DJ Muggs is tired of talking about reefer, so if you don’t mind could you give it a rest, please? With an unmistakable hint of exasperation, the turntable whiz and musical mastermind behind Cypress Hill says yes, the members of the Southern California rap trio smoke pot — a whole…
Billy Mann figures he’s lost more day jobs than the average person will hold in a lifetime. He’s delivered pizzas, hawked futons, worked as a photocopier, and during an early-Nineties stay in Miami he sold classified ads for this newspaper. Despite the crushing realities of the nine-to-five work week, Mann…
As promised more than a month ago, here’s another roundup of local and regional music. Some new, some only kinda new. For what it’s worth, it’s all new to me. Unlike the last “Reverb” batch of South Florida stuff, this one leans more heavily toward readily available compact discs and…
Not to worry, rock and roll conservatives: Reports concerning the death of classic rock have been somewhat exaggerated. Sure, album rock radio programmers may be replacing their copies of Jailbreak and Escape with Sixteen Stone and Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Nonetheless the tireless Frankenstein’s monster, created from the…
Been wondering why the University of Miami’s WVUM-FM (90.5) sounds an awful lot like commercial FM stations WSHE (103.1)and WZTA (94.9)? Then gather around for a brief, explanatory history lesson. It may seem hard to believe now, but there was once a time when college radio was the place to…
Five snare drums, each of them precisely tuned to a different pitch, are positioned around a grand piano in the Center for the Fine Arts. When composer Alvin Lucier hits certain notes on the keyboard, the heads of one snare drum or another rattle in discord. This was among the…
Growing up in Havana in the late Sixties and early Seventies, pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba made little distinction between the percolating jazz of his countrymen and that of their creative counterparts working in the U.S. “[Cuban and American musicians] are the main sources of inspiration in my work,” Rubalcaba explains by…
Dread Zeppelin No Quarter Pounder (Birdcage) According to official legend, Elvis Presley once remarked, “I may not be Led Zeppelin, but I can still pack ’em in.” This was in the mid-Seventies, when Led Zep was the biggest band in the world and Elvis was, well, big. The twin ocean…
The woeful state of mainstream country music was a hot topic among the artists who took part in the recent HighTone Records Roadhouse Revival. The package tour showcased the Oakland-based independent label’s roster of new-country trailblazers, including Buddy Miller, Dale Watson, and former Blasters’ guitarist and songwriter Dave Alvin, all…
The music industry as a whole isn’t exactly known for taking care of the workers who create its main commodity. Yet Florida Music Association (FMA) executive director Helaine Blum insists that the Tampa-based nonprofit organization exists to help musicians develop the skills needed to journey unscathed through the financial minefields…
Curtis Mayfield People Get Ready!: The Curtis Mayfield Story (Rhino) Although this lavish three-disc set is devoted to the musical achievements of one man, it also acts as a kind of rhythm and blues history. As much as James Brown, Curtis Mayfield has helped chart the course of the music…
Bill Orcutt is on the phone, sounding perplexed, bemused, and slightly exasperated. “We’re like the 2 Live Crew of noise bands now,” complains the guitarist and vocalist who makes up one-third of Harry Pussy, the lords of Miami’s small but noisy avant-garde underground. He’s just found out about the hubbub…
As soon as I started working at New Times last November, before I had even memorized my new phone number, the demo tapes started pouring in. I must have received at least five my first week here — little C-60 missives from this band or that singer/songwriter, usually accompanied by…
Mutiny Aftershock 2005 (Black Arc/Rykodisc) Of all the spin-off satellites orbiting George Clinton’s Parliafunkadelicment mothership, Mutiny was arguably the best A and one of the few to distance itself from its former employer. The group was formed in the late Seventies by drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, the coauthor of several…
“After the accident, like the next day, we made a conscious decision that if there was any kind of passion in our music, any kind of legacy we wanted to create, we had to keep doing this.” For Squirrels guitarist Travis Tooke is ruminating on the aftermath of the September…
There’s some new blood over at WSHE-FM (103.5), but don’t worry: “South Florida’s rock alternative” will most likely continue to serve up Deep Blue Something’s unctuous hit “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” as well as what the station calls “Excellent Eighties” tracks from New Order, U2, R.E.M., and other modern-rock radio regulars…
Pay attention everyone/To play son/You don’t need to be strident/Or make too much noise/If you mark out well the beat/With rhythm and with harmony/You’ll see that you’re playing son/With joy, in the Cuban way. “El Orgullo de los Soneros,” Septeto Habanero Like King Curtis offering the musical ingredients of his…
Don’t bother asking Michael O’Brien why his band the Eat has become an underground legend in punk circles. With equal amounts of humility and bewilderment, he’ll tell you he has no idea. “We’re all totally clueless,” admits O’Brien, the 39-year-old guitarist and vocalist for the Miami quartet, whose 1979 single…
Surveying the landscape of today’s rock and roll underground, it seems hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t any surf music around. Once the twangy, reverb-soaked, early-Sixties commodity that drove Frankie and Annette bonkers as they rode the Hollywood celluloid surf, the music these days is found at all…
What happens when the denizens of Miami’s punk-rock underground enter the historic halls of Tobacco Road? Well, a lot of yelling and screaming, for starters. None of it, however, came from the club’s second-floor stage. Star Crunch Records, an independent label based in Miami, was invited to hold a February…
If cynicism breeds contempt, obscurity can often breed cynicism. This is common knowledge in the blues world, which for decades has been overpopulated with hard-bitten also-rans untouched by the hand of popularity. For all the B.B. Kings, Robert Crays, and Buddy Guys out there who have parlayed their years of…
Like many frustrated surfers on the commercial radio airwaves, Michelle Naples finds cultural comfort in the eclectic programming of WLRN-FM (91.3), Miami’s public radio station. And like a lot of listeners with bigger hearts than bank accounts, Naples wanted to help the station, which is feeling the crunch of recent…
