Concerts

…And folks in Ohio, Texas,Vermont, and Rhode Island are headed to the polls, it only makes since to play some election music. Here’s some Obama love from the Lone Star state. — Jonathan Cunningham…

Ky-mani Marley rocking in front of thousands of fans. 15th Annual Caribbean Festival AKA The Bob Marley Festival Saturday, March 1, 2008 Bayfront Park Amphitheater Better than: Staying home and listening to Exodus on repeat. Over the weekend, one of Miami’s most treasured music festivals returned to the city for…

Would it hurt to once in a while raise your fist in more than a mere whisper?

Three weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with the two women who will be starring in Florida Grand Opera’s upcoming production of Tosca, Giacomo Puccini’s great opera about a brave, doomed painter, a jealous, doomed singer, and a very-mean (and very-doomed) police chief. One of these interviews was published…

The Gipsy Kings didn’t set out to redefine world music. They didn’t intend to scandalize the world of traditional Flamenco music through their inclusion of pop instrumentation and rock song structures. They just wanted to make pretty girls dance, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The history of the…

The Really, Really Good Looking Tour: Cobra Starship, Metro Station, We the Kings, the Cab Wednesday, February 27, 2008 Culture Room Better Than: The programmed sounds coming from your 1985 Casio keyboard. The bands on this tour could have held an open casting call, but they wouldn’t have found a…

With only a handful of live performances to date, local act Ghost Stroke is already making waves. The quartet comes fully equipped with a seasoned vocalist, a Berklee alum guitarist, a Warner Bros. veteran as a bassist, and a drummer with a Ringo Starr style. Influenced by artists like Tom…

Mannheim Steamroller is comin’ to town, which doesn’t automatically mean Santa Claus is along for the ride. Like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Steamroller is best known for concert spectacles in which classical music and standards are rockified for the holiday season. Originally concocted as an alias for record producer/composer Chip Davis…

You don’t rack up country credibility by wearing big hats and shiny shirts, although the current crop of Nashville movers and posers might suggest otherwise. Better to emulate the trajectory Ricky Skaggs has followed for the better part of the past four decades and return to your roots, or in…

An anti-harmonic convergence takes place at Tobacco Road on Friday when the 30-band Kryptonite Metal Fest touches down. DJ Oski and QueenOfTheScene.com are handling the event, which will spotlight bands from all over the state playing 30-minute sets. For this minipalooza, The Road will have stages set up in the…

Leon Russell February 23, 2008 The Culture Room Better Than: And old 45 and a Kleenex. There are very few songs that I’d travel some seventy-plus miles to hear sung live – very, very few. But among that short list is Leon Russell’s “A Song for You.” Covered over the…

Click here to see a slide show of the Jose El Rey’s performance. Jose El Rey at Poplife February 24, 2008 White Room Better Than: Shopping at Flamingo Plaza Local musician Jose El Rey is the embodiment of the Cuban stereotype. He is flirtatiously misogynistic, unbelievably crass and sports a…

One of Central Florida’s most popular jam bands, Shak Nasti, is in town and playing a couple of shows–one in Fort Lauderdale, the other in Coral Gables. Langerado is just around the corner and if you want to get in an early jam fix, go check these guys out tonight…

A.B. Quintanilla being interview by a reporter at his Listening Party. A.B. Quintanilla & The Kumbia All Starz Listening Party February 20th, 2008 The Raleigh Hotel Better Than: Staying at home and listening to a 20-second song snippet from Amazon Oeuvres, Champagne, and Cumbias? Last night’s listening party sponsored by…

Johnny Cash once said, “When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, ‘You mean, besides George Jones?'” Nicknamed “No-Show Jones” in honor of all the gigs he missed as a result of his drinking/drugging/God-only-knows, the now-76-year-old Jones still ranks second to Eddy Arnold for the most…

Truth be told, Q-Burn’s message is no more abstract than “get thee under the mirror-ball and shake yo’ ass.” The former Rollins College (Orlando) DJ is a master at blending software and electronics with live instruments to create bump-and-groove house tunes, weaving his own guitar riffs and drum breaks into…

Like Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow knows the value of old songs. But unlike Stewart (who caught his third career wind by recording 76 albums’ worth of tunes your grandma got busy to back in the day), Manilow has slowly been working his way through the 20th Century, beginning with the…

This emo supergroup began as a lark in 2006, when the blogosphere had Snakes on a Plane fever. Gabe Saporta, frontman for New Jersey rockers Midtown, was recruited to pen a song for the movie. But the flick turned out to be an overhyped washout that couldn’t even muster enough…

It looks like McDonald’s is going after the urban crowd with this one. “Cha cha now y’all.” — Jonathan Cunningham…

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone February 16, 2007 The White Room Better Than: Having Dostoevsky read to you by an ex-lover. Hard to believe anyone would put their faith in heartbreak, let alone turn out en masse to listen to it. But that’s Miami – ever ready to flip the…

You don’t need to know the music of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone to know that somehow, somewhere, sometime, you too have trod down that same long, dark road. But it helps, if only for the fact that you can commiserate. You might even get a bit gleeful hearing how…

Better hook up the Red Bull I.V. — DJ Boris is on his way to Space. The Russian-born 35-year-old is known as much for his marathon club sets (15 hours at Crobar in 2006, 22 hours at Nocturnal during the 2007 Winter Music Conference) as for his ever-growing list of…