On January 22 the world watched as the pope homilized in Cuba, but for maestro Frank Emilio Flynn and his friends, the truly historic event was happening on this side of the strait. That night the influential 77-year-old Cuban pianist, whose rhapsodical playing reflects a lifelong passion for American jazz,…
Various Artists Good Will Hunting (Capitol Records) Most movie soundtrack albums function more as marketing ploys than coherent musical statements. Songs are either tagged on as blatant record-company favors or used to sell a piece of Hollywood hackwork on VH1. Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting is a different story…
We’re barely into 1998 and, much like the year that preceded it, death has already tainted its arrival, an unfortunate but inevitable continuance of 1997’s massive body count. That year was kicked off by the January 1 death of singer-songwriter and cult icon Townes Van Zandt. By the end of…
You Am I Hourly, Daily (Sire Records) You Am I is a Sydney, Australia, trio that has achieved an oddly impressive distinction during its six-year history: It has somehow managed to build a zealous American fan base without actually releasing anything in America. Hourly, Daily, its third album (following hard-to-find…
Night falls loudly on a recent Sunday evening in Riverside, the downtown barrio wedged between the Miami River and Flagler Street. The sizzle of frying food and snatches of Spanish-movie dialogue leak from the windows of faded stucco apartments, as dogs bark behind chainlink fences surrounding small, shaggy yards. Bass-heavy…
A few weeks ago I was watching MTV, and Kurt Loder was interviewing Marilyn Manson on the subject of Hanson. The esteemed Mr. Manson, unbloodied for the moment but still sporting that corpse-white glow, had this to say: “Those little boys scare me…. I think they’re instruments of the devil.”…
In their classic soul ballad, the Persuaders persuaded pop fans that “there’s a thin line between love and hate.” In their fine cover of that classic soul ballad, Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders pretended to agree. But the truth of the matter is that there’s a wide gulf between love…
Metallica Reload (Elektra) Put plainly, Metallica’s last album, 1996’s Load, made me angry: To see a band that I had always valued for its integrity change its music for what appeared to be commercial reasons was deeply frustrating. But after catching the quartet in concert earlier this year, I was…
Museums tend to be quiet places, but the silence that gripped the galleries of the Lowe Museum on a recent visit seemed out of sync with the exhibition, “It’s Only Rock and Roll.” This ambitious if ultimately ungainly effort showcases contemporary art inspired by music, yet it wants some sort…
Who do you think of when you hear the song “Dude (Looks like a Lady)”? Regrettably enough, you probably think of Steven Tyler, the scrawny, fat-lipped lead singer of Aerosmith. If someone asked you who wrote the song, you’d probably assume Tyler. One thing’s for sure: The name Desmond Child…
Lisa Loeb Firecracker (Geffen) What’s been so refreshing about Lisa Loeb up to now is that she has never tried to sell anyone false goods. Unlike Alanis or Courtney or any of rock’s other young women, Loeb never pretended to be angry. Rocketing to fame on the strength of her…
Tucked away in a courtyard off Lincoln Road, between Euclid and Pennsylvania avenues, the Bee Hive Lounge has the look and feel of a comfy dungeon. Lit mostly by candles perched on shaky iron stands, the small room features a row of large windows shielded by white gauzy curtains. Two…
Fulano de Tal Normal (BMG) Pepe Alva y Alma Raymi Pa’ Mostrarte Mi Amor (Alma Raymi Music) Over the past year, the mainstream media discovered rock en espanol, with wide-eyed items about Latin American bands appearing in Spin, Newsweek, and even USA Today. Of course, this was old news in…
It’s the official season of yuletide and cross-promotion, in case you hadn’t noticed. And, because Jesus Christ was such a huge music fan, record companies have seen fit to dump the expected cavalcade of crap unto us, the wee consumers. If we were feeling less feisty, we might have filled…
It was the day my Ray Charles Genius & Soul: 50th Anniversary Collection five-CD box set arrived in the mail from Rhino Records and I was telling this friend of mine about it over the phone. It’s great, I told him, tremendous. He said something about a green chicken. I…
Various Artists Cuban Gold 4: !Fuego, Candela! The Smokin’ ’70s (Qbadisc) The utopian balladeers of the earlier years of the Cuban revolution — Silvio Rodriguez et al. — became worldwide ideological icons, and they have remained enduring symbols of their place and time. Meanwhile, the funk of the same era…
The Box is a cramped art gallery located in a jumble of warehouses off the Palmetto Expressway in South Miami. Jorge Elbrecht and Justin Gracer, the progressive pop duo known as J.E. & Justin G., are waiting here, as patiently as they can, for a bigger crowd. Their scheduled 9:00…
The mythology surrounding the 1969 appearance by the Doors at Dinner Key Auditorium is as thick and obscuring as smoke from a magician’s flashpot. Revisionists like Oliver Stone, who directed The Doors, a 1991 hagiography of the band, have done their best to turn the late Jim Morrison’s arrest at…
Sarah McLachlan has only herself to blame. After all, in a country where Baywatch can pass as high drama, her idea to put together Lilith Fair, a pop music road extravaganza spotlighting women artists, was bound to score inordinate media attention on pertinent issues such as goddess worship, sex, lesbianism,…
Janet Jackson The Velvet Rope (Virgin) Mariah Carey Butterfly (Columbia) Is it mere coincidence that two of pop music’s most angelic, transcendent songstresses both have a new release in the stores — which, by the way, both proclaim to be their most emotional, personal, and gut-wrenching project to date? Sure,…
Inner Circle vocalist Kris Bentley recalls when the band performed for an audience of 60,000 at an 1995 outdoor festival in Switzerland. “We’re playing with a lot of big guys,” Bentley says, “Elton John, Page, and Plant.” “Lenny Kravitz,” adds drummer Lancelot Hall. “We’re high up in the lineup among…
At sundown, they come. From all over South Florida and all over the world, they come to hear and see him. They are his loyal subjects and he is their king. He rules over no country, no state, no province. Just a street. A glitzy, noisy, congested, exhaust-choked street. His…
