When the black-clad members of Cadillac Blindside walk onstage and light enough candelabras to stock a horror movie set, it’s clear this is no run-of-the-mill emo-punk band. By the time the band’s frenetic antics and sonic boom blow enough wind to snuff the candles, the skin of the exhausted backpack…
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…
The Lincoln Theatre is intimate enough that everyone in the audience can watch artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas’s expressions — they tell the story. His enthusiasm and excitement about music are written all over his face, as when he introduced an evening of works by Soviet-era composers, part of the…
It seems shortsighted to begrudge the rain in a year following such a serious drought, but if the rain had to fall so infrequently, why did it always seem to pour on the Rhythm Foundation’s outdoor summer concerts? Colombia’s vallenato king, accordionist Alvaro Meza, was completely washed out of the…
She first dazzled the world, or at least her fifth-grade class, with her rendition of “Be a Lion” in an elementary school production of The Wiz. That might explain her courage. After scoring as a dance diva with “Miracle” in 1998, Henry has opted for a much more challenging career…
The Lincoln Theatre is best known as the home of the New World Symphony (NWS), Michael Tilson Thomas’s “training” outfit, who regularly blow their older Philharmonic peers out of the water. But as anyone knows who’s caught a concert here when musicians of the NWS have hung their strings up…
Guitarist Josh Sonntag and singer-songwriter Catty Tasso make for the perfect rock-and-roll marriage — literally. When Tasso advertised for an axe man on a Guitar Center bulletin board in 1999, Sonntag offered her not only a pair of the best plucking hands in town but also his hand in matrimony…
Spend enough time on the Beach and it can seem as if every sound system marches in lockstep. In 1999 it appeared that the music police were practically forcing every restaurant in town to play the Gipsy Kings — and nothing else. Meanwhile the clubs were filled with trance’s aural…
What better source for the ethereal strains of orchestral music than an institution of higher learning? And with the recent death of the commercial classical format at the former WTMI-FM (93.1), but for the grace of University of Miami administrators there went any classical music on the Miami-Dade dial. Now…
In a pop world where satisfaction is measured by how long a song sticks in listeners’ brains, nothing is stickier than a Shufly hook. That’s due to the songwriting duo of Scott Smith, whose short, sharp lyrics always seem truthful without every word being troublingly profound, and lead guitarist Mike…
People sometimes wonder just how New Times selects “Best of Miami” winners. It is a highly scientific process devised long ago by a select committee of experts and requires the participation of more than 100 judges from around the world who take up residence in the Magic City for the…
Think of sound as a galaxy, a shimmering play of lights. Think of guitars, horns, and keyboards as so many sparkling arrows, so many zodiac signs, pointing to the glowing nebula of Rocky Ordoñez’s and Erica Boynton’s angelic voices. That is how you would see the sound that Christopher Moll,…
Heartily pounding out the rousing “St. Louis Blues” or gently improvising on the tranquil bossa nova melodies of Antonio Carlos Jobim, eminent pianist Eddie Higgins always puts his indelible stamp on the keys. The Massachusetts-born and raised musician gravitated to Chicago to study at Northwestern University and stayed twenty years…
Okay, so it’s not an album, it’s a three-song EP, but then, as they say, it’s not the length that matters, it’s what you do with it. And this little disc is more an act of protest than a digital artifact. Dismayed by the faux-phenomenon surrounding Brit crit darlings the…
Most of Miami’s rap hopefuls dream of the day their big break arrives in the form of a major-label record contract. Once they’ve signed on the dotted line, so their thinking goes, everything else is automatic: fame and fortune, groupies and gold teeth. Right? Not always. Take local emcee X-Con,…
You’ll have to provide your own sweat, smoke, and spilled mojitos, but this live document of the Allstars residency at Hoy Como Ayer’s Fuácata party (edited and spliced together in dizzying Miles Davis Bitches Brew fashion) is still one of the slinkiest set of grooves around. DJ Le Spam (that’s…
A newcomer arrived in Miami. He drove from the airport through the jungle breeze and sharp metallic colors. He switched the radio on and heard: “Lift up your leg! You must!” in a froggy, urgent roar from an artist he’d never heard. The station, he discovered, was WAVS-AM (“The Heartbeat…
Critics have been proclaiming the death of rock and roll for so long now, the genre’s aesthetic demise is almost taken as a given. Buzzsaw guitars? Crashing drums? A lovesick singer whipping his microphone through the air? Uh, what else ya got, grandpa? So why the Strokes were able to…
Whatever alternate moniker he’s going by at the moment — Hova, Jiggaman, or simply Shawn Carter — New York City’s Jay-Z remains one of hip-hop’s most talented rappers. And while his paeans to all that glitters (preferably if it’s wrapped around somebody that glitters) aren’t going to win too many…
If there’s one thing you want coursing through a rock band, besides electricity, it’s moxie. Singer Catty Tasso hit upon the name in Maine. She saw a bottle of Moxie, the weird old gentian-root soft drink that still has a cult-like following. “That’s us!” she exclaimed, according to husband-guitarist Josh…
If Latin alternative music never triumphs in South Florida, don’t blame Kike Posada. This tireless crusader for la causa is determined to get the word and rock out by any means necessary: promoting events, publishing ¡Boom! magazine, and in July 2001 convincing the Anglo owners of AM station Radio Uno…
A reformed journalist who wisely joined our NPR affiliate in 1995, Fields takes the honor this year not because she’s done something different but rather because she’s been consistent — consistently good. Her playlist spans decades but is selective and smart. No pop jazz or smooth jazz or acid jazz…
