One of the pleasures of following the local music scene is the direct line of communication between performer and audience. An example: You buy a recorded work by a local artist or band. A) You think it’s great, or B) you think it sucks. Either way, you get to tell…
Those who enjoy — and by extension support — music made in South Florida by musicians who live in South Florida must constantly deal with naysayers. Stevo, of the Strength of Unity rap-fusion outfit, has a lyric about it in which he imagines all his critics gathered, wearing white robes…
Kathy Fleischmann Speaking Guillotie (independent CD) Just where do you put Kathy Fleischmann’s Speaking Guillotine in your record collection? Folk? Okay, you could make an argument for that category: Fleischmann writes poignant and personal tunes and strums acoustic guitar and even has long flowing hair. Rock? For sure the songstress…
The Goods, one of South Florida’s most danceable rock bands, is on stage at the Reunion Room pulling out all the stops: “Gypsy,” “Gotta Get It Back,” “I’m Not Average,” “Tonka Truck.” A sign on the wall warning that the establishment will not be responsible for any injuries sustained during…
In mock honor of my tenth anniversary as a professional music critic, I wonder if you might indulge my views of the future of music journalism: There is none. “Virtual reality” — an oxymoronic piece of linguistic rubbish to begin with — is now “virtuality.” We’ve gone too far. We’ll…
Who woulda thunk it? Tony Bennett, he of “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” fame, and a fave of beehive-era moms and pops everywhere, flies back to the top on a ticket booked and paid for by a ragtag legion of nihilists relentlessly known as Generation X. This is…
Halfway through a recent Milk Can set at the Stephen Talkhouse, lead singer and guitarist “The Milk Man” (a.k.a. former Natural Causes guitarist Joel Schantz) stepped to the microphone in an attempt to set the record straight for any audience members who might still be confused about his new project…
Eric Allison and Jack Keller Live at Ziegfield’s (Wonderland Jazz) Just reeds and piano. Those are the only instruments you’ll hear on this disc from tenor-alto-flute-clarinetman Allison and pianist Keller, though at times you’ll swear there’s a full band cranking. As on “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” the swinging Basie staple…
Sugar Blue is not one to dwell on the past. Practically raised in Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater — his mother was a singer and dancer there — he doesn’t care to relate any stories, drop any names. Only when pressed about a rumored meeting with Billie Holiday does he unlock…
Dada American Highway Flower (IRS) Nirvana was not a great band. They were a good band with a talented frontman. The reason they were so hugely successful was because their sound was right. They came along in the maw of the Seattle movement, a sort of dorky, melodically attuned harking…
The first year in the life of ‘Cane Records — the student-run record label based out of the University of Miami — has been kind of like that of a baby: one long learning experience complete with tears, temper tantrums, and lots of late nights. After overcoming a number of…
Certainly much will be said beginning this coming Tuesday when If I Were a Carpenter hits record stores. The release is a collection of songs by the Carpenters, Karen and Richard, as performed by some of today’s hottest and coolest alternative rock acts, including Sonic Youth, Redd Kross, Cracker, and…
Trampoline dormer (spinART) One-man band Pat Ferrise writes ineffable, lazy-hazy pop melodies, while lyrically musing about nothing in particular in his unaffected, boyish voice. Reflective, wistful, and unself-conscious, Ferrise’s songs indicate sentiments more than coming right out and stating them (“big bones break, small ones bend”). He constructs these tunes…
In many parts of the world one of the biggest names in pop music is Aswad. If that’s a news flash, you have to understand that the world is a big place. It doesn’t begin and end with North America, although the British reggae band also has enjoyed a few…
We cruised through upstate New York, pulling into the biker bar at two o’clock in the morning. Our Volvo station wagon didn’t exactly blend into the rack of Harleys resting in the lot. The joint was packed — wall-to-wall leather and chrome — and we might have felt out of…
The room is brightly lighted and freshly painted all white, like in a hospital. Or a morgue. There’s a cooler in the corner filled with ice and a bottle of water. Above, a lackadaisical ceiling fan spins slowly around and around and around like the world itself. There’s a table…
Everyone who’s ever strummed a guitar has at one time or another asked themselves the question, “If I could trade places with anyone in the history of rock and roll, who would it be?” I know I’ve fantasized about it once or twice myself. Of course the names that popped…
Third Wish consists of serious musicians, veterans of the University of Miami’s music school, true virtuosos capable of technical precision in a variety of genres. Even so, they’re a damn good rock band. If that seems unlikely — that players who can run through a perfect Beethoven sonata are also…
Amid all the manufactured mainstream media malarkey about 1) the 25th anniversary of Woodstock and 1A) its merchandising-gone-ballistic deadly spawn, Woodstock ’94 and 2) the Rolling Stones’s toothless and soulless new album, Voodoo Lounge, and 2A) the band’s “Till Death Do Us Part” kabillion-dollar U.S. tour in support of that…
Little Nicky Yarling says Phillip Walker is one of the best acts she has ever seen. Quite an endorsement from the juke-joint-jumpin’est frontwoman on the South Florida music scene. But then, one doesn’t become hired axman for everyone from Clifton Chenier to Lowell Fulson by being the aural equivalent of…
Intrepidation is not a word. Nor, for that matter, are decimy or centrifugion. But that didn’t stop Rob Elba, songwriter-vocalist of the Holy Terrors, South Florida’s most explosively erudite and least compromising post-punk band, from using them in the songs “Nude,” “Palm Beach,” and “Turn,” respectively, on the Terrors’s new…
It seemed like such a good idea, one of those momentary lapses of reason when both impulse and inspiration collide. The proverbial bolt from the blue, at once whimsical and foolhardy. It all began during my weekly perusal of this very publication. There it was, in the “Concert Calendar,” the…
