Homecoming at the Electoral College
Here’s something to think about as we go down to the wire in this very close presidential election: George Bush and John Kerry are both paying far more attention to New Mexico than to our three largest states put together. That’s right, they’re pouring millions of dollars into New Mexico, which has fewer people than…
This Week
The new-agey poster chick for female emcees is back with her long-awaited second album. And she’s amped to take on past critics and kick the sophomore jinx straight in its ass. Her debut, Attack of the Attacking Things managed the get the South African-born, New York-bred lyricist considerable underground buzz while somehow rubbing a gang…
Art Bar
Detroit-born artist Eugene Harris — better known as Geno — will unveil his first solo show, entitled Poor Man’s Art, this Saturday at 227 Iron St., Suite 201 (just south of the Redd Apple Gallery). The artist assembles collages of photos, scraps of paper and miscellaneous items, and then coats the creation with varnish; this…
Wine, Women And Song
Metal is supposed to be brutal, and Porn (The Men Of) understands this. But when it’s also experimental, that’s when things get really hairy. For the Bay Area band’s latest Small Stone offering, lead Porner Tim Moss is joined by bassist/producer Billy Armstrong and Melvins drummer Dale Crover for a journey through proto-Sabbath sludge, intellectual…
The 2004 CMJ Music Marathon
The CMJ (College Media Journal) Network has been trumpeting indie music long before it was co-opted by the mainstream. The music (and film) marathon — which took place Wednesday, Oct. 13, through Saturday, Oct. 16, in New York City — offered hundreds of shows at 50-plus venues. CMJ also hosted more than 50 panels. That…
Bing with a Beat
I know a lot of you wiseacres think this title has something to do with Der Bingle being such a strict hands-on disciplinarian with his sons! B-uh-uh-BAH! This 1957 collection of Dixieland jazz, universally acknowledged as his finest long-player, goes a long way to explaining his appeal before “Road” movies, White Christmas and his a-bah-bah-bah-bysmal…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
This is MB6! Collect the whole series! • Brian Wilson — Smile (Live In Concert) :: Yeah, I love paying big bucks to watch a medicated wax dummy spend the entire evening reading from two teleprompters that are force-feeding him his own lyrics. • John Frusciante — Inside Of Emptiness (Record Collection) :: If you…
Duran Duran
No, it’s not the Killers dressed up in Duran Duran novelty masks. Astronaut is a full-fledged Duran reunion, from the Taylors times three to Nick Rhodes and Simon LeBon. The greatest band of the video age has aged into gallant mascara robots, but still brings the big choruses quite capably here. The cheeky electro tickle…
Rouge reverence
Industrial mythology: President Calvin Coolidge once wrote, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple … the man who works there worships there … to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise.” Likewise, modern artist Charles Sheeler commented that American factories are “our substitute for religious expression.” Architect Albert Kahn…
Junior Boys
If the Scissor Sisters cut the sound track to summer flings, the Junior Boys have pasted together an autumnal pastiche of singlehood. This blue-eyed soul reminiscent of Hall & Oates, led by Jeremy Greenspan and Johnny Dark, blends with pop electro into a “sad dance” category that tips its hat equally to Tahiti 80’s Wallpaper…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I have a good imagination, but it’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around the possibility that anyone besides a white Christian fundamentalist millionaire is planning to vote for George W. Bush in the upcoming election. The man is not only a menace to the environment, women’s rights, health care,…
Making airwaves
It’s that time of year when the air cools, the leaves change color and WDET-101.9 FM asks listeners to fork over some dough to keep the public radio station afloat. But will WDET see fewer dollars this fall pledge drive given the radical program changes it instituted last month? Some loyal listeners were irked when…
Sleazy rider
Director/writer/actor/camera operator/infamous weirdo Vincent Gallo has produced a quietly powerful film, a film that’s more often than not sentimental and old-fashioned in taking its time to tell a story. The Brown Bunny is refreshing in that it lacks extraneous, maudlin dialogue and easy explanations. It’s a film that Gallo can be proud of, stunning and…
Those cheatin’ hearts
Q: I am an 18-year-old student. I have trust issues. I have been with my boyfriend for 10 months now, and he’s very supportive. I am not a jealous person or a controlling head case because I have no problem with him going to bars/clubs with friends, going to parties when other girls are there,…
Johnny off the spot
Last week, Wayne County Commissioner Bernard Parker finally got a chance to respond to Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s decision to return some crime-prevention money to the state. Sitting before the commission’s committee on public safety and homeland security, representatives of Worthy’s office explained why Johns TV wasn’t included in the budget for the fiscal year that…
Point of Order!
Emile De Antonio’s 1964 Point of Order! distills the televised U.S. Army-McCarthy hearings, held in the spring of 1954, into a concise and dramatic 97 minutes. The film presents in digestible form possibly the first time that television played a significant role in American politics. Aside from that it’s a hell of a story and…
Head cheese
Shannon Selberg fronts post-punk scuzz-rockers the Heroine Sheiks, an act molded on guitarist Norman Westberg’s former bands (Foetus, Swans) and Selberg’s previous noise-rock compadres, the Cows. While the Sheiks exercise more subtlety and finesse than the aforementioned combos, they’re still uncooked and crunchy, even rankled and randy. Hell, Selberg’s stage antics are legendary. The loosely-built…
Outwageous
Unable to get the city to step in and enforce what they say are their rights under Detroit’s living wage ordinance, Cobo Hall security guards have turned to the courts. A class action lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court last week claiming that Guardian Security Services Inc. is illegally underpaying Cobo security guards. The…
Team America: World Police
Featuring gorgeous low-tech sets and hilarious deadpan marionettes, the hyper-clichéd story of Team America is a play on the 1960s marionette TV show The Thunderbirds, courtesy the geniuses behind South Park. The puppet daredevils pursue terrorists in a twisted, rude and shamelessly parody of post-9/11 America that isn’t as effective or funny — consistently —…
Jam session in the sky
A band is jamming on a dimly lit nightclub stage, magically transporting the observer from New York to New Orleans to Europe and various points along the way. Given the expansive 1931-to-1954 time frame of this performance, it’s labeled “The Greatest Jam Session That Never Happened.” A piano, trumpet, upright bass and set of drums…
Low on curb appeal
Not far from this burned-out two-story bungalow at 2153 Chalmers on Detroit’s East Side, new homes have been constructed, and more appear to be on the way. They sit in stark contrast to this sty in the eye, built in 1919 and valued at about $12,000, according to the city’s most recent tax records. Trash,…
I [HEART] Huckabees
If you heard or saw the tagline for this movie, “an existentialist comedy,” and were enthusiastic to see a film that tackles with deep understanding and wit a philosophical school of thought responsible for Kafka’s cockroaches, you’re going to be madly disappointed. I © Huckabees has an over-qualified group of actors, some pretty funny sight…
First, make a roux
For me, Louisiana is the culinary mecca of the United States. The abundance of fresh seafood and vegetables, the regional sausages and smoked meats, the generous — or rather, aggressive — use of spices by cooks with roots from around the world; all this combined delivers the best chow I’ve ever eaten. Of the many…
Proactive
Trial run? — If you want to see George W. Bush stand trial (sort of) for his alleged misdeeds during the past four years, head to Xhedos Café in Ferndale at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 25. The Raging Grannies, a group of somewhat elderly women dressed in bonnets and aprons, will stage a mock trial…
Zelary
Adapted from an autobiographical novella, Zelary’s heroine, Eliska, is a young med student and resistance fighter in Prague in 1943 forced to hide out in the countryside with a peasant lug. It’s a movie with a lot of gritty violence and a tragic climax, yet at its core it’s a love story with an emotionally…
Reinvented redhead
After 2000’s Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons, it looked as though perhaps Blonde Redhead had taken the boys over at Chunklet magazine up on one of their semi-infamous breakup-for-money offers and threw in the towel. But ’twas not true — turns out singer/guitarist Kazu Makino was thrown from the back of a horse in 2002,…
Noise is for heroes
It’s 11:30 on a chilly Friday night and some guy called Roach — all 6 feet 2 inches and 200-plus pounds of him — is furiously clicking a computer mouse in vain, trying to get Slayer’s “Angel of Death” to stop blasting through the speakers. Big, loud speakers that dominate this 7-by-11-foot concrete room just…
Head in the Clouds
Starring real-life couple Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend, the flick reads like an old-time war movie, only significantly kinked up for modern sensibilities. But like a cold shower, Head in the Cloud’s serious side washes away the sizzle. The World War II love story is told at an agonizingly slow pace with an arduous plot.
N&D Center
WEDNESDAY- SATURDAY • 20-23 The Elephant Vanishes THEATER The absurd and fantastic can emerge even from the daily grind; that’s the premise of The Elephant Vanishes, a multimedia work that is surreal yet familiar, disturbing yet humorous. Based on Haruki Murakami’s short story collection of the same name, the play explores modern Japanese consciousness yet…
Ethics for idiots
If Kwame and company don’t feel they’re above the law, it’s probably because they don’t care about the law in the first place.
The Final Cut
How much longer will Robin Williams pay penance for Patch Adams? The latest in a string of dour, depressive, lithium-induced performances that began with 2002’s Insomnia and One Hour Photo, The Final Cut casts the former funnyman as a loner toiling away as a kind of futuristic video editor who prepares super-deluxe funeral presentations for…
Six words of separation
It comes down to just six words. On Nov. 2, a proposed amendment to the Michigan Constitution will go before voters. It reads: “To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement…
Letters to the Editor
Feat of Clay? Re: “Morrissey vs. Clay Aiken” (Metro Times, Oct. 13), how sad that Serene Dominic finds it necessary to make fun of Clay Aiken in this manner. Mr. Aiken has said many times that his private life is his own and he refuses to discuss it. In leading a decent life, becoming a…
The Manson Family
This graphic and gripping mockumentary recreates the infamous murders of the Manson Family in 1969. The film doesn’t romanticize the subject, and isn’t meant to be enjoyed in any traditional sense. The most tolerant viewer will come away with senses pummeled and a head full of dark ideas to sort out. If a heavy mindfuck…
Second fiddle?
Growing up, bassist Paul Randolph’s grandfather left his progeny this indelible piece of advice: “If you’re gonna go somewhere, you gotta go with something.” And through the years, behind the scenes as the cat in the back or as a bandleader, Randolph has heeded granddad’s counsel. In fact, this Randolph guy is a musician’s musician…
Comics
This Modern World Red Meat The Comix
More than a warm gun
Have you ever wanted to run the slow driver with the cell phone to his ear off the road? Or decapitate the obnoxious, fitted-cap-clad idiot at the table next to you? Or pondered the possibility of a disease that targets those with double-digit IQs or seven-digit incomes? If so, then you can appreciate the sentiments…
It’s a small world after all
Each day they offer a different soup; three Indian dishes, two of them vegetarian; a “Mideast feast” of hommous, tabouli and falafel; a veggie quesadilla; a pasta dish, such as spaghetti with chicken meatballs; nachos; three pizzas; Greek salad; and three American-style sandwiches. Desserts are Middle Eastern pastries, and you will often find crisp, fresh…
Choose sides — or the sidelines
Remember that image of the Rev. Al Sharpton sitting on the stage at the Northwest Activities Center all alone? During the presidential primaries, long before the race had narrowed down to the current field of two major party candidates, you may remember a February town hall meeting, sponsored by the Freedom Forum, at the activities…
The Electras
With the presidential election drawing ever nearer, a new controversy has emerged that will serve to further distract both candidates from focusing on the real issues. That’s right, serious questions are again being raised about Senator John Kerry’s garage band record, on account of The Electras, the group’s 1961 eponymous debut album, getting officially rereleased…
