If you want to check the evidence supporting the supreme production status of the Neptunes look no further than Lord Willin’, the debut release from the coke-dealing mid-South-representing Clipse. Sometime emcees Pusha T and Malice spit slow and hard about Virginia’s drug-dealing scene, an average tale at best, but when…
Back in 1978, long-time U.K. Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt remarked to a writer that frontman Charlie Harper was old enough to be part of Beethoven’s backing band. Fast-forward almost 25 years, and at 58, Harper could easily be the cool grandpa who’s still more punk than his children’s children –…
In mid-August, Miami label Ciocan Music’s press rep triumphantly announced that the stellar Cuban a cappella group Vocal Sampling would perform on the upcoming Latin Grammy Awards broadcast in Los Angeles. The vocal sextet’s album Cambio de Tiempo is up for three awards, the highest number of nods yet for…
Pop stars are only discovered on TV shows, not in real life, right? Don’t tell that to Puerto Rican band Circo. “This is totally pop-star imagery,” laughs charismatic singer Jose Luis Abreu, better known as Fofe. Sitting with his bandmates — drummer David Perez, keyboardist Edgardo “Egui” Santiago, bassist Nicolas…
In hetero circles, the mention of a gay South Beach nightclub still conjures images of Robin Williams and Nathan Lane flittering about the Birdcage. Visions of the Village People or even Keanu Reeves (c’mon, lighten up) dance in hetero heads. Aaah, the attitude, the glitter, the duct tape, the RuPaul…
Eight Hialeah bands kicked off the Eighth Annual Miami Rock Festival at Churchill’s Friday, a celebration wherein the pub known mainly for live rock music hosts a month of, you guessed it, live rock music. “Rock” means just about anything here. From blues rocker Jon Paris (September 21) to Miami…
Thanks to the latest life-extension medical advances, some of us who bought LPs way back in the 1970s are still alive today to wax nostalgic about the experience. In that bygone era long before either compact discs or today’s “World Music” category were invented, enthusiasts sought out the occasional African…
The world’s unlikeliest sex symbol is taking a break. It is a scorching Saturday afternoon on a Biscayne Boulevard side street, and Angel Lopez cools off in a trailer, waiting to be called to shoot more scenes for a music video. Meanwhile his wife Elizabeth and their three small children…
On his latest album, Emboscada (Ambush), Puerto Rico rapper Vico C brags that he is still respected by fans even though critics have branded him a has-been. “How to go back to [being] number one?” the 31-year-old asks. “Easy,” he answers, “being faithful, working hard, and playing a few tricks.”…
In this town it seems like every time two Latin musicians get together in the same room someone calls it a descarga. For the dizzying thrill of the real thing, head to Café Nostalgia this Friday night, when a group of powerful multigenerational instrumentalists will scare up the very soul…
Next week in my spaceship/I will leave this world/I can’t find peace here … I want to be a citizen of the world. Juan Antonio Ferreyra sang those words on the title track of his 1991 album Salida de Emergencia. Eleven years later JAF — as the Argentine blues man…
In a few weeks 73-year-old Fort Lauderdale millionaire Herschell Gordon Lewis will be in a Cleveland recording studio. There he’ll sing a new version of the theme song to 2000 Maniacs, the classic gore film he directed in 1964. Members of underground Ohio rockers the Pagans, Pink Holes, Pere Ubu,…
DJ Cedric Gervais is ready. He’s got club connections, South Beach residencies, Lenny Kravitz remixes, and that quiet confidence found in most successful DJ/producers. It’s a muggy August dusk. Thunder rumbles in the distance. Gervais is tapping commands on a keyboard and watching graphics on a large monitor display the…
It’s not yet midnight and every local lush and barfly within ten miles of Washington Avenue has made way to the little spot on Española known as Lost Weekend. Women drink free from ten till two, so bar scene-savvy men show up early to offer companionship to the complimentarily inebriated…
What are those random clicks and scrapes doing accompanying a recording of “The Girl From Ipanema” at Gil’s Café? Maybe those clips from the movie That’s Entertainment projected on a screen above the stage are a clue. About half of the people eating or drinking at the tables wear tap…
Sandwiched between a large desk and credenza at his Boca-based Hardware World distribution company, DJ Hardware maintains a deceptive polished-businessman persona. Todd Greenhouse, a.k.a. Hardware, makes a living DJing and handling A&R accounts for several record labels, including New York’s hip underground imprint Adrenalin and his own startup, Pure Music…
Maybe it’s expecting too much to want the major record labels to step back for a moment and rethink their stance on music and the Internet. They’ve spent so long treating their most fanatic consumers (i.e., the ones so geeked up about music that they spend hours online downloading the…
bird gets the smile seems to be the kind of band Miami needs. Stocked with a couple of veterans from the local scene, BGTS makes sounds of the sort commonly defined in Webzines by a morass of hyphenated music-geek terms. A quick review of online descriptions suggests that BGTS is…
A handful of Armani, Guess, and Kenneth Cole shirts wrinkle in the humidity outside an unmarked club on Collins Avenue. There’s no line and hardly a soul on the street, but still a honey named Honey holding a clipboard marked “Guest List” insists the guest list is closed. One of…
After putting one over on the public — by which I mean the fanatical hundreds who keep up with Damon Albarn’s digital circle jerks — the Blur frontman, Dan Nakamura, Jamie Hewlett, and everyone else collecting royalties three albums in for one album’s worth of real, ahem, work return with…
Ever since Diane Sawyer profiled the cherubic Utica, New York native with piston dexterity over a decade ago, Joe Bonamassa, now 25, has been working on his blues prerequisites: thick riffs, thicker skin. So, It’s Like That, Bonamassa’s second LP, finds him wading in the genre’s chasm between sunshine and…
Those looking for a mix CD that represents everything that is right with dance music today need look no further. Trevor Jackson, the man behind last year’s popular Playgroup LP, has compiled and mixed a collection of groovers that spans the past two decades. Jam-packed with Eighties production, Jackson’s contribution…
