Ray Milian likes the hour before midnight best. “You don’t have to worry about the dance floor, so you can play all the new stuff,” he explains. “People are just getting in, getting their drinks, and they’re not going to dance no matter what you play.” But then, continues the…
Enrique Iglesias is in trouble. The disc he is lip-synching to skips. “Hero/hero/hero/hero,” he mouths, jerking at the mike until a midget shakes him back on track. A midget? Okay, the singer in the backward baseball cap is not really the atonal Iglesias; it’s star impersonator Julio Sabala. The midget,…
Independence exacts a toll. When Michelle Shocked releases her first CD on her own label, Mood Swing, this spring, nearly six years will have passed since the eclectic singer rallied the Thirteenth Amendment (the one that outlawed slavery) to win her freedom and the rights to all her music from…
Reports of the death of rock and roll have been greatly exaggerated. Far from vanquished by electronica’s black box, the spirit of the Delta stomp has risen again, stirring the unquiet soul of Motown, rattling the bones of Detroit garage, and resurrecting legions of Lou Reed’s undead. The glow sticks…
Jorge Moreno’s manager had a plan. With the kid’s good looks, he could be the next Ricky or Enrique. That was the pitch for the record companies. Trouble was, he was pitching to Madonna’s new Latin label, and Maverick Musica wasn’t shopping for just another pretty face. Sure the Material…
Carlos Vives will never be caught in a sequined jump suit. Exuding gentleness rather than libido, the pop vallenato singer is more likely to gambol across stage wearing a T-shirt, sandals, and shorts. Mischievous eyes framed by long, loose curls, his bustling energy at age 40 is a far cry…
Angel Mora and Luis Miguel are natural enemies: paparazzo and pop star. Spurred by a star system that makes Miguel’s tiniest dalliance NEWS, Mora hunts the Mexican balladeer with all the big-game intensity of the Green Hills of Africa. The Miami-based photographer once spent hours hidden outside a hotel in…
When Merlin ran away, the dancers were tumbling in a field after rehearsal at the Jaycees Club on Marathon Key. The Shih Tzu nosed around in the sand on the volleyball court and then trotted across the Jaycees’ driveway to Stanley Switlik Elementary School. Sniffing at the silver buttonwood on…
I have a confession to make. I love the song “Chi Chi Man” by Jamaican quartet TOK. I know, I know, even with my barely speaky-spokey patois I can understand that the chorus “Blaze di fire mek we bun dem!!!!” is not a SAVE Dade slogan. And yet I love…
Forget about digesting turkey and stuffing. I’m still churning over the pre-Thanksgiving festivities from the week before. I know I previewed a lot of this stuff two columns ago, but I had no way of knowing what would actually happen. Pop psychology has it that if you never process the…
Blame Ayden. Even after three hot teenage girls plied him with food and gas money, the nineteen-year-old MDCC student took his time driving from the school’s Kendall campus to Spec’s records in Miami Beach. Now Bettsy, Linda, and Sandra are stuck on the wrong side of Ocean Drive at the…
A lot can happen if a drinking hole manages to stay open 89 years. Tobacco Road started as a speakeasy and gambling den during Prohibition and would have been a strip club back in the Mariel days, but the crowd was so rough no woman, self-respecting or otherwise, would work…
The title of Mambo King is hotly disputed, with any number of pretenders vying for the crown. “After Perez Prado died, everybody else said they invented the mambo,” observes Paquito Hechavarria, “but how come no one made that claim while he was still alive?” The memory of another of the…
When Paquito Hechavarria and German Pifferrer were kids, mambo was new and Dámaso Perez Prado ruled. “I remember when I was little, I used to sit at the piano,” says the 62-year-old Hechavarria, spreading his plump fingers and pounding the air just above the glass table where he sits on…
Damian Marley, 24-year-old son of Robert Nesta and Jamaica’s 1977 Miss World, Cindy Breakspeare, has his father’s dreads, his mother’s pretty face, and a raspy, just-out-of-bed vocal style all his own. On his sixteen-track sophomore outing, Halfway Tree, the youngest Marley’s sing-song delivery would grow tired fast were it not…
The stateside success of Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, and Salma Hayek got the folks at Venevision International to thinking: Why let Hollywood make all the money off great Spanish-speaking actors? Instead of importing movie stars, why not import entire movies? Not those grim arthouse bores made for miniscule audiences but…
It all started with a dress. A white dress with black polka dots and red trim. Crinoline skirt. Red belt. Red shoes. Like Minnie Mouse wears. Only this is TMarie, at age six. She is competing for Tiny Miss Miami 1994. Her hair is pulled back in a poof. Her…
The folks at IRmagazine have a roundabout strategy for boosting readership. “It’s a literary magazine,” explains editor in chief Ben Carrasco. “We do short stories, poetry, nonfiction. But people like to read about music, so we write about music, too.” The only problem is, Carrasco doesn’t think there’s all that…
There’s a gaggle of underage girls gawking at the band on the far side of Finnegan’s 2 on Saturday night: blond, late teens, ponytails. The doorman might keep them from setting foot inside, but they don’t mind catching what they can from Lincoln Road, leaning against one another for support…
Pushed back from the original September date, the Fourth Annual Mix Show Power Summit finally went down this past weekend, bringing to town more than 100 commercial radio mix-show DJs for some high-profile politickin’. The Eden Roc meet-and-greet sessions were closed to the public, but late-night Thursday through Sunday, jocks…
On September 5 Emilio Estefan, Jr., and his niece, Univision host Lili “La Flaca” Estefan, made the short list of guests at the Bush administration’s first White House gala, boosting the Latin factor at the dinner honoring Mexican President Vicente Fox. Cowboy to cowboy, the Mexican leader was pushing the…
In the recording industry, a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. For Puerto Rican model-turned-singer Shalim, a picture in the hands of Emilio Estefan, Jr., was worth a recording contract. The son of singer and comedian Charytin and television producer Elin Ortiz has been in front of…
