You know things have gotten bad when Tom Waits is singing songs about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Waits, who earned his stripes in this world as the songwriter from another, will soon release a three-disc set called Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. The music will be accompanied by a 94-page book…
Pitbull’s newest CD, El Mariel, includes lines like “Welcome to the real Dade County/ Where we’re soldiers from birth to the hearse/That’s why my childhood included a bulletproof vest,” and “Welcome to the real Miami/Where we live to die.” Typical rapper throwdown boasts, yes, but that’s the only thing typical…
Ever get the feeling that modern rock is now all about one-upmanship? The Killers are reaching for Springsteen’s lofty heights. Panic! at the Disco is augmenting its stage show with a veritable burlesque troupe. And emo heroes such as Taking Back Sunday are slapping on enough production gloss to kill…
On a steamy Saturday night at Wynwood bar Bullfrog Eatz, a band prepared to perform. The members of Secret Identity stood patiently, respective instruments in tow. An announcer, reading from an archaic-looking book, introduced the main act: “Look up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a…
The singer/guitarist/bass player for punk-rock band Animals of the Arctic, Ricardo Guerrero, is stripping onstage at the Pawn Shop Lounge. As drummer Rhodaine Wallace pounds away and bassist/guitarist/singer Alex Puentes wails out a backup, Guerrero loses his shirt and pants. By the end of the fourth song, he’s singing in…
Every couple of years there’s a new buzzword for urban underground music from the United Kingdom. In the Nineties, it was drum ‘n’ bass, trip-hop, and basically everything originating in Bristol. When those two genres reached their peak, then came UK garage, based on hardcore breakbeats and featuring some MCing,…
The great cultural seesaw between New York and Miami tilts southward, sending one of the Big Apple’s icons sliding into Twilo, fittingly enough. The transplanted superclub, nixed during Rudy Giuliani’s near-thorough cleansing of high-end places that tend to dump heaps of bloody MDMA casualties at emergency room doors, will be…
Some misled souls out there are trying to do something “creative” with their reggaeton videos. They’re shooting them in locales outside Puerto Rico (Tito El Bambino) and getting artsy via grainy montages of Latin culture (Don Omar). What a shame, after they had the perfect reggaeton video down to a…
For all the disaffection you might feel over being spoiled with another Paul Van Dyk performance in Miami, one look at his roots is enough to see he has had quite the struggle getting here. “At one time I only earned one deutsche mark a day,” he reminisces of the…
Zach Lewis has experienced the intense scrutiny that accompanies performing a one-man show. With a laptop and an electric guitar as his only companions onstage, he is solo act Disposable Thumbs. Auditory deception strikes listeners who have not seen Lewis strum his guitar and tap his MIDI pedal, for Disposable…
November 24 will be a busy day for the Beddy Ford Band, because the quartet will be headlining two shows in Miami. Beddy Ford employs the most phenomenal, state-of-the-art sound equipment to create its original sound, reminiscent of Nirvana-era Seattle. Though the band’s hardware is expensive, the boys dress casually,…
Known as the formal successor of the legendary Eighties Spanish pop group Mecano, La Oreja de Van Gogh has a way of taking the genre to new frontiers. Deeply manifested in the bandmates’ music is a prodigious ability to spill their hearts out through solid keyboard strings and bass lines,…
Peter Rauhofer was raised in the angular and restricted channels of the Viennese music scene. But alas, deviancy would come in the form of the progressive Radio Luxembourg and young Rauhofer’s cassette deck, with which he’d waste hours taping the sweet new jams floating across the airwaves. So now, twenty…
Way back, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids would rent a van from Crease and cruise down from Broward to play what became known as the “chocolate cow” shows (don’t ask, don’t tell) at the perfect rock and roll club, Washington Square in South Beach. And even then, clueful rock…
Linkin Park and Evanescence achieved massive success in the earlier half of this decade for two reasons: inflated, therapy-session-worthy you’ve-got-your-stadium-rock-in-my-techno hooks and angst-ridden, anthemic sentiments universalized to the point where listeners could locate themselves and their own unique problems therein. Young Love, an NYC band fronted by singer/songwriter Dan Keyes,…
Born in the 1970s in southwest Detroit, Rolando grew up heavily influenced by his Latin rhythms and percussion. When he heard DJ Jeff Mills mix as “The Wizard,” he discovered the sounds of techno. Through a mutual friend, he was introduced to “Mad” Mike Banks and promptly became a member…
With the exceptions of a couple of appropriate jags and ledges, the musical mountain scaled by Diane Ward is almost perfectly vertical. Despite her lithe blond beauty, she was a hard-hitting drummer who sometimes shattered sticks until, damn near twenty years ago, she stepped from behind the kit to front…
Scotty’s Landing is laid-back, even by South Florida standards. Flanked by Miami City Hall and the infinitely more expensive Chart House, it’s tucked behind one of several marinas that line the water along Coconut Grove’s South Bayshore Drive. Unadorned and nondescript, Scotty’s is little more than a canvas-covered wood deck…
They are festive, bright knit garments in solid colors or, at their jazziest, maybe an animal print. Their most distinguishing characteristic, though, is a neckline crowded with all manner of shiny baubles, mainly rhinestones and bugle beads. And these tops are often abandoned by the dozens, criminally forgotten in the…
With a Diddy-approved platinum debut album, New Joc City, and not one, but two smash hit singles (“It’s Goin’ Down” and “I Know You See It”) that have gotten more rinse than a laundromat washing machine, Atlanta rapper Yung Joc is among 2006’s greatest pop music success stories. And although…
The Oski Foundation will headline at one of Miami’s most creativity-friendly venues, the Wallflower Gallery, at its grand reopening celebration in early December. Mixing a smorgasbord of genres and musical styles, the Oskis, since their 1999 inception, have conquered more than 100 local spots, including Tobacco Road, Churchill’s, and Señor…
Emerging from the post-Sublime era, these two bands have been rocking it nonstop since the mid-Nineties. Pepper, the Volcom band from Hawaii, is receiving much-deserved acknowledgment through additional sponsorships from major corporations such as T-Mobile. Pepper’s vibe makes you want to dance your ass off, while heartbreaking lyrics remind you…
