Small menu, big style
The frequently changing, seasonal menu has only five entrées, so you can have confidence that anything you order will be done right. There are four appetizers, including scallops with a sauce of cauliflower and almonds, with grapes and raisins. Red snapper is presented atop Asian somen noodles, bok choy and shiitake mushrooms, mildly flavored with…
Wikky-wikky wonders
DJ Lenn Swann remembers the time he saved Eminem’s ass. He and the then-emerging rapper were in New York playing an industry showcase gig at a club called the Wetlands. Em and Swann were sharing the bill with the Cocoa Brovas, a rowdy New York crew that just wasn’t about to let a Detroit MC…
Song of etiquette
Maxine Powell still bristles when someone referres to her as an etiquette instructor. Motown’s first lady of class won’t stomach such a limited description of her work — not before, after or during her 1964-1969 stint as part of the artist development department for the record company that has become synonymous with Motor City music.…
X inflammable
It’s Tuesday night and Bob Mulrooney (aka Bootsey X) is at home alone, dead tired. Long hours spent stocking pop platters at a chain record store and debilitation from dope detox has him drained. And since the electric company cut the power (nonpayment), Mulrooney is navigating his small, two-bedroom flat by candlelight. But things are…
No smoking gun
Lee Beck was alone in her West Bloomfield home when the call came from the Detroit Police detective. He was phoning to assure her that he was “on the case,” determined to find those responsible for robbing and shooting her husband, Jack Beck, at his business 17 days before. As the conversation wound to a…
North
Yeah, you read right: Elvis Costello’s new album is on the esteemed Deutsche Grammophon label. Wait, it gets better. Clocking in at a breezy 40 minutes, North has 11 tracks — all of them jazz ballads which give new vistas of meaning to the word minimal. Did I say minimal? Check that; the mood is…
The Mindbending Sounds Of …
Currently in competition with the Fleshtones for the title of America’s longest-running, still-extant American neo-garage combo, the Chesterfield Kings — who, like the ’tones, clambered out from amid the detritus of punk’s aftermath in the late ’70s — have unexpectedly served up a collection of all-original tunes. Unexpectedly, because, excluding an early ’90s punk/metal flirtation,…
Exalted Lover
One look at the retrofied cover photo and you know you’re cruisin’ in the right neighborhood for a good old-fashioned heapin’ helpin’ of home-style rhythm and blues bruisin’. In the classic album cover tradition of Jonah (I Dig Chicks) Jones and George (Burnished Brass) Shearing, we’re presented with an uncorked bottle of primo cheapo vino…
Banned in DC: Greatest Riffs
Bad Brains are the greatest band you never heard — unless you caught them on VH1’s “History of Punk Rock” when Dave Grohl called them “the best fucking live band ever.” A quartet of black, middle-class, jazz-fusion-bred kids from suburban D.C., the Bad Brains were both an anomaly and brilliantly overqualified for the East Coast…
What’s old, pussycat?
Honest to Pete! Why the hell would anyone read a near 350-page song-by-song breakdown and bio of a composer best known for lite-pop hits like “Walk on By” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head”?! Take Carole King, Dionne Warwick, Mike Myers, Elvis Costello, Vic Damone, Frankie Avalon, Neil Simon, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance…
It’s all about sex
Leonard Shlain is the kind of bullshit artist you keep reading because he tells a good tale. In Sex, Time and Power, he weaves a grand theory about how humans became the only species to develop a deep sense of time. We got it from observing women’s menstruation cycles, he argues with wild conjecture. This…
Mambo Italiano
Mambo Italiano
serves up Montreal’s Little Italy, its inhabitants and the comic tribulations of Angelo Barberini (Luke Kirby), a gay, second-generation Italian-Canadian. Here, the impediment to true love is "coming out." This movie is lighter than a cannoli. It’s amusing, but rarely laugh-out-loud.
Cartoon cinema
Star animators Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge — creator, animator and main voice of "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill" — present the highest-quality anthology of short animation seen yet. It all adds up to an entertaining mix of the very funny and the weirdly visionary. Judge and Hertzfeldt set out to show…
Burt’s hurts
What insights into Bacharachia are to be found in this new book? We learn, for instance, that in 1965 Burt Bacharach was an opponent of early rock ’n’ roll (but had nothing but praise for the Beatles). Here’s an excerpt about the Peter O’Toole film What’s New Pussycat, which featured Manfred Mann’s version of Bacharach’s…
The Milky Way
The Milky Way (’68) is both one of Luis Buñuel’s most specific and most obscure films. Never having achieved the popularity of such other late-period works as the Spanish director’s Belle de Jour (’67) and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (’72), The Milky Way is a film about Christian heresies through the centuries. The…
Cet Amour-La
For the final 16 years of her life, the celebrated French writer Marguerite Duras lived with a man nearly 40 years her junior, Yann Andrea, who adored her. The film is less a re-enactment of the pair’s relationship than an overlong musing on the nature of writing. And there is no relief for us —…
Talking trash
By the time you finish reading this, Michigan will have received more than seven tons of trash from around the nation and Canada. State House Democrats claim that every minute more than seven tons of garbage are imported to our fair state. In fact, they have gone so far as to invent the Trash-O-Meter, a…
Bollywood/Hollywood
Bollywood/Hollywood
is an Americanized, cross-cultural take on the popular movies churned out by the Indian film industry. It’s Pretty Woman meets Monsoon Wedding. Take away the brown skin and saris and you’re left with an inexpertly executed romantic comedy that pretends to be about culture clash but isn’t.
Knuckleheads and numbskulls
News Hits laughed out loud when we learned that the Hamtramck School Board voted last week to reject suggestions that might prevent future fiscal mismanagement. The proposed safeguards must have made too much darn sense for the knuckleheads who voted against them. Last year, the school board hired attorney George Ward to investigate whether administrators…
Demonlover
All seems to be fair in love and corporate war in Demonlover. The film drifts into murderous corporate espionage with an aloof MacBeth and undertones of a Hitchcock thriller. But shallow characters dissipate the potential voltage of Demonlover and its futile attempt at suspense and tragedy.
Here yesterday
Abandoned Shelter of the Week A few weeks ago, the Abandoned Structure Squad (aka ASS to our friends) snapped a photo of what amounted to little more than a brick façade backed by a pile of rubble. A few days later we passed by the site, at 4650 St. Aubin, and found workers from Adamo…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Every day, 5 million lightning bolts flash on our planet. At any given moment, 2,000 thunderstorms are raging. While you may not be in the literal presence of one of these elemental outbreaks in the coming week, you will channel a similar kind of energy: You’ll be fiercely and tenderly alive…
Porn again — the female view
Q: Maybe there’s nothing women can do about men being “hard-wired” to lust after other people. Maybe we just have to “get over it.” But can you give some advice on how to “get over it”? Maybe it’s “natural,” but can you give us a pep talk to make us accept it? —No Clever Acronym…
Cliff-hangers
If the subject is Edgefest, the question should be “edge of what?” Last week, the answer seemed to be “edge of calamity” for festival director David (no, not that David Lynch) Lynch. Ann Arbor’s Workbench Furniture, an offbeat fest venue of several years, had just gone bust, leaving two combos without an ottoman. “It was…
Exhibits with bite
A black woman nurses an adult white man dressed in a suit. He’s rubbing her thigh and sucking her large pink nipple. The woman is dressed in “loose woman garb” — a leopard-print dress and bright fuchsia heels. Next to them, a blond white woman, cartoonish, looks away while holding a black baby. The child…
October 1-7, 2003
3 FRI • MUSIC Mood Elevator CD Release Celebration — The Mood Elevator’s latest album, Married Alive, has been floating around the office for a couple days now, and, well … it is missing. Fans of the Mood Elevator know all about the squeal-level joy induced by 2000’s Listen Up! Record No. 2 offers 11…
Small-town appeal
Bob and Delores Evans know how to put people at ease. The bar owners do just that at Kovacs, a friendly establishment at 6986 W. Jefferson on Detroit’s southwest side. On a cool fall day, a stream of semi-trucks kick up dust as they roll by. Kovacs sits in the rundown neighborhood of Delray, which…
Losses & labor bosses
Other media have hammered on Mike Ilitch for the miserable Detroit Tigers, but clearly, when this column took him on last week, it turned out to be the last straw. After avoiding the press all year, the man who made cheap pizza an important part of America’s food pyramid caved in like an overdone calzone,…
Letters to the Editor
Words of wisdom Upon reading the piece by Wayne Kramer (“Bongs, songs & the truth,” Metro Times, Sept. 24-30), I just wanted to say thanks. As an “old dog” from those days, I can fully appreciate every line of his discourse. Moreover, it’s most important that today’s young folks and aspirants to some success in…
Crazy independence
Some might say that obsessive behavior is a character flaw. Others see an admirable quirkiness. Whatever it is, independent filmmaker Dennis Przywara wanted to document it — even if it took a degree of obsession on his part. His documentary about fans of the Star Wars series (also known as “Starwoids”) and their six-week quest…
Firefighters ignite the hood
News Hits has to hand it to the southwest Detroit firefighters. When the city periodically shut down fire companies in the area this summer, the men and women in red alerted the community. “We educated the public about what is happening,” says firefighter Robert Shinske, the union steward for the 7th Battalion, which includes southwest…
Flashes of brilliance
This past Saturday, on a small farm somewhere on the outskirts of Windsor, Ontario, the third annual Fahrenheit Festival of Fire ignited its most ambitious fire art show yet. Don’t go conjuring images of piercing-riddled, shirtless men exhaling orange plumes, musically challenged rockers engaging in a little pyrotechnic wizardry or, heaven forbid, starving artist renderings…
I remember mama
According to Tolstoy, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This statement holds true for one of the American stage’s really unhappy families, the Wingfields of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. The play that put Williams on the map is now being staged as the first show of…
Hit Singles new
White’s Pop Tell me, Daddy, are Motor City streets really paved with authenticity and musical genius? If you move to Detroit and make albums, will they be drooled over 20 years from now? Who knows? Who cares! But for at least one month, Detroit’s got Mojo. Or maybe it’s Mojo that has Detroit. Not the…
Mojo motor oil; Baker’s super session
White’s Pop Tell me, Daddy, are Motor City streets really paved with authenticity and musical genius? If you move to Detroit and make albums, will they be drooled over 20 years from now? Who knows? Who cares! But for at least one month, Detroit’s got Mojo. Or maybe it’s Mojo that has Detroit. Not the…
