Phone lines are cut in the small desert town 60 kilometers from Pakistan. “India and Pakistan are getting ready for war,” the e-mail reads, “security is tight. The airport is closed.” So in this town in Northern India a handsome, dark-haired man boards a train that will take him from…
If Sax on the Beach fails, the newly opened music bar will be just another Miami jazz dream deferred, like Arthur’s (which featured big names in the Eighties) and the cozy, if empty, Champagnes on 79th Street that closed months ago. This gin joint in the lobby of the Bay…
Jorge Moreno’s manager had a plan. With the kid’s good looks, he could be the next Ricky or Enrique. That was the pitch for the record companies. Trouble was, he was pitching to Madonna’s new Latin label, and Maverick Musica wasn’t shopping for just another pretty face. Sure the Material…
So this is odd, the painful realization that all has gone wrong/And nobody cares at all,” sighs Chris Carrabba. “And nobody cares at all,” answers the gentle children’s choir of the crowd. What the hell? Seven hundred fans have arrived at Millenium, a dance club in Pompano Beach — on…
It’s a lonely hour, one promoters dread. Billboardlive is empty save for bartenders wiping down bottles and tonight’s first-up DJ prepping the sound system with not-ready-for-prime-time records. But Jeffrey Sanker, a promoter who draws up to 25,000 for his major DJ events, knows the club will soon be packed for…
They’ve got the look, they’re gettin’ the buzz, and their sound is straight out of a New York garage via Memphis. This is the kind of lo-fi, hi-fuzz sound that rattled the windows of the neighbors’ houses across the U.S.A. — 30 years ago plus. Named after a couple of…
Carlos Vives will never be caught in a sequined jump suit. Exuding gentleness rather than libido, the pop vallenato singer is more likely to gambol across stage wearing a T-shirt, sandals, and shorts. Mischievous eyes framed by long, loose curls, his bustling energy at age 40 is a far cry…
The makeup of Miami’s jam-fusion band Outdance is a microcosm of South Florida itself: Tom Korba, who plays the Chapman Stick, is a transplanted New Yorker. Drummer Raul Ramirez was born in Puerto Rico. Guitarist Josh Sonntag grew up in Cancún. Percussionist Sean Dibble is a Miami-Dade County native. But…
What’s house music about? Arguably the first form of electronic dance music to rise from the ashes of disco, pure house is hard to find these days, save for too-brief sets by originators like Derrick Carter and Frankie Knuckles. Yet Christopher Lawrence and Judge Jules still summon ghosts of the…
Justin Gracer seems none too satisfied, crouching alone on the outdoor stage of Piccadilly Garden’s PopLife, packing up his guitar. As the crowd of hipster indie-rockers and wannabe Brit-poppers mills about the fountain and foliage, the vocalist/guitarist of the Miami-based alternative rock quartet Machete slips his sleek white Stratocaster into…
It’s already dark when the farandula gathers outside Café Nostalgia on a Thursday evening. Journalists, artists, songwriters, and industry types kiss and shake hands, careful not to crease their starched shirts or defrost their frozen smiles. Inside, waiters cut through the multitudes, carrying sugar-laced trays of mojitos and rocks glasses…
Aslender bamboo leaf floats from above and alights on the surface of a shallow pond. Under the water a school of dime-size minnows darts among the reeds, under a moon bridge, then circles around carefully placed rocks. Amid all this Asian greenery, a visitor resting beneath the shade of a…
It’s fitting that Raul Malo’s first solo album kicks off with a whirlwind hybrid of a song, blending salsa figures with calypso horns, English-language lyrics, a chorus drawn from Beatles-era Top 40 hits, and a pumped-up carnival atmosphere raucous enough to swallow the rest of Today. But Malo’s huge, emotive…
With the release of Bionix, the second installment of the Art Official Intelligence troika, De La Soul come off unpretentious and finally unfettered after previous efforts to escape the Day-Glo handcuffs created by 3 Feet High and Rising, their hugely influential debut. The album is, as its title promises, “better,…
Anyone who thought September 11 and the spiraling recession that followed would put a damper on Miami nightlife underestimated clubland’s tenacity. “The beautiful thing about Miami is it can be anything you want it to be,” says Louis Canales, as he takes a sip from his rum and Coke before…
By the time Trans Am arrives in South Florida this weekend, it’ll have a new paint job. Valves will have been adjusted. That sticky window vent will be fixed. Since 1993 the Washington, D.C.-based indie-rock trio has garnered a reputation as a purveyor of eccentric instrumentals that merge the cold…
When Merlin ran away, the dancers were tumbling in a field after rehearsal at the Jaycees Club on Marathon Key. The Shih Tzu nosed around in the sand on the volleyball court and then trotted across the Jaycees’ driveway to Stanley Switlik Elementary School. Sniffing at the silver buttonwood on…
Young women in tight hip-huggers and heels line dance with buff boyfriends while the master of ceremonies, wearing a microphone headset, cheers on the DJs in Portuguese. This is Friday, November 16, the first night of South Florida’s First Annual Brazilian DJ Festival. At the end of the night, makeshift…
The modern history of Mexican rock has two eras: before and after “La Negra Tomasa,” the cumbia-rock cover immortalized on the self-titled 1994 album from Caifanes, the most important Mexican band of the late Eighties and the group that spearheaded the rock mexicano renaissance. And even though Caifanes recorded four…
Partially hidden behind palm fronds and gurgling fountains, the Green Room is working its way through a nine-song set on the patio of Piccadilly Gardens. The tropical landscaping of the design district restaurant/lounge that hosts Saturday night’s PopLife might obscure the band from sight, but the sound system is impeccable…
Like the twisted ladder of genetic material that fuels life, Recluse DNA is a shifting chain of elements that come together and split apart. The band of six core members can attract additional members to double in size or shrink back, all the while switching musical codes from dark, ambient…
Thickest cranium in rock? Probably Martin Atkins, former drummer for Public Image Ltd., now de facto head of the industrial-rock conglomerate Pigface. Who else would devote insane amounts of time, money, and energy to industrial music — a subgenre that had its day bathing in the money hydrant during the…
