In 2014, Franco Parente ran a filmmaker’s dream of a Kickstarter campaign. After it was announced Churchill’s Pub was changing owners, he sought funding to make a documentary about the legendary bar with the clever title Little Haiti Rock City. There was anxiety over the future of the venue that had been Miami’s live-music oasis since 1979…
Autumn is here (even if it doesn’t feel like it yet), and the City of Miami Beach wants to get South Floridians outside again. Just about every Wednesday night from October 3 through May 29, a different movie will be screened on the 7,000-square-foot wall outside the New World Center for the SoundScape Cinema Series.
Tom Petty had a complicated relationship with his hometown of Gainesville. He was born, raised, and spent his formative years in the North Florida university town. In the ’70s, he and his band Mudcrutch played all around Gainesville, but once they relocated to Los Angeles in 1974, it seemed Petty…
Musical influences are cyclical. There have been stages in rock history when everyone was trying to sing like Bob Dylan and other eras when everyone channeled their inner Lou Reed. But among the indie rockers who’ve pushed boundaries and topped the charts since the turn of the century, one has…
Asked how his rock band got its name, singer/guitarist Albae Camino recites the dictionary definition of “analog.” The gist is that “computers are digital devices; humans are analog,” he says. “We brainstormed short, simple names representing the way we sound. The four of us go for a pure…
When Burt Reynolds passed away yesterday, much was made of his Florida connections. The star of classics such as Deliverance and Boogie Nights graduated from Palm Beach High School and played football at Florida State University. With the star power to be crowned box office champ every year from 1978 to 1982…
There aren’t too many crooners in modern rock like Scott Yoder. But it’s not Roy Orbison or Chris Isaak who Yoder is channeling when performing. “I always had an affinity for the classic films, like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel,” Yoder says. “In these film-noir movies, they usually had a scene…
When the garage-rock political revolutionaries of MC5 recorded their live album Kick Out the Jams at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom in 1968, it became an instant classic. But guitarist Wayne Kramer still has an uneasy feeling about that concert. “It was a monumental night, but the pressure was too much…
It’s so easy to mock farewell tours. Classic-rock legends embark upon them every few years when alimony or back taxes call them to the road one last time — until the next time. But eventually, every artist has a tour that ends up being a farewell. Tom Petty’s came last year, Prince’s the year before…
September 2 through 9, Churchill’s Pub, Little Haiti’s legendary live-music mecca, will celebrate 39 years of business. Some performances have been weird, some beautiful, and some beautifully weird. To celebrate this odd anniversary, we list the most Churchill’s-esque shows you might have missed.
“There’s a weirdness from growing up in Miami that lends toward storytelling. Everyone there comes from somewhere else. It made me want to know people’s stories.”
It’s a point of pride for the jam band Umphrey’s McGee that in this, its 21st year of existence, it released not one, but two new records: It’s Not Us and It’s You. “It’s great we can show people that 20 years into the band, we’re not rehashing old music,” keyboardist and singer Joel Cummins says…
Austin is known for its guitar music. Few people think of the Texas capital as an EDM hot spot, but electronic geniuses Tritonal call it home. “I came from a Texan musical family,” explains one half of the duo, Chad Cisneros. “My grandparents played guitar and piano. They had my mom and her sisters cut records as a family band of gospel and Christian music.”
It seemed outrageous in 1994 when lead singer Billy Corgan said the Smashing Pumpkins were influenced by ’70s dinosaur rock like Boston and Electric Light Orchestra. His most faithful fans figured he was being ironic. Those were the kind of older acts his alternative-rock peers like Nirvana and Radiohead openly mocked…
Have you been dancing to the new Enrique Iglesias song featuring Pitbull, “Move to Miami”? Of course you have. It’s everywhere. And Nitti Gritti, the man who started the song, has come up with a new remix of it.
If you bought tickets through Ticketmaster between October 21, 1999, and February 27, 2013, there’s a good chance you are owed free tickets. As part of a settlement for the Schlesinger v. Ticketmaster class action lawsuit, Ticketmaster agreed to provide free vouchers and discount codes for select events…
A lot has happened in the past two years. In 2016, Barack Obama was president, fake news was an oxymoron, and the South Florida rock ‘n’ rollers of Beach Day played their most recent hometown show. “I moved to Detroit,” singer/guitarist Kimmy Drake explains. For someone who grew up in Kendall…
It’s the classic “desert island” question: If you were stranded alone on a remote, tropical destination with only one album to keep you company, which would you choose? I’d never given the question much thought before last September, when news reports and mayors predicted Hurricane Irma would be a “nuclear”…
When Luis Fonsi’s song “Despacito” topped the U.S. singles charts for a significant part of 2017, there was talk it might lead to a multicultural epiphany — that America was finally ready to open its ears to Spanish language songs. But though the success of “Despacito” might turn out to…
The “Chains of Love” performers have chained themselves to the Magic City.
We’re getting into those dog days of summer. Your kids are only a couple of weeks out of school, and you’re already losing your mind. How can someone so small have so much energy? Well, to paraphrase Meryl Streep, have them use that hyper-energetic heart to make some art.
Poison was more rose than thorn in the beginning.
