Principal singer/songwriter Todd Thompson and his bandmates guitarist Sean Edelson, drummer Ari Schantz, and bassist Brad Berman maintain a busy schedule performing their insightful tunes, an array of pleasant rock melodies combined with deft lyric writing. A favorite among South Florida’s live-music fans, the foursome emerged victorious against several other…
It was 1997 and the lawn around the cosmic house of rock was shaggy and rife with worn-out musical monikers. But bassist and songwriter Chris DeAngelis (formerly of The No, Raw B. Jae and The Liquid Funk, and The Whistling Tin Heads) was determined to find a fresh one for…
How the planet’s greatest living Latin-jazz flutist made it in and out of town with barely a passing notice is one of those mysteries peculiar to South Florida. Indeed late this past winter Dave Valentin, woodwind-player extraordinaire, ascended the stage of Miami Beach’s Van Dyke Café for two nights of…
Miami: heat, entropy, and the concomitant disintegration of form. We love it. Want to love it more? Try a little dramatic tension. Have some bona fide sonic structure with your sweltering decomposition, and meet the people who can give it to you. For the steamy drive home, tune in to…
The shrill whistle, the rumble of the engine rolling down the tracks. It’s 8:00 on a Sunday night. Ted Grossman takes his usual seat as conductor of the Night Train on WLRN. As he has every week for 25 years, Grossman leads a four-hour journey through his deep collection of…
Whether playing a Gershwin song or Madonna’s latest hit, pianist and singer Nathaniel Reed is always in tune with his audience. Perched atop the one-foot-high stage at the Piccadilly, Reed’s baby grand piano faces the restaurant’s main entrance. The entertainer, who can be heard weeknights from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.,…
Turntablist extraordinaire and reigning DMC champ DJ Craze dropped by the home studio of Edgar Farinas (a.k.a. Push Button Objects). The end result is this abstract meeting of the hip-hop minds: an odd blend of off-kilter beats suffused in a crunchy timbre that attains a head-nodding forward motion almost in…
“I gave you Quaaludes/I held your cock/We spoke in diphthongs/ Clubnite!” Update the drug of choice in this bitter early Eighties anthem from West Palm Beach punkettes Sheer Smegma, and it’s clear some things haven’t changed in South Florida’s nightclub scene. “Clubnite” is just one of dozens of singles released…
Whatever you do, don’t refer to saxophonist Keshavan Maslak as an avant-garde musician. “You know what an avant-garde musician is?” scoffs Maslak. “It’s somebody who’s starving!” That may be the reason Maslak finally bailed on his adopted home of New York City in 1986 — despite a résumé of playing…
The fallen in search of a strong dose of that old-time religion should skedaddle posthaste to a particular stretch of strip mall in Hialeah. It’s there on most Saturday afternoons, near the corner of East Tenth Avenue and NW 62nd Street, outside the Flamingo Plaza, that you’ll find James Kendrick…
Latin rock veteran Pepe Alva and his band Alma Raymi (“soul celebration” in Quechuan) spent much of the past year in the studio, working on the follow-up album to 1997’s Pa’ Mostrarte Mi Amor (MATT Entertainment). With a new disc tentatively titled Comprometida (Engaged), Alva makes a bid for the…
Get ready for a little Cuban chemistry with Grupo Nostalgia. The Latin jam ensemble that won New Times’s award for Best Latin Band in 1996 and 1998 has completely transformed itself. The nucleus remains bassist and band director Omar Hernandez. Circling around him for the past few years have been…
One by one 50 musical acts — that’s right, more than 4 dozen — alighted Tobacco Road’s upstairs stage from 9:30 p.m. until past 3:30 a.m. for this starry-eyed, six-hour extravaganza. The show’s loving creator was Jeff Rollason, musical son of former Miami City Manager Frank Rollason. Once known as…
Musicians around town often complain that Miami’s reputation as little more than an international playground makes it difficult for them to play styles that depart from the tourist-oriented mainstream. It’s certainly true in the local jazz scene, a genre that has a tough time, commercially speaking, almost anywhere in America…
With WDNA-FM’s Steve Radzi laying his Reggae Beat to rest after nearly twenty years, the Caribbean radio crown safely belongs to Clint O’Neil, who has provided the tropical soundtrack of choice for night owls since 1979. Aside from those gravel-voiced Bob Marley-show IDs (recorded back in the late Seventies, when…
Delia’s arrival in Miami one year ago is the stuff of fairy tales. Once upon a time on a tropical island, there was a lovely young woman with a voice like a precious instrument. She sang so beautifully that in 1991 she won the prestigious OTI prize for Latin music,…
After watching Trick Daddy’s last album, www.thug.com, go gold, and seeing his leering mug plastered all over MTV, the Box, and BET, it’s safe to say Miami’s hip-hop scene has definitely found life after Luke. Not that Trick Daddy himself sounds too happy about his newfound fame and fortune: On…
Among the warehouses just west of Biscayne Boulevard and north of the Design District lives birdman (a.k.a. Sean Gould). Since graduating in 1987 from Clemson University with an English degree, the six-foot-four blond-haired Gould has been honing the art of what he calls “urban pioneering.” What this amounts to: moving…
In a city of conga players, bell clangers, and maracas shakers, Brazilian percussionist Claudio Silva stands apart. The largest country in Latin America, Brazil also boasts the greatest number of percussion instruments, from the Amazonian rattle to the booming surdo of the samba schools. Silva dominates them all. The versatile…
Once again Rat Bastard’s cacophonous collective Laundry Room Squelchers are tops in Miami noise. Not that there aren’t other noise artists doing notable things, such as Monotract, which performed to a packed house with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore at the Knitting Factory in New York City. But no one wants…
Since 1989 the “mystic thunder” of Loray Mistik has boomed all over town. Led by Papaloko (Jude Thegenus), the self-crowned king of vodou pop, this ten-piece band mixes traditional vodou rhythms with West African percussion, rock and roll, blues, and hip-hop. A painter, political commentator, and cultural promoter as well…
No other Miami frontman can carry you through a tune like Endo’s Gil Bitton. First, understand the jet-fueled rock Endo belts out lands somewhere between Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit. Second, realize Bitton puts everything he has into a performance, prowling the stage and gesticulating to each break-neck…
