Urban Beach Week … is the ultimate Beach Party … You arrive on Thursday … You check into your hotel … and you begin to see people already mingling … The road blocks, police, and traffic signs are all over the place letting you know that … this is gonna…
Remember the Eighties? If you lived in South Florida during that magical decade, you swam through a sea of spring breakers in your new Celica. You might have been an extra in Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, you lucky dog. It was filmed in various locations along…
It took only four months for a five-person group led by business owners Gil Terem and Poplife’s Aramis Lorie to transform Piccadilly Garden into the District Restaurant and Lounge. Since Piccadilly Hearth was renamed and reopened by then-new owner Mary Klein in 1994, the restaurant had earned a reputation among…
18 Wheelers If the notion of a revved-up rockabilly band specializing in pure Southern honky-tonk seems somewhat out of sync with South Florida’s tropical leanings, then perhaps we ought to remind you that this isn’t the first country combo molded in Miami. The Mavericks were regulars on the local circuit,…
The early word on RJD2’s Since We Last Spoke is that it’s something of a disappointment, especially coming on the heels of the robust, near-heroic Dead Ringer. True, it is willfully introspective and less frenetic than that auspicious debut; there are no headline-grabbing raps by his old crew, MHz, or…
No British rapper has a bigger hurdle to overcome than the Streets’ Mike Skinner. His second full-length, A Grand Don’t Come for Free, comes two years after the critical and fan favorite Original Pirate Material, an album the “British Eminem” used to turn the world on its collective ear, with…
With Infame (Infamous), Babasonicos — the proud holder of six 2004 Gardel Awards, the Argentine equivalent of the Grammy — establishes itself as one of the top performers in that country and takes the crown as Argentina’s most innovative export. It is funny, though, that the altrock sextet, obsessed with…
Electroclash was just a fifteen-minute cocaine high on the pop timeline, so Miss Kittin is deservedly cranky on her solo debut-cum-comedown, I Com. She kicks off a liturgy of her sub-A-list duties (adding people to the guest lists, kissing cheeks) on the opening track, “Professional Distortion,” before reminding us that…
You used to find bastions of bohemia on South Beach; cozy, East Village-style hangouts where original art adorned earth-toned walls and a wobbly stage held a platter of local musicians. At the time, studios and the starving artists who lived in them were located up and down Lincoln Road. That…
On the tenth floor of an anonymous building that stands among high-ranked law firms and accounting offices in the financial mecca known as the Brickell district, there lies a small room that looks like a college dorm unit, decorated with random pictures of graffiti on the wall and a boom…
No birthday could be bitterer than the bicentennial of Haiti’s independence last January 1. Soon after then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew the nation’s flag to mark the occasion, thousands of demonstrators marched in front of the National Palace demanding his removal. Security forces responded with gunfire. It wasn’t the place for…
The past few months have delivered a dramatic sequence of events in the life of Beenie Man, whose 24-year career has experienced vertiginous peaks and abysmal valleys. Following the tepid response from dancehall fans to his 2002 “crossover” collaboration with Janet Jackson and the Neptunes, “Feel It Boy” (which nevertheless…
Oly In the past year, electronic waif Oly has been quietly passing out her demo CD-Rs to a handful of lucky clubgoers. On them she plays charming music, accompanying her vocals with keyboards, adopting the sort of whimsical singer-songwriter persona familiar to fans of Solex and Money Mark. This is…
While Eightball and MJG are Living Legends to Southern rap fans, they’ve yet to receive their due recognition from mainstream listeners. With their seventh full-length release, they’ve teamed up with the shiny suit man himself, P. Diddy, as the first artist on Bad Boy South, presumably in an attempt to…
Lil’ Flip is a new champion of Southern hip-hop. The Houston native’s style is as laconic as Too $hort and as unapologetically hook-heavy as MC Hammer. This isn’t an innovation — Memphis’s Three 6 Mafia has been perfecting this blueprint for years. Like that notorious group, Flip, first introduced to…
Pete Rock’s followup to his 1998 solo debut is a decidedly uneven affair. Like its somewhat overpraised predecessor, Soul Survivor II’s fifteen songs are driven by the Chocolate Boy Wonder’s legendary production skills, yielding tracks peppered with samples from the Natural Four (“It’s A Love Thing”), among other excellent choices…
Britain’s Neil Hannon, a.k.a. Divine Comedy, who is known for his wry sense of humor and singular worldview on the most mundane of subjects, hit his stride with the witty 1996 album, Casanova, and further cemented his reputation with 2001’s Regeneration. Three years later on his ninth full-length, Absent Friends,…
Bittertown, Lori McKenna’s exceptional fourth album, finds the skilled singer/songwriter looking at life through the eyes of one whose hopes and dreams have been tempered by fate and circumstance. Bruised but determined, she has created a harsh yet telling snapshot of rural existence, using riveting melodies to etch an indelible…
Last week’s Miami Beach City Commission meeting was a South Beach-style theater of the absurd. The elderly residents were crabby as usual, party people got political over a misconception, and the city’s elected leaders confirmed that municipal government couldn’t get organized or efficient even if it tried. The hot topic…
Nearly two months have passed since the 2004 Winter Music Conference and it still haunts the Miami dance community like a treasured memory. You can see it at Privilege, which was so empty on a recent Friday night that the raucous breakbeat sounds of Habersham and Dave Preston, together known…
As the cliché goes, nothing is new anymore. But in the music industry, there’s always a new artisan eager to add his work to the pantheon. In other words, don’t try to ask the newly minted label owners behind Somia Music if its output is similar to the legion of…
Charles Feelgood In the wonderfully outrageous world of dance music, three styles predominate over all others — progressive house, tribal, and tech-house. You’ll usually hear a combination of them at a dance club, but Baltimore-based DJ Charles Feelgood specializes in the latter, banging out tracks with a ferocity that rivals…
