BENEFITS, BENEFITS & ROCKIN’ THE VOTE…
Perhaps the most pertinent benefit taking place this week is the memorial show for the late Tom Furtaw of Spitting Nickels, who succumbed onstage at Hart Plaza last month when the band was opening for Blue Oyster Cult (see earlier blog item). In honor of Tom and his family, the musician-lawyer’s many friends are holding…
MONEY, GIRLS & MUSIC…
Check out the below video from veteran Detroit rock photographer and our old pal Thomas Weschler who takes the opportunity to explain how he broke into the game. Weschler’s part of the Detroit-based Backstage Gallery photography collective that’ll have an exhibit at this weekend’s Metro Music Expo, which takes place at the Rock Financial Showplace,…
This week’s issue
What to do? That was the question we faced last week when Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third, and then resigned. It was a story guaranteed to get saturation coverage from all the area’s media. That was a given. And, by the time Metro Times hit the…
The greatest theorem ever told
In a world of zeroes and infinities, where does one find unity and love? Certainly not in a lecture hall where mathematicians try to map the mystical dance of numbers behind string theory. This is no place for creativity and romance. Or is it? A lecture hall is the setting in the opening scene of…
The Clix Records story
Hidden next to I-75 in Troy, just south of the Big Beaver Road exit, they sit, surrounded by strip malls, corporate high-rises and recently constructed apartment complexes. What we’re looking at is a smattering of old farmhouses — some still heated by oil furnaces and kerosene heaters — on a two-block stretch of dirt and…
Preaching to the boardroom
“Working at Excellence” once defined the initials in Khary “WAE” Frazier’s name. He used to tell folks this meaning more often back when he simply called himself “WAE.” And even though this worldview could be called “inspirational,” he admits that, in the world of hip-hop, it can get corny. Nowadays, he just lives the philosophy.…
Editorial: Guilty as charged
Outside the Wayne County Circuit Court where Kwame Kilpatrick’s reign as mayor of Detroit finally came to an end Thursday morning, a trio of women — African-Americans apparently in their late 20s and early 30s — held signs showing support for the city’s felon in chief. They blame the news media for Kilpatrick’s fall. Or…
Couch Trip
Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2 Fox If you’re looking for scares, the three titles that make up Fox’s Horror Classics Vol. 2 collection are about as frightening as your average Jane Austen adaptation. That doesn’t mean they aren’t enormously entertaining examples of Golden Age Hollywood craftsmanship. They are proof that Fox’s B-level responses to Universal’s…
Burning for you
As the new fall series begin drifting over the air like so many autumn leaves, it’s time to bid farewell to the shows of summer, including the one that currently ranks as my Must-See-Can’t-Miss-Favorite-TV-Program-of-the-Moment. (Yes, television critics are allowed to feel unabashed love for one show over all others; we just don’t talk about it.…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 10 AN EVENING OF DISCRIMINATING DRAG CROSS-DRESSING FOR EQUALITY An Evening of Discriminating Drag is the first of a three-event series — Unity — produced by Hamtramck United Against Discrimination, a grassroots organization of concerned citizens working to educate Hamtramck voters on the human rights ordinance appearing on the ballot this November. The…
Tale of two Kwames
The Rise and Fall of Kwame Man The Tragic-Comic Tale of the Mayor of Detroit art by Sean Bieri story by Curt Cuyette and W. Kim Heron Tale of two Kwames by Curt Guyette The facts behind this tragic comic When Metro Times profiled mayoral candidate Kwame Kilpatrick way back in October of 2001, he…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
A maker of things
On a table in the middle of Andy Krieger’s workshop is a turquoise L-shaped box decorated with images of King Kong and the Empire State Building. It looks like an old-fashioned Bally arcade game. A group of 2-inch cardboard cutout island natives, standing on the box’s base, raise their arms up to two wooden doors…
McCain’s contempt
Republican candidate’s veep pick insults us all
Jerky parenting
Enough about your problems, let’s talk about Sarah Palin
On the Download
Ah, Grand Rapids: the same city that birthed the mighty Whirlwind Heat and Amway is perpetually in a state of light college transition, capitalist-driven urban renewal and Republican ultra-conservatism and Midwest isolation that tends to birth goodness, weirdness and locally based experimentation. Hence, the Heat. What’s up with them lately, you ask? Well, they’ve expatriated…
Motor City Rides
Champions of Breakfast rock their 2008 Honda Fit.
Power of Will
Turning a Greek play into a hip-hop performance
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
What’d Kwame say?
Detroit’s mayor leaves with few memorable words
Letters to the Editor
Truly moved Jack Lessenberry’s “Days of future passed” (Sept. 3) truly moved me. I was downtown for Obama’s speech Monday and remember feeling part of something very powerful. The streets were spilling over with Detroiters filled with passion, excitement and hope. The scene chilled me to the bones and sped up my heartbeat. To see…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
In a world enslaved by mediocre rock critics, one man will rise up and free all of humanity by daring to write Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #188! Don LaFontane — R.I.P. (1940-2008) :: In a world without "The Voice" of Don LaFontane, movie trailer voiceovers will never be the same again. Andreas Öberg — My…
True East
Sharaku is the most authentic Japanese restaurant in metro Detroit, offering 25 daily-changing appetizers, including catches of the day, and a relatively short list of entrées. As in Japan, the decor is spare, blond wood, and meals are served with a minimum of pretension — just artful arrangements of the food and garnishes themselves. For…
Raising Hitchcock
Under-the-radar director Brad Anderson (Session 9, Next Stop Wonderland, The Machinist) effectively channels Hitchcock in this icy train-bound thriller. Jessie and Roy (Mortimer and Woody Harrelson) are an American missionary couple traveling home along the Trans-Siberian Railroad, in order to deal with some unresolved marital problems. When their bunkmates turn out to be a lascivious…
Moonfunk
By titling their third album Ghost Rock, Michigan-based Afrobeat revivalists Nomo have done more than simply file another entry in their impeccable catalog of horn-heavy funk. The title is a ready-built genre tag, a statement of intent that conjures such seminal records as Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool and the Clash’s Combat Rock, which…
Fantastic Gusts of Blood
What’s to be made of Child Bite, a frantically energetic fivesome of (mostly) bearded young men who seem to revel in translating chaos, both onstage and on record? The evidence that Shawn Knight (vocals, synth, guitar, noise, etc.), Zach Norton (guitar), Danny Sperry (drums), Sean Clancy (bass) and Christian Doble (sax, clarinet, etc.) have laid…
Baghead
Directors Jay and Mark Duplass maintain a steady hand on their stripped-down, improvisational film, integrating three disparate elements — slasher-in-the-woods horror, indie relationship flick and comedic satire — into a charming, ironic whole. A quartet of frustrated Los Angeles actors are stuck in the career cellar of extras and walk-ons. Convinced they can make a…
No shield for reporter?
A Detroit Free Press reporter may be questioned about the confidential sources who told him about a federal investigation into misconduct by a former federal prosecutor, a federal judge ruled. David Ashenfelter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning 26-year veteran of the daily newspaper, reported in 2004 about an investigation into possible ethical violations involving then-Assistant U.S. Attorney…
