STOOGES BACK ON THE BALLOT…
The nominations for this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony were announced earlier today. The Stooges are back on the list, after being nominated and rejected (who the fuck makes these decisions anyway?) two years ago. Also on this year’s ballot: Run-D.M.C., Metallica, Jeff Beck, “female Elvis” Wanda Jackson, Little Anthony & the…
REVIEWING CHEECH & CHONG…AND RODRIGUEZ LIVE!
It almost looked like it could’ve been a Latino Artists Pride celebration on Woodward Avenue, near Park, on Saturday night. Not only were Cheech & Chong performing two shows at the Fillmore but comedian George Lopez was appearing almost next door at the Fox Theater (“But he’s not funny,” said one of the folks in…
DETROIT DROPS ALL CAID RAID CHARGES
Well, chalk one up for truth, justice and the American way. The ACLU of Michigan announced today that the City of Detroit has dropped all charges against the nearly 116 patrons of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID) who were detained and cited by Detroit Police during the raid of a members-only gathering at…
FESTIVAL OF ARTS ON HOLD?
We got no return calls from the folks in charge, but we’re told on good authority that the Detroit Festival for the Arts is kaput — at least for the coming year. That was the word that came to us this past week after a gathering of the University Cultural Center Association, which is an…
WILL THE REAL JACK WHITE PLEASE STAND UP?
I’d certainly take this with a large grain of salt — but when I got into a very busy office yesterday morning, after a much needed day off, the first message on my voicemail was this: “Hey, Bill, it’s Jack White calling. Just want to know what you want me to do and when. Let…
‘Free Scary!’
Back in the day, “Scary” Cary Safarian was the tough-talking promoter who took over Graystone Hall after former Necros bassist Corey Rusk and wife left the club to concentrate on his Touch & Go/Quarterstick label. Safarian’s run as that venue’s manager was rocky and brief, and, by 1988, the Graystone’s days as a music venue…
TED’S LOVE LETTER TO PALIN…
I guess it should come as little surprise. Michigan’s favorite neocon rock star sent the first advance copy of his upcoming book, Ted White & Blue — The Nugent Manifesto (which he describes as “16 chapters on how to fix America”…oy!), to McCain’s “hockey mom” running mate with the following letter. Hopefully, Palin will keep…
“I didn’t know there was a number 2?”
Out and about today I happened upon another film crew taking in the sights around Detroit. At Woodward and Congress, just up from “the fist” and “the spirit” and just south of Campus Martius Park filming was underway in a little diner for the third installment of The Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect 3? I…
Art of life
If money were granted our way, we would start a decentralized power network by purchasing several foreclosed homes around our house and turning them into mini power stations. Since the houses in our particular Detroit neighborhood — which borders Hamtramck’s northern border and is sometimes referred to as “BanglaTown” or “NoHam” — are quite typical…
Motor City Cribs
The highest compliment you can pay producer-DJ Aaron-Carl Ragland’s music is to call it schizophrenic. Or, more accurately, that he has musical multiple personality, but don’t call it a disorder. In anyone else’s hands, Aaron-Carl’s musical stylings would seem crazy, but in his mischievous grasp it makes perfect sense. You see, Aaron-Carl’s music is a…
Wake up the neighborhood
In the tiny village of Hauterives in southeastern France, surrounded by nothing but rural land, in 1879, a postman named Ferdinand Cheval began building a visionary work of art called the Palais Idéal. He would spend the next 34 years stuffing his pockets with stones from the road to create a surrealistic château that looks…
Couch Trip
Max Ophuls’ brief, poignant sexual trysts, an oversized ant farm, pirates, terror tongs and death cults La Ronde, Le Plaisir and The Earrings of Madame de … Criterion Thanks to these three ravishing Criterion discs, all four of Max Ophuls’ postwar European masterpieces (Lola Montes being the other) are now on DVD in the United…
In the city, off the grid
Six years ago, Glendale Stewart took a look at the world around him and decided to drop out of it. He quit working, bought an empty plot of land at a city auction, parked an old trailer on it, built a wood privacy fence around it and made it his home. He lives in a…
Trane kept a-rollin’
Powertrane’s Scott Morgan and Robert Gillespie have seen it all, but they’re not ready to give up the ghost just yet Anybody with some interest in the Detroit rock ‘n’ roll scene of the ’60s and ’70s is probably familiar with the name Scott Morgan. After forging his reputation as lead singer with garage rock…
Artful beekeeping
Editor’s Note: In September 2004, two Berliners, Stéphane Orsolini and Erika Mayr, visited Detroit after participating in the German-funded international Shrinking Cities competition. They greeted the city with a proposal for urban beekeeping as one possible solution to postindustrial challenges. Four years later, Mayr, a horticulturist and beekeeper, and Orsolini, a London-trained architect with his…
Lost in the ozone again
Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong require little introduction. The countercultural comedy heroes turned movie superstars took several decades off to pursue solo careers (and Chong spent nearly a year in prison for selling a bong on the Internet; you’d think he lied about weapons of mass destruction or something) — but they’re back and ready…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 17 DETROIT ROCKS THE VOTE CELEBRITIES VOTE TOO! GOSH. Since 1990, the nominally nonpartisan (yeah, right) organization Rock the Vote has been working to mobilize the apathetic youth masses of America to vote with a parade of celebrities and pop musicians (because if Christina Aguilera tells you to do something, ya probably should,…
The Sarah swindle
Palin is like a more reckless version of Dubya
Working out kinks
The ins and outs of ball insertion
On the Download
DAS Bootleg The untimely demise of the Bohemian National Home got me to thinking how fickle the world of performance venues can be. Anyone who’s done any time knocking about the music scene in this town (hell, any town) has a tale or two that ends with a wistful “Man, that place was awesome. Too…
BMF’s hard time
The Black Mafia Family’s Flenory brothers get sentenced
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Tim / Pleased to Meet Me / Don’t Tell a Soul / All Shook Down
In many regards, I probably shouldn’t be writing about the Replacements at this point, since it must look to many like I can no longer be objective (… although I firmly believe I can be — for instance, I still think All Shook Down was a major disappointment; besides, during my time back in Detroit,…
Noir town
A Royal Oak institution marks 25 years
Unshielded
The widespread fallout from a federal case that began with the arrest of alleged terrorists and then turned into a widely cited textbook example of prosecutorial excess has now hit a Detroit Free Press reporter who’s attempting to protect the identity of a confidential source. Advocates are saying this latest twist in an already twisted…
Letters to the Editor
Strong reaction I have been a fan of Metro Times since before Desire Cooper was the editor. Jack Lessenberry is one of my favorite reporters. Most of the time he is on the money. But the Sept. 10 Metro Times cover, “The adventures of Kwame-Man,” is extremely offensive to me as a Detroiter and as…
Election spin cycle
Does state GOP plan to use foreclosure data as a weapon?
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
In Switzerland, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #189! François Thomas & Jean-Pierre Berthomé — Orson Welles at Work (Phaidon Press) :: It’s a monument to his undisputed congenital genius that, despite a maddeningly meager output of a mere 12 feature films completed over…
Oakland bounty
With a “depression-sensitive” price structure, you might almost forget what you paid for the gas to get out to Modern. Run by veteran restaurateurs, this is a comfortable eatery where working stiffs can afford the high-quality, sophisticated cuisine. Decorated with amusing mid-century-modern furnishings, the small room can accommodate about 75 at tables and 20 at…
Operation Filmmaker
It’s pretty clear that Nina Davenport didn’t set out to make the documentary she ended up with. Operation Filmmaker was to be the triumphant tale of a 25-year-old Iraqi film student plucked from the war zone by benevolent artists and given a chance to fulfill his dreams of becoming a devoted student of cinema. Instead,…
Burn After Reading
Burn After Reading is a farce, but bleak, casually cruel and existential. John Malkovich is Osborne Cox, a mid-level CIA desk jock forcibly ejected from the endless hallways of bureaucracy. His relative irrelevance is lost on the nitwits at Hardbodies gym, who find a rough draft of Ozzie’s memoir on the locker room floor, and…
The Women
What use do we have for a remake of 1939’s “The Women”? Despite the careful updating from writer-director Diane English, there’s something quaintly old-fashioned about this film, the story of beloved society matron Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) discovering that her high-powered husband is having a fling with the sultry Crystal Allen (Eva Mendes), who works…
Interstellar overdrive revisited
Those on the outside looking in on the Detroit music scene still find it necessary to marvel when they hear something coming out of this city that “isn’t garage rock.” But those who’ve been following the growth of the city’s vibrant and disparate music scene know that just about every sound or style is here…
Two tough guys
In the first dizzying minutes, this serial thriller is so dementedly off-kilter it seems headed for bad-movie heaven. It eventually calms down and reveals itself to be arun-of-the-mill cop movie, with Bob and Al engaging in an extended macho pose-off as two of the most grizzled murder cops still pounding a Manhattan beat. The decaying…
Death Magnetic
Metallica doesn’t have to say anything new. These guys could just shit out another bit of ashtray repulsion as they did with St. Anger and the metal world will still be in an uproar, both negative and positive. They certainly deserve the brouhaha, but you simply can’t ignore how humdrum their sound and energy have…
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Writer-director Alex Holdridge shows a penchant for old-fashioned romanticism that’s at odds with the kind of anonymous hook-ups found via the Internet. Wilson (Scoot McNairy) studiously avoids celebrating New Year’s Eve, rejecting the holiday’s promise to wipe the slate clean and offer a newly optimistic outlook. But a particularly rough year has changed his viewpoint.…
The Exiles
The Exiles is a remarkable cinematic find: Shot over a three-year period, the film is a remarkable cohesive, glorious black-and-white document of Native Americans off the reservation. British-born filmmaker Kent Mackenzie (1930-80) had both an astute eye and a strong social conscience, and the fusion of the two resulted in this 1961 film, a stunning…
Tarred as …
The Metro Times has received several e-mails and phone calls from readers who take us to task for the comic book treatment we gave Kwame Kilpatrick, aka Kwame-man. You can read some of the letters Wednesday when this week’s paper hits the stands and the letters are posted to the Web. The general theme is…
MAYBE HE’S MORE A PEPSI KINDA GUY…
According to “Queen of All Media” Perez Hilton and the little less hysterical NME, our former homeboy Jack White is none too pleased about the James Bond theme he wrote as a duet for himself and Alicia Keys being featured in a new Coke commercial (didn’t he read the contract?) before making its debut in…
