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Tracy K. Smith

I’m almost ashamed to admit that I came to Tracy Smith’s Life on Mars only after she won the Pulitzer Prize for it. I had seen the title, and I immediately remembered the wonderful David Bowie song, and I felt just a...

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Phil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings

The “roaring” twenties and thirties of the last century were a golden age of popular dance and dance bands. The new record industry was working overtime, but canned music did not permeate all public spaces as it does today, and...

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Works by Michigan Artists

Every fall during college, after all our books were purchased and fees paid, the last thing on the shopping list was always posters or art. With whatever money we had left, my girlfriends and I would scour the poster bins for...

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The Queen of Versailles

The Queen of Versailles is a documentary about David Siegel, a seventy-four-year-old time-share tycoon, and his forty-three-year-old wife, Jackie, who set out to build America’s biggest home, in Orlando, Florida. Named for...

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Burn This

My respect for playwright Lanford Wilson (best known for his wonderfully titled Hot L Baltimore) shot through the roof with this production of Burn This. High five for the Performance Network Theatre, too.Twenty-five-year-old...

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The Ben Miller Band

The Ben Miller Band is a versatile blues-rock Americana trio that hails from Joplin, Missouri, and has built a cultlike following in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti area ever since performing at the 2010 Michigan Roots Jamboree. Led by...

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Forest, Farm, Field

Forest, Farm, Field, the current exhibit at Chelsea’s River Gallery, presents the natural world as we would like it to be: shimmery green and mild, a generous offering of benign plants, pretty wildflowers, and ripe...

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BA-Dum

Despite the slightly ridiculous-looking title character, Jaws is a great movie. It’s got great pacing, great acting, great editing, great cinematography, and particularly, great directing, uniting Hitchcock’s...

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Riverfolk and NashBash

Dog days. Summer Festival is over, the fall season is weeks away, and everyone who can make it out of town has done so. August isn’t the top month on anybody’s concert-going list, but that just means it offers a...

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Vincent York at the Gandy

When residents and politicians sing the praises of life in Ann Arbor they usually leave out one important factor: the marvelous jazz educators in our public schools. I think of Mike Grace at Community High, Louis Smith at...

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Matt Jones

Local singer-songwriter Matt Jones grew up in Adrian and has been involved in the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti music scene for the past decade. He’s played, often on drums, with a plethora of local bands and performers and is...

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Minerva and Cthulhu

Don’t have the funds to experience a magnificent Baroque-style fountain in Rome? Want to check out a towering artistic interpretation of Cthulhu (generally pronounced “Ka-THOO-loo”), the malevolent high priest...

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Scott Lasser’s Detroit

Scott Lasser’s new novel, Say Nice Things About Detroit, starts with a double homicide and dementia. That makes it sound like an Elmore Leonard novel, and Lasser’s fast-paced narrative and ear for the speech of the...

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Mike Stanley

Perhaps you have somewhere in your past an aunt, grandmother, or fifth-grade teacher who would sniff, “That’s a sign of a very limited vocabulary!” whenever they heard a four-letter word. I heard this...

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Anti-apartheid Legend

The son of an English crime reporter living in Johannesburg, Johnny Clegg traveled into the city’s black townships as a teen and absorbed Zulu music firsthand. Later he studied anthropology and began to think about the...

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Yellow Submarine

I just watched The Beatles’ 1968 cartoon movie Yellow Submarine again for the first time in forty-four years, and I’m glad I did. Whether or not you’ll feel the same after watching it at the Michigan Theater on...

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Steve Rush

For many, the highlight of this year’s musical season in Ann Arbor was the University Musical Society’s presentation of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, the last century’s most radical rethinking of...

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Poetic postage

“Robert Hayden,” Fran Wright announced jubilantly, bending down to clear grass cuttings off a grave marker at Fairview Cemetery. “Success!””Robert Hayden 1913-1980 / Poet,” the marker read....

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Orpheum Bell 2012

Orpheum Bell has been kicking around Ann Arbor since 2005, playing its distinctly Eastern European folk, yet genre-­challenging, sound. Founded by Aaron Klein and Serge van der Voo, the only remaining members of the original...

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