Shelton Williams was just another face in the crowd, an anonymous punk with safety pins in his clothes (and, occasionally, his skin) playing in unknown bands with names like Buzzkill. He was onstage from the time he was fifteen years old, yet he was rarely the frontman, usually playing drums,…
(World Circuit) By now you know the heartwarming story of the Buena Vista Social Club: American guitarist goes to Cuba, locates almost-forgotten elder statesmen of classic Cuban music, records album, watches album become worldwide smash. Said Cuban musicians receive long overdue recognition, adulation, and royalty checks. But one sometimes-overlooked fact…
(Delmark) From concept to execution, Design in Time is a visionary marvel, an album that honors jazz innovators as it steps boldly into the music’s future. The maiden release by the Sound in Action Trio, a Chicago outfit led by reedsman Ken Vandermark, Design in Time presents the young sax/clarinet…
Perverts, you’re in luck. With more hedonists per square mile than most other cities, Miami Beach offers more than a few chances to get any wicked urges out of your system before the traditional chocolates and roses of Valentine’s Day bring you down. And New Times will even help you…
The faces of the men nursing their beers at Mango’s Tropical Café fill with wonder, like children watching a fireworks display. Brazilian bartender Nice Taber has just mounted the mosaic-tile bar that opens on to Ocean Drive like a proscenium stage. Wearing space-age silver boots with six-inch platform heels, Taber…
For someone who describes himself as a “social misfit,” documentary filmmaker Les Blank has a tremendous knack for crawling inside his subjects and capturing their souls on celluloid. Over the course of a career that stretches back more than 30 years, the Tampa-born Blank has penetrated the insular communities of…
Thirty years ago — on December 6, to be exact — the Altamont Speedway, located about a half-hour’s drive from Berkeley, California, was the site of a free concert presented by the Rolling Stones. The band’s 1969 U.S. tour (its first in three years) had been a huge success, grossing…
The Byrds Live at the Fillmore — February 1969 (Sony/Legacy) Take a spin or two through the latest batch of Byrds reissues offered by Legacy, and you’ll soon figure out that the late Sixties and early Seventies were not kind to the band, which went from defining the country-rock aesthetic…
Chick Corea and the London Philharmonic Orchestra Featuring Origin Corea.Concerto (Sony Classical) It was probably inevitable that Chick Corea’s resonant, popular “Spain,” a buoyant theme hinged to cleverly shifting Latin rhythms, might eventually be reborn as an orchestral piece. Corea is a musical renaissance man, after all, able to adapt…
Jam Master Jay was cuttin’, groovin’, and bustin’ out the rhymes long before any of today’s roughneck homeys who claim to be the original G. As Run DMC’s man behind the decks, Jay was more rocker than gangsta, and was instrumental in helping his group be the first to turn…
“Spider” John Koerner sits alone on the darkened stage inside Hollywood’s Temple Beth El, sound-checking for his show later in the evening. Spectacles perched low on the bridge of his nose, he leans into his harmonica rack and blows, then picks out a walking riff on his acoustic guitar. A…
In the spring of 1962, Memphis producer Sam Phillips, ever the iconoclast, did something he hadn’t attempted in nearly a decade: He recorded a set of raw blues, the kind of stuff that boomed from the juke joints and roadhouses that dotted the flat, desolate landscape of north Mississippi. Phillips,…
Longineu Parsons Spaced: Collected Works 1980-1999 (Luv n’ Haight) Conventional wisdom holds that jazz is relatively immune to the marketing and promotional forces that shape mainstream success in the rest of the pop music world. It is here, in this oasis of artistic integrity, the thinking goes, that musical worth…
The Firesign Theatre Boom Dot Bust (Rhino) Like radio terrorists simultaneously infatuated with Dada, the Marx Brothers, science fiction, and Surrealist wordplay, the Firesign Theatre spent the better part of the Sixties and Seventies skewering pop culture and redefining the concept of the comedy album. At its creative zenith, the…
The pied pipers of Ecstasy culture, England’s John Digweed and Sasha, are spinning at Groove Jet (323 23rd St., Miami Beach) on Saturday. With house and trance dominating South Beach’s club scene (especially on the weekend), why settle for less? Bring in the big guns and let ’em run all…
The crowd wants a superstar, now. A parade of wannabe microphone masters tries the patience of the first fans to arrive at last month’s Reggae Shock Festival. Later in the night, this annual event will feature some of the biggest names in Jamaican reggae and dancehall music. At the moment,…
“File under: jazz.” Those three telling words sit in tiny print above the UPC bar code on the back of violinist Regina Carter’s third and latest album, Rhythms of the Heart. Understandably record store drones need to be instructed about the contents of this compact disc, lest it land in…
Ani DiFranco To the Teeth (Righteous Babe Records) In her rise to independently wrought stardom, Ani DiFranco created a sound and a persona designed for maximum impact. She may have gently dubbed herself “the little folksinger,” but to everyone else, she became that punked-out bisexual with the hard-strummed acoustic guitar…
Music of Indonesia 18 Sulawesi: Festivals, Funerals, and Work (Smithsonian Folkways) Music of Indonesia 19 Music of Maluku: Halmahera, Buru, Kei (Smithsonian Folkways) Music of Indonesia 20 Indonesian Guitars (Smithsonian Folkways) The final three volumes of Smithsonian Folkways’ vast Music of Indonesia project mark the end of a decadelong odyssey…
Pot, sex, and rock music. Some consider these vital to any nightlife experience, and this week several shameless bashes celebrate all three. Always start with pot: It makes the sex and the music better. This weekend at Tobacco Road (626 S. Miami Ave.; 305-374-1198) the legions of stoners will be…
Few groups have taken more critical abuse in recent years than Phish, if not in the form of outright animosity from hipsterdom-at-large, than in the guise of backhanded bemusement on the part of the mainstream media, ready to dismiss the band as nothing more than a curious replay of Sixties…
There is a ruckus at the back gate of the Six Pack Shack on Prison Lane. In a few hours, a record crowd of 60,000 people will assemble in downtown Nassau to see who will win top prize in a competition the Bahamian Minister of Youth, Sports, & Culture calls…
