Like the best mid-Sixties work by Bob Dylan, the first three albums by the Clash redefined the rock and roll landscape into which they were unleashed. Between 1977 and 1979, the British punk foursome issued The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and London Calling, along with a brilliant string of…
It’s got to be one of the strangest box sets ever released, even though it stars the Stooges, one of rock’s most celebrated bands. 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions is a seven-CD collection, clocking in at just under eight hours and thoroughly documenting what has come to be known…
(Sub Pop) From Brian Wilson and Nick Drake to Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg, rock and roll has never been short on guys who’ve been kicked around by love and roughed up by romance. Northampton, Massachusetts, singer/songwriter Joe Pernice has his share of bruises and scars, and he’s used them…
When people talk about rock in Miami, most think of the white stuff smuggled in on barges from Haiti. But this week a few parties are out to change that perception. And no matter what musical genre you’re talking about, when the DIY attitude is adeptly displayed, there’s simply a…
Alexandre Pires does not want to talk about the days when he played at weddings and wakes. Looking back over his career during a stop in Miami to promote his latest CD, Juegos de Amor (Games of Love), the Brazilian singing sensation prefers to remember the time troubled boxer Mike…
As the Marley clan gathers to celebrate the high-profile birthday of reggae’s avatar at Miami’s annual Bob Marley family fest this Saturday, reggae itself continues to struggle to bust out from its long-term underground sentence as the musical catharsis of choice for a loyal but still relatively small international fan…
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,…
