In the mood for Ghostly
Ann Arbor-based Ghostly International has just released an app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Called Ghostly Discovery, the application works as a mood-reading jukebox containing Ghostly’s and sister label’s Spectral Sound’s catalogs, allowing users to create space-age playlists for what they want to listen to based on their emo(tional) state and digital (or) organic…
‘Dotte Fair In Music
Last month, Metro Times featured the emergence of Single Barrel Detroit.com — a group of guerilla filmmakers dedicated to creating original music videos of Detroit musicians interacting with distinctively Detroit places. On Friday, July 10 the group found themselves at the Wyandotte Street Arts Fair documenting the ‘dAP Summer Festival. Marking its third year of…
Detroit’s Lucky 13
When we stumble upon the Motor City gettin’ some lovin’ in national media, we share. It’s true, we just adore this town. Hence this feature on the communal CNN-Money-Fortune website: It sees 13 Detroiters offering up their fave Motor City spots in colorful (and flattering) photos and words. The usual gems are there among those…
Motion to Strike
Outside Detroit’s federal courthouse Tuesday afternoon, Chief Judge Gerald Rosen ditched his gavel for his glove. The judge was serving up fastballs, prepping his appearance on the Comerica Park mound, where he threw out the first pitch that evening in the Tigers eventual 9-7 win over the Seattle Mariners. In a pre-game exhibition, the right-hander…
Night and Day
WEDNESDAY JULY 22 Times New Viking BASEMENT RECORDING CHIC After signing to Matador Records for its third LP, fans and critics worried that a higher-profile label meant that this noisy, low-fi trio from Columbus, Ohio, would mean one more high gloss indie band. But Times New Viking still eschews the polish of modern production, opting…
Comics
The Boiling Point – by Mikhaela Reid
Plunk you
News Hits was impressed to see the Freep’s City Council slate last Sunday, the apparently painstaking culmination of combing survey responses from 90 candidates and interviews with two dozen finalists. The Freep gives a deserved nod to Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. and council member Brenda Jones alone among the incumbents, along with seven hopefuls,…
If you’ve got it, show it off
That’s the idea of ARISE Detroit’s Neighborhood Day, planned for Saturday. Throughout Detroit, nonprofits, churches, community groups and corporate sponsors have organized nearly 200 neighborhood cleanups, home buildings, health fairs, health screenings, anti-crime rallies, youth concerts and other events to showcase the work of area nonprofits. (They’ll take your volunteer applications too.) The day is…
High anxiety
Many bands have become known over the years for nonstop touring, but the High Strung has taken that sort of work ethic to a whole new level. They’ve spent most of the last four years on the road. No mean feat for an indie band with no tour support. So audiences all over the country…
That’s the way it was
My guess is that if you are in your 30s, or younger, you have a hard time understanding why everybody made such a big deal over Walter Cronkite dying last week. He hadn’t anchored a news program since 1981. You probably don’t remember him, except as a sort of ghostly, grandfatherly figure in some old…
It ain’t anger!
First Lenny Bruce, then George Carlin and now Lewis Black — America continues to rely on comedians to cut through heaps of steaming bullshit (much of which is spouted from our nation’s capital). If a comedian’s agenda is truth and they can circumvent the cheap transfer of pop-cult baggage, they might transcend the tag of…
Mayor’s race? What mayor’s race?
On a Thursday afternoon in mid-July, about 40 folks have gathered in the sanctuary of Liberty Temple Baptist Church on Detroit’s west side to hear from five people who want to be the city’s next mayor. The candidates are varied and optimistic, earnest and … What’s that you say? There’s a mayor’s race going on…
Hello, Goodbye
We came, we saw, we conquered. Then we were fingerprinted, photographed and told to get the fuck out of England. The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. In fact, we want you to know who we are. We just wish the British government…
When Joe Henry met Mose Allison
"Well, a young man, he ain’t got nothing in the world these days." Or so a young man named Mose Allison sang in his backcountry half-sung, half-spoken twang in a New York studio in 1957, inaugurating a singular recording career. The song, then just "Blue Blues," on an album that mainly featured his piano playing,…
Taking it outside
Michigan weather is a fickle beast at best — we get one 90-degree-plus bust-out-the-flippy-floppies day, then it plunges back down into subzero overnight lows and you have to scrape frost off your windshield to go to work in June. Well, maybe that’s exaggerating just a little, but it’s not unheard of. We may have jinxed…
Family trouble
Q: I’m a straight guy, and my first girl was very experienced — she was proud to say she’d been with at least 30 guys before me. When all was said and done, she said that I was the most well-endowed of any man she’d seen before. In all my subsequent experiences, the women I’ve…
High-water marks
When Canadian filmmaker Liz Miller’s documentary The Water Front was released two years ago, local environmental groups met to discuss how they could use the film as an educational and organizing tool. After all, water advocates thought, if access to clean and affordable water was threatened in Highland Park — just a few miles from…
Motor City Cribs
You know you’re "Up North" when instead of guiding you to your destination, your GPS sends you down a two-track road in a national forest, and, when you call your host for directions, you discover there’s no phone service, but maybe beer. Welcome to the not-so-old days!  Insane Clown Posse and Kid Rock producer…
Letters to the Editor
Outraged by piece on Michael Jackson I’m not some crazy Michael Jackson fan, but I am a fan of his music and I was offended by Serene Dominic’s "Too soon?" (July 8). You should be ashamed of yourself. This is a music section, so instead of talking about Michael Jackson’s personal low points (which we…
Cheat Code
NCAA Football 10 EA Sports PS3 Xbox360, Ps2 Ah, the good-old college New Year’s gameplan. You’ve had your walk of shame, washed away the debauchery and sucked down a meal that you soon hurled. There’s only one thing left to do: Turn on football, and watch the USC Trojans demolish whichever unfortunate Big Ten team…
Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout
Saint Serene, get me on Jeffrey Morgan’s Media Blackout #225! SIZZLING PLATTERS OF THE WEEK: Phil Manzanera — The 801 Series (Expression/MVD Audio) :: 801 was the Plastic Ono Band of mid-’70s progressive supergroup rock ensembles, a nebulous ever-shifting central shaft around which revolved some of the greatest English art rock adherents ever: Roxy Music’s…
Money market
At the pawn shop, the line for loans ebbs and flows, but lately it’s been long. The hard times are displayed every day here, as the desperate hock belongings for fast cash. "When it’s depressed like this, people are bringing in anything just to get by, whether it’s to make monthly mortgage payments, car payments,…
In progress: The Lot
Inspired by the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists Residencies in Saugatuck, where Corktown-based artist Kathy Leisen works on staff, the Lot is the latest in Detroit’s lineage of public art sites. Leisen says that site-specific outdoor artwork is a natural part of the experience at Ox-Bow because of its exceptional setting on the dunes…
Food Stuff
More beer! — You may have noticed last week’s article on Michigan craft brewing. If you’d like a chance to sample Michigan brews this week, drop in at the 12th annual Summer Beer Festival. It happens July 24-25, in Ypsilanti’s Depot Town. For more information, see the website of the Michigan Brewers Guild at michiganbrewersguild.org.…
Couch Trip
The Cremator Dark Sky  When, exactly, was the last time you saw a film and thought, "I’ve never seen anything like that before." Sure, some sense of uniqueness is difficult to find in cinema anymore, and the average moviegoer doesn’t give a damn about challenging narratives and unabashed artistic flair, like those found in…
Indian spice
It’s a little more expensive than some Indian restaurants, with most meat entrées at $14 or $15 and most vegetarian ones at $10 or $11, but it has a full bar, including Indian beers and wines, and a quiet, cloth-napkin atmosphere. You get naan with your meal, so you’re saving $3 or $4 right there.…
Haunt me
Devon Bostick is Simon, a sensitive orphan teen raised by his sulky uncle (Scott Speedman), and struggling to give meaning to his parents deaths through a bizarre school project that’s part social experiment. Simon’s French teacher (Arsinee Khanjian) urges him to take the story of a Middle Eastern man who attempted to plant a bomb…
Horehound
Jack White appears to still have that Midas touch, as he takes the Detroit tradition of seemingly being in 100 different bands at the same time to an international level. That’s an exaggeration, of course. This is only White’s third "official" band since becoming a rock star — the Dead Weather being an "indie" supergroup…
Backwash
Emitt Rhodes’ story is as strange and sad as any in pop … only this guy didn’t die. Nearly did. He’s alive, in fact, in ill health, with no Internet or mobile phone. A recluse for decades in his Hawthorne, Calif., home (and studio), which sits across from the house he grew up in, he…
Postman cometh
Transplanting James M. Cain’s bleak Depression-era tale of betrayal to impoverished northeast Germany, director Christian Petzold’s slow burn neo noir is less a Teutonic exercise in genre thrills and more a grim character piece that subtly examines the desperate emotional toll of economic hardship. Thomas (Benno Fürmann) has returned from Afghanistan, dishonorably discharged and broke.…
“IT CAME FROM DETROIT” HITS HOLLYWOOD
James R. Petix’s It Came From Detroit documentary film is making its L.A. debut this Thursday, July 23rd, as part of the city’s annual Don’t Knock The Rock festival. The yearly event was launched several years ago by acclaimed film director (and major rock ‘n’ roll fan) Allison Anders (Gas, Food, Lodging; Grace of my…
