I was all set to badmouth Vampire Weekend when they were to take the stage at Langerado yesterday, but the Ivy League louts denied me the privilege. Seems a little TV show called Saturday Night Live trumps Big Cypress, so the boy band decided to stay home and do their…
Alright, Langerado is in it’s first full day and early reports are indicating that the music is rocking, the crowds are thick, and the drug busts have already started. Watch your ass people. Cops are on the lookout so be safe and stay out of jail. There’s a couple of…
Nile As is so often the case with metal shows, there are too many bands on this bill. While there’s a certain bang-for-the-buck factor, in all honesty – and with no offense to the other three bands – this show could easily be whittled down to Nile and Warbringer and…
The long-haired, natty Lazaro Casanova got his start playing at the now-defunct old Malibu Grand Prix’s infamous Full Moon parties, int he Nineties. But he really became a local marquee name as the musical selector du jour for the main rooms indie-ish dance parties in Miami, most notably at the…
This quartet specializes in face-melting volume, pounding riffage, and a churning, breakneck-speed riffage section. But don’t tag ’em with the “m” word – Torche is a band possessing the rare ability to create heavy, heavy sounds that remain versatile and nuanced. With a floating overlay of intelligent, almost shoegazey textures,…
Within a span of months, the kiddies of Black Tide have shot from totally unheard-of to total buzz band for lovers of heavy music, appearing in the like of Spin and Revolver. And they are, in fact kiddies – the oldest members of the quartet are 19, and the frontman,…
Jacek Gancarz Click here to see a slide show of the concert. Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin with Hurt and Seether March 6, 2008 Cruzan Amphitheater Better Than: A cold beer on a hot night. Allow me to begin by saying that I commend everyone that made the hellish…
It’s really not surprising that the members of They Might Be Giants have started releasing records geared toward children, considering how educational and creative their music has been over the past two-plus decades. We present an encyclopedic history of the band — arranged from A-Z, natch. Accordion. John Linnell’s instrument…
Tough times in pop-starlet land these days. And riding to the rescue is … Ashlee Simpson? Laugh if you must, but Jessica’s little sister, now 23 years old, is looking pretty good lately. Not only has she avoided any kind of public embarrassment for more than two years, but also…
Bernadette Peters has appeared in classic movies such as The Jerk, Annie, Pink Cadillac, and Pennies from Heaven, as well as innumerable TV shows including Ally McBeal, for which she received an Emmy nod. But musical theater obviously still runs in the veins of this 60-year-old, Queens-born actress and singer…
Judging by Bayonics’ mix of hip-hop, reggae, funk, and salsa sounds, you’d think they were local boys, or maybe an experimental act from some island somewhere. But most of the 10-piece band’s members hail from San Francisco’s Mission District. The group holds a monthly residence at that city’s Elbo Room…
Imagine that Rachel Bilson, Adam Brody, and the rest of the hot young-adult stars of The O.C. played together in Newport Harbor’s hottest fake band. Then imagine they decided to take the music offscreen and around the world. Translate their songs into Spanish, and you’d have RBD, one of the…
Miami owes a great deal to Arturo Sandoval. Not only is he a great civic treasure as one of the world’s premier jazz trumpeters, but also he is the man responsible for bringing jazz to South Florida. Prior to the 2006 opening of the Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club in the…
For every musical prodigy there’s a horde of rabid critics eager to decry and defame. This is certainly true for Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang. His was a troubled career from the start. At nine years old, after winning contests and playing highly regarded public recitals, Lang Lang was invited…
In Miami, the central destination for Latin pop stars, concerts by international heartthrobs are held every day. Even so, Thursday’s show by Spanish singer Miguel Bosé at the James L. Knight Center is special, for Bosé is no ordinary Latin artist. After more than three decades in the music business,…
He boasts production credits for everyone from Lil Wayne, Fat Joe, and Juelz Santana to Smitty and even Junior Reid. He almost strictly uses samples, plus the heaviest percussion sounds this side of ?uestlove and Travis Barker. And he’s only 26 years old, born and raised in South Florida. Yep,…
Del the Funky Homosapien is an outer-space hip-hop trailblazer, helping to pioneer a weird-for-its-own-sake rap style by focusing on absurdist rhymes and sci-fi storytelling. Though a cousin of Ice Cube’s and a onetime member of the Da Lench Mob, the Bay Area-based Del abandoned his mentors’ gangster tropes but maintained…
Golden Smog and Jayhawks alum Gary Louris has a knack for crafting heartbreaking yet inspiring pop songs. At his best, on Jayhawks tunes like “Save It for a Rainy Day,” “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” and “It’s Up to You” — plus all the incredible tracks he wrote with…
San Francisco’s Kronos Quartet is globally renowned for championing the works of contemporary classical composers. Though Terry Riley’s profile isn’t as high as that of colleagues Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he is one of the key 1960s innovators of minimalism, that classical genre based upon variations on repetition. (In…
If you Google Louisville hardcore punk band Coliseum, you’ll find several dozen reviewers tripping over themselves to compare the power trio’s overtly political, vitriolic, venomous speed rock to British thrash pioneers Motörhead and hardcore stalwarts Discharge. And as the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. “Those are probably the…
Contemporary R&B quite often seems like it’s become a victim of its own name. So it’s good to see a fresh face adding something different to the sound; the fact that she’s local makes it that much more enjoyable. Singer/songwriter Rachel Brown is keeping things grown-up and respectfully sexy on…
Why is Janice Turner grinning so widely? It’s just after 7 p.m., 10 days before Christmas 2007, and she’s backstage at the Y-100 Jingle Ball show at the BankAtlantic Center. There’s a bunch of performances due to kick off in about a half-hour, but right now, folks are squeezed into…
