Music

Blues Night: For more than six months that’s been the official tag on Thursday evenings in the Veranda Bar at Miami Beach’s Palms Hotel. But as those who frequent the place know well, there is little to be sad about. Even after dark, the room seems sunny. A lengthy bar…

Since the early Eighties, more than twenty musicians have been Guided By Voices. The brainchild of Robert Pollard, GBV has still managed to pull off a cohesive string of records, consistently forcing a Siddhartha six-handed bitchslap of sound to fit into a fistful of recording space. With Universal Truths &…

There’s a lull in the schedule, and Paulina Rubio doesn’t like it. “Open the curtains,” she says across the back of the couch to anyone who will listen. “Let’s do something. Let’s practice yoga. Turn on the television. Anything.” This should have been a good day; the first interview wasn’t…

Ah, to be young and over it already. It’s an old story: Talented local musician makes a serious stab at success in the biz, only to play his heart out in a mostly indifferent South Florida music scene. He records, he tours, he practices his balls off. He does all…

Multiple-choice time. Recently the following words were uttered: “Ain’t no way that SPM can be a human being.” Who said them? a. the prosecutor during SPM’s molestation case b. a disgusted juror on that same case c. a pissed-off grandmother after hearing about the case on the news d. none…

Think of it this way, and perhaps Marshall Mathers’s (or Eminem’s, or Slim Shady’s) 25-mil-plus-sold popularity makes more sense to the old farts who stoop to find him repellent. He’s the bleached-blond Holden Caulfield, a catcher-in-the-dye job loaded down by “all that David Copperfield kind of crap” who spends his…

Things you need to know about Mexican singer and actress Pilar Montenegro: She recently set a record in the music world by topping Billboard’s Latin charts for eleven consecutive weeks with her hit song “Quítame Ese Hombre” (literally, “Take That Man Away From Me”); her album Desahogo (Release) is a…

Love Jewel. Hate Jewel. Fear her manipulative mom. Laugh at her poetry. Give her props for not fixing that snaggletooth. Marvel at her staying power. Almost seven years ago, I interviewed the fresh-from-Alaska Jewel Kilcher, before she’d sold many copies of her first album. At the time, she’d just parked…

It’s the challenge DJ Simply Jeff loves. Perhaps the leading authority on the dance-music genre known as breakbeats, the California native just won’t let electronic music sink in a 4/4 sea. Instead the prolific DJ spreads around the recognizable styles of house and techno and slices the known into a…

“Andan Diciendo por Ahi” (“They Go Around Saying”), a guaguancó written by Albita Rodriguez, denounces gossips and affirms the Cuban singer/songwriter’s resilience despite speculation by busybodies about her professional and personal life. Funny and menacing, the rowdy rumba chastises liars with the threat “I’ll cut your tongue off” and warns…

If you don’t believe that underground hip-hop is enjoying a serious renaissance, just listen to El-P’s brilliant solo debut. Maybe “enjoying” is the wrong word: The oh-so-appropriately-titled album doesn’t make it sound as though it’s enjoying much of anything, save for the ruin of listener-friendly mainstream rap. In the midst…

Oh, what haunted places some songwriters wander. Smog, Cat Power, Sparklehorse — these artists’ songs sound as though they were carried over by a skip on the river Styx. You can add Nina Nastasia to that list. The Blackened Air is a frightening and gorgeous piece of work, notes from…

Arlo is a band of the kind of back-porch rockers that speed through a 30-minute set on One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer night at your local club, so it makes sense that the group is named for its Tuesday-night soundman back in L.A. Arlo’s second LP, Stab the Unstoppable…

Close your eyes and you can picture the scene. Ominous piano thunder rolls as the musicians approach their instruments, dank amber silhouettes. Electronic sparkles signal the drums and ignite the rhythm. Bright white house lights pop and flood the room, synchronized with the guitar melody. “Words,” the opening track of…

Last November, when the Argentinean government blocked access to everyone’s bank accounts and the national economy collapsed, rock band Los Piojos still managed to fill a 40,000-seat soccer stadium. It should come as no surprise, then, that the rockeros whose name means lice played to sold-out crowds of Argentinean expatriates…

In 30 years the Argentine audience will end up signing autographs, predicts Ratones Paranoicos singer Juan Sebastian “Juanse” Gutierrez. The emotional crowds who greet every Argentine artist who ventures to the United States will become stars in their own right, he insists, not only in Miami but across the globe…

Okay, so there wasn’t an overwhelming shout-out over the music on Memorial Day weekend; maybe the eclectic mix for the second annual Soul Beach Music Festival this weekend will ease some eardrums. The list of performers runs the gamut from Cameo, Luther Vandross, and Morris Day and the Time to…

“When you’re playing music that has some humor to it, you can make all the mistakes you want,” offers Chris DeAngelis of the Miami band Avenging Lawnmowers of Justice. “With serious music, one mistake and they hate you.” By that yardstick, the ‘Vengers should be allowed more than their fair…

J.G. Thirwell creates a new moniker for each of his musical outings — Foetus for the pioneering whipsmart industrial urges, Baby Zizanie for the electric and eclectic, Manorexia inadvertently scoring the sequel to They Live, the synopsis of which still resides just behind John Carpenter’s left eye. And now Thirwell’s…