Music

Keys N Krates have fond Miami memories of eating good Cuban food and playing a WMC party hosted by DJ Craze at a strip club. They love Florida and say the crowds are “lit.” Their mission statement reads, “make weird rap beats for the weird kids,” which would make the…

Making a living as a musician was considerably easier before the digital music revolution started killing record sales. These days, it’s particularly tough for idiosyncratic artists like Marco Benevento, a Berklee-trained keyboard virtuoso and songwriter who eschews pop formulas in favor of experimental jazz-rock forays. Fortunately for Benevento, his talent…

The first printmaking conference that I went to made me realize how punk rock printmaking is,” Kristine Leschper raves over the phone. “It’s really time-consuming. There are a lot of really cool techniques. It’s very nerdy. It’s a very old-school way of making art.” Leschper is speaking about intaglio, a…

Since the United States began its diplomatic thaw with Cuba in December 2014, we’ve seen a gradual exchange of culture between the two countries. Some developments were small, like when Netflix became available in Cuba. Or when the famous Havana cabaret, El Tropicana de Cuba, performed its first stateside show…

Jack Daniels is bringing its new Motel No. 7 experience to five different cities. And this Thursday, it makes its stop in Miami. What exactly is Jack Daniels Motel No. 7? Well, it’s not easy to explain. Still largely shrouded in secrecy, Motel No. 7 is the liquor brand’s attempt…

I only had an opportunity to see the late David Bowie once, at one of his rare South Florida appearances on November 17, 1972 when he and his Spiders from Mars (famously consisting of Bowie, guitarist Mick Ronson, drummer Mick Woodmansey and bassist Trevor Bolder) played Miami’s Jai Alia Fronton…

On Halloween 2007, Tallahassee PD received a noise complaint for a house nestled in the woods. When the police arrived, they discovered what Sebastian Solano calls “probably the biggest Halloween party Tallahassee has ever seen.” Solano puts the attendance around 5,000. “There were crowds of people walking in the street,”…

Unless you are a toddler (and if you are, may I compliment your excellent reading comprehension and ability to navigate the internet) or constantly around young ones, the name Peppa Pig means nothing to you. But at any tot lot or daycare center, the pink animated character is inescapable. The…

10. The Miami Chapter of the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis’ Seventh-Annual Block Party with People You Know. Saturday, January 16, 5 to 9 p.m. Hillstone, 201 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables; 305-529-0141; hillstone.com. Tickets cost $50 via thebuonicontifund.com/miami, or $60 at the door. Party for a cause and help the Miami Project and Buoniconti Fund to Cure…

An unlikely New Year tradition is well into its third year. Through the assistance of a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge, the recent installment of Ocean Drive in Vienna will once again mingle the sounds of Vienna with the tropical Latin American…

After an aspiring DJ named Danny Krivit met James Brown, the young Krivit’s vinyl hobby evolved into a full-blown profession. Raised in 1960s Greenwich Village by a jazz singer mother and a father whose music experience stretched from managing Chet Baker to owning the Ninth Circle disco club, Krivit was…

The concept of “the hustle” has always played an integral role in the mythologizing of music success stories. In the estimation of Roman, one-half of the Chicago-based electronic dance group Jump Smokers, it is the integral element for his group’s ascent up the EDM ladder. Since the Jump Smokers’ first…

Few artists have ever burst onto the scene with the intensity of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. The beat of the duo’s 2012 smash single “Thrift Shop” — which sounds somewhat like a funky door hinge that could use a bit of oil — is forever ingrained in our minds. Even stranger,…

“Excuse me, but I have to eat while we talk. Do you mind?” Tara Nevins is at home doing what most people do as part of their morning routine, scrambling eggs — sorry, “fluffing them,” as she points out — while also attempting to answer the questions posed by an…

Alright, let’s get it out of our system. He was Frodo. He palled around with a slimy grey creature and had a quasi-sexual relationship with a pudgy hobbit. That, for a long time, was how we knew Elijah Wood. And who can blame us? He’s the lead in one of…

In the mid ‘60s, the division between the races was never more distinct. Despite the emergence of Motown and the assimilation of soul into the musical mainstream, most pop ensembles remained sharply segregated, with musicians of one race or gender rarely performing alongside musicians of another. While bands like the…

Jay Simonson’s prediction for Friday’s show: “It’s going to be loud, and I’m going to climb on stuff.” It’s one of the few straightforward answers Simonson, lead singer of the Minneapolis garage-rock band France Camp, was willing to give over the phone, where he was joined by drummer Dylan Rosebringeth…