Eternal thirst
“There have always been legends of blood-drinking humans,” director John Carpenter says in Los Angeles. “This probably goes back to when we were all sitting around the campfire in a tribe, and the medicine man said, ‘The evil’s out there in the dark someplace — he’s going to come and get you.’ But some suspect…
Crawl, slither and swing
FORKED ‘N’ WEIRD One of the more stylish Halloween/Devil’s Night parties took place in the appropriately spooky Russell Industrial Center on Friday night. Entitled “The Weirding,” the event was put on by the 3+4 Studio, with hosts including, among others, John Dunivant, Lisa Spindler, Tony Gomez and John Engstrom. With a heavy emphasis on the…
In one ear
KEEPING IT ROLLING While it’s been a rather slow year for Detroit hip hop as a whole, groups such as Da Ruckus continue pluggin’ away in the never-ending quest for fame and fortune. It’s heavily anticipated release, Episode I is currently out and the duo has been busy promoting the project through various shows. Featuring…
Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember
At one point during Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember, Anna Maria Tato’s engrossing 3-hour, 20-minute documentary on Marcello Mastroianni (1923-96), the great Italian actor bemoans the fact that he was once considered an archetypal “Latin Lover.” And while there’s something disingenuous in his demurral — “I was never handsome,” he adds (yeah, right) — one can…
Why live with the bomb
They say that if there is a gun, someday it will shoot.” –Mikhail Gorbachev, on why nuclear weapons have to be abolished. Well, the election is over, and we now have some relief from the torrent of lies and meaningless personal insults that seriously affected our ability to contemplate Ally McBeal’s tight little skirts these…
John Carpenter’s Vampires
The fans will scorn. The critics will protest. The restless crowds will want their money back, because all the stuff from their other unpleasant movie experiences is there: the hollow dialogue; the really bad acting — see Daniel Baldwin’s performance; the superficial relationships; the dented masculinities; the worn-out dick jokes. And yet. Even more than…
HUD cites Empowerment Zone
Inadequate control over spending and inaccurate reporting. These are some of the major problems cited in the first audit of the Detroit Empowerment Zone released last week by the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Between March and August, HUD auditors reviewed 10 of Detroit’s 73 EZ programs, in…
Velvet Goldmine
Todd Haynes, the immensely gifted filmmaker who made Poison (1991) and Safe (1995), delivers a whirling dervish of sound and vision with Velvet Goldmine, his expressionistic re-imagining of the brief heyday of glam rock in early 1970s London. In Velvet Goldmine, the scene is propelled by a new strain of British dandies, who Haynes envisions…
Environmental injustice?
Activists claiming a planned Flint steel mill would adversely affect minority communities were outraged but not surprised when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency dismissed their complaint Friday. “The outcome was predetermined,” said Julie Hurwitz, an attorney for the Sugar Law Center. “The EPA is under so much pressure on this issue they just decided to…
Voyage to the Beginning of the World
At one point during Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember, Anna Maria Tato’s engrossing 3-hour, 20-minute documentary on Marcello Mastroianni (1923-96), the great Italian actor bemoans the fact that he was once considered an archetypal “Latin Lover.” And while there’s something disingenuous in his demurral — “I was never handsome,” he adds (yeah, right) — one can…
Economic conflict
The troubled territory where the global economy intersects with social justice will be explored in a new documentary airing on public television in Detroit. “Globalization & Human Rights” looks in detail at how the spread of multinational corporations creates an “emerging conflict … between those making macro-economic decisions and those struggling to cope with the…
Ecstatic underground
It’s an age-old story, at least in the age of underground. Boys and girls invent their own separate culture out of necessity, disenfranchisement and creative angst. Boys and girls fill that world with passion, faith and loyalty. Their culture gets appropriated and infected by commercial interests, bum highs and participants who don’t share the original…
Teamsters race heats up
In the early days of James P. Hoffa’s campaign for president of the Teamsters union, he barely mentioned his main opponent, reformer Tom Leedham. With Hoffa’s name recognition and strong showing in the 1996 race, he saw the election as a cakewalk. It may not be. The Leedham slate reports a favorable reception wherever members…
Growing Bold Gracefully
After working together on music for a movie sound track, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach decided to make a go of it on a real record. It was one of many courageous moves for Costello who has experimented with different genres in the past few years — and cost himself some visibility in the process.…
What’s the big idea?
Leave it to those nutty Detroit-area “creatives” (the name given to advertising workers) to be instigators of a good time. Last week’s Viva Ad Vegas event at the Novi Expo Center was a lively carnival showcase of some of the area’s most innovative creative suppliers. They displayed their wares — portfolios, artwork, the latest technologies…
Artfully Funky Beats
Former college radio geek turned My Bloody Valentine noise band guitarist turned sample-happy, funky breaks beatmaker, Michael Donaldson (aka Q-Burns Abstract Message) brings a deeper sense of musicality to the otherwise beat-numb American electronica scene on his debut full-length, Feng Shui, his follow-up to last year’s Oeuvre singles compilation. Like fellow college-rock-stoked beatmakers the Hardkiss…
Pitch’d
RAVER HISTORY LESSON Though it’s taken its sweet-assed time getting here (other cities have had it for over a month) one of the handful of new films (er, at least the best one) that traces the history of electronic music, Modulations comes to Ferndale’s Magic Bag Theatre (22920 Woodward Ave.) this week for its Detroit-area…
The Free Slave
This reissue captures Detroit legend Roy Brooks leading a quintet through a heated set for Baltimore’s Left Bank Jazz Society on April 26, 1970, one of those inspired conferences of post-bop heavies — Woody Shaw, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor sax; Hugh Lawson, piano; Cecil McBee, bass and Brooks, drums — which seemed so common back…
Slam, glam, thank you ma’am (er, man)
“To me, what really distinguishes it from other periods that preceded and that followed,” Velvet Goldmine’s writer and director, Todd Haynes, explains about glam rock, “is its refusal of natural models for the whole idea of the artist onstage and also, by association, identity itself.” The 37-year-old, Los Angeles-born filmmaker got his first dose of…
Art-Rock Archaeology
For many people — yours truly included — Genesis was effectively finished when Peter Gabriel left the group. The band at least seemed destined to travel in a different direction than it had gone during the singer’s tenure. For fans of that era of Genesis, a four-CD box set of previously unreleased material has recently…
The better binge
I know this guy who started taking gingko biloba to improve his memory. “The problem was,” he said, “I kept forgetting to take it.” I believe it. You’d need three or four memories to recall and take all the herbal elixirs suddenly available to jack up everything from your metabolism to your spirits. Not long…
Rock ‘N’ Roll: Dead & Killing
In the name of reviving a national interest in poetry, Mouth Almighty head Bob Holman made his own pop poetry album. In With The Out Crowd is a regular rock circus that even pits Jesus Christ against Elvis in a wrestling match. The Rocky Horror-ish humor and commercial break theatrics strive to offer something between…
Bats in the bel canto
Opera often inhabits a deliciously deranged world. There are few more dramatically urgent and musically elevating scenes than when the heroine loses her marbles — usually to the tune of flowery musical passage work. Celebrated mad scenes can be found in Il Pirata, I Puritani, Hamlet and a host of other operas, but none is…
Liniment and Collard Greens
Getting this CD finished was more than a notion. If it wasn’t finances, then it was something, always something, that was blocking the completion of this project. Still, despite roadblocks that seemed to spring relentlessly from everywhere like concrete Pop-Tarts, Sweet Claudette kept at it. When you get to be a 56-year-old great-grandmother in this…
Truth on trial
Clutching a teddy bear that’s nearly as big as she is, a 9-year-old girl sits on the witness stand in a Washtenaw County courtroom. With hair pulled back into three tight ponytails, a frilly pink dress and white lace socks that fall like little ruffled curtains over her shiny black patent leather shoes, she stares…
New-Art-Punk-Wave
Number One Cup is an impressive four-piece guitar/alternative/pop band from Chicago, Illinois that has been around since 1993. While comparisons to contemporary groups such as Pavement, Guided By Voices and the Flaming Lips will put you somewhat in the ballpark, Number One Cup has achieved a far more distinctive identity on its latest (fourth) CD.…
Doctor of bluesology
Phil Lasley heats up that good old jazz medicine….
Can children speak the truth?
In the late 1980s, a rash of allegations of child sex abuse rings awakened America to the prevalence of child sex abuse. But as cases wound through the courts, questions about children’s testimony became central. How accurately can they recount the horrors of sexual abuse? How open are they to suggestions from hysterical parents or…
Torrid Timbales
Latin jazz, thy name is Tito Puente. Yes, yes, one must not forget hallowed names like Chano Pozo, Mario Bauza or Machito, but when you consider the folks who haven’t taken the dirt nap yet, then Puente has longevity and craft going for him. The creator of “Oye Como Va” and “Para Los Rumberos” has…
International film flam
Move over Cannes, Toronto and Sundance. This weekend, Detroit plays host to the first Detroit and Windsor International Festival of Film. Co-chaired by Tom McPhee of First Light Contemporary Releasing and Wayne Indyk, director of the Detroit Filmmaker’s Coalition, this elaborately organized mega-event features 80-plus narrative, documentary, experimental and animated features and shorts, some submitted…
From the mouths of babes
About 13,000 children testify each year in criminal sex abuse cases, increasing the pressure on the medical establishment to provide guidance for discerning when children can be counted on to tell the truth. “Most of the time, a child can accurately describe what happened,” says Dr. William Bernet, medical director at the Psychiatric Hospital at…
If you lived here you’d be home
Detroiters face a lot of downtown dust over the next few years as the city demolishes the old and builds the new. But what are we building? So far, we have three Las Vegas-style gambling casinos, two professional sports stadiums and this thing called Campus Martius on and around the Hudson’s rubble. All of these…
Once upon a tragedy
When your scribe comes across an interesting ditty in the popular press, he’s always keen for a peek. Such was the case with Christopher Hitchens’ diatribe about the irrelevance of history to Americans that appears in this month’s Harper’s. The same month brought us the most hyped post-Cold War space launch and two powerful historical…
