Last Night: Juliette & the Licks at Culture Room

Juliette and the Licks October 30, 2007 Culture Room Better Than: Patti Smith fronting the MC5 – or just as good anyway. It’s a sad state of affairs when more people turn out on a Tuesday for the Tiki-fied floor show at Mai Kai than for a second South Florida…

Interview: Pepper

The Hawaii-born trio Pepper is based in Southern California, played this year’s Warped Tour, and mix in Jamaican rhythms with a little punk rock ‘tude. But don’t call ‘em any variation of s-k-a. Rather, they look a little further later in the history of Caribbean beats, mixing in a classic…

Habana Abierta this Weekend!

If you plan on going to Sleepless Night this Saturday, make sure you head to Collins and 21st around 1:00 a.m. That’s when Habana Abierta, the Cuban supergroup – by way of Madrid – will rock the beach. For an excellent profile on the band, read Julienne Gage’s February New…

Interview: Motion City Soundtrack

Although the band originally about ten years ago in Minneapolis, Minnesota, things really started picking up for Motion City Soundtrack within the last few years. A booster: a big helping hand from Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, who fell for the band’s high-powered, punk-inflected, Superchunk-y rock. Hoppus later produced the band’s second…

Last Night: Lil’ Blaze and Yungen at Cameo

Last Night: G Records Presents Lil’ Blaze & Yungen Monday, October 29, 2007 Vice at the Cameo, Miami Beach Better Than: Watching reruns of I Love New York 2 on VH1. OK … so maybe it’s not as good as watching Tailor Made get his ass beat by Midget Mac…

Monday Afternoon Music Fix

BY ANDY VIHSTADT E=CD^2 The Eels are kicking off 2008 time-capsule style. Along with the Essential Eels Vol. 1 2CD/DVD greatest hits collection, the band will releasing Useless Trinkets (also 2CD/DVD), an all-inclusive anthology of B-sides and rarities that makes the cache of import singles I’ve been collecting just that…

Last Night: Toots and the Maytals

Toots and the Maytals Sunday, October 28, 2007 City Limits–Delray Beach Better Than: Getting Swept in the World Series Reggae fans around the world should be familiar with the raspy yet powerful voice of Toots Hibbert, enigmatic frontman of legendary band, Toots and the Maytals. The group has left their…

Kelis Gets Booted from Jive Records

It was just last week that CrossFade reported news out of Miami that R&B/pop star Kelis was heading to trial for her recent run in with the law this past March in South Beach. As if that’s not enough to deal with (aside from everyone hating on her fashion style)…

Tommy Lee and DJ Aero: Full Q&A

This week, I wrote about Tommy Lee and DJ Aero’s tag-team DJ/live remixing project in my column, Suicide Blonde. (Click here to read it and get background info). A lot of stuff got cut out necessarily for space, so here’s the full Q&A. — Arielle Castillo Details: Tommy Lee and…

Last Night: DJ I-Dee and Q-Bert at Studio A

DJ Qbert October 24th, 2007 Studio A, Miami Better Than: The fat lady singing on a gondola in Venice Q-Bert All photos by Eddie Rosenstock The Review: If you’re not familiar with Qbert, he is the best scratch DJ on the planet earth, zectar and any other distant solar system,…

Jah Cure Announces Concert in the Bahamas Nov 3rd!!

Popular reggae star Jah Cure has announced that he’s performing a show close enough to South Florida that it almost feels local. He’ll be in Nassau, Bahamas on November 3rd as part of the Millennium Countdown and the show is just his third concert since being released from prison in…

Kelis Headed to Trial in Miami

Back in March of this year, R&B star Kelis, famous both for her songs, “I Hate You So Much Right Now” and “Milkshake” plus obviously for being married to Queensbridge rapper Nas, got arrested in South Beach for interrupting an undercover prostitution sting. If you want specifics on that event,…

Fall Out Men?

There is no better way to dismissively sum up a rock band than by labeling it “emo.” This is probably why Fall Out Boy’s bassist and de facto face man, Pete Wentz, insists the term doesn’t apply to the group’s breakout album, Infinity on High, released in February. “I wanted…

Bubbling Over

In the video for Barcelona-born Dani “Macaco” Carbonell’s song “Sideral,” a quote by Polish philosopher Stanislaw Jerzy Lec scrolls across the screen. “We should learn languages, including the ones that do not exist,” it reads in various tongues, such as Korean, Russian, and English. The singer-songwriter, it’s evident, is deeply…

They’re Just Like Us

With Halloween coming up, we asked a few rock stars to share some personal ghost stories. James Valentine, Maroon 5: [We recorded our latest, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, at Rick Rubin’s allegedly haunted house]. One night, when I was there alone, I saw a figure walking up the…

Ryan Joy

Avril Lavigne should be looking over her shoulder with chicks like Ryan Joy around. The Tampa-based minidiva manifested a love for show biz at age 10, taking up voice lessons in the hope of someday becoming a part of the cultural landscape like her childhood heroes Kiss, Mötley Crüe, and…

Tommie Sunshine

Electro-rock remix superstar Tommie Sunshine has one of the most formidable resumés in music, but ’tis beauty that whips this beast. Sunshine — a ZZ Top look-alike, with his long, scraggly beard and Cousin It hair — has remixed them all, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Good Charlotte, Ladytron, Avril…

Annie Lennox

Annie Lennox has sung onstage with greats like Aretha Franklin and David Bowie. She has recorded alongside Al Green and Paul Simon. She has won four Grammies, seven Brit Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. She has sold some 80 million records with her former band the Eurythmics and…

The Genitorturers

In 2004, Hustler magazine named the Genitorturers “world’s sexiest rock band.” It was about time: Throughout most of the Nineties, you could catch the band’s erotic blend of heavy metal and BDSM performances at clubs like Washington Square in South Beach. The band soon became famous for piercing fans’ penises,…

Folk Hero

Ben Harper’s bandmates from the Innocent Criminals are in the middle of pillaging several newly arrived boxes. The first copies of their CD, Lifeline, have just arrived, and the musicians are grabbing stacks with each hand. Meanwhile, Harper, who has already gotten his share, is shuffling about their rehearsal space…

Green’s Video Gold

It’s a sweltering afternoon in the impoverished Miami district of Overtown. In the nearly treeless neighborhood, cracked sidewalks typically remain vacant this blistering time of day, but today they’re brimming with hundreds of enthusiastic residents. DJ Khaled — with a little help from hip-hop celebrity friends Busta Rhymes, Trick Daddy,…

The May Fire

San Francisco-based indie rock band The May Fire is just like its Bay Area stomping grounds — lively, imaginative, and capable of creating a harmonic convergence of seemingly contrary styles and ideas. The band features former Miami resident Catty Tasso as lead singer and guitarist; musically it incorporates surf rock…