Graham Drout is a great front man who puts together great bands. That said, it seems like every time I mention his Iko-Iko – which is not often enough – it’s to announce ye olde personnel change. Julian Kasper has departed the long-time Tobacco Road houser. He and his wife,…
Michael Kennedy – the tough-looking, soft-talking Rooster Head singer – has lost it, gone completely bonkers, out of his mind, deranged. The incident was captured on an audio tape recently obtained by New Times: Kennedy: “They mock me. I know they mock me.” Unidentified voice: “No one’s mocking you, Mr…
Does anyone remember the summer of ’89? It was exactly two years ago that Miami rappers the 2 Live Crew released As Nasty as They Wanna Be, the group’s third album and biggest hit, and also America’s most controversial musical recording. It’s old news now, the way censors, cops, and…
There are two ways to record music: in analog or digital. Analog is the old-fashioned way. Singers and musicians play their parts into microphones, which are wired to a console, where engineers twist knobs and slide levers (known as faders) to add effects – balancing the volume of various sounds,…
AIRWAVE: Four years ago veteran radio DJ and production manager Robert W. Walker opened this North Miami Beach studio, which specializes in commercial production – jingles and other radio commercials – and audio for TV. Such work is usually done digitally, with synthesizers, but Airwave prefers the old-style approach, with…
THREE WEEKS AGO, when James Brown began recording his first album since being released from a South Carolina prison, the studio was abuzz with the sort of excitement that surrounded his legendary sessions for “I Got You.” Three decades later, in the same studio, the Godfather of Soul looked around,…
Gloria Leonard, Al Goldstein’s friend and colleague, is on the phone from New York City. “Victims again?” Goldstein says to the former pornographic-movie star and publisher of High Society magazine. “It was a setup. You can’t win, Gloria.” It seems Leonard had been invited to appear on Geraldo to discuss…
blowfly n. Any of several flies of the family Calliphoridae that deposit their eggs in carcasses or carrion or in open sores and wounds. The American Heritage Dictionary After riding a Metrobus from his home just south of Joe Robbie Stadium to the North Miami Beach record company where he…
Mack Bennett poured his fifth cup of coffee and lit another Marlboro Light. The window shades were up, but no shadows were cast; it was high noon. Time to get to work, Mack Bennett thought to himself. He was alone in the cramped office, and he held at arm’s length…
Now I’m back to let you knowI can really shake ’em downDo you love meNow that I can dance? the Contours, 1962 The second show inside the main building at the sprawling Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop is about to begin and the place is packed. A scintillating, electrical energy hums…
Rockers rant about social injustice, reggae stars call for world order, industrial acts urge anarchy, folk singers still peddle peace, too. But jazz singer Sylvia Bennett operates in different surroundings, a place that doesn’t invite torn jeans or dread locks, but does welcome diamond earrings and fine tuxedos. Upscale and…
The future of rock and roll – in stereo, double vision, twice over. They aren’t coming to town, they aren’t media darlings, they aren’t being hyped as anything more than a couple of maidens looking for their first win. But they should be all of those things. Not since the…
On May 9, 1989, Richard Griffin, better known as Professor Griff, met with a writer from the Washington Times for the purpose of an interview. The article resulting from that tape-recorded session, published two weeks later, quoted Griff as saying, among other things, that “Jews have a grip on America”…
Chances are, it’ll rain on the Fourth of July this year. That would be just perfect. In August of 1969 a young woman with long hair, a pug nose, beaming grin, and acoustic guitar stood in the stormy weather at Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York, alone with a half-million…
