Is Dinosaur Pile-Up a Ridiculous Band Name?

Some band names are downright ridiculous: Butthole Surfers, Diarrhea Planet, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, for example. Dinosaur Pile-Up, a British three-piece rock band from Leeds, falls into this category. Frontman, founder, and lead vocalist Matt Bigland named the band, as a sort of joke, after a scene in…

NKOTB’s Total Package Tour Is the Ultimate Political Escape

The last presidential election separated the red and blue states, demarcating two very different American lifestyles. There’s the America that wants its big red Solo cups full of something sweet or boozy, its tanks filled with gas, and its guns on its hips. Then there’s the America that dreams of…

Brazilian Troubadour Tiago Iorc Makes His Florida Debut

Brazilian musicians have a long history of absorbing American and British musical influences and then spitting out something completely new and different. In the ’60s, Os Mutantes and Gilberto Gil caught a whiff of the psychedelic revolution and birthed their own hallucinatory genre, tropicália. More recently, the Rio de Janeiro…

LA’s Busdriver Makes a Stop in Miami

From an early age, Busdriver was weened on rap and what he calls “heavy jazz.” His father wrote the 1985 Def Jam biopic Krush Groove. Busdriver emerged as a rap contender when he was “rapping a lot” on the school bus with his friends, he says. His lyrics, inspired by the L.A. riots in 1992, pushed boundaries from the outset. And he was inducted into the famed open-mike workshop Project Blowed at the tender age of 16.

The Best Concerts in Miami This Week, July 10-16

It already feels like the dog days of summer, but you wouldn’t know that by the amount of music packed into the week. Tuesday, the California rockers of Rooney will bring plenty of West Coast vibes to Gramps. Thursday, Lower Dens, along with Ex Reyes and Nick León, will headline Red Bull Sound Select’s last Miami concert at 1306.

Metallica Brought Its Greatest Hits to Hard Rock Stadium

This past Friday, the same day it was announced Metallica scored its 12th number one album on the Billboard charts with last year’s platinum-selling Hardwired… to Self-Destruct, the L.A.-based four-piece brought its spectacle of a show to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium that was as impressive as the fact that people still buy albums versus simply streaming.

STRFKR’s Josh Hodges on Turning a Side Project Into a Career

Over the past ten years, STRFKR’s Josh Hodges has subtly fostered a cult following, but it’s unclear whether this was deliberate. In 2008, Hodges began what was then known as Starfucker in Portland, Oregon. He intended it to be a fun, loose, creative outlet removed from the more serious stylings of his band Sexton Blake.

Cyndi Lauper’s Songwriting Career Outlasted Her Quirky Public Persona

Cultural icons never die. As generation after generation outgrows teenybopper fixations and digs deeper into record store bins, the timeless work of beloved artists is renewed era after era and time after time. But immortality comes at a cost, and its price is often caricature. Prince’s death and the subsequent outpouring of tribute showed us that the seminal genius of a generation, who spent decades bending genres in the studio, in the end became frozen in amber as the Purple One in a studded latex jacket and ruffled shirt.

The Best Concerts in Miami This Week, July 3-9

It’s Independence Day week, and Miami’s music calendar is loaded. Today, Electric Karnival promises to bring Caribbean riddims and electronic beats together with a lineup that includes Walshy Fire, Bunji Garlin, Brenmar, Ape Drums, and many others. Tonight, Heart and Space will go head-to-head with sets by Chus & Ceballos and Sasha, respectively.

DeGreaser Defends the Planet With Rock ‘n’ Roll on New EP

Ben Katzman’s DeGreaser has never been a band to step aside and let industry gears decide its fate. In fact, Katzman started his label, BUFU Records, in part to influence the direction his band went and on what terms. He believes fortunate hands he’s been dealt have been random.