does not come close to describing the anticipation of fans. Mos Def’s name and face were stapled on hip-hop’s collective consciousness when he and partner Talib Kweli dropped Black Star last year. While Kweli seemed to…
Prisoners of sex
OK, it isn’t the right thing to say, but part of you has gotta love it. For six years, long-suffering liberals have been saddled with ’Dick’ Clinton, who has done his considerable best to live down to or exceed every right-wing stereotype of moral decay. Now conservatives have a horrifying scandal of their own in…
Black and bold
When one record label simultaneously releases albums by two heralded MCs from two different eras in hip hop, "buzz" does not come close to describing the anticipation of fans. Mos Def’s name and face were stapled on hip-hop’s collective consciousness when he and partner Talib Kweli dropped Black Star last year. While Kweli seemed to…
Viruses R Us
It’s officially flu season, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not sure which of us is sicker, me or my computer. I’m shivering on the couch, sipping flat ginger ale and hoping against hope that the pounding in my head and the aching in my limbs is really just an especially virulent strain of…
Back in the day, F’real
Before this thing called hip hop had a name, DJs such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash mixed songs from all genres. The only criterion was that they had to have a funky beat. Rock, reggae, disco and even classical music were all fair game. Often, the DJs would mix only the instrumental parts of…
Cyclical soundworld
Mixing Cuban rhythms, punk rock and acoustic folk, Café Tacuba is an innovative Mexican band whose crazy musical wisdom makes sense of life’s loopy logic.
Radar detects the scene
PARTY PEOPLE Detroit awaits the opening of Steven Sower’s latest gift to nightlife, Radar (formerly our beloved old Blue Moon), at long last joining with Majestic and Union Street to restore Woodward’s Bermuda Triangle of festivity. Select scenesters, however, were tossed the bone of a preview party Saturday night. The Majestic Café functioned effectively as…
Blues!
You like the blues? Get this. Listen, some older blues cats these days are getting a lot of play simply because they’re older blues cats. I hate to say it, but it needs to be said. If your body is all broken-down and you look good sitting on a porch that’s just as broken-down as…
The Cho must go on
Comedian Margaret Cho both defies and defines the notion that humor comes from misery….
News Hits
Paging Mr. Maryweather It wasn’t a big article – just a column-length piece on Page 3 of the Free Press business section last Tuesday – but it sure got the attention of Freep Publisher Heeth K. Merrywhether. Reporter Charlotte W. Craig’s piece on corporate parent Knight-Ridder’s plan to form a new company that will run…
Punk with curls
Besides being the funniest oxymoron in music, Hasidic New Wave is the brainchild of two of New York’s finest horn tooters, Frank London and Greg Wall. “Kabalogy” is the third record that blends the musical and religious customs of Hasidic Jews with the band’s acid and klezmer jazz textures. From the sprawling opener, “Purple Vishnu,”…
Food Stuff
FOOD FOR THOUGHT As the holiday season approaches, the food banks and soup kitchens of the Detroit area find themselves overwhelmed. More clients visit at this time of year, and the kitchens receive a glut of donations and volunteers eager to spend their Thanksgivings spooning out stuffing to those we politely call "the less fortunate."…
The wired report
Detroit may be wired, but where do those wires lead? At the end of the ’90s, it’s no longer news that we’re using the Web. What’s interesting is how we’re using it. I talked with random readers and friends (OK, my fellow surfing staffers here at MT) to get a read on Motown’s virtual traffic…
Tension released
Super Furry Animals – the Welsh quintet – are quite the characters for those of us outside the UK but trainspotting that scene anyway. They’ve officially sponsored the Cardiff City Football Club, refused to play for the royal family and had a minor UK hit single with "The Man Don’t Give a Fuck," a song…
Self-made man
When Kimberly Peirce began working on her debut film, Boys Don’t Cry, she didn’t envision an exploitative true crime story. In Brandon Teena, the young woman posing as a man who was murdered in a small Nebraska town six years ago, Peirce recognized a kindred spirit to the gender rebels she had been researching; women…
Pitch’d
WE ARE ON TV Last Tuesday night at Motor’s weekly "Family," fliers (intended for Kompress) were handed out for "Turn On – Tune In – Find Out," a TV commercial for Richie Hawtin’s New Year’s Eve event, "Epok." Rumors have been flying around like crazy about this thing (like the unlikely notion that Jeff Mills…
Preacherman
Rod McGaha distinguishes himself from the current generation of trumpet players with his debut album, Preacherman. McGaha avoids the pitfalls of most debut records, which are usually formulaic and predictable, often leading the listener to wonder whether or not there are any fresh ways to play jazz. He has, instead, invented a new spectrum of…
DIY religion
It’s Saturday night. I’m on my way to Genesis, a 7:30 p.m. service at Kensington Community Church in Troy. It’s not the time, or day, I’d expect to head to church, but that’s what sets apart this particular event. "We knew that young people would want to stay out late on Saturday night and wouldn’t…
Eat the house
Think of the food court at your local mall. Now ratchet up several notches, because everything is done to excess in casino-land. There are 10 food stations: The American Grill, The Bayou, The Wok (a miniature Mongolian barbecue), Mexican Fiesta, soul food, Italian, and a salad bar, coffee bar, ice cream bar and dessert bar.
Preach to the converts
Release, recorded from 1996-1998, is a documentary on hardcore punk as practiced by a group of kids as unrepentant in their hatred for rock stars as red meat. It’s built out of band interviews, fan explanations and promoter manifestos, intended to be a punk manual for those kids new to the scene. But in its…
Government on demand
It’s amazing where you can go in Oakland County these days without even bothering to slip on your trousers. Say you’ve been eyeing a particular home for sale in Oakland County. If you know the address, you can get on the Internet – hair mussed, clad in only your undies – and find out who…
Boys Don’t Cry
In death, Brandon Teena has become a symbol of the brutality of gay bashing and hate crimes. But in her stunning debut film, director Kimberly Peirce doesn’t canonize Teena as a transgendered martyr. Instead, she uses her clear-eyed humanism and a remarkable performance from Hilary Swank to bring Teena vibrantly and defiantly back to life.…
Hearing prisoners
Prison reforms can’t come fast enough for Jamie Whitcomb. During her three and a half years at Scott Correctional Facility in Plymouth, the 36-year-old woman says she was chained to a bed in a room alone for 20 days straight. A videotape of her ordeal, including footage of Whitcomb being tear gassed while restrained, was…
Dogma
The two parts of the Catholic double feature now in theaters – Luc Besson’s old-style Hollywood epic, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and Kevin Smith’s irreverent ecclesiastical farce, Dogma – seem to have little in common. Yet both have the same idea at their core: that faith and God have been corrupted…
Downloadable downside
There’s music out there, and it’s free! Yes, there has been much printed bluster surrounding the vast landscape of downloadable music on the Internet. Usually, these songs and sounds are available in the MP3 format, a form of digital encoding that allows music to travel from the World Wide Web to your very own home…
Felicia’s Journey
He’s an ordinary man with a soothing voice, small hands and an extraordinary capacity for compassion. He’s a middle-aged loner of tidy habits who lives in a world of carefully guarded delusions. His name is Mr. Hilditch and he is a serial killer. Hilditch (Bob Hoskins in an uncanny, superbly crafted performance) belongs to that…
www.hotnheavy.org
Log on, stud puppets! Get wired, marionettes of desire! If, as they say, sex is 90 percent mental, then what better party for your throbbing insatiability than the ultimate zipless liaison? No fuss, no muss, no unwanted conversation, no sloppy personal interaction – sex on the Internet is the perfect fantasy leading nowhere but to…
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
The two parts of the Catholic double feature now in theaters – Luc Besson’s old-style Hollywood epic, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, and Kevin Smith’s irreverent ecclesiastical farce, Dogma – seem to have little in common. Yet both have the same idea at their core: that faith and God have been corrupted…
Computer kids
Donald Amboyer pulls out of the driveway of his $1,000-a-month beachfront condo, driving his 1994 Nissan 300 ZX and wearing the latest that the Gap has to offer. No, he’s not a lawyer stumbling through a midlife crisis. He is an 18-year-old computer wizard. And his parents didn’t buy him the house, the car or…
Light It Up
At a time when accounts of inconceivable crimes – high school shootings, bombs, how many dead and wounded, how many survivors – seem like a daily occurrence, a film such as Craig Bolotin’s Light It Up takes a risky stand. Bolotin places the camera inside a high school in Queens, N.Y. (during the accidental shooting…
Pilot’s projects
Just blocks away from the dusty hole that was once the Hudson’s building, there’s a hipster loft that’s the unlikely home to one of Detroit’s hottest digital video innovators: Pilot Pictures, a partnership of graphic designer Rita Sayegh and visual artist Scott Stephanoff. The location may seem odd – it’s not like downtown Detroit has…
Peeped
There’s a picture by the late Garry Winogrand in this book of soberly sensational black-andwhite photographs that exemplifies the idea of looking without being seen: A nondescript young woman occupies a quiet museum bench while writing on something in her lap. Concentrating intensely, she crosses her lovely legs, holding them close to her and arching…
