Go home and call your first girlfriend.
UPDATE, Tuesday, Dec. 19: Apparently Money’s minions didn’t like their master’s past being splashed all over the Internet – the file for “I Wanna Go Back” has since been removed. But if you’d still like to read my commentary and picture Eddie in your head, doing his thing, please do.-Johnny Loftus Let’s start your weekend…
Improv the Grimy way.
It’s another jazz In the Flesh from our man on the scene, Charles Latimer.-JTL Henry Grimes 11/30/2006 Bohemian National Home The Henry Grimes gig Thursday night at the Bohemian was an improvisational journey through every nook and crevice of jazz music. Every thought and sound that emanated from the musicians’ instruments was made up on…
Robyn is (still) here.
Remember Robyn? After conquering the pop charts in her native Sweden (where she’d been a child star), she hit America as a teenager in 1996 with “Do You Know (What it Takes),” an effortless R&B flutter that checked the comfortable slip and watery bass grooves of jams like Monica’s “Don’t Take it Personal (Just one…
Still rollin’ dice
Seated in a dark room, illuminated only by two glowing computer monitors, Russell “Kwation” Culvin looks more like the head of night security at the Penobscot Building than the “CEO” of Fallen Angelz Entertainment. His fingers click out responses to a fan on his Fallen Angelz MySpace page. His eyes occasionally shift to an indie…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Sights and sounds of evil
A skriker, if you haven’t had the privilege of hearing one, is a horrific, unearthly sound. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a cross between a scream and a shriek. Caryl Churchill’s 1994 play by the same name depicts a shape-shifter in an urban fairy tale about the nature of evil. The plot includes…
Feel the heat
Are you a man or a mouse? At a Thai restaurant, your fellow diners will sit in judgment. The level of heat you ask for is not just a personal preference but an index of your toughness, nay, of your authenticity. Pi’s heat levels should be approached with caution. The prices are friendly, with $1.69…
More than dream pop
Christopher Willits hears things. It might be a melody in his head or a sweeping chord progression that he finds in his heart. What he hears has evolved into what he describes as the “song-like things” that make up much of Surf Boundaries, his stunning new full-length release on Ann Arbor’s Ghostly International. “I’m surprised…
The lady is no tramp
Jay-Z’s most recent signee to Def Jam, Lady Sovereign knocks out a legitimate spot on the roster with Public Warning. Bringing the gutter and grime of the London projects where she was raised, Sov skips the sexiness that other female rappers often try to amplify and use to their advantage and instead goes for tough,…
Motor City Cribs
DJ Graffiti packs his stacks of wax.
Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin Redux
The themed Red Hot + (X) compilations, assembled to raise money for AIDS awareness, were a mainstay throughout the 1990s. The first, Red Hot + Blue, featured artists like U2, Sinead O’Connor and Tom Waits interpreting the songs of Cole Porter. Later entries included Red Hot + Bothered (a jumble of indie rock), Red Hot…
American Life in Poetry
The first poem we ran in this column was by David Allan Evans of South Dakota, about a couple washing windows together. You can find that poem and all the at americanlifeinpoetry.org. Here Tania Rochelle of Georgia presents us with another couple, this time raking leaves. I especially like the image of the pair "bent…
From This Moment On
When Diana Krall deviated from her usual interpretative approach to golden-era love songs for 2004’s largely self-penned Girl in the Other Room, she proved songwriting wasn’t one of her greater strengths. But few contemporary jazz vocalists can infuse love songs with such warmth, and for From This Moment On, Krall returns to her usual source…
Advice from on high
Q: I’m a smoker and my partner is a nonsmoker. He says his face goes numb when I give him head. His theory is that the penis is permeable and is absorbing the nicotine in my saliva. It’s a good theory, but it’s only his face that goes numb — his cheeks and lips, not…
The Big Three drive on ‘E’
Last week, after writing about President George W. Bush’s utterly meaningless meeting with the heads of Ford, General Motors and the Chrysler division of that German firm, I decided to talk to a real expert on the industry. I know about politics; I don’t really know about cars. Jerry Flint does. He has been a…
Band of brothers
In a rented meeting space in a northern Detroit suburb, an “integration group” — or “I-group” — is meeting. Nine “warrior brothers” sit in a circle, surrounding a candleholder shaped like men locking arms in a huddle. Next to the candleholder sits a prayer fan. A symbol of power, the staff, sits nearby. This room…
Saturday Night Wrist
After nearly 20 years together and a slew of side projects, Deftones’ provocative metal blend continues to resist mainstream classification. Saturday Night Wrist, the band’s fifth, is its fiercest yet, building on the blistering intensity of 2000’s White Pony but pulling also from the more visceral impulses of the 2003 self-titled release. The Deftones’ professional…
Coming to terms
Blessing: An affirmation of manhood that only men can bestow on other men. Checking in: Becoming aware of your body and your feelings and being emotionally "present." Father wound: Emotionally injury from a father’s abuse or neglect. Father hunger: An emotional need for the blessing of other men. King: An archetype expressing the part of…
Thrill blossoms
Just for a Thrill, a collection of poetry published by Wayne State University Press and written by native Detroiter Geoffrey Jacques, is not what you’d call pretty poetry. It’s not sunshine, roses and cheer. Rather, angry outcries, despairing jazz riffs and complete chaos color the landscape. Jacques is an early MT jazz writer who moved…
Mad, Sad, Glad, Fear, Shame
I had read thousands of books. I had written a novel, a screenplay, hundreds of poems, a master’s thesis on Melville. But I was emotionally illiterate. “What are you feeling?” When I was asked that, usually by a woman, words, usually my best friends in the world, would flee. A great abyss of silence would…
Gush gush
The Fountain is such an audacious creative experiment, that it’s easy to forget it’s just three films in one: a faux historic action epic, a weepy medical melodrama and an interstellar freak-out that defies classification. Hugh Jackman is a model of focused intensity in a triple role, variously a fierce 16th century Spanish explorer on…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 29 The Cock Rock Show MUSIC The way peace signs, bellbottoms and assorted hippie accoutrements were novelties for Generation X-ers, spandex, leopard print and lamé are what the kids find kitschy these days. It was the bastard child of 1980s Sunset Strip metal and a (mostly) regrettable period in music history — but…
Fur: An imaginary an Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
That the biographical details of Arbus’ life aren’t exactly public knowledge doesn’t excuse the liberties taken with the facts. It is doubtful that Arbus (played here by Nicole Kidman) was inspired by a fur-covered neighbor(Robert Downey Jr.) to develop her creative sensibility. But even though the attempts at dreamland mystery often come off as sleepy…
A whole new world
Until this latest exhibition of laser-hot paintings at Lemberg Gallery, Beverly Fishman had primarily explored the dehumanizing and invasive procedures, products and ideology of modern medicine. Her graphics referenced the scary imagery of medical technology, such as micrographs and electrocardiograms. Without ever spelling it out, Fishman cast the medical establishment as an indifferent but ever-present…
Happy Feet
Happy Feet’s astonishing visuals are a spectacular blend of real-world photography and computer-generated animation. Where Happy Feet falters is in its awkward storytelling. Mumbles (Wood) is a happy-go-lucky Emperor Penguin with a strange handicap; unable to perform his “heartsong” — something all penguins must do to attract a mate — he expresses himself through dance.…
Letters to the Editor
Compassion, not cash Re: Jack Lessenberry’s thought-provoking article on “aged-out” foster kids (“Worrying about the least of these,” Metro Times, Nov. 8), those that reach 18 never having been adopted. I can honestly say I had never heard of these kids before, and I am grateful that this issue has been brought to my attention.…
Shut Up & Sing
Since that one glorious fateful Bush crack back in ’03, these bumpkins with ’tude have been embroiled in a controversy that’s shaken the Nashville faithful and rankled Washington. It all starts with the Dixie Chicks — the best selling women’s band ever — on a London stop of their world tour. Onstage, Natalie Maines blurts…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom," wrote Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. That’s vividly true for you right now, Aries. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you’ll thrive on the whirling gaga that overwhelms you as you play in vast, open spaces. Your best decisions will arise as your mind…
Head Cheese
When he’s not making, um, “beautiful music,” with songbird girlfriend Loretta Lucas, or handling his day job as a plumber, the SSM/Hentchmen’s storied John Szymanski is a prominent cog in the city’s rock ‘n’ roll machine. Here’s his abridged, monomaniacal version of the History of Hen(t)ch. 5. Henchwoman: Queenie, the Joker’s henchman from the Batman…
Bobby
Set during the 24-hour period before RFK’s assassination, 23 characters of all stripes struggle with life and love under the roof of the renowned Ambassador Hotel amid the political and social upheaval of the 1960s. There’s the politically progressive but personally flawed hotel manager (William H. Macy) who’s cheating on his hairdresser wife (a barely…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Well kiddies, once again it’s time to dip into the old Media Blackout mail bag and see what fresh lettuce the stork has delivered this week! Dear Mr. Blackout: I want to be a world-famous rock critic like you so I can get tons of free records every day so please tell me how I…
Learn the hustle
A recruiter found her at a neighborhood coin laundry, and now 19-year-old Jeanette Miller is walking daily across the marble floors and riding the glass elevator at Compuware Corp. headquarters with a plan for her further advancement. The high school dropout is a student at the new Hustle & TechKnow school, located in Compuware’s downtown…
Art Bar
Outta sight — An incredible thing about working in a world-caliber museum, besides the prestige and the pay (well, it for sure ain’t the pay), is hanging out with Greek statuary as the sun rises in the morning and the whole place is a silent palace. And when quietly wandering through after closing, the oil…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Only God Knows Why
There’s no way to report on this shit rationally, and that’s not my job, anyway. So instead I’ll poke fun.-JTL DETROIT–With the announcement this past weekend of her divorce from area Coors Light enthusiast Kid Rock, Pamela Anderson has reportedly bequeathed her left boob to the City of Detroit. “I want to leave something behind,”…
Zune Out…
The Microsoft Zune digital music player is less than a month old, but it’s already facing tremendous adversity. For those unaware, the Zune is Microsoft’s attempt to create an ‘iPod killer’. And while the unit offers a few nifty features, such as wireless song sharing (Microsoft calls this “squirting”) and a built in FM transmitter,…
