What up doe!
Perception is not always reality in my eyes — sometimes you learn things and expect a certain outcome, but that’s not always the case, especially when it comes to me. So, come along, Detroit, as I take you for a bumpy ride in the coming weeks and months, through all different genres of music. It…
City Slang: Carolyn Striho to play Dylan’s
Singer / songwriter Carolyn Striho will play at Dylan’s in Grosse Pointe Park this Saturday, October 15. The show is extra significant because it sees the return of Dave Dion on bass. According to Striho, “This is our only October show as we get ready for the Italy tour – coming up in early November…
Wieber Fever: Flipping for a Michigan gymnast at the World Champs
Detroit should save some room in its jock psyche this week for Jordyn Wieber. Don’t worry, the Michigan teen doesn’t need much space. At about half the size of an average Tiger or Lions player, the still-mighty Wieber, of DeWitt near Lansing, is leading the team of U.S. women gymnasts at the World Championships in…
City Slang: There’s no conflict of interest in music and sport
There’s a strange little cultural difference between the UK and the States that I have noticed since relocating from the old country nearly four years ago. In the UK, pretty much everyone has their soccer team and there is no stigma attached. Here, it seems as if music fans, hipsters and nihilists take pride in…
City Slang: Luder to open for Kyuss Lives
Local stoner rockers Luder will open for Kyuss Lives, the band featuring most of Kyuss, at the Crofoot in Pontiac on December 3. Doors are at 8, and tickets are $25. Also on the bill are out-of-towners The Sword and Black Cobra. Luder, of course, include in its ranks Small Stone Records head honcho Scott…
City Slang: Prussia to premiere new video on Impose
Local awesome indie rockers Prussia have announced that the band’s video for “What am I Gonna Tell Your Mom?” will be premiered here, on Impose. In addition, the “My Marie” single will be premiered on AOL Spinner. In a statement, the band said that, “Over the past three months the Detroit band has released a…
Margaret
Margaret C+ Not that the behind-the-scene details should matter, but there’s been a long and tortured history to Kenneth Lonergan’s second film, Margaret. Shot in 2003, scheduled for release in 2006, this ambitious, pretentious cautionary tale in artistic overreach is only now showing in an arthouse near you. In the intervening eight years, two…
2 losses to Detroit jazz: Bess Bonnier and Brad Felt (update)
One of the great and unusual combinations of jazz voices hereabouts was the big-horn/little-horn thing that Steve Wood and Brad Felt had going at least since the ’80s, with Steve on sax (especially the relatively small soprano) and Brad on tuba or euphonium, romping through tunes like “Second Balcony Jump,” a Jerry Valentine composition from…
City Slang: Black Jake & the Carnies to celebrate anniversary with Ann Arbor show
Black Jake & the Carnies will celebrate the fifth anniversary of their first ever gig with a show at the Circus Bar in Ann Arbor on November 9. Music starts at 10.30 p.m., and there is no cover for over 21’s. 18+ pay $3. In the band’s own words, “The date was November 18, 2006.…
Local church-state case before Supreme Court: A roundup
The day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in his client’s case, Bingham Farms attorney James Roach was touring Washington D.C., strolling on the national mall and admiring the glorious architecture. But Roach stopped to discuss by phone his case: The dispute that is forcing clarification from the high court about how to…
Ides of March
Ides of March Starring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Evan Rachel Wood. Directed by George Clooney. Written by Clooney, Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon. Based on Willimon’s play Farragut North. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated R. B Less interesting for what it is, but more interesting for what…
Thunder Soul
Thunder Soul A The Kashmere Stage Band ruled the land way in the ancient days of polyester and 8 tracks; a tight, funky, technically dazzling unit with a sound that could hang with the soulful likes of the Bar-Kays and the Ohio Players. The really incredible part? They were public high school students. Thunder…
In wake of Occupy Wall Street, plans develop for Occupy Detroit
Area activists will gather at the Spirit of Hope Church at 1519 Martin Luther King Blvd. in Detroit on Monday to discuss plans for a protest dubbed “Occupy Detroit.” The planned protest — to begin Oct. 21 — is an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protest that has been continuing in New York City…
Well Said: SelfSays (Pike Room – Oct 9)
“I know I’ve been really quiet, as far as putting stuff out…it’s cuz I’ve been working, just being patient, making sure things are done right. Not to say I didn’t do (the first EP) the right way, but I know, better, how I wanna move, now.” ~ It’s been more than two years since Charles…
Ambassador Bridge trial feels like Groundhog Day
Sitting in court the past few days felt like a Groundhog Day experience, only without Bill Murray to provide laughs. The story has been unchanging since the summer 2009, when the Michigan Department of Transportation filed a breach of contract suit against the Detroit International Bridge Co. for failing to complete its share of work…
City Slang: “The Romantics” revisited
Since I started doing this City Slang “Revisited” blog every Wednesday evening, the band that I have been getting requests for more than any other is the Romantics. So here we are. Don’t say I don’t listen to y’all. The question is then, which Romantics album needs to be revisited? The simple answer is, all…
How did metro Detroit get so segregated? David Freund has answers
That Detroit is one of the most segregated metropolitan areas in the country is hardly news. How that came to be is rarely explored. Or what can be done about it. Or the full extent of its ramifications. To that end, urban scholar David M.P. Freund speaks a Marygrove College on Friday. The title: “Marketing…
Lions & Tigers, oh, my
Because we here at MT headquarters are such aficionados of athletic contests, we decided to mark this moment in Detroit sports history with a bit of word-play to celebrate the good fortune of both the Lions and the Tigers. Regular Idiot Boxing columnist Jim McFarlin rose to the, um, challenge when we asked him to…
Food Stuff
Joe and a show An upstart coffee house in the mid-city area is hosting a show of art from Gwen Joy. The Thistle Coffeehouse, will display Joy’s paintings starting Oct. 5 and through the beginning of November. Call the Thistle for a schedule of events this month. Enjoy Joy’s joyful art and scope out a…
Unusual junk
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…
Psychedelic Furriers
Trot out any clichéd adjectives — dark, intense, brooding — to describe local indie rockers Fur and the words will fit. See, the band has embraced the nihilistic, Eno-informed, wan-skinned swagger of the likes of Joy Division and Radiohead (when they were good) and added Detroit blood, sweat and terribly good songs. Singer Ryan O’Rourke,…
Real Steel
Real Steel C+ Handcrafted for the 8-year-old video game junkie inside us all, Real Steel is an overloaded, underthought empowerment fantasy with a bright shiny chassis and a lemon under the hood. Hugh Jackman affects some sort of hybrid accent never heard in any particular region of the United States, as Charlie Kenton, a…
Stinking to high heaven
OK, breakfast clubbers: Where’s the outrage? If you live in Wayne County and you are not ready to march to Robert Ficano’s office with blazing torches and pitchforks, you must have been chugging Thorazine for weeks. Last week, we learned that a rather striking woman named Turkia Awada Mullin got $200,000 in severance from the…
Hot stuff
Yup, it’s that time of year. We’re moving away from the lighter stews, consommés and gazpachos of summer and into the thicker, heartier chowders, bisques, gumbos and chilis of the colder months. When it comes to soups, the addition of starchy ingredients and an extra hour of simmering is sometimes all it takes to thicken…
Ain’t too proud to beg
They have to look miserable, they say. Otherwise they’d never make a dime. And they have to sum up their lives in a few words written on a small piece of cardboard. These are the first rules of the sign-holders, the panhandlers who post themselves where freeway exit ramps spill onto the surface streets, presenting…
Letters to the Editor
Metro Times is pleased to announce that the paper is the recipient of eight awards in the Michigan Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. Competing against the state’s largest weekly papers, we swept the special section category, including taking first place for our Pot Issue, which included a long editorial calling for legalization of the drug.…
Lessons of Prohibition
The three-part miniseries from Ken Burns, Prohibition, which concludes on Public Broadcasting on Tuesday and repeats locally Sunday, is a penetrating and meaningful look at a colorful and controversial piece of U.S. history. One thing that impressed me was the way Burns presented the complexities of an issue that from a distance seems fairly simple:…
Found in translation
Trizest Restaurant 33170 Dequindre Rd. Sterling Heights 586-268-1450 Handicap accessible Soups and apps: $1-$8 Entrées: $8-$13 It’s not often that a Chinese restaurant surprises you. The overwhelming majority of these low-priced eateries cater to a clientele that believes almond boneless chicken is actually a dish that originated in China, and that you’ll almost always find…
Crossing the court
During its new session that begins this week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a Michigan case that pits the constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion against individuals’ rights as employees when they work at religious institutions. How the court decides will potentially affect the more than 300,000 teachers who work at roughly 23,000 parochial…
Restless
Restless C There’s an interesting movie struggling to get out from underneath the suffocating layers of self-conscious whimsy and morbid Harold and Maude affectations permeating Gus Van Sant’s Restless. Toeing the line between edgy art-house quirkiness and Lifetime disease-of-the-week romance, this mawkish misfire works best when it sheds its dewy-eyed pretensions and lets real…
Leftward, ho!
When the Hits made its way over to Dearborn on Saturday night to hear what journalist William Greider had to say about the economy and the prospects for its future, there was something else we were interested in learning. What, we wondered, do real socialists think when they hear right-wingers attempting to tar our current…
Honors for MT
Metro Times is pleased to announce that the paper is the recipient of eight awards in the Michigan Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. Competing against the state’s largest weekly papers, we swept the special section category, including taking first place for our Pot Issue, which included a long editorial calling for legalization of the drug.…
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…
Edgar Guest: America’s most famous poet, and he came from Detroit
He may be largely forgotten today, at least partly because his approach to dialect writing is to our eyes and ears “close to unreadable.” But the online journal Slate has a reminder from poet Robert Pinksy about who was the top dog of American poetry. The most famous poet in American history sold 1 million…
“I’m Just Too Young”: Beirut
I think I’m having my first legitimate jealous-music critic moment… Or maybe I’m just not young anymore, not young like Zach Condon… When I graduated college five-ish years ago, I picked up a compilation album, spilled out of some Revolver magazine likely picked up at Lansing’s Flat Black & Circular… A few tracks stuck out then: one…
