Earlier this year, the silver-anniversary re-release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller — a souped-up, repackaged remembrance of the nine tracks of pop/soul perfection that the tree-climbing, surgical-mask-wearing, yeah-it’s-okay-to-sleep-with-kids, nutty sumbitch unleashed on the world so many years ago — hit stores. Sadly there’s one thing keeping the re-release from being just…
Miami’s Junc Ops combines some of the better elements of South Florida music into a savvy and futuristic amalgamation that whets the appetite and satisfies the hunger. The work of PG-13 (Paul Gaeta) and Kentsoundz (Kent Hernandez) gels well with the assistance of Matt CNTRL on the cuts, and musically…
The greatest Morrissey songs aren’t just sad, creepy and boastful; they also contain telling details, counterintuitive punch lines, and surprise turns of phrase. On Greatest Hits, we get winners such as “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get.” But sometimes Morrissey doesn’t channel Morrissey properly, and one of…
Kid Creole and the Coconuts — possessed of a flavorful, beat-driven energy with a slight urban touch — were a staple of the hip musical experience in the Eighties. Prior to that time, however, central figure Kid Creole was known as August Darnell. As such, Darnell worked in front of…
Usually, overly long band names point to an irritating sense of self-importance. Why else would you make someone spend a full minute enunciating your name, or force your fans to apply some ridiculous acronym? But somehow, by about 15 seconds into “Glue Girls,” the lead track from Pershing, it’s easily…
This past February 27 would come to be known as Kristopher Hull’s Worst Day Ever. Armed with a full-size upright piano, a repertoire of Chopin’s etudes and nocturnes, and his nerves, the 33-year-old pianist planned to storm Lincoln Road, guerrilla-style. He was going to bring classical music out of the…
Concert Review: B-Live at The Bayfront Park Amphitheatre B-Live April 19, 2008 The Bayfront Park Amphitheatre Better Than: The biggest block party you ever attended. See the slide show here Miami is mad about its music, not to mention its mojitos, so when the good folk at Bacardi took over…
Not everybody hates Buju. According to a story that came out in the Jamaica Star last week, Apple Inc has recently removed some songs deemed homophobic from their catalog. Buju Banton’s “Boom Bye Bye” was one of those songs and according to this article, some Canadian gay rights organizations are…
I’d toast to that! I knew there would be more to this story after Kelis first got arrested last year in Miami. Now it looks like both her and her legendary hip-hop husband, Nasir Jones, are going to be suing the City of Miami to the tune of $100 million…
Eisley Thursday, April 17, 2008 Culture Room Better than: Taking three xanax and drinking a handle of Jack. If you’re anywhere near exhausted, don’t even think about going to an Eisley show. This all-in-the-family Texas-born quintet (four sisters and their cousin, all with the last name DuPree) may produce some…
“Warning: trying to follow Meshuggah’s music can make your eyes cross.” Apparently, the appeal of Swedish death metal band Meshuggah extends beyond your typical metal fan base. So much so that awareness of the band has even reached classical conservatory culture. In Volume 29, Issue 2 of Music Theory Spectrum,…
Last Night: Another Night at the Agora at Sunrise Cinemas Mizner Park The Palm Beach International Film Festival wrapped up last night with the second showing of A Rock and a Hard Place: Another Night at the Agora, a concert film/documentary that sheds light on the once-vibrant but now forgotten…
Springsteen fans who were heading to see The Boss in Sunrise tonight are going to be sorely disappointed as the show has been indefinitely postponed. Last night, news broke that Danny Federici, keyboard player and original member of the E Street Band, passed away at 58 in New York. Federici…
Tomorrow night marks the three-year anniversary party forThe Rock, the weekly locals-only showcase at Tobacco Road run by the loveable Oski Gonzalez, guy about town and frontman of his own band, the Oski Foundation. Yes, The Rock usually happens on Thursdays, but it’s been bumped forwards this week to Friday…
You might think it’s commonplace at this point in the election for Obama to continuously rack up support from musicians. It is. But the latest endorsement holds some significant weight. The boss of all music bosses, Bruce Springsteen, is throwing his political muscle behind Obama. That might not mean a…
Carmen Lundy Quartet Unlike most vocalists in the jazz realm, this Miami-born diva doesn’t always rely on material from The Great American Songbook during her sets. Instead, Carmen Lundy always includes as many of her own compositions as she can both when recording and playing live – something she has…
Shine a Light makes even the biggest comic-book superhero collaborations look lame. The upcoming concert documentary, previously released on IMAX, recently arrived at regular movie theaters. And it teams up one of the greatest rock bands in history, the Rolling Stones, with one of the greatest American movie directors ever,…
Beach Food Market clerk Pratap Chowdhury spends a lot of time focusing on South Beach diplomacy efforts. He practices basic Spanish, learns customers’ names, and reaches out with a handshake or fist bop deemed appropriate for each patron’s apparent nationality or culture. As such, New Times decided to offer our…
Although Motion City Soundtrack originally started about 10 years ago in Minneapolis, things have recently picked up for the quintet. One reason: an official seal of approval from Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who fell for the band’s high-powered, punk-inflected, Superchunk-esque rock. Hoppus even produced the band’s second album, Commit This to…
From the tight-songwriting-and-flashy-pants black hole of old Seventies space-junk, Earth, Wind & Fire rises, touring every year with such predictability you could set your calendar by it. Last famously recognized during the apex of a medley in the kid-flick Happy Feet (“Boogie Wonderland”), EWF has bestowed upon the planet classics…
In recent years, conceptual electronic music has come a long way, with young artists using their tweaked computers to rearrange traditional sounds. But it’s often a lonely business, with laptop jocks building this nascent genre mostly alone, in home studios. But the FIU Laptop Ensemble reveals the music to be…
Michael Dixon and his crew don’t get off “the rock” — that’s Key West — very often. “This is our first trip to play Miami,” says Robin Menard, the band’s sax player and resident hot chick (a SPILF, beg your pardon). “We had a gig in Fort Lauderdale last month…
