Throw your set in the air
Move The Crowd: Voices And Faces Of The Hip-Hop Nation By Gregor and Dimitri Ehrlich MTV Books, $16.95, 142pp. During Yo! MTV Raps’ heyday, MTV gave hundreds of artists invaluable promotion and exposed millions of listeners to the exploding hip-hop phenomenon. Yet MTV’s agenda has always been dictated by people far removed from the music…
Happy, Texas
There really is a Happy, Texas, but the community portrayed in Mark Illsley’s directorial debut only exists in the fertile soil of American imaginations. The just plain folks who populate the fictitious Happy are quite content to live in a sleepy small town, but this doesn’t mean they’re small-minded. So what if the two professional…
Planet Ant Theatre
A former hip cafe transformed into a bold performance venue, this bare-bones space is conducive to intimate and innovative performances of all types. Run by a cadre of theater school graduates, playwrights covered run the gamut from Shakespeare to Steven Dietz and Eric Bogosian, with some local flavor thrown in for good measure.
School for stompin’
Teddy Harris shares sacred ground with young musicians….
Frank Johnson’s union dues
The morning began like most other workdays for Frank Johnson. Up before 4 to see his wife off to her job at an auto plant, he downs a couple cups of coffee and does chores around the house for an hour or so before climbing into his 11-year-old Dodge pickup for a 15-minute drive to…
Seeing through water
Tacita Dean’s images navigate persistent oceans of the mind….
In one ear
ROCK ’N’ ROLL NEVER FORGETS It was a weekend of bittersweet celebration as members of Detroit’s music community memorialized the loss of two of their own who lived life to their own beat. There’s really no way to encompass in such a short space the position that promoter, manager, mentor, friend and fan of Detroit…
Mariela and the dictator
"Today, justice was done," Gonzalo Martinez, Mexico’s former ambassador to Chile, proclaimed last week, when a British court ruled the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet could be sent to Spain for trial on human rights charges. "Pinochet lived a long time, but history caught up with him," Martinez intoned. Well, not quite yet. The sawdust…
Dirt cheap sensation
In my driveway, there’s a pile of dirt. Not a large pile of dirt, really. Just big enough that I’d need to trade up to a midsized suburban assault vehicle to be able to park on it. But when I decide to move the dirt, I’m stopped short by the Lizard of Fun throwing itself…
Glossy gala, gym swing
HEIRS AND MOHAIRS Woodward magazine recently threw a little shindig for itself at the C-Pop Gallery, trucking in a rather bespectacled and suburban-looking group of predominantly middle-agers into the pulsating aorta and atrophied liver of our fair city’s arts and entertainment district. For the uninitiated, Woodward is that nascent-yet-polished little Motor City New Yorker wannabe.…
Aid from the enemy
To say that Zahraa Hamada has just made an ironic journey would be the understatement of her lifetime. The 12-year-old Iraqi girl flew thousands of miles last week to receive open-heart surgery in a country that is bombing her homeland, killing and maiming other children her age. Meanwhile, United Nations sanctions on Iraqi oil sales…
The Limey
Beneath its self-consciously arty facade, The Limey is the kind of run-of-the-mill revenge fantasy that Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson specialized in during the 1970s. Director Steven Soderbergh tries to pump up the lackluster story (written by his Kafka cohort, Lem Dobbs) with an array of jittery camerawork, baffling jumpcuts, and logic-defying continuity shifts that…
Immigrant justice
Two busloads of Detroiters will join thousands of marchers in the streets of Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, demanding amnesty for all undocumented immigrants. The march is sponsored by immigrants rights groups, religious groups, and labor and community organizations, including the Xicano Development Center on Detroit’s southwest side. Asked why she’s going, the Center’s Maria Zavala…
Romance
Several contrasting colors are at work on the screen during Catherine Breillat’s Romance. There is white for purity, red for lust, black for violence, and fleshtone, which stands for itself. And the waifish Marie (Caroline Ducey) – a French elementary school teacher in her 20s – wears them all. Sexually rejected by her live-in boyfriend,…
Shake-up for lockups?
Detroit Police Chief Benny Napoleon said that recent media attention and lawsuits over inmates dying while in precinct lockups may result in reforms in department policy. “Now that this is brought to our attention we are looking at all the deaths,” said Napoleon in an interview with the Metro Times last week. “The lawsuit and…
Economy of invention
How often do we hear about a jazz album where the drummer is also the bandleader? Well, Max Roach and Art Blakey come to mind, but then things drop off fairly quickly. I know, how about Matt Wilson? Who’s Matt Wilson? The leader (and drummer) of the Matt Wilson Quartet, that’s who. A humble little…
Food stuff
CONSULT THE SPIRITS I’m a Libra, which means generally I’m pretty balanced. But like any other mere mortal, I’m not immune to the intoxicating powers of really good vodka. Luckily, our fair city is one of a handful of locales that can reconcile astrological spirits with fine spirits. What’s the connection, you ask? Why, Royal…
Clear horizons
Anything can show up on a June of 44 album – typewriters, Moog synths, melodic-skronk guitars, avant-howling, Miles at Fillmore-esque trumpet, start-stop Studebaker drums, the familiar incantations of a ship’s captain explaining deserted shores and hearts – which makes deciphering the band’s comings and goings since 1995 more than a little challenging. But recently the…
Tele-vitalizers
After decades of hand-wringing by parents’ groups and reams of studies by sociologists, the medical community has at last weighed in on television and the young. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that not only does media violence do harm but, more importantly, the simple act of sitting in front of the idiot box for…
Juices flowing
FULL EXPOSURE: OPENING UP TO YOUR SEXUAL CREATIVITY & EROTIC EXPRESSION By Susie Bright Harper San Francisco, $22, 163pp. "We’re still dealing with sex like it was an eight-crayon box." So says sexpert Susie Bright in Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression. Her latest manifesto is an attempt to get…
Ode to soup
Forté presents a menu full of magical combinations — complex, rich flavors served with style. Every dish our reviewer tried was splendid, and the dessert tray looks like a work of art.
R’n’R chameleon
They say it’s all been done before. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. They say a lot of things. Love as Laughter, however, is too busy rewriting the rock ’n’ roll fakebook to say much of anything – and we and they are all the better for it. Love as Laughter is…
Confidentially Yours
François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) was made at the end of a decade of experimentation, of attempts by the director to infuse various genres with his unique blend of melancholy humanism and fatalistic romance. By 1969, Truffaut, who had a restless imagination and was rarely satisfied with his films, decided it was time to…
Famous death dwarves
Even sporadic moments of inspired sound can’t save The Fragile from itself. Trent Reznor drops a new haircut and this audio slab on the world and leaves us to wonder which is more intriguing. This album is a stationary tour diary documenting five years of going nowhere, at least not past the doorway of self-pity…
Mississippi Mermaid
François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) was made at the end of a decade of experimentation, of attempts by the director to infuse various genres with his unique blend of melancholy humanism and fatalistic romance. By 1969, Truffaut, who had a restless imagination and was rarely satisfied with his films, decided it was time to…
Sweeet and bubbly
Call it indie rock, power pop, alternative country or what you will, the Velvet Crush’s fourth album contains 13 strongly crafted, original pop songs full of effervescence and emotion. The two founding band members – vocalist-bassist Paul Chastain and drummer Ric Menck – have operated with a semirevolving lineup since their 1989 debut. Here most…
The Story of Adele H
François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) was made at the end of a decade of experimentation, of attempts by the director to infuse various genres with his unique blend of melancholy humanism and fatalistic romance. By 1969, Truffaut, who had a restless imagination and was rarely satisfied with his films, decided it was time to…
Buzzin’ cousins
Why an industrial compilation, assembled and co-produced by Alternative Press magazine head Mike Shea and editor Jason Pettigrew? Well, why not? The magazine devoted a lot of head and page space to the genre long before and long after Rolling Stone was publishing cheeky nine inch nails reviews with up-to-the-minute reports on the music’s dangerous…
The Wild Child
François Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) was made at the end of a decade of experimentation, of attempts by the director to infuse various genres with his unique blend of melancholy humanism and fatalistic romance. By 1969, Truffaut, who had a restless imagination and was rarely satisfied with his films, decided it was time to…
Sir Richard
Richard Thompson’s music has always been an acquired taste. At least that’s been the case with Thompson’s recordings for the last 30 years. This includes his vintage work with the Fairport Convention and the several albums he made with his then-wife Linda, as well as umpteen solo albums he’s produced with clocklike regularity. Thompson’s strong suit?…
Blowin’ out
Clarinetist Don Byron – whose open-minded approach to jazz has taken him all over the map, from the politics of the Tuskegee experiments to the inner reaches of klezmer – has sometimes frustrated fans by generating more originality than heat. But on his latest effort, he leads a quartet (with Bill Frisell, guitar; Drew Gress,…
