Rowdy rebirth
They used to call it "trash rock." The kind of music the Gore Gore Girls practice so well, so named thanks to its lo-fi aesthetic and lyrical celebration of the low life has fallen by the wayside as of late. Such classic trash rock outfits as Supercharger, the Oblivians and any number of Japanese lo-fi…
Hell, yeah!
Tenacious D, a comedy duo who plays acoustic heavy metal, is a little nervous about playing Detroit Rock City. (This from guys who have jammed with Sasquatch?)
Grand notions
For those Detroit youths who came of age during the Reagan years and found shoegazing and early alt-rock’s oceanic guitar feedback as energizing as the sound of Ford-metal-machine music was for Iggy Pop, the lure of Liberty or Death’s opening salvo – "Where on Earth is Kevin Shields?"– should be enough for at least a…
Laughing away the pain
Contemporary comedians poke fun at a long history of oppression….
Grasp meets reach
Many modern-day blues bands, both locally and nationally, can be counted on to reach into the grab bag of the past for the majority of their material. Whether they are reaching for prerecorded material to cover or tried-and-true styles to imitate, the usual result is far too many bands reaching for the same spot, both…
Rebellion in maid’s clothing
Moms Mabley hid behind her comedic character….
Love Stinks
Long before and long after J. Geils declared it, love did, does and forever shall stink. Especially when a painfully average guy, Seth (French Stewart), is swooped down upon by a Victoria’s Secret vulture, Chelsea (Bridgette Wilson), who is in the market for a big engagement ring and the even bigger dummy who is willing…
Primal pools
Carla Licavoli’s photographs return us to the joy of floating….
The Following
This little on-the-cheap, black-and-white British film has all the earmarks of a classic film noir – a story told in flashback, a femme fatale and a hapless protagonist who, try as he may, simply doesn’t know the score. The premise that writer-director Christopher Nolan uses to jump-start his plot is a little shaky, but once…
In one ear
The Immigrant Suns have always mixed their multicultural music with the innovations of the avant-garde. Inspired by the Earwhacks Festivals of several years back, Suns bassist Joel Peterson has organized a one-night-only cavalcade of ethno-avant traditionalists and experimenters. Named the Wrench Festival, it promises "music to damage the machinery." The Wrench Festival takes place this…
Stir of Echoes
Tom Witzky (Kevin Bacon) feels the walls of his small world slowly closing in around him. His wife, Maggie (Kathryn Erbe), has just announced that she’s pregnant, which means sticking to his blue-collar job instead of playing guitar with his musician friends. His young son, Jake (Zachary David Cope), is a bright but solitary child,…
Keepin’ on with Newt gone
Few know it, but if the Democrats win back the House of Representatives next fall – a very real possibility – Michigan could have the most congressional power of any state. If this happens, U.S. Rep. David Bonior will be House majority leader. John Conyers will chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee. Downriver’s John Dingell,…
Stop Making Sense
Stop Making Sense is a digitally remixed, freshly struck print of director Jonathan’s Demme’s 1984 movie of the rock quartet Talking Heads in concert. Shot over three nights at the end of the group’s ’84 tour, the footage was then edited into a very tight 88 minutes, its 16 songs describing an arc as explicit…
Royal Oak Flip-Flop
Instead of proceeding with a master plan that had some citizens up in arms, Royal Oak officials did an about-face and won grassroots support. A residents’ movement is taking credit for a final master plan that no longer classifies residential areas surrounding downtown as "transitional zones." That designation, which was included in a draft version…
The Adventures of Sabastian Cole
Sebastian Cole (Adrian Grenier) is a 17-year-old heartthrob whose personal style reflects the bohemian influence of his European mother (Margaret Colin) and pretranssexual stepfather (Clark Gregg) and the visual impact of New Wave bands that littered MTV in the early 1980s. With a wardrobe of military jackets, penetrating green eyes, a shock of peroxide blond…
Low-power radio push
With the Federal Communications Commission cutting off public comment this week on a proposal to legalize low-power FM stations, this is certain: The views of Michigan residents will be well-represented when a decision on the matter is finally made. Tom Ness made sure of that. As editor and publisher of Jam Rag, a music magazine…
Keep on truxin’
Sure rock died in ’59 or ’69 or ’77 or ’87 (go ahead and take your pick) but Royal Trux make rock sound like what rock should – or maybe even could – sound like in 1999. Jennifer Herrema (vocals) and Neil Hagerty (vocals, guitar), the partnership behind the Trux, have been there and back,…
Protest charges dropped
Washtenaw County prosecutors have again come up short in their attempts to hang felony convictions around the necks of protesters who demonstrated against a Ku Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor last year. Friday Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Donald E. Shelton dismissed felony riot charges against eight people who protested at the May 9 rally…
Welcome back, funker
After their electrifying funk-dub-Sharrock debut, where’d 5ive Style go? Well, there were some radical changes in direction and personnel, and then a bit of a disappearing act for these talented instrumentalists. But voilà, they’re back! And as the package authoritatively sez, "5ive Style is Bill Dolan, Jeremy Jacobsen, John Herndon and LeRoy Bach," just in…
Art ed second chance
Classes at Detroit’s Institute of Music and Dance will continue – at least for one more semester. The IMD’s future has been uncertain since July, when, just six weeks before the start of fall classes, the Center for Creative Studies announced plans to demolish the building housing IMD. The Center for Creative Studies, an art…
Madame Weill
The possessor of an unremarkable voice punctuated by a light Austrian accent, the flame-haired chanteuse Lotte Lenya nevertheless knew how to interpret a song – better, in fact, than many of her colleagues with more spectacular instruments. Lenya, the wife of composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), was his strongest and most urgent interpreter. That’s clearly apparent…
Food stuff
FAT CHANCE Would you fill a plastic bag with a pound of ground fat and stick it in your pantyhose "right on your butt?" The purpose of this exercise, advocated by the Silver Sage diet-aid folks of Salt Lake City, is to emphasize the meaning of excess body fat. Silver Sage, of course, has what…
Avant BBQ
Slap down CD No. 1, Track No. 3 and put words to the familiar melody’s new twists: "Hello, Dolly," the trumpet seems to say, "this ain’t Louis, Dolly … but I suuuuure dig ol’ Satch and then some mo’." There you have, circa 1974, a musical snapshot of Lester Bowie, circa 1974, a jazz radical…
Old-school scary
The ghost story has returned just in time to save the horror genre from eating itself. Scream and its demented progeny turned self-referential mocking into the dominant style. Being scared was no longer enough; audiences had to be made aware of the deus ex machina of horror. But the phenomenal success of The Sixth Sense…
W-Vibe
Simply the finest in retro-electro-rock, the W-Vibe’s plundering of obsolete ’80s game technology (particularly the sonically-rich Atari 2600 system), synthetic drums and effects machines that have lost their cutting edge and DIY space-ace getups necessarily puts ’em in a class by themselves. Luckily, Dan and Joe, the humans behind the analog sounds, take their duty…
Hot this fall
Even if you’re not going back to school this fall, there’s still that same old feeling in the air. You need stuff. Stuff to talk about. Stuff to play with. Cool new stuff to get you through from now until the holiday gift season. Here’s some stuff… Apple iBook Too, too beautiful. A computer you…
Death in the lockup
On an October evening in 1997, Larry Bell stood inside an eastside Detroit market with his eyes on the cashier, who was clearing $914 from the register for the daily cash drop. As she pulled the money from the drawer, Bell reached over the counter and grabbed it. Startled, the cashier turned to see Bell…
Juan Atkins
Pioneer of the first ever techno label, Metroplex, Juan Atkins is often overlooked as an inventor of the booty-buzz of Detroit. As a creator and member of several electro-groups in the late ‘70s, including Cybotron and Model 500, he combined the funk styles of George Clinton with Kraftwerk drum and bass to make a genre…
