Willy Chirino Asere (Sony Tropical) Family-style salsa pop with a light dance beat best suited for conservative hips has propeled Miami’s Willy Chirino to the top of the Latin tropical-music ranks. And here we go again: His new release, Asere, is as predictable as the menu of a Cuban restaurant…
The Cars The Cars Anthology: Just What I Needed (Elektra/Rhino) Back in the late Seventies, when record executives and rock critics alike used the term “new wave” to describe the more accessible groups that spun off from the planet of punk, the Cars were the rulers of the new-wave hemisphere…
Kristin Hersh The Holy Single (Ryko) On this four-song EP, Throwing Muses singer/songwriter/guitarist Kristin Hersh goes solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar with little additional instrumentation, much as she did on her fine — and overlooked — 1994 album Hips and Makers. Here she applies her clear, unaffected voice to…
Blood, Sweat & Tears The Best of Blood, Sweat & Tears: What Goes Up! (Legacy/Columbia) First, the history. When New York City-based avant-rockers the Blues Project broke up in 1967, the band’s guitarist, Steve Katz, hooked up with jazz drummer Bobby Colomby, and the pair set about welding jazzy big-band…
New Bomb Turks Pissing Out the Poison (Crypt) Before punk rock found new digs on the Billboard album chart, it was the provincial music of outcasts and miscreants who had little interest in (let alone a chance in hell of attaining) the massive fame and success awarded to the likes…
Last summer Bo Crane, president of Miami’s Pandisc/StreetBeat Records, invited rapper Garrick “Jammin G” Troutman to contribute to one of the label’s compilations. The intended genre was Pandisc’s bread and butter, that brain-thumping derivative of rap known as bass music. “But G requested to do a few hip-hop songs,” explains…
A year ago, at a concert thrown by and for Miami’s hip-hop habitues, a Bronx rapper by the name of Fat Joe clambered his way to the microphone and, drum tracks rattling in the background, hollered something to the effect of, “Y’all ready to party? Give it up!” This was…
His first published works appeared in the April 20 edition of New Times, and like many a literary debut, they went virtually unnoticed. Nonetheless, tucked away on page 105, under the “Jewelry” heading, were two texts that read as follows: Thus was the world introduced to William Broder — rogue…
By Steven Almond Ruby Breathing deeply the minted smoke of a stove-lit Kool, Ruby stared out at the tree in her front yard, a massive ficus with limbs that grew out instead of up and littered leaves the shape of pursed lips onto the dirt below. Young boys were gathered…
Four years ago Guillermo Rodriguez was a Cuban-American kid with dreams of becoming an architect, but not a whole lot of money. He’d just earned a two-year degree in architecture from Miami-Dade Community College and was trying to decide where to go next. Private schools such as the University of…
Billy Hardemon was on the phone, and Billy Hardemon sounded…well, he sounded worried. “I understand you’ve been looking at my cellular phone records,” fretted Metro Commissioner James Burke’s chief of staff. “I just want you to know up-front that this office operates by the book.” While it is certainly understandable…
This is a test: You are the assistant manager of a city that is hurtling toward bankruptcy. Your boss, the city manager, has already called for massive cuts in staffing and services. One of your duties is to oversee the distribution of 140 cellular phones, which cost your town more…
When Metro-Dade Police Cmdr. Antonio Prieto transferred Sgt. David Simmons out of the Juvenile Investigations Bureau to a patrol unit eighteen months ago, the comment most frequently heard among Simmons’s subordinates was, “What a joke.” Exile a recognized expert in the field of child-abuse investigation? “What a joke.” Risk dashing…
After more than seven years spent dodging prosecution for embezzlement, Roberto Polo finally stood trial three weeks ago in Geneva. Accused of skimming $124 million from wealthy investors, the former art collector, whose case became a cause celäbre within Miami’s Cuban exile community, pulled out all the stops during the…
It doesn’t take much to get the natives gossiping in South Beach. — celebrity indiscretion. A few bounced checks. A new designer drug. So it should come as no surprise that the SoBe rumor mill has been churning for the past two months over a club promotion known as the…
THE RECEPTIONIST The receptionist did not look happy. Her mascara was streaked from tears, her dress rumpled to the hem, and her eyebrows, once slender brown lines, were now hoisted into apprehensive question marks. The frosted glass window behind which she generally sat, protected from the world, was flung open…
For the past five months state investigators have been trying to determine whether Susanna Timor, a paralegal at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, committed insurance fraud by submitting bogus receipts for repairs to her Coral Gables home after Hurricane Andrew. Though the dollar value of the alleged fraud is…
Reporters love stories about bad cops. Cops on the take. Cops on the make. Cops who beat up civilians and then lie about it. Because cops are supposed to protect us from evil, not succumb to it, a bad cop story packs a heavy payload of irony. And because reporters…
Over the years, Miami has had trouble living down its bad boy image, even among rock stars. A besotted Jim Morrison was so disgusted by the vibe here that he flashed the natives his weenie. Bob Marley did him one better by croaking here. And Bruce Springsteen stopped one of…
It started innocently enough. On the evening of November 29, 1993, Robin Ables, a Metro-Dade police officer, reported to the Team Police Station off NW 22nd Avenue in Liberty City, at the request of her commanding officer, Dante Starks. Starks, who had been promoted to sergeant two months earlier, initially…
On the evening of February 23, some twenty law school students from Nova and St. Thomas universities convened at Dino’s Upper Deck, the bar atop Dino to Sushiya, a year-old restaurant at 11220 Biscayne Blvd. It was supposed to be a casual get-together. A little beer. A little billiards. And…
Kirsty MacColl Galore (I.R.S.) Kirsty MacColl’s clear, breathy voice; knack for effortless hooks; and (occasional) biting wordplay have made her a star in her English homeland since the early Eighties, when she recorded her bouncy, rollicking “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis.” Here, however, she…
