Clubland is all electric this week for the Winter Music Conference. The Beach is saturated with DJs, about a zillion of whom are listed on this page and the next, so take your pick. (Plus see “Music” for more in-depth coverage of select events.) But if you don’t feel like…
The tattoos marbling Patrick Shannon’s arms offer glimpses of his past. The one with Bugs Bunny banging on a drum is emblematic, he says, of his postadolescent years in a speed-metal band. The one with the words Semper Fidelis illustrates his stint in the U.S. Marine Corps. The one with…
He’s easy to take for granted, the weird-voiced singer named Willie Nelson. He’s been at it for so long it’s hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t a Willie Nelson around, writing some of country music’s most enduring classics, revolutionizing the artistic and commercial possibilities of honky-tonk, forging a…
Formed more than two decades ago, the Mekons have established a rabid following, pursued whatever they pleased with no regard for prevailing trends, consistently changed the face of music with ideas and execution that took years for anyone else to follow, and had absolutely more fun on tour than just…
Franco Luambo Makiadi, better known as Franco, was the most influential musician in the history of African pop music. But he doesn’t have a single American-label record in print. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, the magnificent 2096-page tome edited by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry…
After the opening title track of Morphine’s now posthumous studio release fades into darkness, this much becomes clear: Band leader Mark Sandman’s unexpected death onstage at a European festival last summer mercilessly pulled the plug at a pivotal moment in the group’s career. The unusually constructed trio of Sandman on…
Are you sick of going out to the Grove or South Beach? Why can’t the party atmosphere in Miami feel like a real city? Sure we have the Wallflower Gallery downtown. It’s a cool space and it features great bands, but the strongest thing to drink in there is coffee…
In polite Colombian society, well-meaning mothers tell their children in hushed tones: “Don’t say negro, my dear; say moreno.” One word means black. The other means dark. Jairo Varela, leader of Grupo Niche, Colombia’s most successful salsa orchestra, has no patience for such fine distinctions. After spending three years in…
Bruce Springsteen’s career, onstage and on record, arguably is the most consistently brilliant of any artist of the past 30 years. But his latest tour is unlike the recent embarkments by rock’s other aging legends: the biannual Rolling Stones and Who wingdings, or the contrived revenue-raking regroupings of Fleetwood Mac,…
What would you say if two men approached you on the street and asked if they could drill a hole into your head to record your thoughts? This is the kind of situation that Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe inflicted on scores of innocent pedestrians as the pair walked around…
After taking a spin through Tommy Womack’s latest album, Stubborn, it’s obvious to see the guy can do practically anything. The Nashville-based wordsmith has the heart of a rocker, the fatalism of a seasoned troubadour, a wit that rivals that of Bap Kennedy or Robbie Fulks, the weird streak of…
“To the left/Don’t slow down now,” commands Nigeria’s Femi Kuti. “To the right/Don’t come too fast.” The lyrics, announced authoritatively in “Beng Beng Beng,” the catchiest, most pop-oriented song on Kuti’s Shoki Shoki, well describes the basic feel of the musician’s latest attempt to breach American ears: an energetic display…
If you’re not a tourist, the thought of going to the Hard Rock Café (401 Biscayne Blvd; 305-377-3110) in Bayside Market Place can sound vile. But on Thursday the Hard Rock makes it a little easier to stomach with Bandemonium 2000, featuring Marcy Playground and locals Darwin’s Waiting Room, Jade…
Curd Duca carefully swallows a forkful of his quiche lunch and begins speaking in his thickly Austrian-accented English. “I have never understood why being avant-garde equaled being tense and unhappy,” he says with obvious frustration, the distinctive timbre of his voice capturing the full attention of the diners sitting behind…
Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Donna Karan. These are just a small sample of the upscale clothing retailers often mentioned when critics deride the imagery adorning jazz pianist/singer Diana Krall’s latest album, When I Look in Your Eyes. Granted, among the thank-yous from Krall inside the lavish CD booklet (the…
The career of Sammy Davis, Jr., was long and strange — laced with tragedy, blessed with success, loaded with contradictions, and defined, for better or worse, by his ceaseless determination to live up to his marquee epithet, Mr. Entertainment. He pulled it off, as is amply proven by the 91…
We all know Africa gave birth to the blues. Identifying the father has been a favorite game of recent CDs, which try to match John Lee Hooker’s DNA to a specific West African style. Taj Mahal traded songs with a six-piece Malian folk ensemble fronted by kora player Toumani Diabate…
If the combination of jazz and theater is rare, then the combination of avant-garde jazz and theatre is on the endangered species list. With the notable exception of Carla Bley and Paul Haine’s Escalator over the Hill, there are few recorded examples of avant-garde jazz artists who have created specific…
It’s that season when everyone’s thoughts turn to music, specifically what’s going to happen at the Winter Music Conference later this month. Mawla Music has turned thought into action by staging what is perhaps the first pre-WMC event, Thunderground at Amnesia (136 Collins Ave., Miami Beach) on Friday. Miami’s Trip…
When considering the Caribbean’s greatest dance bands, Cuba’s Los Van Van and Puerto Rico’s El Gran Combo usually are among the first to roll off the lips of Latin-music aficionados. But a table in that VIP section also should be reserved for the Dominican Republic’s incomparable merengue crew, Los Hermanos…
Vestiges of the old head-solo-head structure, the familiar but still viable blueprint for bebop combos everywhere, were recognizable in Astral Project’s approach to all things jazz during a January daytime gig at a cocktail lounge inside New Orleans’s gargantuan Hyatt Regency. The quintet, easily one of the Crescent City’s most…
Purists may have scoffed, but lovers of New Orleans’s evolving music spirit rejoiced when the Dirty Dozen injected funk, R&B, and pop influences into traditional brass-band music in the late ’70s. Since then that rich, party-hearty blend has been successfully exported far beyond the confines of the Crescent City. The…
