Tenacious Quease.
* There’s this queasy feeling my body triggers whenever it wants to reign in my brain’s constant jones for music/pop/trash-culture. It’s this sudden ache in my flanks, an I’m-going-to-wake-up-with-a-fever tomorrow sideswipe that gets more pronounced the more I look at whatever’s causing it this time around. And right now, I’m getting it from Tenacious D.…
Smoke Break vol. 1
It’s no-fi, perhaps a bore, and totally gutter’d out. It’s “Smoke Break,” and Brian Smith and I did it for you. Stay tuned for more episodes; should be one per week. All talk! No action! JTL
30 Seconds to Baldwin
Alec Baldwin has been hitting it hard lately. As he glides on hair grease and three-course meals toward his 50th birthday, dude’s become one of the most reliable character actors in Hollywood, capable of stealing scenes in both blockbusters and weird one-offs, Walken-style. He was fantastic in The Departed (“Patriot act!”), made the 30 Rock…
Blowout 2006: Will you be part of our X Clan?
It’s time to gear up for Blowout X. You’ve been there before. You’ve slogged through the slush, been splashed by buses on Joseph Campau, given Hamtramck Steve a ride to The Belmont, drank so many Molson that you bled pureed Canadian bacon the next day in the stall at work. You’ve been there before, and…
Will drugs or knives help a tiny tool?
Q: I am a 19-year-old male with a 4.5-inch cock that has not grown since I was 12. My girlfriend says that it does not penetrate deeply enough. I have already lost two girlfriends because they said the sex wasn’t sensational enough. My doctor says I could have surgery, but my girlfriend says I should…
What the hack?
As this paper goes to press on Monday, the results of Election Day are not yet known. What’s disturbing to people such as Jan BenDor is the possibility that even after votes have been cast and the results announced, residents of Michigan will still not know for sure who really won. BenDor, the assistant clerk…
Race Music for a Long-Distance Runner
The Lonesome Tumblers’ lineup revolves, and migrates between three states. But it includes locals like Arlo Pickens and Scotty Karate, and no matter who’s in the band at any point, they absolutely kill. Blurry psychedelia, unbound guitar freakouts, and frayed rock songs coming out of some backwater between the 1960s and indie rock from the…
Live at the Fillmore
You ain’t heard “Love the One Your With” until you’ve heard the “Sweethearts of Soul” soaring on top, the Memphis Horns chirping underneath, and Franklin barreling down the middle. Culled from three Fillmore nights in early 1971, you get the original sweat-drenched album (including the Billy Preston-led band, with Ray Charles guesting) plus a bonus…
Belly booty
It’s an interesting juxtaposition. You hear the word “superstar,” and you think Champagne and spotlights, you think Jem and the Holograms, you think Molly Shannon’s armpits. Hear the term “belly dance,” and it’s dish-sized sequins, middle-aged white women, tit tassels and a dimpled gut wobble. But when you’re talking about the touring dance ensemble known…
Still fightin’
Justice grinds forward for Detroit’s John Bennett.
Hank Williams Project
Hear that lonesome postmodern whippoorwill? Ann Arbor saxophonist Bishop makes it sound utterly natural to take liberties with the bard of the country highway. Bishop alternately plays Williams tunes (and originals inspired by him) for laughs and for angst; he jazzes things up and slows them down to Williams-haunted dirges.
Une
Detroiter Uné moved to Cali before recording this debut, a slick (sometimes too slick) slice of contemporary R&B with flecks of jazz and soft-toned hip hop (the latter mostly on the tribute to cruising “Hit Da Shaw”). Uné’s rich singing voice is the standout here, and his natural, understated sound livens up some of the…
Rough drafts & desperate beauty
No matter what’s driving it — the pursuit of truth or beauty, noble intellectual fervor, rage at social injustice, a ravenous ego, good old lust or, the lowest of all, greed — the moment of conception of anything, of a work of art, a building or even a living being, is monumental. It’s when raw…
Taking chances
Detroit schools labor dispute endangers academies.
Girl on Top
s like porn and femdom strap-ons. Looks like Cherry Curry sightings and Whiskey a Go-Go pay-to-play nights. Sounds like hulking lines on smoggy freeways; car horns, skids, crashes and DUI’s. Queen Bee, as she froths here, has got shit for your, um, head. Queenbeedetroit.com.
Let the Nightlife Down
Nice Device exists in the same indie pop for sophisticates spot as the Cardigans, with keyboards whirring behind electric guitar and Alicia Gbur’s push-pull vocals out front. (Innocent? Dangerous? You decide.) There’s some new wave influence here too — it’s cool when the dudes come in on backup in the chorus of “Dinosaur.”
American Life in Poetry
Many of this column’s readers have watched an amaryllis emerge from its hard bulb to flower. To me they seem unworldly, perhaps a little dangerous, like a wild bird you don’t want to get too close to. Here Connie Wanek of Duluth, Minn., takes a close and playful look at an amaryllis that looks right…
Zinn fizz
Lefty historian wows crowd at Cobo.
Blues in the Night
An emphasis on bluesy and rootsy material on this collection, half new and half culled from the last dozen years of work by the vocal-guitar duo. They do “Fever” and Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” but there’s still room for whiplash hard bop, some jazz-meets-poetry material and a rockin’ take on “At Last.” Landis’ 21st album is…
Never a Good Time
There’s a sexy-but-innocent swing here that you never get from the band live. Too-cute singer Mariah Cherem might not have the vox to front a proper rock ‘n’ roll band, but the big, Derwood Andrews-like guitars, Bo Diddley beats, shout-along girl-group refrains and John Speck production give this a winning sheen. Too, the title track…
Myth, mirth and fresh water
Novi sprawls just west of the freeway tangle where I-96 meets I-275 and M-5. The usual retail, entertainment and residential features straddle Grand River Avenue as it runs through the suburbs on its northwestern meander toward Lansing; Novi really is the typical middle-American suburb. And yet, in the hands of Washtenaw County’s Great Lakes Myth…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Xtended Play
It was in limbo for a couple of years thanks to label foot-dragging, but Frank N Dank’s first full-length is worth the wait. With production contributions from OhNo, the late J. Dilla, and DJ Kemo, and Frank N Dank’s stoned confidence leading the way, this is Detroit hip hop at its finest — unpredictable, soulful,…
Paranoid
Released in a gorgeous paperboard package that’s apparently limited, Paranoid happily darts between styles, trying on Pavement as an influence before detouring into vintage 4AD and back toward conventional indie rock tarted up with cello or piano. Rescue’s so scatterbrained that Paranoid doesn’t really work as an album. But as a package of great ideas,…
A WIFF of TIFF
If you haven’t had the funds or the wherewithal to attend the overwhelming Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in past years, you’re in luck. Now in its second year, the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) has carved out a niche for itself as a purveyor of challenging, Canadian-made features both new and old; it’s also…
Making love painlessly
I’m surprised at you! Both in your response to AWOL and in a response a while back to another woman who had difficulty or discomfort sucking cock, you failed to mention one tip that I remember reading in your column way back when I was a teen in the late ’80s. I’m a small woman…
three-song demo
Apparently, 17-year-old rapper Kelz entertains Detroit elementary and middle-school kiddies to much fanfare with his puppy-dog Usher soul and an uncanny ability to rap like old-school west side Detroit. The Em’ adoration is apparent, and Kelz articulates well the everyday Motor City kid looking to get some action on. There’s even teen-beat crunk! Makes you…
Detroit, Michigan: Original D-Town Records 1965-1968
Eighteen shoulda-been hits from a Detroit trio weaned in the Black Bottom. It’s amped up on horn blips, serpentine bass, waaahck-aaahck guitar, pop melody, killer suits, perfected coifs and the dance-riot soul-din of a fading boomtown choking on its own exhaust but celebrated in the midnight hour at the Twenty Grand. There’s even some Memphis…
Peninsular pages
Timothy and James Christopher Monger are usually described as writing “literate” pop songs, and Great Lakes Myth Society is probably one of the few bands where that’s actually accurate. Here, the brotherly core of GLMS walks the walk with a list of their top eight favorite regional books. Welcome to your handmade autumn-into-winter reading list.…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Warrior Kings
The blogs keep saying heavy metal is back, but if you ask Wolfbait, they’ll say it never left. Warrior Kings rumbles like Maiden, rhymes “dark” with “rock,” sometimes sounds like the Cult, and always makes you want to bash mailboxes with a bat. They’re also another Wolf band. Local heshers, your Saturday night has arrived.
Dear Sir EP
Sticky-sweet like the first kiss under twitching neon after six beers, this EP cracks the code of Pop Mastery in the same way, say, Jellyfish or even Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart did. Shit, Jon Brion could don PAS/CAL’s songcraft like lay-around sweat pants. And if “Little Red Radio” isn’t a huge fucking hit by…
Worrying about the least of these
Well, the election is over, and I can say that once again, it came out exactly the way I thought it would. Except, that is, for one state legislative seat in North Carolina, and I am confident the recount there will vindicate me. Truthfully, however, lest any comparisons be made with any sportswriters living or…
Ready, aim… fire
Let’s shoot them all at a wall and see what sticks, what’s sweet, what stinks and where they fall. “Grapeshot” is a new, periodic feature that rounds up local music releases, gives them a listen and then gives them a grade. Sure, they’re a little shorter than our regular reviews. But we’re trying to maximize…
The Breakdown
Any bar in Anytown, USA, on a Tuesday night, near some college. There’s always some dancefloor asshole doing the faux-cosmic, arm-flailing, on-one-leg-twirling hippie dance when the band covers moe.
Ask Me Now
Graceful and intimate in a post-Bill Evans Trio sort of way, pianist Vreeland, bassist John Dana and drummer Renell Gonsalves deserve to settle into a long residency in a quiet club with a rapt audience. Their repertoire is especially well chosen, from the ubiquitous “Good-bye Pork Pie Hat” to less-well-known pieces like Tony Williams’ “Pee…
Backslash
Eff you, Santa! — And so it begins: As soon as the last trick-or-treater slunk home and the clock struck midnight, Nov. 1, it officially became open season for obnoxious singing reindeer, blinking motion-activated Santas and red-and-green merchandising mayhem in the aisles of every drugstore and every department store in every goddamned town in the…
The King
For Elvis Valderez, being a bastard sucks. While his whore mother wastes away in some sleazy brothel, his dad gets born again, moves to a posh suburb and starts a lily-white family of Christian rockers who protest their school’s policy of teaching evolution. Meanwhile, Elvis does his time in the Navy, learns a thing or…
Midwest Side Story
With top-shelf production to match GT’s feisty flow, Midwest Side moves quickly and keeps the skits and filler to a minimum, and sticks around with hooks and a fresh mix of thoughtfulness and the usual boasts. From “Dimes Nicks”: “I make Michigan anthems/Pan Am and Miami/With Michigan tags on the Grand Am.”
Ypsisongs
If you’re into classifying your hipsters, Ypsi is supposed to be where the enlightened ones live. Or something. Jokes aside, this burg-celebrating comp is an agreeable mix of folk (Annie Palmer), alt-country (Vailcode), deliciously manic metalcore (Coke Dick Motorcycle Awesome with “Ypsilanti Jaxxxy”), and fractured-pop home recordings (Leaving Rouge). Plenty of local color and paths…
Letters to the Editor
Evilest man alive? Re: “The kinder, gentler Satanist” (Metro Times, Oct. 25), I found this article rather well-written and not at all biased. Even if the author is a Christian and found the topic of interest, she didn’t impose her own immediate interpretation of Satanism onto it. The mainstream Christian community continues to maintain the…
Brothers of the Head
Though faux reality presentations have been around since Orson Welles first scared the hell out of New Jersey in 1938 with War of the Worlds, the term “mockumentary” didn’t enter our lexicon until Rob Reiner first used it to describe This Is Spinal Tap. Despite a few notable exceptions (Blair Witch Project, Man Bites Dog),…
It’s About Time
Part of the legendary musical McKinney clan and a member of Straight Ahead, drummer-keyboardist McKinney delivers a perfectly pleasant smooth jazz disc, including covers of “Makin’ Love in the Rain” and “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” Then there’s the curve ball of the wailin’ title track. Session players include violinist Regina Carter and Cassius Richmond.
Live at the Stardust Cafe
Seems Detroit violinist Khoury happened to be in Orlando, Fla., on business and put out feelers for free improv types. The results (with percussionist Welch and Sam Rivers protégé Mackie on sax) are impressive. They play (apparently) without knowing where they’ll end up. If that’s your bag, you won’t regret tagging along for 40 minutes.
Inertia creeps
Distortion clattered off the Diego Rivera murals on a recent Friday evening at the DIA, as the Dirtbombs brought their revved-up truth and soul to the museum’s courtyard space. The performance was in conjunction with the Annie Leibovitz: American Music photo exhibit showing just down the hall, including a shot of Jack and Meg White.…
Punch & Judaism
Sacha Baron Cohen’s most offensive creation is Borat Sagdiyev, an oblivious Kazakhstani TV reporter who struggles to understand American culture through his sincerely sexist and anti-Semitic attitudes. His character is so convincing that Cohen’s interviewees are often lulled into revealing their own repugnant opinions, or swallowing their revulsion and gently attempting to correct the reporter’s…
Demo
“Let’s drink to the end of dreaming days/Ghosts make better partners/Don’t mind if you’re broken.” Yow, now that’s a line. DBD is Scott Sellwood, of Brandon Waird’s band and on-again, off-again Saturday Looks Good To Me. This wonderful collection of 13 airy, acoustic-driven songs incorporate footstomps, well-timed sleigh bells, hints of ambient distortion and the…
Cotton Museum
t’s that precise moment when you question the soundness of your own existence, your own survival, and every personal horizon is lost. It other words, when the daybreak greets your coke crash. But how CM managed to capture that “feeling” through, basically, unorganized electronic noise and hum is remarkable. Great stuff, truly. (See cottonmuseum.tastysoil.com.)
Motor City Cribs
Scotty Karate’s Wyandotte pad.
C.R.A.Z.Y.
Growing up in suburban Quebec in the 1960s, 7-year-old Zac is deathly afraid of disappointing his father, desperately praying that he won’t become what his macho dad seems to hate most: “a fairy.” When dad catches him dressed in Mom’s jewelry, cooing over the new baby, the jig is up: “I had just turned 7…
Breathing Underwater
BU deserves kudos for execution, this four-song EP sounds major-label ready. But it’s just what the world needs, another quintet of mass-produced suburban dudes with hair-product locks playing a kind of soft power-chord rock (stippled with piano and strings) whose record collections don’t run any deeper than Radiohead. Blah.
The class of 1998
When It Came from Detroit premiered on a recent Friday evening, the Detroit Film Theatre was filled with a sold-out crowd of scene people, DFT regulars and various local musicians. The brainchild of filmmakers James P. Petix and Sarah Babila, the film is one of the first official attempts to chronicle the modern garage rock…
Babel
Director Alejandro González Iñárritu has made a film of often stunning beauty and power, marred by more than a few manipulative, implausible plot twists. The movie connects the dots among more than a dozen lives spread across the globe, brought together by a single gun shot. It’s fired in Morocco by a couple of peasant…
American Zen
There’s a promising trend toward this sort of band locally; like Porchsleeper, Cowboy Messiah makes the sort of straight-ahead rock that’s live performance-friendly and made better by drinking. Maybe it should be called beer-core. Cheers.
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When George W. Bush replaced Bill Clinton as U.S. president, Bush’s advisor Karl Rove decided to take extraordinary measures in cleansing the White House of the previous occupants’ energy, which is why he summoned three Catholic priests to perform an exorcism. I urge you to do something equally vivid in order…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 8 A Salute to Women Winemakers COMMUNITY When you put two of Night & Day’s favorite things together — wine and women — you can bet your ass that we’re going to sing some praises. Enter the Fifth Annual Birmingham Rotary Wine Tasting event where the ladies of the rotary will salute women…
Entre La Mer Et L’eau Douce
The effects of the French New Wave didn’t end at the Atlantic Ocean. Quebecois filmmaker Michel Brault — inspired by the low-cost, on-the-fly techniques of Godard, Francois Truffaut and others — cobbled together a small budget and cast of unknowns to make the strange, entrancing slice-of-life drama Entre La Mer Et L’eau Douce. Brault’s film…
Stars
Cool and hazy, just like the in-motion black-and-white cover art. The Come Ons’ fourth full-length fades back from the dancefloor a bit, but has a great sashay to it, particularly on “Let Me Be” and the incredible “Another Day,” which is what driving through a deserted Detroit at 5 in the morning sounds like. It…
The Fags get screwed
John Speck walks like he’s going to get jumped. He takes long strides, his hands stay forward, and his eyes anticipate everyone’s next move. Tonic slicks his hair back, and he wears Dickies work shirts in layers. It’s an unseasonably warm night for autumn in Michigan when we arrive at Cass Cafe, but if it…
Under the neon
We solicited a handful of area musical “names” to scribble out some honest commentary on the current state of Detroit music. Because our own humid, hungover and cigarette-fouled breath can get mighty weary, we were keen to use outside voices. And besides, these cats know what’s up, from the neon flicker down to the gutter.…
Flushed Away
Though Aardman Animations has been bought by Dreamworks, the new Aardman film Flushed Away maintains the look and tone of Aardman’s clay style, expanding the limits of what they can create. The film is so jam-packed with visual jokes, sly satire and wacky digressions it sometimes feels like an amped-up episode of The Simpsons. Roddy…
Pistol
Does the red-hued cover of this four-song EP sport a heart with rising flames that’s flanked by two pistols, one inscribed with the word “heartbreaker” and the other “lifetaker”? You bet. Does it sound like a sweaty, man-tit mook-fest mining a Stooges (yawn) thud motherload? Yup. Does the singer yelp, “Your love is a pistol/pointed…
Creative ferment
Putnam Weekley, who could be simply described as a wine activist, sells wine and dispenses prodigious amounts of philosophy on wine as well as other subjects at Cloverleaf Fine Wines & Spirits (29673 Northwestern Hwy., Applegate Plaza, Southfield; 248-357-0400) and on his forums, at cloverleafwine.com/forums. Metro Times: On your forum, you have plenty to say on…
Soft landing
Before it opened a few weeks ago, Meditations in an Emergency, the first show at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, had a lot of hype. The show, curated by Klaus Kertess, features work by nine internationally recognized artists. With the anticipation came questions about what a new museum can and should do to enliven the…
G-Mommy Tales
Old-school, Run-DMC-ish raps that work like a 14-track cautionary tale. Harlem-born Detroiter Grandma Rap and emcee Big Whillz cloak their raps in a sometimes-irksome preachiness that’s offset with pocketbook street philosophizing. To wit: “Never thought I’d end up in the big house … Mother and father had problems, gee whiz.” Best cuts: “You Ain’t Hittin’…
The Verb Hip-Hop EP
Matt (“X-It”) and Mario (“TexT”) are two white guys pissed because they’ve been stepped on. But they’re unwavering in their intent to express how they’re going to “make it in the music business.” See, the “R” in Verb “is for the realness that we spittin’.” Got it?
It’s Nice, vol. 2: Guster in Ann Arbor
Guster hits Ann Arbor for a show at Hill Auditorium tonight, so it’s worth revisiting the quick interview I did last summer with Joe Pisapia, the Boston-based band’s multi-instrumentalist, newest member, and all-around nice fella. (Check out his personal Web site for info on his new solo album too.) Actually, all the dudes in Guster…
