BOHEMIAN HOME’S FUTURE…
Some troubling fireworks going on over at the Bohemian National Home, Detroit’s favorite venue for genuinely alternative and just plain “out there” music. We can’t say more right now but will as soon as we can. Suffice it to say that the venue is closed for now — but most of the scheduled shows will…
THE WONDER TWINS AT THE SILENT YEARS’ PARTY…
The Wonder Twins, aka D’Anne and Laura Witkowski, spent their Saturday evening at the Magic Bag in Ferndale, reveling in the enchantment that was the Silent Years’ CD release party. And what a party it was, with Mann and Quail, These United States and Deastro rounding out the bill! L: I hadn’t been to the…
HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND…
Just coming up for air again — hey, it’s been a busy week, what with McCain’s scary soccer mom dominatrix (thanks, Tommy Chong!) and I think someone resigned the other day (it was hard to tell from that speech; man, the arrogance just boggles the mind…) — to alert you to some of the going-ons…
Now Casting: “Citizen Kwame: the Rise & Fall of the Hip Hop Mayor”
Here’s a little thought experiment. Thanks to Governor Granholm’s tax incentives to ramp up movie production in Michigan, it’s only a matter of time before someone decides to shoot a film about the rise and fall of Detroit Mayor Kwame Malik Kilpatrick. This story has everything a filmmaker could ever want! A family political dynasty.…
History lesson, part two
Vratislav Brabenec is in Prague, talking to an American journalist on the telephone, and he’s asked how politics, both past and present, have shaped his band, the Plastic People of the Universe. Brabenec’s bandmates have already suggested he may have had a few drinks this evening, and his English is a bit clumsy — though…
Crossover hit
Writer and director Courtney Hunt’s debut feature is a bracing reminder that independent film once existed as a defiant middle finger to cultural hegemony. She takes a cold, hard look at two difficult women who are chafing at the limitations imposed on their lives by men, facing grinding poverty with a defiant sneer, and determined…
Groove is in the heart
Before the inferno, Brad Hales’ shop, Peoples Records, was a subterranean mecca of second-hand vinyl housed floor-to-ceiling in beautiful old Atlas soda crates. Mountains of remarkably rare records wove a tapestry of Detroit music, rediscovered and ready for the taking. Nestled in the heart of the Cass Corridor in the Forest Arms building, Peoples was…
Brian’s back!
Although the word has been used frequently throughout his career, both justifiably and not so justifiably, Brian Wilson’s new album is an artistic triumph. A song cycle in the same vein as Smile (which — though some may view this as heresy — pales both melodically and thematically in comparison), Wilson builds this one around…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY • 3 THE SHONDES ROCKING INDIGNATION When musicians describe themselves as political, it’s often nothing more than a sort of current-events dilettantism that’s better left ignored. But for Brooklyn’s the Shondes, politics are at the forefront of their musical identity — they’re a queercore, feminist punk, indie band who sing about contemporary Jewish identity,…
The Globe
The Globe, the highly anticipated second album from Detroit faves the Silent Years, can be summed up in this one lyric: “Microscopes and telescopes both end up showing the same thing …” The band tackles the universe and the universal on their second release — and in “concept album” form no less. Lofty? Yes. Risky?…
Indian shivers
Fulfilling Native American fantasies is a challenge
Cheat the Gallows
Initially, Cheat The Gallows sounds like some grand Pink Floyd-ish rip-off, featuring an opening track that swirls in synths and distinctly Brit-rock sounding riffs. Nothing new, of course. You’ve heard it done almost every year by some eager indie group who’s hoping to lift their influence’s mojo rather than create their own. But soon enough,…
Amateur night
What a weird and inglorious beginning to a daring television experiment. At 10 p.m. on Monday, July 14, debut night for WMYD-TV’s improbable My TV20 News at Ten, Detroit’s newest newscast opened with a story about FEMA’s efforts to help rebuild homes and businesses destroyed by flooding along the Mississippi River. Then came the music…
Disaster Movie
The latest pop culture regurgitation from the team who made “Date Movie” finds the world coming to an end, and the audience asking for their hour-and-a-half back. This stream-of-consciousness parody’s problem is that its humorous twists just aren’t fresh. Questioning the sexuality of naked warrior Beowulf? Adding racy lyrics to a chirpy High School Musical…
Sonically different
Contemporary classical music takes to MOCAD.
Forth
A decade after the Verve and an accompanying wave of Brit-pop acts washed the grunge off listeners who’d grown tired of wearing flannel in warm climates, the band is back with enough “sing-it-in-your-sleep” hooks to hawk running shoes. Forth is a lesson in contrasts — glossy production laced with gritty vocals; grandiose melodies disrupted by…
Days of future passed
How would Dr. King react to Obama?
College
Using Animal House (1978) as her model, commercials director Deb Hagan takes an adolescent rite of passage and turns it into a primer on collegiate sadism, pushing the R rating to new raunchy lows in the process. Screenwriters Dan Callahan and Adam Ellison have created three archetypes for this hellish adventure: serious-minded photographer Kevin Brewer…
Motor City Cribs
If you stepped into Viki’s basement you’d think a bomb went off in a Radio Shack and took out the music aisle at the Toys ‘R’ Us store next door. Strewn about are soldering guns, cables, electronic parts, hot-wired toy keyboards, synths and absurd custom made electronic music instruments — all cast-off gizmos and toys…
Babylon A.D.
This muddled, brain-dead piece of sci-fi slop is so bad that director Mathieu Kassovitz recently disowned it. Some undisclosed disaster has left Eastern Europe a grungy, bombed-out crater, where Toorop (Vin Diesel), a surly, mumbling mercenary has his door down as he’s dragged off to chat with a crime lord named Gorsky, who charges him…
Dick’n around in Flint
In wake of droopy drawers crusade, top cop imposes gag rule on department
Newton’s law
Why Wayne Newton’s plane is grounded in Oakland County
Cross-examining the charters
Mary T. Wood arrives for a lunch meeting hauling two tote bags of files with hundreds of pages of semi-organized records about the state’s charter schools. She orders a chicken salad sandwich and is pleased with its fresh bread, juicy tomato and crisp lettuce. But there’s just not quite enough chicken salad for her taste.…
Food Stuff
Full plates for local foodies.
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
This is the strangest Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #187 that could ever be! Don’t turn on the lights ’cause I don’t wanna read! Pink — Funhouse (LaFace) :: What a stooge. Love — Out Here (Collectors’ Choice) :: Well it’s 1969, OK? And Arthur Lee is conducting a cosmic clinic that easily outstrips what passes…
Old-school pool
It’s a hot and sunny recent Friday afternoon, and a few men hide from the heat inside Bill’s Recreation, a pool room just south of Wayne State University’s campus. They’re playing a game called “Bank.” “Go on!” yells Bill King to the ball he just shot at. “Get in there!” It stops at the lip…
On the Download
SAILING THE SEA OF JAPAN Local combo the Silent Years will get a justifiably large-ish word count in weeklies and dailies this week [Geez, you must have ESP, Handyside, since you’ve added to the word count in this one! —Ed.], as they’re releasing their new, vast, gorgeous, meticulous and ambitious full-length, The Globe, with a…
Couch Trip
Boomerang Fox Film Noir In making the tired and unnecessary point that the story in Boomerang is a small-time crime yarn that could have happened in any sleepy American town, the film opens with the kind of ironing-board-flat voice-over narration that has graced many a 1950s instructional short. It’s so similar, in fact, that all…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
New queen of noir
She isn’t the kind of woman who’d pack a pistol or stash a dead body in the trunk of a car. In fact, she looks adorable, friendly and even somewhat diminutive on the cover of the winter issue of Crimespree Magazine. But make no mistake, Megan Abbott is a noir fiction writer who isn’t afraid…
There’s Only One
In interviews, Buff1 has said that his album titles have multi-dimensional meanings. The Athletic Mic League member’s critically acclaimed solo debut, Pure, was a reference to undiluted hip hop, God, and raw, natural emotion. Likewise, the Ann Arbor rapper’s new effort, There’s Only One, isn’t only an allusion to his musical individuality, but also an…
THE WONDER TWINS ON THE SILVER JEWS!
Just to prove that there was actually more going on this weekend than just the International Jazzfest, and the Hamtramck festival, and Arts Beats & Eats, and the Belle Isle Grand Prix, and a Tigers game, and the appearance in Hart Plaza of (hopefully) the next Prez of the United States (whew! ), we offer…
Take five
Before I delve into my final commentary on the 29th Detroit International Jazz Festival, I want to acknowledge some of the improvement the fest organizers made in 2008. Last year, the security staff treated the journalists and photojournalist assigned to cover the festival like crap. We had to fight to get backstage, and when we’re…
