City Slang: ICP to broadcast Hallowicked show via internet pay-per-view
The Insane Clown Posse has announced that it will broadcast the 18th annual Hallowicked show live and online on Halloween night, along with one Dark Lotus show from Rochester, NY, on October 27. Both shows are available for purchase here. According to a press release from the Psychopathic Records mob, “Many years ago the Insane…
Detroit in the media: Beyond ruin porn in DIA photo show
We were discussing the whole ruin porn thing in our staff meeting the other day, asking what else there is to say about the pro and con, the aesthetic attractions, the realities and distortions in the imagery of the city. Especially as that imagery is projected beyond the metro area. The online journal Salon recently…
Mozart’s Sister
Mozart’s Sister C+ It’s hard to tell whether writer, director and producer René Féret’s modestly budgeted but lushly appointed fictional biopic is a family affair born out of common passion or overreaching vanity. Casting himself and his teenage daughters (one as its lead), and making his wife the editor, Mozart’s Sister suffers from stilted…
City Slang Reads: Fever – Little Willie John
Man, if ever there was a story that needed telling, it is that of Little Willie John. Born William Edward John, the singer had a recording career that lasted approximately six years before he was jailed for manslaughter in ’66. He died in jail in ’68. Before that though, he recorded some intoxicating, lasting R&B…
City Slang: Join our Turntable community
City Slang now has a room set up with the ever-growing Turntable application. Click here to join. For the unfamiliar, Turntable is like a social version of Pandora. One you are signed in, you set up a playlist and then five people at a time take turns spinning songs. Any number of people are allowed…
Detroit Design Festival: Jim Hay says, ‘Go Where You Are’
Artist Jim Hay said in a short biography that he “cannot know all of the world, so I seek within me that which mirrors all.” Hay is an international artist who lives in Japan but also has a home in Cedar Springs, Mich. His father came to Detroit from Scotland after World War I. Thankfully,…
Matty’s pants on fire: Bridge company lies exposed
We don’t know for sure who first said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” We do know, however, that billionaire Manuel “Matty” Moroun and his Detroit International Bridge Co. are heeding that advice big-time in their desperate attempt to keep a publicly owned bridge from being built across the…
City Slang: Joseph Messing coming home
Royal Oak native and now Chicago resident Joseph Messing is coming back to the D to play a show at the Majestic Café on September 30 with his band the Wise Men, in support of his debut album, The Waking Visions of Joseph, which was released in July. Amazingly, this show marks the first time…
City Slang: Dennis Coffey to play the Magic Bag
Dennis Coffey alongside Will Sessions is to play a CD release show at the Magic Bag on October 21. The Bo-Keys open the show, and tickets are $15. Willy Wilson of the Bag issued a statement to say that, “Dennis Coffey is an American original. Only in America (and specifically, only in Detroit) could one…
Hendrix mentor Billy Davis plays downtown Detroit Friday
Last summer we published Kent Alexander’s profile of Detroit guitarist Billy Davis, a longtime musician for Detroit legends Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and an influence on a very young Jimi Hendrix. … Ballard would give Davis 30 minutes to open the shows. He’d go out and do flips and bite guitar strings. It’s no…
‘Kickin It Dungeon Style’ & ‘Even in the future nothing works…’
As 2011 dawned, Detroit’s recently buzz-swarmed new-wave/space-rock duo Silverghost was exorcised from local stages. The preceeding winter found that band’s male component, Deleano Acevedo, squirrling himself away in his Detroit apartment to pen a trunk-load of tunes, effectively birthing what’s now known as K.I.D.S. His initial batch of simple yet cathartic pop tunes were sketched during what was a…
The Killer Elite
The Killer Elite C Jason Statham as the reluctant hit man lured back into action? Check. Fight scenes that are a chaotic blur of grunting, grappling and gouging? Check. Flash cuts to a comely love interest pining for our hero half a world away? You betcha. Though first-time director Gary McKendry supposedly had real-life…
The Killer Elite
The Killer Elite C Jason Statham as the reluctant hit man lured back into action? Check. Fight scenes that are a chaotic blur of grunting, grappling and gouging? Check. Flash cuts to a comely love interest pining for our hero half a world away? You betcha. Though first-time director Gary McKendry supposedly had real-life…
Bellflower
Bellflower C+ Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy builds a flamethrower. It’s mumblecore meets The Road Warrior. Writer-director-producer Evan Glodell’s Bellflower is the cinematic fever-dream of twentysomething dudes who struggle to separate reality from pop culture fantasy, are suspicious or dismissive of women, and believe that a broken heart is an akin to…
Moneyball
Moneyball Directed by Bennett Miller. Written by Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin and Stan Chervin. Based on the Michael Lewis book. Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robin Wright. Running time: 143 minutes. Not rated. B+ Fielding percentages, conference calls and signing bonuses have never been this entertaining. In adapting Michael Lewis’…
Class warfare: Elizabeth Warren brings passion and sense to the debate
Somehow, around the time of the Bush-Gore campaign, the fixation about returning “your tax dollars” totally overpowered the notion that “we” have a country of shared resources, responsibilities and yes, even possibilities. But maybe, just maybe, we’re at a point where more than a few Democrats can openly proclaim the virtues of progressive taxation without…
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…
City Slang: “Gashole” revisited
Motorhead’s Lemmy loves Speedball, and you should too. The reference should be lost on no one too. Like the ‘head, Speedball played hard and heavy, gnarly, metal-tinged rock ’n’ roll complimented by whisky-gargling vocals. What a band they were too (and are, when they play the occasional reunion show). Former Seduce drummer Chuck Burns played…
Recommended recent spins: Male Bonding; Iceage; Moby
Male Bonding: Endless Now (Sub Pop) The unfussy Nothing Hurts, UK punk melodicists Male Bonding?’s 2010 debut, had a charm no acquisition of maturity or fame could duplicate. How bold, then, for the Londoners to wait scarcely a year to censure themselves to sophomore slump accusations; that confidence makes Endless Now a delight, even if…
Puzzle Pirates
Puzzle Pirates Three Rings Design PC, Mac If there’s one thing any seasoned PC player should consider investing in, it’s a "Steam" account. Partially because Steam is a user friendly way to keep track of your PC games and purchase select new ones. Most recently we’ve been granted the exquisite puzzler Puzzle Pirates. With a choppy, free-roaming world…
Earlabia, pro and con
Q: I am a 22-year-old college grad who has been living at home for the last year. My parents are divorced, so I’ve gone back and forth from one place to the other. The other day, I was using my father’s computer, and the history came up on the search engine. It turns out that…
Duende – Florence to the Mad Man (Loco Gnosis)
Not so much outlaw country, more like outsider, or even Outer Limits … see, Detroit quartet Duende singe the traditional twang of Western ballads with a psychedelic haze. Is it fierce and dazzling? Yes. Is it murky with a surf-rock ready rhythm? Yup. Do we hear UFO-like quavers of a theremin and the ridin’-the-rails wheeze…
Das Racist – Relax (Greedhead)
The progression between Das Racist’s superb mixtapes of last year (Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man) and this wondrously inventive, scary debut album is simply the addition of songs. Whereas earlier releases existed on a kind of murky continuum, Relax offers complete pop compositions that are still leftfield and mysterious as often as searing.…
Granholm’s world
"You are being called to something more right now, Jen. To somewhere you’re never been. This is your crucible. So many factory workers are lost, so you are lost too … maybe it’s okay for you to be lost, Jen … my point is, you’re not God. So let it go. Let go of the…
Dreaming in color
He’d climb that tall ladder every weekend to put those black letters up high on the sign. Over the years, that marquee on the Alger Theater announced birthdays and graduations, advertised nearby small businesses, even carried a marriage proposal once. Changing the message took hours of reaching upward, sometimes into wind-driven rain or face-burning sunshine,…
Symphonies in cider
Autumn signals its arrival with a certain snap in the air, morning frosts, falling leaves. We respond with our annual rituals, breaking out sweaters and leaf rakes, readying the trusty ice scraper. And, just as the geese fly south, metro Detroiters fan out to the dozens of apple orchards and cider mills in the region,…
The sky isn’t falling
Medical marijuana activism in Michigan seems to have hit a roadblock the past few weeks in the wake of the State Appeals Court decision against Compassionate Apothecary, LLC, of Mt. Pleasant. After that ruling, hundreds of so-called dispensaries shut down and there were raids in Ann Arbor, arrests in Oak Park and the bust of…
The song collector
Ferndale’s Record Collector used record store has been kicking for 30 years this month. That’s something. It’s not easy keeping a record store alive these days — just ask the owners of two long-standing local "brands" that recently shuttered, Car City Records and Record Time. Each was ensconced in the community and, we thought, immune…
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame B- An opulently entertaining kung-fu epic steeped in visual excess, Detective Dee is big on spectacle but has a typically relaxed Chinese attitude towards narrative; the title character doesn’t even pop up for the first 20 minutes or so. Master action director Tsui Hark is…
Upscale pies
Antica Pizzeria Fellini 415 S. Washington Ave., Royal Oak 248-547-2751 Handicap accessible Prices: $10-$25 Metro Detroit has received a fair amount of attention, even national praise, for several of its pizzerias. Thick or thin, round or square, slathered in industrial cheese or dappled with heirloom tomatoes, we’re infatuated with our pies. But can the area…
I Don’t Know How She Does It
I Don’t Know How She Does It C Sarah Jessica Parker’s career no longer seems to involve acting so much as nurturing brand identity. Her latest role tries to make the logical progression from party girl to mommy. It’s as if Carrie Bradshaw traded in her martini glasses for sippy cups, but got to…
Mates of State – Mountain Tops (Barsuk)
People used to get so irritated when a Mates of State song came on — they’d bitch until you shut it off. Their early vocal abrasions laid against towering, cartoonish drum-and-synth combos in service of songs that rendered A.C. Newman’s power pop burlesques comparatively lightweight. But when the cute-coy married duo mellowed out and started…
Food Stuff
Down with it It’s time again for Detroit Restaurant Week, when restaurants, most of them in and around downtown, make a renewed bid for your business by offering inventive specials at delicious discounts. Expect full three-course dinners for just $28 per person at some of Detroit’s best-known restaurants. Not only is it affordable, it’s simple:…
Megafaun – Megafaun (Hometapes)
The guys in this mostly bearded North Carolina trio used to play in a band with Justin Vernon, before he started Bon Iver. These days they seem to be competing with Bon Iver for the title of the World’s Most Mellow Dudes. Based on their languid and pokey third album, we’ll give it to Megafaun.…
Letters to the Editor
POST MORTEM The MT mailbag was on the light side this week, but we had a number of noteworthy comments posted on our website. Several of you had high praise John Sinclair’s Higher Ground column drawing parallels between right-wing demagogues attempting to crack down on marijuana users here and in the Netherlands. Fairuse…
Jack Oblivian – Rat City (Big Legal Mess Records/Fat Possum)
Listening to the three blues-rock "garage" tunes that open this stunningly excellent album, the uninformed could be forgiven for thinking that songwriter-guitarist Jack Oblivian (aka Yarber) has definitely borrowed much from the White Stripes. But as Mike Hurtt pointed out in these pages years ago, it’s actually Jack White who was informed by the extraordinairy…
Jerry Lewis – Jerry Lewis Just Sings (1956)
You get an uneasy feeling with this record that at any moment Jerry’s acceptable Johnnie Ray love-calls could lapse into Koo Koo Bird craziness, and that’s probably what led the Muscular Dystrophy Association to choose predictable American Idol blandness over Jerry-atrics this year. Nostalgic for the telethon’s glory days, I went all YouTube this Labor…
Top 10 Dearborn Music weekly sales
1 Dream Theater A Dramatic Turn of Events 2 Eric Clapton & Wynton Marsalis Play the Blues 3 Jimi Hendrix In the West 4 Adele 21 5 Jimi Hendrix Winterland 6 Nick Lowe The Old Magic…
Lady Te — “Never Dreamed” Official Video
There’s always been something about Lady Te that exudes the confidence and moxy of a person who’s going to make it in the music world no matter what. The Cass Tech graduate and Wayne State University student had one hell of a summer, winning a handful of key hip-hop showcases in New York including two…
