The first time I ever heard the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” it was introduced on a Memphis R&B radio station by a disc jockey who clearly had little use for the song but was honoring a call-in request. I can’t remember what he said, but his sneer was audible,…
Anyone who watched MTV back in the Eighties and early Nineties, when Michael Jackson was still commercially and artistically relevant, remembers the almost daily reports of screaming, weeping teens around the globe, reaching supplicant toward their musical messiah. This would eventually translate itself across nations and cultures to occurrences such…
The first thing that must be said about The Final Concert is that it’s not. This live album does capture a 1983 Indianapolis show from Marvin Gaye’s final tour, but there were shows after this one. The second thing to note is that when the its producers warn on the…
Everybody these days seems to be trying their hand at doing the perfect pop record à la Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. The Flaming Lips tried something like it with last year’s The Soft Bulletin and Wilco came pretty close to pop perfection with its Summer Teeth recording, also…
The sarode isn’t a big name in the United States. You might even accuse the sitar of hogging all the glory when it comes to lead instruments in Indian classical music. Blame it on the Beatles, who first brought the sitar to Top 40 radio with their Rubber Soul LP…
In truly inspiring do-it-yourself fashion, Mr. Quintron, “The Amazing Spellcaster,” has created a minientertainment empire based in New Orleans’s tough Ninth Ward. His music: four albums of organ/theramin/contraption sound, from noise to go-go R&B. Think Korla Pandit in a junkyard, eyes to outer space. His club: the Spellcaster Lodge, host…
I’ve always liked the Doobie Brothers. Not for their music but for the simple fact that they were one of those bands that at their peak had too many members. You’d look at the cover of one of their successful late-Seventies albums and see all these people milling about and…
The hyperbolically titled The Story of Cuba could not possibly live up to its name with a mere fifteen tracks. While its compilers certainly take poetic license, the disc does offer a lively variety of contemporary Cuban music, including songs performed by NG La Banda, Elio Reve, Los Van Van,…
Oh God, it’s a world-beat record from two aging rock drummers who really ought to know better than to attempt something like this. Charlie Watts, long-time drummer for the Rolling Stones and American Civil War artifact collector, has never made it a secret that he loves jazz much more than…
Security grew tense backstage at the tenth annual Colombian Independence Day Festival at Tamiami Park late last month. A record crowd squeezed into the fairgrounds in front of the main stage, spilling over into the fenced-off VIP section. Ordinary folks eager to get close to their idols added to the…
The scope and depth of north Mississippi blues are amply documented on the latest releases by the Oxford-based Fat Possum label, the highly touted indie responsible for breaking the likes of R.L. Burnside and the late Junior Kimbrough. T-Model Ford’s She Ain’t None of Your’n and Robert Belfour’s What’s Wrong…
It’s commonplace in our cynical world for people to respond to an overabundance of inequality and suffering with an infuriating shrug of the shoulders: Well, hey, nobody said the world was perfect. But there’s a difference between inescapable imperfections — death specifically, for instance, or pain generally — and the…
Years ago the combination of Sonic Youth and Pearl Jam would’ve been a sure-fire misprint. Even when Sonic Youth were inching their way toward the rock mainstream at the turn of the Nineties, opening for Neil Young and writing damn near linear songs on their early major-label releases (e.g, 1990’s…
Eleven years ago Pepe Alva could not get to Miami fast enough. When the singer was seventeen years old, his father moved the family from northern Peru to southern Ohio. After a month in Cincinnati, Alva was itching for the highway. “I went to the map with a highlighter,” he…
Although it has been long awaited by her fans, Albita’s pleasing new release, Son, is not an especially remarkable album. But it is a personal coup for the singer, who arrived in Miami in 1993 for a total immersion course in record-industry politics that included being rejected as “too Cuban,”…
No one can argue with the amazing popularity of rapper Eminem. Still, his meteoric rise has been fraught with as much controversy as success. In his climb to the top of the charts, he’s managed to anger gay and women’s groups, the media, fellow musicians (‘N Sync, Britney Spears, Christina…
Whereas most drum and bass acts are identifiable by a signature sound (Goldie, LTJ Bukem, and the like), Spring Heel Jack doesn’t really have one, which makes its music all the more interesting. The duo’s inventiveness may be a result of pedigree: When he’s not with Spring Heel Jack, John…
It’s no exaggeration to say Jai Uttal is the best in his genre. He’s the only one in his genre. He’s built his devotional-music shtick from the ground up, and his contagious enthusiasm transcends any doubts I have about forebearing hymns to Shiva, Krishna, and others in the Hindu pantheon…
Although the mystical guitarist may be correct in believing otherwise, the phenomenal success of the diamond-selling, Grammy-sweeping Supernatural has a very natural explanation. In the face of volatile industry pressures, former Arista label-head Clive Davis made some brilliantly simple choices in this collaboration. He wed the growing public appetite for…
The crumpled funky white T-shirt lay at the bottom of the laundry bag. It had been there for years. A rainbow of colors on the front advertised Miami Rocks Too!, Vol. 3., a yearly industry showcase for a select few local groups hoping to hit the big time. The back…
They like the gray area. Like a pitcher who paints the corners of the plate with a late-breaking curve ball, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (Steely Dan to us) avoid giving you anything you can hammer. Plenty of critics and pundits have the purple thumbs to prove that while their…
For Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman — known to their fans as Dean and Gene Ween, respectively — Ween’s new album, White Pepper, was a long time coming. The duo released a double live album, Paintin’ the Town Brown: Ween Live ’90-’98, last year, but it was a quickly assembled…
