Cover Story
The Throw Down in Motown
Metro Times Candidate Interviews | Benny Napoleon and Mike Duggan In this Corner: Benny “Hands Where I Can See ’Em” Napoleon … Facing some long odds, BENNY sits down with MT in a follow-up to his pre-primary interview. Benny Napoleon has an easy smile and a relaxed demeanor, both of which belie his reputation as…
12th Man Report: Showtime for Tigers
Being that Tuesday night’s contest between the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox is just game three of a seven-game series that’s tied 1-1, you wouldn’t think there’s much on the line That’s far, far from the case, though. CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP To say that Boston has the momentum right now after their Cinderella comeback on…
Take Back the Night at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
More must be done to increase the awareness of domestic violence and sexual assault. UM-D in conjunction with WILL (Women in Learning and Leadership), Women’s Resource Center, and Inkster’s Delta Alumnae Chapter is hosting an event to help create this awareness. On Thursday October 17, 2013 on the UM-D campus in the IAVS auditorium the…
Reviewing Claire’s Broken Promise Land
Munich five-piece Claire is an odd but cool little band. The sound sits somewhere between ’90s electronic acts like Underworld and Portishead-eque trip-hop (maybe even a little Dido), with a touch of Josh Wink trance thrown in for good measure. Therefore, you’d think that they’d sound dreadfully dated, but the shameless pop of the title…
Film Review: Machete Kills
Machete Kills | D+ You’ve heard of beating a joke into the ground, but this pointlessly excessive, violent spoof-sequel takes the joke out behind the barn and bludgeons it into paste with a rusty shovel in the head. “Machete” began as a funny little throwaway segment in director Robert Rodriquez’s half of Grindhouse (a movie…
Film Review: The Fifth Estate
While watching The Fifth Estate’s stylized visualizations of computer networks, one can’t help but wonder how loudly future audiences will snicker at its already dated view of IRC sessions and data manipulation. In an attempt to make the online world of Wikileaks more cinematic, text flies across the faces of hackers while endless rows of…
Film Review: Captain Phillips
Captain Phillips | A- All thrillers operate on an expectation of violence, balancing our desire for safety with the innate desire for cathartic release that accompanies rattled nerves. A thriller presupposes the audience goes in knowing that something dreadful is bound to happen; it’s an even safer bet when the movie is based on recent,…
City Slang: DJ LaFemme celebrates Start Up
World renown house music DJ Jenny Feterovich, aka DJ LaFemme, will celebrate her co-produced PBS series, Start Up, (Monday, 7:30 PM WTVS in Detroit) airing now on 350 PBS affiliates, with an all women entrepreneurial event and mixer and premiere, on Thursday, October 24, at the Royal Oak Pink Pump from 6:30 to 9:30PM. The…
Remember Random Access Memories?
Come and get your Deluxe Box Sets! (Wait, you haven’t put one of your own out yet??) Daft Punk haven’t confirmed it as of this blog-posting, but their most recent album, Random Access Memories, which came out mere months ago, is rumored on twitter to be re-released, not yet, but soon, via a Deluxe Box Set.…
The Infatuations: One of Detroit’s Hottest Bands
Many people say the Motown sound is dead. Those folks have not heard the music of the Infatuations. This is not your father’s Motown. It is new music with a hint of the oldie. Their singer, Caleb Gutierrez, packs enough emotion into his voice to satisfy any Motown fan. The group couples that voice with…
City Slang: Liz Larin at the Detroit School of Rock and Pop
Liz Larin will perform an intimate show at the Detroit School of Rock and Pop next Friday, October 18. They say, “Liz Larin will be in the studio presenting a multimedia show that will dazzle and amaze in our intimate setting. This season, through our association with HumbleDesign.org, we will be accepting home goods to…
What is THAT? – Oddities from the MT mailbox
Here’s the deal. Every day here at the Metro Times, our mail delivery includes CDs, books and all sorts of other promotional items. A lot of it we can use and review – local-interest music, DVDs, etc. But we also get a lot of weird and whacky items that just kinda build up. So that’s…
Kilpatrick to Spend Next 28 Years in Prison
Judge Throws the Book at Kwame; Prosecutors Rejoice. DETROIT ? It was time to pay the piper for Detroit’s former “hiphop” mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, as a federal judge sentenced the once-heralded rising star to 28 years in prison for corruption that turned city hall into a pay-for-play bonanza. In issuing the sentence, U.S. District Judge…
Reviewing Melt Banana’s Fetch
Anybody familiar with Japanese noise rock band Melt Banana’s work up to this point will know that, when these guys put out a new record, it’s near-impossible to know what to expect. The mind-fuckery, the glorious unpredictability, is what makes the band so exciting. They blur genre boundaries with childlike abandon, melding the oft-Neanderthalic nature…
Busy Weekend (Islands / Bill Callahan / Double Weirdo)
Islands are coming to town. Their latest: Ski Mask (Manqué) No band is an island. Well, Canadian pop-renegade Nick Thorburn seemingly defies that, as psychedelically-inclined indie outfit Islands, have come to be harder to pin down for some who might find more ease identifying with others slinging instantaneous hit singles. The talented, progressive pop auteur, albeit wayward, has…
Lost Boys
I haven’t climbed atop my don’t forget to pay attention to Ypsi-soap box in a while, so I feel I’m due. Lost Boys have a pretty basic band name but I feel it aptly captures the nature of most bands currently shouldering their way into your regular rock venues – That is, its made up…
Reviewing In The Valley Below’s Peaches EP
LA rock band In the Valley Below are touring the States and Europe up until the end of the year, playing just about everywhere but, wait, no Detroit date. This is incredibly annoying, especially because they’re actually very good. (I know, a decent LA band post-1988. Weird, huh?) The male/female vocal interplay between Jeffrey Jacob…
12th Man Report: Verlander’s time to shine
Justin Verlander just hasn’t been Justin Verlander. I’ve heard that too many times to count this season in regard to the Tigers’ pitcher and ace. And it was true. Previously in his career, but specifically the past two seasons, he has been one of, if not the best, pitchers in baseball. This season hasn’t been…
Reviewing Ezra Furman’s Day of the Dog
Chicago native Ezra Furman is perhaps best-known up to this point as the main man behind the Boston-based band Ezra Furman and the Harpoons, formed when the members were in college. Then he broke that band up, returned home to Chi-town and wrote the songs on Day of the Dog (Bar None) alongside his new…
Lee Ranaldo & the Dust
Lee Ranaldo recently returned from the most remote place he says he’s ever been: the tribal lands of “more India” (extending east of Bangladesh and south of Bhutan), and likens it to, “What do you guys call it? The Upper Peninsula?” Ranaldo & the Dust (guitarist Alan Licht, bassist Tim Luntzel and drummer Steve Shelley)…
DEJJ
Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr The Speed Of Things Warner Bros Like a 007 film, we gotta get that name out of the way. This local duo could care less if you snicker at their silly, double-suffixed name, they’re too busy trying to keep up with the dizzying instantaneousness of a post-Internet music world. The…
The Lunch Room
The Lunch Room 407 N. Fifth Ave., Ann Arbor 734-224-8859 Handicap accessible Sandwiches: $4-$8 Entrées: $6-$10 Open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday. Local pop-ups and food carts have become a fertile proving ground for dining concepts,…
City Slang: Thee Detroit Halloween Cover Band is back
It’s October, and that means Halloween is fast approaching. That means that all manner of local bands and musicians will go the ‘temporary tribute band’ route, and none will be more highly anticipated than Thee Detroit Halloween Cover Band. Frank Woodman told us, “The leaves are turnin’ and there is a crispness in the air.…
MT Endorses Mike Duggan for Mayor of the City of Detroit
FOR MONTHS, TALK AROUND our little water cooler in the Metro Times newsroom has involved — among discussions of weed, bands and other provocative proclivities — who would make the best choice as Detroit’s next mayor; at best, a thankless job made more difficult by unprecedented circumstances befalling the winner of November’s election. Would personality…
MIKE DUGGAN
Metro Times: A centerpiece of your campaign has been the creation of a “Department of Neighborhoods.” Have you run a cost-benefit analysis to determine what type of savings the city would realize from a consolidation of that size? Mike Duggan: Well, right now there are 14 different agencies involved in affecting quality of life in…
BENNY NAPOLEON
Metro Times: About your “One Square Mile” initiative … while it is rich in prose, it doesn’t seem innovative — the use of statistics to target crime-prone areas and things like that — are those things not currently being employed? Beyond 140 new ombudsmen, what in this plan is new? Benny Napoleon: I’ll be real…
Kelley Jean
In 2012, a documentary movie called Tight was released and almost immediately forgotten. The brainchild of former porn star Bree Olson, the idea was to take four fellow porn stars and throw them into a rehearsal space with some instruments, tell them to mold themselves into a band called Tight, and put them out on…
Dine Drink Detroit
This issue coincides with an inaugural weeklong celebration of Detroit dining. It’s called Dine Drink Detroit, and it runs Oct. 10-16. For $15, diners can get food and drink at 13 of the hottest restaurants in town, including several new hip joints, such as Green Dot Lounge, Ottava Via and St. Cece’s Pub, as well…
Rock City Rocks
FOOD THOUGHT Dining with the Washingtons The University of North Carolina Press, $35 hardcover, 224 pp. Your election-year cookbook, Dining with the Washingtons explores the menus, diet and styles of entertaining that characterized the home of the nation’s founding father. Featuring a foreword by former White House executive chef Walter Scheib and more than 90…
The Best Month of the Year
Last Friday, while the Tigers were starting their opening-round playoff series with the Oakland Athletics, the Red Wings were mid-game with the Carolina Hurricanes. Hockey? Baseball? What????? As of last Tuesday, the puck has dropped. And what does the start of the long-winded NHL season mean? I’ll tell you — it means we’re kicking off…
The Coast
I visited Halifax, Nova Scotia, last week — for my geographically illiterate fellow Americans, Halifax is the biggest city on Canada’s Atlantic coast — to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Coast, Halifax’s kick-ass alternative weekly newspaper. The paper brought me to town to do Savage Love Live. I took questions…
Belle Isle Lease Deal
Drinking Law Add-Ons Dear Editor: Regarding the new “4 a.m. drinking law”: … They have to have a guard. How about adding on they have to have live music. Think how that would add to the employment of musicians; and for the bar it is an expense that is a [tax] write-off. Benny Speer Inkster,…
Six Absurd Statements by Scalia
On the eve of his 27th anniversary as a jurist, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had quite a lot to say on a range of topics from homosexuality to politics in a colorful interview withNew York magazine. Here are six of his most absurd quotes: 1. On Homosexuality: When asked about his views on…
Rally at the DIA
At the grand opening of the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1927, museum director William Valentiner said the gallery was for “all us Detroiters, rich and poor, high and low. The beauties of art are as essential in the life of a community as are the material comforts and modern facilities and improvements.” When Edsel…
MICH. State GOP Hates the Poor
WITH A VERY FEW EXCEPTIONS, Republicans have never cared much about poor people. They’ve been the party of the rich and powerful at least since the Civil War. True, the party was formed by those opposed to the further expansion of slavery. But once that was settled, the GOP became the party of big business…
A Multi-Faceted Coalition
I recently spoke with Brandy Zink, chair of the Michigan Chapter of Americans for Safe Access, about the movement to legalize marijuana, when she said, “When marijuana is legal, we’re still going to need medical marijuana.” That got me to thinking. There are a lot of fronts when it comes to cannabis activism — each…
Halloween in Detroit: Theatre Bizarre
Artist John Dunivant spent a decade building up the Theatre Bizarre carnival near the old Michigan State Fairgrounds site — outside the law — before the law’s long arm finally caught up with him in 2010, putting the kibosh on that year’s event at the venue. Dunivant, though devastated, wasn’t to be stopped and the…
FASHION Profile: Barbara Deyo Make-up artist
Eyebrows may be biologically designed to keep eyes sweat-free, but if we want to look more Brooke Shields than Groucho Marx (and bold brows are in), we need to know our way around a pair of tweezers. Get into complicated issues like powder or pencil, brushed on a diagonal or straight up, natural ends or…
Memories of band
My recent interview with the Detroit Party Marching Band was fun for many reasons, but not least because it mined old memories of my own band experiences. Around 1989/1990, I joined the Wilnecote branch of the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade Brass Band, in the West Midlands, UK. I was 14-15 years-old, and my interest in…
12th Man Report: Last call for Tigers
And so there was one… One final chance that is, for the Tigers to salvage their season. That’s the situation that Detroit finds themselves in before tonight’s game four of the ALDS against the Oakland Athletics. You know the clichés: win or go home, last game of the year can’t hold anything back, all or…
