Ritchie Valens Come On, Let’s Go! (Del-Fi) Whether or not listeners understand the Spanish lyrics that follow, the five-second guitar intro that kicks off “La Bamba,” the signature tune of tragic Fifties rocker Ritchie Valens, seems to affect most people the same way. Valens’s joyous reworking of the 400-year-old Mexican…
thursday july 2 Tonight at 8:30 the Wolfsonian-FIU presents the finale of its Florida on Film series, and the closing flick is a classic: Where the Boys Are. Boys and girls alike will have a blast at the Hotel Astor (956 Washington Ave., Miami Beach), which is hosting the event…
thursday june 25 Launched from New York nocturnal haunts such as Save the Robots, the Palladium, and the Limelight to mixmaster-extraordinaire status, DJ Këoki lands at Groove Jet (323 23rd St., Miami Beach) tonight at 11:00 to show off his beat-heavy and hauntingly sampled brand of electronica. He’ll spin tunes…
thursday june 18 Attention all you hep cats and the rest who take to heart Duke Ellington’s 1932 tune “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.” The band Seven Foot Politic is riding the swing-ska-rock wave, popularized by Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, into…
thursday june 11 Even though Masterpiece Theater is on hiatus for the summer, you can still satisfy your craving for a cinematic period piece at the Alliance Cinema (927 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach) during Views of Merchant-Ivory: Three Continents, Fourteen Films. This festival, which began last week, highlights some of…
thursday june 4 Suffering from a chronically short attention span? Then you’ll love City Theatre’s Summer Shorts. Two different programs consisting of comedies, musicals, and dramas, each less than twenty minutes long, will alternate over the next four weeks at the Ring Theatre on the University of Miami campus (1380…
The Specials Guilty ‘Til Proved Innocent! (MCA) Go figure: After returning to the revivalist ska scene in 1996 with the listless Today’s Specials, the reunited Specials — the Coventry outfit that started the whole ska-punk thing back in 1979 — have rebounded with an album that recaptures much of the…
thursday may 28 Heard at spas and wellness centers around the world, the jazzy new-age music of guitarist Nicholas is said by some to have healing qualities. Find out for yourself how soothing the sounds can be as he performs two shows at South Beach’s new wine and champagne bar…
Gary Numan Exile (Cleopatra) Gary Numan The Mix (Cleopatra) Synth-crazed robot and occasional musical innovator Gary Numan has been responsible for some of new wave’s most laughably dated moments, from “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” and the massive 1979 hit “Cars” to the dreary, sci-fi schlock typified by “Down in the Park”…
thursday may 7 Pre-Millennium Tension, the most recent release from Tricky, is classic trip-hop: cut-and-paste soundscapes made up of elements borrowed from dance music, rock, electronica, and hip-hop — all of it suffused with haunting angst. In truth, Tricky virtually birthed trip-hop in the late Eighties with Massive Attack and…
The Mavericks Trampoline (MCA) Trampoline, the fourth record by the Mavericks, wasn’t recorded in Miami. It doesn’t have any songs about Miami. And yet it has Miami in its blood. Once upon a time the Mavs were Miami’s brightest, newest musicians, a country-rock foursome whose powerful live shows packed in…
thursday april 30 In the 1930s art dealer Ambroise Vollard and Pablo Picasso struck a bargain. Picasso would create 100 engravings for Vollard; in exchange the dealer would return to Picasso a clutch of the artist’s paintings. Vollard got a good deal, as evidenced by Picasso: The Vollard Suite, now…
thursday april 23 Who needs Michael Flatley? Certainly not the cast of Riverdance, the Irish jig fest that has continued to stomp successfully despite the 1995 defection of its star/choreographer. Flatley, an American born to Irish parents, went on to create Lord of the Dance, his own sensational Celtic extravaganza,…
thursday april 16 Yellowman has overcome bouts with cancer and the prejudice related to his albinism to become one of reggae’s best-selling artists. The Jamaican started off as a DJ in the mid-Seventies, then leaped to huge popularity in the Eighties as a cornerstone of dancehall music. Long ago he…
Pulp This Is Hardcore (Island) Jarvis Cocker’s songs are much like Martin Amis’s novels: The characters are distasteful, the situations sordid, the sex unsavory, and the humor cruel. It’s an ugly picture of humankind stripped to the skivvies with its immorality dangling in the wind. Amis likes to hide his…
Thursday April 9 You want to write a novel but are daunted by the prospect. All those characters to develop. How do writers do it? Ask Donald Antrim, whose delightfully wacky novel The Hundred Brothers is populated by 100 characters — all of them brothers. The siblings range in age…
Thursday April 2 For the past fifteen years the Dade Heritage Trust (the county’s largest historic preservation organization) has sponsored Dade Heritage Days, a celebration spotlighting South Florida’s architecture, environment, and history. This year’s theme is “A River of History,” and for the next six weeks more than 100 events…
Thursday March 26 Thomas Lynch often walks among the dead. He’s not a zombie. He’s an undertaker and a writer. Lynch, who works as a funeral director in Michigan, has had poems and essays published in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the Paris Review, and Harper’s. He’s…
Thursday March 19 An evening of sizzling song and dazzling dance awaits those who attend tonight’s Spanish Spectacular, presented by the Miami City Ballet. Topping the bill is Spain’s leading stage and recording star Paloma San Basilio, who, since launching her career in 1975, has starred in several television shows,…
thursday march 12 Subtropics 10 New Music Festival: Its different. It’s innovative. It’s that stuff you don’t hear on the radio very much, stuff you probably don’t have in your CD collection but think is incredibly cool nonetheless. We refer to experimental or new music. And the Subtropics festival is…
James Iha Let It Come Down (Virgin) On his first solo release, Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha eschews his band’s more wrenching form of heart surgery in favor of the tender Neil Young-style ballads that are often washed down with whiskey and tears. Iha’s earnest songwriting and singing will no…
thursday march 5 Doral-Ryder Open: We have to admit that ever since Gerald Ford stopped missing the green and hitting the spectators with his errant drives, golf has lost a bit of its action-packed appeal. But the Doral-Ryder Open (in its 37th year, the longest-running PGA Tour event in the…
