Our Inaugural Indie Music Showcase
Four out of four kids agree: Indie Music Showcases rule. Metro Times Indie Music Showcase Starring The Decks Thursday, Sept. 28, 7pm @ Rock-A-Billy’s in Utica 8411 Hall Rd., Utica; 586-731-0188 ……… “We’re kind of important/Yeah, people know our names/And we wear giant sunglasses/And we don’t make mistakes ” I might be wrong on that…
Your Noise Music Toolkit
*John Olson says hello, his finger hovering over the Mormon-garbling equipment of Aaron Dilloway, 9/21/06 (MT Photo: Doug Coombe). Screaming, screaming, screaming, some guy screaming in a leather jacket – a noise music toolkit “But while the noise scene definitely has its proponents of the extreme, that doesn’t mean there’s only darkness at its core,…
Black flags
Patti Smith sang “Rock and Roll Nigger,” but 25 years later filmmaker James Spooner has really taken a look at what it means to be marginalized in the white rock world. His 66-minute documentary called Afro-Punk explores the uniquely American phenomenon of African-American kids going doubly underground — black in the white punk scene. “I…
Messy mate needs a cleanup
Q: I’ve been dating a wonderful guy for four months. He’s 41, I’m 37. We enjoy each other’s company immensely; we laugh a lot and he fucks like a champ — definitely a keeper. The issues I have with him are manageable, but I don’t know how to broach these subjects: He has a dental…
Jackass: Number Two
Although critics love to toss around the warning “this film is not for the faint of heart,” in the case of Johnny Knoxville’s newest homage to painfully funny unbridled idiocy, it’s really true: you just might find yourself puking into your popcorn bucket. After a sporadically successful foray into mainstream Hollywood, the impishly charming Knoxville…
How long is now?
In discussing the physics of space and time, University of Michigan game master Fred Goodman once quipped: “A thing is really nothing more than an extremely long event.” Along the same lines, an artwork is a thing that’s a record of an event, an object that results from the process of its making. This is…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid The Perry Bible Fellowship – by Nicholas Gurewitch
Art Bar
Mothers and fathers grow accustomed to being asked by young children, “What’s that?” Thus parents relearn the world by having to explain things they haven’t thought about in years. In this poem the Illinois poet Bruce Guernsey looks closely at common, everyday moss and tries to explain its nature for us. The poem deepens as…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Lost in space
Though it may come as a shock to generations of stoners who could imagine no higher purpose for it than as a vehicle for Laser Floyd, the planetarium does have other uses. An equally stunning astronomical factoid is that in addition to a post office, radio station and supermarket, the Vatican has an observatory. Lovers…
The Air Force
“Buzz Saw,” this album’s opening song, has a title that befits the entire thing. In what is otherwise a soft and embraceable ballad of piano and voice, a totally left-field burp of synth squelch suddenly cuts across the song, just like a buzz saw would. This happens more often than not on The Air Force.…
Bringing back the Dark Ages
Last week, Dick DeVos, the man who is spending millions of dollars a month attempting to sucker you into voting for him for governor, escaped. Escaped his handlers, that is, who want to filter every word their man says through three speechwriters and two public relations consultants. But Amway Dick gave a telephone interview with…
Keye up!
Their signing to None-such would seem to raise the Black Keys’ two-man blues grit to a higher art. Alongside the perfectionists and square-peg eggheads of jazz, classical, roots, rock and ethnic music, the music Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney make is suddenly supposed to be more than just something loud and howling enough to knock…
Driving while Muslim
Ali Houssaiky and Osama Abulhassan left their homes in Dearborn as college students and came home as terrorists. On Aug. 8, Houssaiky and Abulhassan drove to an Ohio Wal-Mart to buy hundreds of cheap cell phones, intending to sell them back to a distributor they knew to earn some extra cash for tuition. A Wal-Mart…
Futuresex/Lovesounds
“Gentlemen,good night. Ladies, good morning …” The announcement that began Justin Timberlake’s 2002 solo debut introduced us to a pop star beyond reproach, proving the former candy-ass had the smarts and self-assurance to draw appeal far beyond mall corridors or the daft and dying boy-band demographic. With vintage synths and beatboxed grunts, Timberlake’s sophomore record…
Night and Day
Wednesday • 27 Faces of Spirit ART There’s no denying the human form. Each generation of artists, from the Romans to the Impressionists, has framed it uniquely. And Detroit artists Judith Sheldon and Baba Issa Abramaleem continue this tradition with the exhibit Faces of Spirit. In paintings, wooden carvings and fabric collages, Sheldon and Abramaleem…
The Body, the Blood, the Machine
Do all punks go to heaven? The Thermals’ third record is a spiritual crisis set to sonics, a concept album that narrates the most basic fables of Christianity. But the real mystery isn’t in the heavens, or the heaviness, it’s in singer Hutch Harris’s distorted howl: Does he believe in the faith he dissects? Either…
A different kind of tension
Noise music gets a bad rap as being too volatile and oppressive. It’s often maligned as an out-there genre pursued only by those lost souls who’ve completely forsaken conventional rock ‘n’ roll in favor of routinely locking their heads inside an autoclave, or envisioned as some horrible, scary cauldron that boils with the bloody discharge…
A visual feast
Bamboo’s dishes have their origins all over the world, but with their own twists, and always with a feel for combinations that bring out the best of the diverse ingredients. There are four different but overlapping menus for lunch, Sunday brunch, tapas-time (4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday) and dinner. The food is very…
Motor City Cribs
Muffy Kroha’s row house gets a pink rethink.
Pop ed
Chuck Klosterman IV is a guy who could give you the best-ever stranger-at-the-bar conversation. He knows pop culture as well as Rosie Perez knows fruits that begin with the letter Q. Klosterman’s latest book, A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, combines a mastery of ’80’s arcania with a sarcastic worldview that’s all too…
Backslash
Starting early — As recently addressed in a Metro Times cover story, the average price tag of sending your kid to college has been soaring, and shows no signs of slowing down. As such, many parents are thinking ahead — way ahead — and starting college savings funds when their offspring are still in diapers.…
Hourglass horror
Amateur entomologist and schoolteacher Niki (Eiji Okada) escapes Tokyo for an extended weekend in the desert, in search of the beetle that will forever enshrine his name in a scientific insect journal. When he misses the last bus back, locals from a nearby dune village offer him a place to stay for the night. They…
Tour de smell
Environmental justice groups sniff Detroit.
Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul
German-born Turk Fatih Akin, director of the critically acclaimed thriller Head-On, introduces us to the Istanbul music scene in this well-crafted documentary. Situated between Europe and Asia, Turkey is a breeding ground for all sorts of funky, cross-cultural mash-ups and creative collaborations. The classic-meets-modernist music scene reflects a city where cell phone-toting teens in designer…
Reined in
Detroit bridge baron balked by high court.
Confetti
English director Debbie Isitt’s mocks modern marriage and reality television by channeling Christopher Guest (star of This is Spinal Tap, director of Best in Show) with this improvised mockumentary. She sets the stage for a triple wedding, giving us three sets of fiancés competing in a magazine contest to see who can throw the most…
Generalissimo George
Proposed legislation gives Bush unchecked power.
Feast
When Matt Damon and Ben Affleck started up Project Greenlight in 2000, they hoped to both open doors to up-and-coming filmmakers and create some entertaining “reality” TV. Feast, the third and final Greenlight movie isn’t all that bad, at least by swiftly plummeting monster movie standards. A motley collection of people wind up in a…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Love isn’t as simple as you wish it would be. On the other hand, it’s nowhere near as complicated as you fear it is. My advice to you is to extinguish any itch you might have to compel love to serve any agenda at whatsoever. Instead, bow down before it with…
Rounding up sound
“It’s very easy for people who don’t find the aesthetic rewards in noise to criticize it,” says Greg Baise, the talent buyer for the Majestic Theatre Center and a longtime enthusiast of noise music. “But you know, that’s not that preposterous.” Baise recognizes that there’s an erratic, unsteady fault line at the center of the…
Haven
Newcomer Frank E. Flowers joins the long list of filmmakers who have brazenly mimicked Quentin Tarantino’s interconnected story structure while displaying none of his energy, wit or style. A muddled multi-character crime drama set on the Cayman Islands, Haven is destined to beat a hasty retreat to late-night cable where, even there, it’s not worth…
Sweet mash-up
A music feature story generally starts with three elements: Noteworthy band (a) has a noteworthy new disc (b), which they’re coming to town to support (c). But when (a) is the hard-to-define Burnt Sugar and (b) is More than PostHuman: Rise of the Mojosexual Cotillion, what follows isn’t exactly (c). The New York City-based Burnt…
Letters to the Editor
Messianic mess Re: “Transformer” (Metro Times, Sept. 13), if I were convinced that I was Jesus Christ, trapped in the body of a middle-aged white male, would you: a) be interested enough to dedicate five pages to me, pandering to my narcissistic obsession? b) wholeheartedly and without question be accepting of my newfound identity? c)…
Fearless
Though Fearless has been touted as Jet Li’s swan song, his devoted fans shouldn’t worry too much. It’s doubtful that Jet Li will never again throw a kick on screen — rather, this film is simply his farewell to a certain kind of action picture: the historical martial arts epic. It’s a genre that’s served…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Got me a date and I can’t be late! Pick her up in my MB88! Buckaroo Banzai & The Hong Kong Cavaliers —No Matter Where You Go There You Are: Live at Artie’s Artery (Yoyodyne) :: Includes the hit singles “Since I Don’t Have You” and “Rocket 88.” More power to them! Scissorfight — Jaggernaut…
Life lessons
Lynette Love knows all about the downsides of May-December love affairs. Relationships between older men and younger women aren’t new, but these romantic — and often predatory — pairings are something she experienced growing up in Detroit. They’re also the subject of her debut book, May-December Winds: And Dorothy, You’re not in Kansas Anymore (AuthorHouse).…
All the King’s Men
If you add it all up, the cast and crew of the political drama remake All the King’s Men have enough Oscars, Emmys and Grammys to open a trophy shop. The ads trumpet this fact, in a series of glossy, slo-mo face shots accompanied by the words “Academy Award Winner Sean Penn,” “Academy Award Winner…
Cursive Rise Up! Rise Up! tonight at Majestic
Ace Metro Times freelancer Nate Cavalieri checks in with this Cursive Q & A , just in time for the indie rock combo’s gig at the Majestic. Take it away, Nick: When Cursive decided to take a break just over a year ago, the pause was well deserved. The band had recently released their widely-celebrated…
