“If you wanted to buy a nice car, you wouldn’t want to buy it off Amazon.” Eric Gould, owner of Deja Vu Audio South, has a point. “You’d want to test drive it. It’s the same with audio equipment, you should spend time with it before you buy it.” Gould…
P.Y.T. — short for Pretty Young Thing — may sound cute and polished, but the new weekly Wednesday night party coming to LIV has a far dirtier background. It is the spiritual descendant of Miami’s infamous Dirty Hairy party series. “P.Y.T. Wednesday will definitely be carrying the torch from Dirty…
Though the electro-pop trio Pompeya hail from Russia, they’re about to make Florida their home for much of the month of May, with half a dozen shows scheduled up and down the Sunshine State. According to Pompeya’s singer and guitarist Daniil Brod, though, there’s not a huge difference musically between Miami…
The origins of ladies night are unclear. Perhaps it was a tool used by men to attempt to lessen their guilt for denying women basic human rights and equality. Maybe it goes back even farther, and after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, she felt the…
Talib Kweli has a simple description for his shows. “Good times all around,” the Brooklyn rapper says to expect. Kweli’s current tour, which had him in New Zealand when he spoke with New Times, will take the MC to Rec Room for a free show this Saturday. Kweli, who is…
Nikki Rodriguez finds it hard to believe June 8 will celebrate the sixth anniversary of Words & Wine Open Mic, a weekly gathering of poets, musicians, and comedians held every Wednesday night. “We started out in my living room on 27th and Biscayne,” she remembers. “Everyone would crowd in and…
“It’s all my fault,” Peter Stebbins, founder and president of the nonprofit local radio station Shake 108 (107.9 FM), tells New Times. He launched his humble radio station just less than two years ago, but now the beloved frequency faces a government-mandated obstacle. “The FCC recently did an inspection of…
According to Miami Beach High alumnus Rachel Goodrich, you can take the girl out of Miami, but you can’t take Miami out of the girl. In a 2008 New York Times profile, Goodrich was proclaimed “queen of the Miami indie rock scene.” But in 2010, she took off for the…
Though John Lennon once co-wrote a song about a Magical Mystery Tour, The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus only goes halfway with that philosophy. While it does hope to create magic, it also seeks to take the mystery out of the artistic process. Started by Yoko Ono Lennon 19 years…
If you know even the slightest amount of Spanish, it is impossible for Cinco de Mayo to sneak up on you. Unlike Thanksgiving, Easter, and St. Patrick’s Day, the holiday’s date is right in the name, and that date is drawing ever so closer. Cinco de Mayo, which commemorates an…
With a focus on the positive and political in the early ’90s, Arrested Development was often brought up in defense of hip-hop whenever the mainstream media demonized rap as the soundtrack of so-called gangsters. With hits like “Tennessee,” “People Everyday,” and “Mr. Wendell,” Arrested Development delivered Afrocentric messages over Sly…
The lively new animated video for the Spam Allstars song “Around the Track” had a long and winding origin. “Years ago the Spam Allstars management reached out to me to do some artwork for them,” explains the video’s director, a man who goes by the name MarcPaperScissor. The artist, who…
Eric Hernandez spends his days packing auto parts in a Miami warehouse, but since the summer of 2014, his nights and weekends have been spent singing and playing guitar for noise-rock quartet Wrong. “I was in another band, Capsule, with [guitarist] Ryan Haft. That fell apart, but we still felt…
Before the internet, if you had some sort of wild wish you wanted to make a reality, it helped to be terminally ill. But now anyone with wifi and a dream can give it a shot. Example: the Facebook event page “Lets Get Smashmouth 2 Perform at City Inn Hotel,”…
Shana Cleveland was listening to ’60s garage rock when it hit her. “They all had interesting vocal harmonies with cutting, twangy guitar sounds. I didn’t see any current American bands doing that.” Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to a pair of musician parents, Cleveland says music was her whole world growing…
After listening to the Dose’s self-titled EP — a sound heavily reminiscent of Alice in Chains and Nirvana — it was surprising to learn that both singer/guitarist Indio Downey and drummer Ralph Alexander weren’t even born during the heyday of grunge. “We look up to those bands. We’ve been listening…
Drummer Nic Collins is 14 going on 15, and his rock band, What You Know, has already played on national television in Switzerland, jammed at the Fillmore Miami Beach, and performed at the American Airlines Arena during a Miami Heat game. But despite all of that experience under his belt,…
Though Otto Von Schirach has called Wynwood home for nine years, the musical provocateur’s connection with the once-downtrodden but now-booming neighborhood goes back further. “Twenty years ago, I used to come here for Hoodstock. It was a ’90s festival held in this hard-core neighborhood, but somehow the festivals were always…
The Cult couldn’t have a more fitting name. If a Druid or Dionysian from centuries ago time traveled to the Fillmore this past Saturday night, they could be forgiven for thinking that the concertgoers were actually religious followers gathering at a temple to witness some sort of holy ceremony. In a…
The reemergence of the record was as unlikely a revival as the world has ever seen. And Record Store Day has played a big part in the resurrection. Held this year on April 16, RSD is the celebration vinyl deserves. There’s live music (Shabazz Palaces headlines this year’s festivities at…
For this year’s TransAtlantic Festival, The Rhythm Foundation scored what was possibly its biggest coup in the event’s 14 year history in bringing Beirut to the North Beach Bandshell for the group’s first ever Florida performance. Beirut, a six-piece based out of New York, blends influences as varied as mariachi…
For a vocal chorus that sings classical music, Seraphic Fire has a name that is downright heavy metal. The group’s conductor and founder Patrick Quigley tells us that was intentional. “Growing up I was a part of choruses and noticed they were always named after the city they were based…
