Chris Azzopardi
Give into the 'Ghost'
Brandi Carlile: God's gift to music. While fawning over Brandi Carlile as she mesmerized and melted a packed crowd to the core in Detroit nearly two years ago, I knew the Seattle-born musician crafted one of the best songs of her then dual-album [...]
Under It All
Wearing underwear is a full-time job for Andrew Christian. That could explain the fashionista forgetting about our first scheduled interview – or why, when it happened, he had no idea who we were or why he was doing this. Maybe he's just easily [...]
Bearing it
Grizzly Bear – 8 p.m. Sept. 26, Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty St., Ann Arbor, www.michtheater.org A name like Grizzly Bear conjures images of chunky, hairy gay men and grisly, man-eating mammals. This quartet, a trippy neo-folk beast of a band, [...]
Hear Me Out: Whitney Houston looks to us, A Fine Frenzy blows up
Whitney Houston, 'I Look to You' Who won't always love Whitney Houston for her sky-reaching vocal bombast – the kind that could rip through a song like a chainsaw cutting into a tree trunk? That rafters-climbing belting that marked the glorious [...]
Hump' it out
Straight friends Ben and Andrew (Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard) want to make art … by having sex on film. Photo: Magnolia Pictures Friendships between gay men are weird: Seemingly, there's always that hard-to-shake sexual intensity no matter how [...]
What a 'Journey'
'It's not even interesting. It has nothing to do with my music, and it's not something that ever really comes up.' – Sharon Isbin, on being a lesbian There she was: Joan Baez in classical guitarist Sharon Isbin's New York home – crying. After some [...]
From commercial king to 'kitchen bitch'
Burtka David Burtka once spray-painted a giant condom on a camera. He was just a kid, and it was for the first commercial he shot – here in Michigan, where the 34-year-old once lived – that promoted wrapping it up. Burtka would go on to peddle other [...]
Peace, love and little else
Demetri Martin ( c e n t e r ) plays Elliot Tiber, who finds freedom in Woodstock and two hippies (Kelli Garner and Paul Dano) with some good drugs. Director Ang Lee's got something for the gays. After the harrowing down-low love story between two [...]
Dar to be different
If ever a boundary, Dar Williams has crossed it. She's turned interfaith into a pop song – the mid-'90s single "The Christians and the Pagans" – and addressed her tomboy childhood on "When I Was a Boy," both of which lured a large LGBT [...]
Soul singer turns us on, Sugarland does live covers
Hear Me Out Ledisi, 'Turn Me Loose' Turning this – Ledisi's third LP on Verve Music – loose would be a big no-no. There are oodles of reasons why this New Orleans-bred soul-stress nabbed a Grammy nod for Best New Artist last year, and her fourth [...]
DVD Lowdown: Double meat-ure
A double dose of cutie-patooties – Paul Rudd goes gaga for a guy in "I Love You, Man," and "17 Again" stars Zac Efron, who goes back to school – in the same week? Someone fan me; I'm sweating more than I do in my AC-less pad. Naked. Rudd's always [...]
The Sex Shack
The B-52s (from left) Fred Schneider, Keith Strickland, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson will perform at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 20 at DTE Energy Music Theatre. The B-52s 7:30 p.m. Aug. 20 DTE Energy Music Theatre 7774 Sashabaw Road, [...]