Concert Review: Miami Wings’ Thursday Night Jazz Jam

Click here to view the full slideshow from this event.Miami Wings Jazz JamThursday, July 23, 2009Better Than: Bedtime on a Thursday night.Miami Wings is a wings joint(duh)/sports bar way down in B.F.E that hosts a weekly underground jazz jam with the help of local serious jazz radio station 88.9 FM…

Black Sheep Bar Closing Party this Saturday Night

Yep, you read correctly — this week it was announced that Black Sheep Bar has officially been sold to new owners and its last hurrah will be this Saturday night. Far from being a cause for concern to loyal patrons, however, current owner and resident DJ/tastemaker Juan “BassHead” Loumiet assures…

Victor Wooten and JD Blair at Culture Room September 25

Earlier, Crossfade told you all about how Victor Wooten, one of the best bass players ever, is playing the Culture Room, but the date was unknown. It’s time to clear your calendar starting at 8 p.m. on September 25, because that’s when you’ll be standing in a darkened room, mouth…

Arjona Plays AAA Next Friday

Next Friday, the indomitable Ricardo Arjona kicks off a 19-show US tour here in Miami, named 5o Piso for his most recent album, which dropped late last year. The Guatemalan-born singer-songwriter endured a failed attempt at recording as a young man and abandoned his dreams of the stage to become…

Crookers Return to Miami, This Time at LIV on August 5

In the Venn diagram of modern electro, fidget and hip-house, Milan-based DJ duo Crookers resides in the overlap. The pairing of producers Phra and Bot, Crookers is often mentioned alongside the Bloody Beetroots, a similarly beat-saturated set of Italian DJs that rose to prominence through blogs. But Crookers differentiates its …

Spam Allstars Trombonist Plays the Conch Trumpet

So the Miami Herald finally got a YouTube channel. They’ve had a talented team putting out high-quality, award-winning videos for a while now (big up Chuck Fadely) but somebody oughtta tell corporate that with sites like keepvid.com all their content can now be downloaded with the click of a button…

Leonard Cohen to Play BankAtlantic October 17

Every young co-ed that I knew when I was a young man in college loved Leonard Cohen. I’m not sure if he fit some weird Elektra complex type of role in their lives or what, but they couldn’t get enough of his deep monotone vocals and sung-spoken verses. Of course,…

Local Album Review: Jennings and Keller – As The Universe Unfolds

Jennings and KellerAs The Universe Unfoldsjenningsandkeller.comAs the owner and proprietor of Homestead’s late, lamented Main Street Café, Laurie Jennings (uh, the musician, not the anchor lady) was adept at entertaining her guests with covers of well-worn classics from the Americana songbook.  Now, paired with partner and veteran session whiz Dana…

Alan Jackson Coming to Hard Rock Live October 1

The very definition of modern country music, Mr. Alan Jackson, has announced an October 1 stop at Hard Rock Live. Jackson is touring in support of his latest album Good Time which unfortunately has nothing to do with the ’70s television show starring Esther Rolle. Instead, Good Time is a…

Head Spins: DJ Omi

Most people would be glad to have either smarts or sex appeal or a sense of timing; to have all three would make one positively giddy. That must be why DJ Omi has such a wide smile on her well-chiseled face. See, not only is this chick good with a…

VNV Nation Returns in Grandiose Form

VNV Nation has never been content with simply making dance music. Yes, the duo’s dense discography is laced with an innate electronic groove, but Ronan Harris and Mark Jackson don’t create sounds just to entertain the body. Since banding together in 1994, the pair of London-to-Hamburg transplants has dipped into…

Matthew Dear

As anyone who has eaten Asian party mix will tell you, rice crackers are delicious, a condensed indulgence balancing salty, spicy, and sweet. But more than anything, the real pleasure of these treats is the texture — they are satisfyingly crunchy, whether shaped like spheres, crescents, or spirals. And if…

Gogol Bordello

Gogol Bordello’s pulsing Mediterranean sound and sljivovica-drenched stage presence have found eager listeners from around the globe. Gogol centers around frontman Eugene Hütz, who first assembled a motley crew of Eastern European expats (himself a refugee from the Ukraine and the Chernobyl disaster) from various New York City bars and…

Keith Sweat

Bubbling up to the pop surface after the hits of ’70s and ’80s love walruses such as Barry White had all but dried up, Keith Sweat is a living, breathing link from those disco-era pioneers to the Autotune-addicted rappers of today. Sweat is one of the last kings of the…

ASG

As ASG pumps out stoner metal/hard rock, the Raleigh, North Carolina-rooted outfit’s album covers lay bare its interests. The 2002 self-titled effort features a woodcut of a topless woman. The Amplification of Self-Gratification, from 2003, spits at subtlety: A near-naked harlot, dressed in Old Glory, leans on an amp and…

Local Motion

Arsonist In Constant Motion (self-released) arsonistmusic.com This 11-track disc by local band Arsonist rocks with proper inflections of shoegaze, post-punk, Hialeah rock, and solid indie know-how. And Miami’s Rimsky lends vocals to two tracks. Awesome. Jorge Ubieta (bass/keys) and Alejandro Tuesta (drums) put down an almost whimsical rhythm foundation for…

Warped Tour Preview: The Classics – Bad Religion

How time flies. I first caught Bad Religion as a very young teenager at the 1998 edition of the Warped Tour, and they were a classic act then. The genres represented on this tour have widened a whooooole lot since then, and the face of punk and its offshoots has…