There’s nothing in the fridge but beers so you wipe the sleep away and go to get some breakfast at two o’clock on a stormy Miami afternoon. You order a hamburger minus pickles at the Burger King drive-thru, park over by the Winn-Dixie. You unwrap the burger to discover the…
There aren’t too many things that have not happened within the hallowed walls of Washington Square. Here’s one: lobster parties. This past Wednesday night South Beach was invaded by zombies. Everybody who rocks was walking around in a daze, stunned as if they’d just run full-speed into a brick wall…
You know the bomb is mack when you spot John Hood at a rock and roll show in a place like Stephen Talkhouse. But there he was, the most dapper doorman and prop promoter on South Beach, the guy the press’ll never stop hyping as an “intellectual thug,” the man…
“You would cry, too/If it happened to you” — from “It’s My Party,” by Lesley Gore I felt like apologizing for what I said before I finished the sentence: “What these rock bands are doing here in Miami,” I was saying on the phone, “isn’t it just a drop in…
My parents taught me lots of things, like never lie, cheat, steal, or take advantage of people. The lessons came in handy the other day on the streets of downtown Miami. In fact, they saved me twelve dollars. It went down like this: A black man with a gray beard…
One must always temper one’s hunger for knowledge with respect for the risk involved. To learn one must risk getting burned. The trouble began three years ago when mail that was strange even for newspaper post-office boxes began piling up: letters plastered with cryptic misspellings, patches of print-media clippings, colorful…
Sometimes I wonder if I could write one of these columns without ever mentioning music. Like my idol, Robert Steinback of the Miami Herald, just ideas, thoughts, mammals replacing insects, insects replacing thoughts back to ideas. Am I starting to read like my other idol, Tom Austin? Big Love takes…
I think, so. So? I won’t bother you with it. This week’s just like one big shout out. I’m running low on energy, passion, and adjectives. Jeff Fritz has left Drive Choir. As you may know, all local bands break up as soon as New Times writes about them. Fritz…
Superstar model Niki Taylor is a Miami native with a discreet beauty mark a centimeter above her upper lip, a body of perfection, and a fondness for rock and roll. Her favorite band: Van Halen. It’s surprising and remarkable she’d choose that veteran metal act. You’d think she’d be in…
Hey, yo, can you hear me? Is this thing on? All love. All gone. Did you listen to me and go see Charlie Pickett and 3 (I’ve renamed the band, thank you) at Stephen Talkhouse? Hope you got there early. The night before at Churchill’s Hideaway some great bands recorded…
The way they’ve done South Florida, a guy like Andy Anderson learns to take his communions with nature where he can find them, even if it means spidering his pickup truck down a steep, grassy knoll at a treacherous angle, or breaching barbed wire barricades, or dealing face-to-face with the…
Summer is the lean season. No good shows. Nothing happening. There isn’t one song by a South Florida artist good enough for commercial radio to play. Local music sucks. Meanwhile, back in the real world, it’s the last day of July, the dead-hot center of summer, and Charlie Pickett and…
Pawn your gold tooth. Hawk your glass eye. Sell your blood if you must. Whatever it takes, find a way to obtain Live at the Square Vol. II. The critical first ten seconds present a perfect preview of what’s to come: A too-real to not be real drum riff from…
The rock world needs new heroes. Elvis is dead (really, he really really is). Bruce is old and paternal (and dads, heroes though they may be, are not rock heroes). Kurt and Axl and Perry just don’t cut it as role models, icons, or even plain old-fashioned rock stars. Where…
Who are you? Are you the buzzed-out little skinhead boy who fell off his chair while cheering on Young Turk at Washington Square in the wee hours, knocking over a table and spilling beer on my leg before hauling ass to what passes for bathrooms at the club? (If so,…
“I will not give up the music.” — Ed Hale, New Times, November 1, 1989 He didn’t. He has changed his name — back then he usually called himself Eddie Darling — but the members of Broken Spectacles never used their given names anyway. That’s changed, too. In fact, it…
I’m bored. There’s nothing to do. It was sometime in the very early Eighties, I don’t remember exactly and I’m not going to look it up (as if there were some reference where I could). The place was 27 Birds in Coconut Grove. There was this kinda weird lookin’ guy…
So whatcha been doin’? Me? I just keep mantra-ing that Neil Young song, the one that goes, “Why do I keep fuckin’ up?” Great old song. Not a bad question, either. It’s an ego thing. So let’s let somebody else get a word in. “I agree with everything you’ve said”…
Professional psychic Patricia Marks and I are sitting in the spotless living room of her house on Bird Road in West Dade. Clad in a colorful print housedress, her brown hair pulled back, she’s telling me I’m intuitive (which I think is good) but that I’m too softhearted (which I…
Some of the local bands drawing raves and followings: Load, Jack Off Jill, Black Janet, Holy Terrors, Dore Soul, Collapsing Lungs, Snatch the Pebble, Drive Choir, Quit, Timescape Zero, and, of course, Marilyn Manson. You may have caught wind of a recent concert that drew 12,000 to Bayfront Park with…
Am I joking? Is it “true”? What is this thing called credibility, love? Some local rockers took exception to my claims in a “Music” story last week that Billy Yeager is the only decent musician in South Florida. Others have questioned the factuality of a recent program note involving a…
Local dealers and users call them rophies, ropies, roopies, roofies, ruffies, loops, wheels, and circles. Roche, the company that developed the drug, calls it Narcozep, Rohipnol, Roipnol, and Rohypnol, depending on where the one- and two-milligram tablets are sold. Chemists call it flunitrazepam, a sedative similar to Valium that is…
