The 32-year-old house producer and DJ known as Laidback Luke first got his kicks in his native Holland as a graffiti artist. When the thrill of the physical and legal danger wore off around the mid-Nineties, he turned to music. Still, he preserved the sly cunning of the graffiti writer…
Rock geeks across the county have already shuffled (real rockers don’t run or flock) to check out MoCA’s superhip summer exhibition, “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967.” But the whiz-bang opening, featuring bands in a soundproof box, and free “What Would Neil Young Do?” was…
Logan Fazio Modest Mouse with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Friday, June 23, 2008 The Fillmore, Miami Beach Better Than: The mental meltdown scribbling in your seventh-grade diary. Modest Mouse and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band kicked off their North American tour together last night to a packed, enthusiastic audience…
Montserrat She doesn’t sound very concerned with how many bodies will – or won’t be – occupying seats inside the Byron Carlyle in Miami Beach on Wednesday night. “That’s out of my control,” says Spanish soprano singer Montserrat. “As long as the people there accept my work and I’m able…
Like Green Day, Rancid was once reviled as a band of poseurs by much of the punk-rock intelligentsia but is now seen as a standard-bearer for the genre — and sheer persistence is a big factor. Early discs such as 1995’s And Out Come the Wolves were so derivative of…
One could say Jamaican singer Papa Winnie had a serendipitous hand in the creation of O Rappa, the Rio de Janeiro-based fusion reggae/funk-rock band that performs this weekend in Pompano Beach. In 1993, Winnie arrived in Brazil for an extended tour with no backing musicians. A pick-up band was quickly…
The most bizarre voice in rock these days belongs to Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock. His Tom Waits-esque yowl guides an array of drunken characters through the churning guitar swirl that has been the band’s bread and butter since its earliest recordings with Calvin Johnson. Now proud members of the…
The course for superstar trance DJ Paul van Dyk is all-ahead full. In Between, his fifth album of original songs, remains the record he’s been giving the most push since its release in August last year. And deservedly so, what with the high-profile collaborators who appear on the album, such…
Mudhoney With Birds of Avalon and the Getback Friday, June 13, 2008 Churchill’s Pub, Miami Better Than: Most other new-jack “indie” shows I’ve seen in the past couple of months. The Review: I was originally going to take a vacation from scribbling notes at shows and just check out this…
Ivon David Rojas Last Night: The Cure Friday, June 13, 2008 BankAtlantic Center Better Than: Explaining to your parents why straight guys can wear lipstick. Diehard fans of the Cure were in luck this Friday the 13th when the band performed a set lasting more than three hours, including four…
According to a press release that was forwarded to me a couple of days ago from the incomparable Afrobella (who you all need to check out), Bejan superstar Alison Hinds is performing an intimate concert tonight in Fort Lauderdale. Her gig tomorrow night in West Palm Beach at the South…
Pearl Jam Wednesday, June 11 Cruzan Ampitheatre, West Palm Beach Better Than: Waiting another five years for the guys to come to town. Flashing lights, smuggled cameras, and lots of hoopla inside of the Cruzan Amphitheatre signaled that something big was going on. Last night, Pearl Jam opened up their…
Let’s put it this way: When was the last time you heard a non-bling-oriented MC not say modern hip-hop is a fucking old mess? For some rappers, making inflammatory statements about the state of the game might simply be part of the business plan. Brooklyn MC AZ has been uttering…
“Big in Serbia” might sound like a joke to the public at large, but dance music cognoscenti know better. Balkan beat conductor Marko Nastic is huge in his home country, but he’s also making ripples in the global sine-wave ocean. He discovered electronic music courtesy of an uncle who spun…
There’s a line in Gogol Bordello’s 2002 song “Let’s Get Radical” that goes something like this: “You know, Mother, some things are actually sacred, and tapping your foot to the ceremony just won’t do.” The tune is one of the New York group’s more abrasive and melancholy (it actually begins…
Like many of its Seattle peers (and famous followers, notably Nirvana), Mudhoney was branded with grunge’s scarlet letter. It’s a hollow label, of course, ignoring the pioneering group’s raunchy, bad-vibe rock and roll, which set it apart from the genre’s occasional this-close-to-metal posturing. Twenty years after its release, Mudhoney’s breakthrough…
Either go to college or you’ll end up like this deer. No pressure. Michigan based rocker Ted Nugent has sharp a message for high school graduates this year. The highly vocal 59-year-old conservative recently penned an Op-Ed piece in the Detroit News that he wants to circulate throughout the country…
Stevie Nicks Saturday, June 7 Hard Rock Live Better than: Watching Stevie Nicks 10 years from now. The body of Stevie Nicks turned 60 last month. Her voice has been 60 for a while. Maybe it was all that coke in the ’70s, or maybe it was that her vocal…
Little Brother with Double-O of Kidz in the Hall Paid Dues Tour Saturday, June 7 Club Cinema Better Than: Believing hip-hop is deceased. It would be great to say the hip-hop extravaganza known as the Paid Dues Tour went off without a hitch this past Saturday night. The vibes were…
Brazilian singer-songwriter Djavan got his start in the late Seventies while playing modern sambas with a clear bossa nova vibe. Over the years, he has expanded his musical palette by incorporating sounds from jazz, blues, and the Brazilian northeast. His resulting unique style boasts a sophisticated sheen but also remains…
The San Francisco-based house DJ duo of Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden celebrated its “Best American DJ” award at this year’s Winter Music Conference in novel fashion: They broke up the act. They went out with a bang, too, slaying the Pawn Shop crowd with a five-hour set March 28…
It’s certainly impressive that Steely Dan masterminds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have contributed such a staggering group of hit songs to the canon of modern music. One imagines that, even after civilization collapses, jazzy classics such as “Reelin’ in the Years,” “Bodhisattva,” “Any Major Dude,” and “Peg” will continue…
