Late on a recent Tuesday night, I parked myself at the bar in the second floor dining room of the Van Dyke Café, eschewing the four-dollar music charge and the small circular dining tables in front of the bandstand. There sat some of South Beach’s late-night winners — people who…
Anyone looking for yet more signs of Lincoln Road’s devolution from bohemian enclave to tourist-overrun strip mall should consider Miami Beach’s new open-air music policy. As part of the city’s attempt to fine tune its vision for the street, it has decided to sanitize the sound along the promenade’s public…
Twelve years ago, when Dale Ayres was an unhappy gay kid growing up in a small Illinois town, he put the business end of a shotgun into his mouth and prepared to pull the trigger. His mom caught him in the act, though, and knocked the gun aside. Dale, now…
In the evening of October 9, more than 3000 determined music lovers defied a bitter, expletive-ranting, bottle-throwing gauntlet of protesters to enter the Miami Arena. After spending a few hours getting down with Cuba’s most popular band, Los Van Van, concertgoers faced the same treatment while exiting. The toxic brew…
You Am I Hourly, Daily (Sire Records) You Am I is a Sydney, Australia, trio that has achieved an oddly impressive distinction during its six-year history: It has somehow managed to build a zealous American fan base without actually releasing anything in America. Hourly, Daily, its third album (following hard-to-find…
Metallica Reload (Elektra) Put plainly, Metallica’s last album, 1996’s Load, made me angry: To see a band that I had always valued for its integrity change its music for what appeared to be commercial reasons was deeply frustrating. But after catching the quartet in concert earlier this year, I was…
Lisa Loeb Firecracker (Geffen) What’s been so refreshing about Lisa Loeb up to now is that she has never tried to sell anyone false goods. Unlike Alanis or Courtney or any of rock’s other young women, Loeb never pretended to be angry. Rocketing to fame on the strength of her…
Various Artists Cuban Gold 4: !Fuego, Candela! The Smokin’ ’70s (Qbadisc) The utopian balladeers of the earlier years of the Cuban revolution — Silvio Rodriguez et al. — became worldwide ideological icons, and they have remained enduring symbols of their place and time. Meanwhile, the funk of the same era…
Mandela Original Soundtrack (Island) This 26-track collection from the documentary of the same name blows its own horn too loudly by claiming to represent “the essential music of South Africa.” Its best moments, though, shed intriguing light on the development of the country’s music. From the Manhattan Brothers’ upbeat, urbane,…
