The road has assumed an almost mythological role in the work of many of America’s greatest songwriters who have found emotional solace and metaphorical significance in the highways and back roads that cut through cities, towns, and map-dot whistle stops. In 1929 Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton wandered to worlds unknown…
Labor Day, a particularly long wallow for club kids, with party promoters and club owners working overtime to jump start the season. On Thursday, August 29, get Liphtid into Pyramic Descent with a dance party full of the purely positive fusings of some of the phattest tunes in town. The…
The Yips Bonfire in a Dixie Cup (Siltbreeze) On the Yips’ 1995 single “1000% Fox,” pinched-voice vocalist/bulldozer guitarist Gilmore Tamny kept her anger in check, and throughout the assaulting gem she made a point of bragging about it: “The rage in my cage stays mainly on the page.” On the…
Suppose you’re Jeff Lemlich, the senior news writer at WFOR-TV (Channel 4), a station where you started working seventeen years ago as a graphics operator and where you’ve won three Florida Emmys as a producer. Your 40th birthday falls on May 11, a Saturday and your day off. Family and…
A member of the local alternative band the Honeysticks is passing out flyers advertising the band’s self-titled CD after a recent show at Cheers. The slip of green paper features the recipe for a Honeysticks drink: a quarter-ounce each of vodka, Midori, Chambord, and amaretto, with equal parts sour mix…
In a typically tight-lipped understatement, Harry Pussy frontman Bill Orcutt describes his group’s most recent tour as “uneventful.” Nevertheless, Miami’s supreme noise ensemble experienced several firsts during the monthlong trek through clubland, which had them logging about 10,000 miles in a cramped van along with Siltbreeze labelmates Un, a Philadelphia…
Nostradamus issued the prediction in his legendary 1555 book Centuries that “in the year 1999 and seven months, from the sky shall come the great king of terror.” If that doom is indeed inevitable, its dark harbinger is Christian Death. Christian Death is considered one of goth music’s top acts,…
David Ball knows what it’s like to be at the wrong end of a recording studio, staring into the Plexiglassed control room as the session producer inside stares right back, neither man happy with what’s being captured on tape, each for entirely different reasons. For Ball, it happened back in…
George Clinton & the P-Funk Allstars The Awesome Power of a Fully-Operational Mothership (550 Music/Epic) When funk genius George Clinton is on — when he’s really on — his music summarizes the entire history of R&B at the same time that it shimmies ass-first into the future. On T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M, his…
A weekend of happy high jinks to look forward to. On Friday, August 23, party promoter extraordinaire Napoleon brings us a reprieve from the usual disco and brain damage with a night where high style rules, with a fashion spectacular showing the 1996 collections of Gianni Versace, Gianfranco Ferre, and…
It’s a slow week for inaugural one-nighter celebrations, but there are a couple of newish doors to pound on if you can bear to drag yourself from the comfort of your air-conditioned home and onto the heat of the street. For starters, South Beach institution Warsaw (1450 Collins Ave., Miami…
The four members of Cheap Trick have been to the mountaintop of rock and roll fame and celebrity. They’ve stood on its hallowed peak and surveyed with satisfaction and accomplishment the years spent kicking and scratching and clawing their way up that mountain: the early years of failed record deals…
On almost all accounts, Davey Molnar was the quintessential nightmare roommate. I met him freshman year in college, back in 1984, this pale bony kid from Jersey, a math genius utterly oblivious to the basic arithmetic of human interactions. He spoke in a slow, clogged manner, as if his sinus…
Some things are too good to be true, whether it’s ten CDs for a penny or John Lydon swearing he’ll never again be a Sex Pistol. Such was the case at the August 4th show at Bayfront Park, a multiartist reggae blowout thrown by Jamaica Awareness in celebration of Jamaica’s…
A voice-mail offering left for me last month by an unnamed reader, who objected to my not-so-nice comments regarding a cassette release by a local band: “You know, it really pisses me off that you writers think you can just say anything you want. These musicians put a lot of…
Various Artists America Is Dying Slowly (Red Hot/Eastwest) After releasing seven successful AIDS benefit compilations that focus on genres ranging from dance and jazz to indie rock and country, the Red Hot Organization has put out its first hip-hop record: America Is Dying Slowly (note the acronym). But with African…
This sounds like the setup to a familiar joke, but it really happened a few Thursdays ago: A guy walks into a bar and asks the bartender: “You got any music tonight?” “Yeah,” the bartender replies, “the Laundry Room Squelchers are playing.” So the guy, who is familiar with the…
A weekend chock full of things to do, places to go, and people to see. On the beach end, three restless brothers from New York open Cream (601 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 674-7988) with promises and plans for frivolity. The festivities begin on Friday with a private party for VIPP’s…
With South Beach undergoing a strange summer regeneration of sorts, new parties are springing up all over while old (in SoBe terms) haunts are still hanging on. On Friday, Society Hill (627 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 534-9993) hosts a big blowout to celebrate its glorious first year in existence –…
R.L. Burnside A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (Matador) Recorded in one afternoon in the Holly Springs, Mississippi, hometown of 69-year-old blues great R.L. Burnside, A Ass Pocket Of Whiskey documents a noisy, spirited session between Burnside, his sideman Kenny Brown, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a New York City-based…
“We play a lot. That’s what we do.” Rocket From the Crypt head pilot John “Speedo” Reis is pragmatic about the San Diego punk group’s nonstop touring schedule and prodigious output. In the five years they’ve been together, Rocket has cranked out a staggering amount of high-quality material for a…
Before the road dust had even caked on their vehicle, Coral Gables jazz-rock eccentrics the Jongleurs were forced to cut short their first full-scale tour when their Ford Club Wagon van took a nasty tumble. The quintet was leaving Savannah, Georgia, in the late morning sunlight on July 12 en…
