John Hood Tom Waits performs before a sold-out crowd at the Times-Union Center in Jacksonville, Fla. Tom Waits July 1, 2008 The Times-Union Center for the Performing Arts, Jacksonville Better than: Having a hobo in your home for supper – and having him sing murder songs for it. (Dateline: Jacksonville)…
If you’ve been to any club on South Beach over the past decade, you’ve swung to the beat of Mark Leventhal. Okay, maybe not any club, but any club that mattered. In fact, Leventhal not only has spun at almost every club you’ve ever been to, but also probably spun…
How Miami’s own DJ Irie handles his heavy schedule is anybody’s guess. He boasts residencies at the Delano, the Forge, the Ganesvoort, Cameo, the Shore Club — and that’s during off-season. When it’s high season, Irie is also turntabling at the American Airlines Arena for Heat games, as well as…
Less knowledgeable folks might be tempted to consider Drop.D nothing but another DJ in a long line of hip-hop-spinning wide boys who’ve come to set up shop in South Beach. But they would be wrong: The kid called Drop.D (a.k.a. ill skill) outclasses his half-ass predecessors, and does so at…
You go out — some might even say you go way out. But you wouldn’t be able to do either if it weren’t for the work of the DJ, the kitten or the cat who soundtracks each and every wild night. For the next however many weeks it takes, New…
John Hood Nada Surf Monday, June 2, 2008 Studio A, Miami Better Than: Letting Leonard Cohen’s bubblegum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight. I’m not supposed to dig Nada Surf. Their songs are sentimental, sometimes sappy even, drenched in despair, cuddled by consolation and stricken in all kinds of…
Of all the many musical exports Brazil has unleashed upon the world, no single piano player has done more for popularizing that country’s music than Sergio Mendes. In the Sixties, with his group Brasil ’66, he helped bring bossa nova into nearly every American home. That disc scored a radio…
Miami Symphony April 27, 2008 The Lincoln Theatre Better Than: 100 years of symphonic solitude sung by Marquez himself. It’s not every night that one gets to hear a hundred year span of classical music played live; then again, it’s not every night that The Miami Symphony Orchestra hits one…
Concert Review: B-Live at The Bayfront Park Amphitheatre B-Live April 19, 2008 The Bayfront Park Amphitheatre Better Than: The biggest block party you ever attended. See the slide show here Miami is mad about its music, not to mention its mojitos, so when the good folk at Bacardi took over…
Iron and Wine April 12, 2008 Revolution, Ft. Lauderdale Better Than: A cellarful of John Henry. Saturday night at Revolution, the 999 other keen-eared indie music types in attendance formed, perhaps, the best-behaved bunch of rock club attendees I’ve ever encountered. The object of their focus: Sam Beam, the man…
Ah, Todd Rundgren. Where, oh where, oh where to begin? Let alone when. After 40 years in the business of music, place and time begin folding back in on each other, blurring the distinctions of a remarkably distinctive career. Say, for instance, we start with the song “I Saw the…
Caribou Culture Room, Ft. Lauderdale April 5, 2008 Better Than: Having The Amboy Dukes drop by to help you with your homework. First things first. I (and you, if you were lucky enough to be there) have gotta thank Ahmed Gallab of Sinkane, who took over the traps for Caribou’s…
The Mars Volta April 2, 2008 The Fillmore Miami Beach at The Jackie Gleason Theatre Better Than: Being cooked in a cauldron of chaos. If it is true, as some rabid fan boys might believe, that you haven’t lived till you’ve been nearly kicked in the kisser by Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s…
Underworld at Ultra Music Festival Bicentennial Park Saturday, March 29, 2008 Even after 10 years of the Ultra Music Festival and 23 years of Winter Music Conference, it’s still sometimes difficult to fathom the onslaught this week brings to Miami. I mean, really. Pulling myself outta Moby’s set in the…
Some critics just don’t get it. Or maybe they just don’t get it enough. ‘Cause if they did, they wouldn’t get miffed about Calvin Harris’s sexy two-step. Sure, the cat swings with more than a little LCD Soundsystem; yes, his debt to fellow Scotsman Mylo is self-evident; and he’d undoubtedly…
The legend is such: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, six-string slinger and otherworldly composer for The Mars Volta, was one day rummaging around a junk shop in Jerusalem when he stumbled upon a Ouija board. Never one to pass up a chance at cosmic fate, he bought the thing and then brought it…
If Scottish singing sensation Calvin Harris is not the hardest working man in electro-land, by the end of this weekend he will be, because the cat’s got three – count ‘em – shows coming up in two days. New Times took a quick phoner from the man before he crossed…
Macy Gray March 23, 2008 The Florida Room at the Delano, Miami Beach There are songs in the world; then there are songs – songs so unbelievably beautiful that they touch the whole wide world at large. Macy Gray’s “I Try” is such a song, and last night she sang…
Jay-Z at The Fillmore Miami Beach March 21, 2008 Better Than: You Even Know The Review: If somebody told me a week or so ago that I’d be spending this Good Friday at The Fillmore digging Jay-Z, I’d have told ‘em off. I mean, c’mon. Jay Z? At The Fillmore?…
Of all the shiny things to come about from the stellar success of the film Juno — Diablo Cody’s career; Ellen Page — none was perhaps more brightly satisfying than the soundtrack. Among the standouts therein were Sonic Youth’s cover of the Carpenters’ classic “Superstar” and Cat Power’s rendition of…
G. Love and Special Sauce March 7, 2008 Langerado Better Than:All the jam in Welch’s reserves. Forget Umphrey’s McGee and the Disco Biscuits and whatever’s left of the Dead (and that includes you, Dark Star Orchestra), ‘cause when it comes to full fest groove, there is but one band that…
Last Night: Matt Pond PA and The Walkmen at Langerado Matt Pond PA, The Walkmen March 7, 2008 Langerado, Big Cypress Reserve Better Than: A hot-buttered steam bath. Matt Pond PA If there were two more incongruous acts to stage in the swamplands, I can’t think of ’em. I mean,…
