Vacation is over, South Florida. After two weeks of back-to-back long weekends, we are finally returning to our same ol’ routine for a while at least. In case you were elsewhere visiting ungrateful relatives, here is what you missed over the weekend:Phish at American Airlines ArenaThe Vermont jam band invaded…
Over the next two days, we’ll post Crossfade contributors’ favorite local albums of 2009. They’re listed in completely random order, so stay tuned as the full list rolls out. Raffa and RainerNo Mercy (self-released)myspace.com/raffaandrainerMiami folkies Raffa Jo Harris and Rainer Davies play the sort of wistful melodies that make your heart…
If ever a band were built for an arena, it’s Phish, back after a handful of years with a fresh new commitment to its avant-expansive rock. This isn’t one of those comebacks where a group reprises a “classic” album, thankfully (although Phish covered the Stones’ Exile on Main Street on…
“I’m a Facebook prophet/I told all the girls that I’d be the hot shit.” Thus sings Kid Cudi on “Soundtrack 2 My Life,” the uninflected voice of a generation that grew up staring at monitors for hours and spends nights cycling through social networking websites. Embodying the hipster-hop aesthetic, Cudi’s…
Thirty years ago, singer-guitarist Mike Palm and the rest of his Southern California trio, Agent Orange, got the good idea to mix first-wave punk rock and hardcore with ’60s and ’70s surf music, holding onto the loud/fast/snotty approach while delivering melody and clarity too. And with that, they all but…
The Big Day Out Festival is one of those “some-day” trips to daydream about. An annual series of massive one-off fests throughout Australia and New Zealand, it’s like a Reading or Leeds done Down Under, with the world’s biggest festival draws ever. This year’s edition features seven dates from January…
Did somebody say, “jam band”? But wait, there’s no Hacky Sack and no tie-dye, and what’s with all of those laptops (like, four of ’em) onstage? If you haven’t figured it out by now, Sound Tribe Sector 9 is not your average jam band. Sure, they noodle on guitars, but…
Every time I look at Propaganda’s web site and see the drink specials and cheap prices, I want to crawl up inside it and stay. Unfortunately that’s not an option, as I have to report to offices in the counties south of Palm Beach. But if you live in northern…
Thanks to whatever changes in the gaming and racing laws (it’s hard to keep track), there’s finally a pseudo-casino within City of Miami limits: The Magic City Casino. It’s in a new building on the site of the old Flagler Dog Track, in that west-ish area of the county between…
Not to be outdone, White Room is hosting its own special events today through Wednesday, courtesy of Glitterglu Productions and Under One Beat Entertainment. The stand of shows is called “Black Curtains at the White Room,” and are all electronic gigs — the flyer bills the series as nights of…
Here’s more in immediately useful news over the next few days if you’re into this sort of thing. As we’ve mentioned here, the Vagabond has its own events planned every night of this week, with Phish afterparties starting tonight. If you’re in town for the show and are the traveling-for-music-festivals…
The Vagabond and White Room aren’t the only downtown Miami venues opening their doors to the Phish crowds who will invade starting any minute now. A little further south, Tobacco Road starts its own spate of after parties tonight, December 28. And while the 14th Street clubs are taking their…
It’s hard to believe that at the end of the decade, any band once labeled “nu metal” is still going strong. So leave it to musicians from South Florida, land of anomalies. In late 2009, Fort Lauderdale’s Nonpoint still enjoys an active touring career and a healthy, loyal fan base…
Who hasn’t been to a post-1998 wedding in which the couple danced to Edwin McCain? The saxophone-drenched ballad “I’ll Be,” in which McCain promises, in essence, never to be a douchebag, granted him the one commercial success he needed to live easy. He’s since dropped off the mainstream music radar…
Above all else, Candyland deserves an award for being South Florida’s longest-running annual electronic music festival. Yeah, uh, “festival” — that’s what they’re called now, to avoid that pesky “rave” word. Make no mistake, though; in its late-’90s heyday, Candyland was one of the highest-budget, complete-fantasy “parties” ever. Of course,…
It’s been two years since jam juggernaut String Cheese Incident called it quits in 2007. Some of the former members have dropped off the radar, while others have appeared with new projects. The latter holds true for the String Cheese rhythm section of Jason Hann and Michael Travis with their…
Once a year at the end of December Christmas takes over everything. See the above flyer of Santa Clause shitting out a full grown Jesus Christ doing the rock and roll sign as he exits Santa’s asshole to see how some people feel about it.This Friday, Destroyio Records presents a…
While still relatively unknown in the States, Portuguese DJ/producer Carlos Fauvrelle is renowned through the Iberian peninsula, a region increasingly associated with the tribal house genre (see Chus & Ceballos, Mastiksoul, etc.) Fauvrelle has been crafting his own percussive-driven brand of tech house since the early 2000s, releases of which…
“I’m a Facebook prophet/ I told all the girls that I’d be the hot shit.” Thus sings Kid Cudi on “Soundtrack To My Life,” the uninflected voice of a generation that grew up staring at monitors for hours and spends nights cycling through social networking websites. Embodying the hipster-hop aesthetic,…
The Big Day Out Festival is one of those “some-day” trips to daydream about. An annual series of massive one-off fests throughout Australia and New Zealand, it’s like a Reading or Leeds done Down Under, with the world’s biggest festival draws ever. This year’s edition features seven dates from January…
The upcoming three weeks in South Florida are pretty much heaven on earth for “phans” and other chilled-out festival-loving types. Phish’s four-night stand at the American Airlines Arena begins on the 28th, and, of course, kicks off on New Year’s Eve, with a bunch of other livetronica-type afterparties going on…
The American Legion Harvey Seeds Post 29 off of 64th Street and Biscayne (6447 NE Seventh Avenue, Miami) is named after Harvey Seeds, the first Dade County representer killed in action in World War I in France by a hand grenade exploding over a machine gun emplacement.His post was founded…
