Happy Birthday Marshall Bruce Mathers III
Happy 39th Birthday Eminem. Even though he was born in St. Joseph, Mo back in 1972, the people of Michigan will most likely always consider him a native son. He’s spent the bulk of his professional career championing the city of Detroit and this year alone, he along with the advertising big wigs at Chrysler…
City Slang: Mayer Hawthorne on Conan tonight
Detroit indie disco King Mayer Hawthorne will be on Conan tonight (the talk show, not the Barbarian movie) to perform “The Walk” from his recent How Do You Do album. That album, his sophomore effort, came out last week on Universal/Republic. According to a press release, his LA visit will be short as he is…
City Slang: DSO rolls over Beethoven
On October 27-29, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will perform Beethoven’s Fifth. Louis Langrée will be the conductor. Price will start at $15. More information can be found here. According to the DSO website, “No other musical statement can match its raw power and bracing energy. Louis Langrée leads the Detroit Symphony in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony…
Occupy Detroit attracts protesters from across the country
Activists came from as far as California to the first day of Occupy Detroit on Friday. “Over the past 30 years, ever since Reagan’s been elected, the government has gotten more and more extreme,” said Greg Cummings, a retired 62-year-old regional planner from San Luis Obispo, Calif . “The nation has become more about greed.”…
City Slang: Detroit emcees prepare to do battle
On October 28, St. Andrew’s in Detroit will play host to Red Bull EmSee, an invitation-only freestyle emcee battle. Bun B will host, and the judges will be Royce da 5’9”, Denaun Porter of D12 and Trick Trick. DJ Dez of Slum Village will DJ. Doors open at 9 p.m. and cover is $8 in…
Occupy Detroit hits the downtown streets
The debut of Occupy Detroit on the growing national protest scene could be chalked up as organized confusion. But amidst the chaos, attendees presented a genuine case for what might come of the now month-long movement. After the first General Assembly meeting was held at the Spirit of Hope Church Oct. 10, plans for the…
Did “Hi Rihanna” from Royce Da 5′ 9″ Get Overblown?
Earlier this week during the BET hip-hop awards, a highly talked about cypher involving members of Shady Records took place that people are still discussing. For whatever reason, Detroit emcee Royce Da 5′ 9″ decided to coyly flirt with pop star Rihanna by saying “hi Rihanna” a couple of times during his verse and “bye…
City Slang: 3-D Invisibles to get spooky in Hamtramck
Old school punks the 3D Invisibles, plus Bootsey X & the Lovemasters and the Casket Bastards are to play a Halloween mega-show, called the Halloween Monster Rally, at the New Dodge in Hamtramck on October 29. The fun starts at 9 p.m. According to the event info page, “The 3-D Invisibles materialize to rock your…
Quelle Chris — “The S.O.N.” Video + New EP
Former Detroit-based producer/rapper Quelle Chris is finally starting to get more national recognition for his music. The former Westsider who now calls the Bay Area home is mostly known locally for being the main producer on Danny Brown’s The Hyrbrid and XXX album’s along with being a part of the Crown Nation family. He’s currently…
Weekend
Weekend B+ Sure, it’s a bit like a gay Before Sunrise set in London, but more emotionally and intellectually challenging if, thankfully, not as conventionally romantic. The quiet, reserved Russell (Tom Cullen) lives alone in a small high-rise flat, which is where he brings the chatty Glen (Chris New) after picking him up at…
The Thing
The Thing C+ Homage is one thing. Imitation is another. Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn’t blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he’s borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott’s claustrophobic Alien. I guess…
My Afternoons with Marguerite
My Afternoons with Marguerite B Gérard Depardieu is a towering figure in the French cinema, a fact belied by his Falstaffian girth, which is now rivaling late-period Orson Welles. His stature has only grown, even as in recent years he’s increasingly taken to lighter fare; at least at work, if not at the dinner…
City Slang Reads: Niagara – Beyond the Pale
Niagara has just about done it all. Punk front-woman, art rock pioneer, performance artist, painter, designer – the woman is a force of nature. She’s also kinda awesome. I first met her when researching my Stooges book, and the sections on Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival (both of which featured Ron Asheton) in particular.…
Wanna buy a foreclosed house in Wayne County? This can help
If anyone is considering buying tax-foreclosed properties being auctioned off by Wayne County starting Oct. 21, you will want to know about a new tool being made available on line by the local nonprofit group Data Driven Detroit. The free tool was created to make it easier for community groups, neighborhood organizations and residents to…
The Big Year
The Big Year C Just who was this movie made for? I know the Audubon Society boasts a healthy membership, but is it really big enough to justify the salaries of Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson? Did the producers negotiate a package deal? All three are past their comedic prime, lately turning…
City Slang: “Field Day” revisited
Man, I love Marshall Crenshaw. Really, really love the dude. There are few artists in Detroit (or certainly anywhere else) capable of writing a pure pop song that can dig as deep into the soul as the Berkley boy. Mitch Ryder maybe. The Romantics had their moments for sure. But Crenshaw is right up there.…
Danny Brown and Black Milk Release Debut Single
Photo by Gerard Victor In case you hadn’t heard the news, two of Detroit’s best hip-hop talents have teamed up to make one mean-ass record. Former MT cover boy Danny Brown and the freakishly talented Black Milk are releasing their anticipated EP, Black and Brown, on November 1st via Fat Beats Records. It’s going to…
Screwing us over, yet again
You gotta hand it to our state legislators, especially those serving in the Senate. They know all about shared sacrifice. They just define it a little differently than you or I would. They believe it means pretending to sacrifice, but really making future generations pay so they don’t have to. They proved this last week,…
Feist – Metals (Interscope)
Leslie Feist’s unexpected march to the pop charts with 2007’s The Reminder seems to have sent her running for cover. Her contrarian third album tones down the hooks in favor of a series of ponderous mood pieces, preoccupied with spaciousness and unison. Opener "The Bad in Each Other" is a filmic, arena-sized lament, while the…
Report from the occupation
New York — Although working, ironically enough, for a bankruptcy specialist in Troy, Justin Lecea still couldn’t manage to afford his car and rent payments. Then the tough times got worse six months ago, when the 26-year-old Flint native lost his job at a law firm. With no prospects in sight after months of looking,…
Beware: Closet claustrophobia
Q: I am an 18-year-old straight male. I have a hodgepodge of birth defects that affect my genitalia: severe hypospadias (my urethra — my piss slit — is at the base of my penis), micropenis (less than two inches) and anorchia (I was born without testes). I have never been naked around anyone else. I…
Food Stuff
How’s them apples? The Greening of Detroit is hosting a field trip out to Almar Orchards in Genesee County. Participants will be given a tour of the fourth-generation, 500-acre organic orchard, all while learning about Michigan’s most cultivated and produced fruit. And don’t forget Almar’s year-round petting zoo and all-organic selections of donuts, honey, bread,…
Hello, again
Ristorante Ciao 22023 Michigan Ave., Dearborn 313-277-2426 Handicap accessible Entrées: $16-$27 Eat at the newly reopened Ciao and emerge feeling as if you’ve soaked in a bath of cream. It’s hard not to be beguiled by foods this high in butterfat, and I was. Entrées with a tomato sauce of the kind most folks identify…
Footloose
Footloose D Is there any thing lamer than rebelling exactly the same way that your parents did? The original Footloose felt like an especially cheesy time-capsule refugee almost from the instant it hit screens in 1984, yet here’s a near shot-for-shot remake that adds little to the old formula. This new, unimproved Footloose slathers on…
In Wayne County, it can pay to retire
It turns out Turkia Mullin’s $200,000 “severance” check is only one of dozens of potentially controversial separation payments made to Wayne County administrators this year. About 40 employees — high-ranking appointees of County Executive Robert Ficano’s among them — received up to 24 weeks of their salaried pay in addition to payouts of their unused…
Honky-tonkin’
Two minutes into Dennis Coffey’s funk masterpiece “Scorpio” it begins: one of the slinkiest bass solos in recorded music, courtesy fellow funk brother Bob Babbitt. By 1972, the year “Scorpio” broke, Coffey and Babbitt already had deep history, one cemented a decade earlier in seminal Detroit rock ‘n’ roll band, the Royaltones. By the time…
Jane who?
Kojak’s lollipop. Columbo’s raincoat. Magnum’s Tigers cap. Since the dawn of TV time, once networks figured out that crime does pay in terms of higher ratings, the most memorable and charismatic crimebusters have been distinguished by a prop, an accessory that identifies the character as immediately as voice or mannerisms. And so it is again…
PAPA – A Good Woman Is Hard to Find (Hit City U.S.A.)
We seldom hear the electrified navelgaze of American alt-rock described as "elegant," but there’s no better description for the often beautiful debut EP from this California trio. It’s little wonder that PAPA is an offshoot of Girls; they share that band’s intimidating gift for both melodic directness and dreamlike haziness. Though the record is a…
Bombs away
As the late ’70s turned into the early ’80s, the punk scene worldwide split into two very distinct camps. There was the aggressive, pissed-off hardcore scene, complete with skinheads and circle pits. And then there were the sharp-suited new wave peeps, happy to embrace Beatles influences. In Detroit, the former meant Negative Approach, the Necros,…
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness
Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness B+ It’s usually not a good sign if while watching a movie you find yourself wishing you had read the book instead — which is exactly what I started to feel halfway through Joseph Dorman’s documentary about Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (aka Sholem Aleichem). Considering, however, that I had…
Björk – Biophilia (Nonesuch)
The breadth and outlandishness of Björk’s multimedia project Biophilia makes it easy to forget that it’s really just a collection of songs — ten adventurous, multilayered new one by an artist for whom those attributes are status quo. Like her prior full-length, 2007’s Volta, the new material is a condensation of her first decade of…
Gone, Daddy, Gone
Among mid-20th century America’s massive vinyl landscape, there are many who had one shot in front of a microphone only to disappear forever. The only sign of their aural existence a two-and-a-half-minute opus of timeless musical frenzy. But few ever waxed a disc as aptly titled as the one by Vic Gallon: "I’m Gone." With…
Letters to the Editor
Cross purposes Re: Jack Lessenberry’s "To hell with the poor" (Sept. 28), Lessenberry needs to read his own writings. Wasn’t it Jack who supported Gov. Snyder’s cuts when he first became governor? Jack criticized then-Gov. Granholm for not making the necessary budget cuts. But Gov. Granholm was influential enough to get billions from Washington to…
Toast
Toast B- A memoir about British food in the mid-’60s? Are they kidding? Nope, Toast is indeed centered on bygone eats produced by a soggy land that culinary innovation forgot; a nation whose dodgy, gravy-drenched comfort food amounted to one long spotted dick joke spread over the decades like a thin gruel. But, baked…
Coffey blast
It’s a calm Saturday morning on Detroit’s West Grand Boulevard. Just west of Henry Ford Hospital, cars line both sides of the streets. The parking lot of the James H. Cole funeral home is overflowing, and, directly next door, patrons in small groups walk up to the Motown Museum, aka Hitsville USA, for an early…
A flash of Mulenga
As usual my pal Mulenga Harangua didn’t answer the door when I tapped on it. I couldn’t even peek in because a couple of boards covered up where the window used to be. I heard some noise from the back of the house, so I went around, and there he was enjoying some late-season sun…
Cannabis Cup in the D
Michigan’s medical marijuana community will be spotlighted in a big way when High Times magazine brings the Cannabis Cup to Detroit this weekend. The first Michigan Medical Cannabis Cup competition and exposition kicks off at noon Saturday and continues through Sunday evening at Bert’s Warehouse Theatre in Eastern Market. The Michigan Cup will feature the…
‘Groundhog Day’ in a Wayne County court
To steal a line attributed to the great legal scholar Yogi Bera, it was like déjà vu all over again in Judge Prentis Edwards’ courtroom last week. Lawyers representing the Michigan Department of Transportation were facing off once more in Wayne County Circuit Court against attorneys for the Detroit International Bridge Co. in a long-running…
Occupy Detroit now planned for Friday
Over 1,000 people gathered together Monday night at the Spirit of Hope Church in Detroit for Occupy Detroit’s first general assembly meeting. Area activists voted to move the protest to Friday, Oct. 14, at Grand Circus Park. Friday’s general assembly meeting will begin at 4 p.m. at the Spirit of Detroit statue at the Coleman…
City Slang: Weekly music review roundup
Remember – if you send it, it will get reviewed. That’s the City Slang promise. It doesn’t matter what genre the music is – as long as it has a Metro Detroit connection, it’ll get in. Preferably, we’d like to concentrate on new releases but, while we’re getting warmed up here, feel free to send…
Eastern Market’s R. Hirt Jr. to close? It’s not that simple
Here’s some news that took us by surprise this afternoon: A press release that the venerable, 118-year-old family business in Eastern Market, R. Hirt. Jr., will close its historic store before the end of the year. According to the bulletin, the business’ nearby wholesale operations on Chrysler Drive will remain and, in fact, expand, but…
Avengers assemble!
There’s a hoary old legend, famous in fanboy circles, that sometime in the spring of 1961 Martin Goodman, publisher of tiny, struggling Marvel Comics played a friendly round of golf with some of his rivals over at DC. No one remembers who won on the links, but allegedly Goodman got a chapped ass from hearing…
