Whatever you call the Damn Personals, please, please don’t refer to them as the saviors of rock and roll, even if their retro indie rock is the stuff that makes lazy music critics sling the clichéd term at bands like the Strokes, White Stripes, and the Hives. Working their way…
Is there something in your eye? Oh, it’s just Carlos Vives, singing “Let me in through your gaze” — you know, the windows to your soul and all that — a lyric from the song and album Déjame Entrar (Let Me In) that earned the Colombian soap-star-turned-vallenato-singer two Latin Grammys…
An emerging guitarist from Texas, Hadden Sayers bares his knuckles and jabs with powerful blues hooks on his latest Ultrasonic release, unveiling licks that aren’t so much fast as they are tasty and rich, and a voice that beams a maturity extending beyond his years, both lyrically and sonically. Formed…
Back in 1978, long-time U.K. Subs guitarist Nicky Garratt remarked to a writer that frontman Charlie Harper was old enough to be part of Beethoven’s backing band. Fast-forward almost 25 years, and at 58, Harper could easily be the cool grandpa who’s still more punk than his children’s children –…
Eight Hialeah bands kicked off the Eighth Annual Miami Rock Festival at Churchill’s Friday, a celebration wherein the pub known mainly for live rock music hosts a month of, you guessed it, live rock music. “Rock” means just about anything here. From blues rocker Jon Paris (September 21) to Miami…
In this town it seems like every time two Latin musicians get together in the same room someone calls it a descarga. For the dizzying thrill of the real thing, head to Café Nostalgia this Friday night, when a group of powerful multigenerational instrumentalists will scare up the very soul…
bird gets the smile seems to be the kind of band Miami needs. Stocked with a couple of veterans from the local scene, BGTS makes sounds of the sort commonly defined in Webzines by a morass of hyphenated music-geek terms. A quick review of online descriptions suggests that BGTS is…
Bondage — to a beat — is back. This time in Miami Beach. After nearly a six-month hiatus, the London Ballroom unleashes its fetish club night once again, promising nothing short of pure debauchery. David Cordoves inaugurated the club theme night in Miami Beach three years ago. He moved it…
Barry White. Englebert Humperdink. Jose Luis Rodriguez. When you’re ready to slip into something a little more comfortable, there’s really nowhere else to turn. Venezuelan loverman Rodriguez, better known by the name El Puma for his penetrating stare and jungle-cat appeal, has been setting the right mood for more than…
This business carbonation/Less pop — more fizz/Coming over the radio station/It’s killing us kids. Enon frontman John Schmersal knows of what he speaks. While the rest of the music world desperately tries to cram into pigeonholes for mass consumption, Enon’s goal is to spray fire over every genre possible. Postpunk,…
There is a never-ending debate over who’s the best rapper of all time. The arguments always change, but the names somehow remain constant. Rakim, ‘Pac, Biggie, Jay-Z, and Nasir Jones — a.k.a. Nas — are consistently considered rap’s lyrical upper class. Of these five emcees, though, Nas is probably your…
For LL Cool J, or Ladies Love Cool James, the man who made the terry cloth fishing hat into de rigueur streetwear, the hits just kept a-coming. From his breakout single “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” in 1985, the first for Def Jam Records, to the double-platinum Mr. Smith…
Since creating Electric Frankenstein in 1991, bassist/mad scientist Sal Canzonieri has taught his rock and roll monster well. Balls-out, AC/DC-influenced punk rock: good. Wimpy alternative rock: bad. After 11 years, 10 LPs, 10 EPs, and countless singles, Electric Frankenstein has perfected its Misfits-meets-Kiss-meets-Jerry Lee Lewis “New Rock” just in time…
With songs like “Martian Martians,” “I’m a Little Aeroplane,” and “Abominable Snowman in the Market,” it’s hard to believe that troubadour Jonathan Richman played such an important role in the burgeoning punk movement of the 1970s. But the Talking Heads, Television, and even the Sex Pistols (they covered the Richman…
Once the Goths get enchanted with you, they never let you go. Loyal and a tad masochistic, Goths love their icons till death, even if their icons don’t love them back. Which is why Peter Murphy can hide out in Turkey reading Rumi, release albums only sporadically, have those albums…
Forget about Spider-Man and his hots for his high school honey. And if you’re looking to Star Wars for love interest, well, look again. For truly otherworldly passion among superhumans turn to the Patakin, the stories of the dalliances and daredevil antics of the orishas, the deities of the once-powerful…
Some say the battle has already been won. That the long reign of compas kings T-Vice has come to an end. No, the pretender to the throne is not KDans, Djakout Mizik, or Zin. The upstarts are the newest of the New Generation Compa: Carlo Vieux, Richard Cave, and Mickael…
When a musician cites influences as diverse as the poetry of William Blake, the country blues of Sleepy John Estes, and the field recordings of Alan Lomax all in the same breath, you know you’re in for something interesting. With all that poetry and roots mixed with jazz, rock, and…
Is Laurie Anderson the coolest chick on the planet? Not only has she thrived all these years with her artistic integrity intact, but she’s done it while scoring a number-two hit on the pop charts (in England, even cooler), making the critically acclaimed concert film Home of the Brave, and…
Cabaret Diosa — the nine-piece extravaganza of guitars, horns, mambo, swing, jazz, and, of course, dancing — is a band that exudes more drama than a late-night Springer marathon. The Boulder-based neo-Latin ensemble always folds a hearty dose of theater and cartoon-caperish quality into its episodic stage shows. Diosa vocalist/guitarist…
Living in Miami since 1987, Cuban-born Carlos Gomez and Canary Islander Marta Ramirez have been offering audiences a rich blend of traditional and original trova interpreted with impressive authenticity. This weekend the husband-and-wife duo celebrate the release of their much-awaited debut CD, Trova Bolero, with a series of shows serving…
Miami may be a noisy place, but it’s not noisy enough for some. So our own beloved Rat Bastard is importing noise acts from abroad. The Flying Luttenbachers come in from Chicago on little cat feet, or more likely in a big dilapidated van, to dump a big heap of…
