La Casa de la Trova in Santiago de Cuba occupies a small colonial building with high-beam ceilings and long street-level windows that at noon on a September Sunday are filled with the faces of people looking in. The austere room feels more like a chapel than Santiago’s most storied music…
It’s 8:30 on a sultry Thursday evening and Rose’s Bar & Music Lounge looks, well, strange. Usually at this hour there are just a few hard-core sots sucking down two-for-one happy hour drinks. But tonight there are plenty of people — and hardly any of them are drinking. A liberally…
It’s Praying Time Miami Mass Choir (Savoy Records) The Miami Mass Choir is on a mission. Formed in 1995 under the guidance of gospel veteran Marc Cooper, the choir, whose 50-plus members are drawn from Miami-area churches, has toured extensively. It’s Praying Time is the group’s debut CD, ten songs…
Thanks in part to his atmospheric soundtrack for Paris, Texas, guitarist Ry Cooder has gained an international reputation as a distinctive composer.
To commemorate August’s twentieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, MGM Home Entertainment has released a video gift set containing all 31 of Elvis’s movies in a guitar case. Maybe they should have been packaged in a coffin instead, since the majority of the King’s film output has more in common…
Resigned Michael Penn (57/Epic) Michael Penn is best remembered for two radio hits (“No Myth” and “This & That”) that are now nearly a decade old. His last disc, Free-for-All, came out a full five years ago. So it’s good to hear him return with a pop album as assured…
Chorrillos, the black neighborhood outside Lima, Peru, where Susana Baca grew up, borders the sea, and her speech mimics the rolling rhythm of breaking waves. Laughter rims Baca’s rich voice, even as she talks on the phone from a hotel room in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on a recent afternoon. The…
The other day I had a vision. I was standing on a vast plain, and the plain was a pale brown that verged on yellow. All of a sudden a huge black block fell out of the sky and clocked me. Down I went. Just before I lost consciousness, I…
For more than a decade, John Fogerty has not been heard from much, since 1986’s Eye of the Zombie (which, in rare form, came merely a year after he released his double-platinum comeback Centerfield). During those eleven years he surfaced with the infrequency afforded rock and roll legends and shut-ins,…
Interiors Brad (Epic) Along with tribute albums, side projects have become prevalent to the point of cliche in the Nineties. Composed of overcooked egos and half-baked musical ideas, most of these projects collapse under the weight of their own indulgence. Brad is a worthy exception, a quartet that plays its…
Tall and solidly built, attorney Richard Friedman is informally attired in an indigo denim shirt, stonewashed jeans, and white leather sneakers. A sliver of white undershirt peeks out from his open collar, bespeaking lawyerly propriety. The midfiftyish Friedman has spent the day moving from his Dadeland Towers office in Kendall…
It’s about the last thing you’d ever expect to see on a Saturday afternoon of mall prowling: the Goods, local rockers legendary for their anti-corporate tilt, playing at Dadeland Mall. And not just at Dadeland, mind you, but inside the young men’s junior department of Burdines. Surely this is a…
It Had to Happen James McMurtry (Sugar Hill Records) In 1995 two songs came out that were sharp expressions of the burden that the freewheeling Sixties left its children: the Charlie Sexton Sextet’s “Plain Bad Luck and Innocent Mistakes” and James McMurtry’s “Fuller Brush Man.” McMurtry continues to wrestle with…
After the Fall Mary Coughlan (Big Cat Records) Ever since the Beatles and Dylan began performing their own songs, critics and fans have placed as high a value on songwriting as performing. Indeed, singers who perform material written by others — Spice Girls, anyone? — are often considered suspect. Mary…
“Ninety-nine percent of the songs are born here,” says 24-year-old Jeff Rollason, mastermind of the whimsical pop collective known as the Curious Hair. He lifts and drops his arms to indicate the organized chaos that pervades his bedroom in his parents’ sprawling Mediterranean-style home on a quiet street off Old…
In recent weeks these pages have not been kind to classic rock acts. In fact, they’ve been downright hostile. First, Steven Almond charted the creative crash and burn of Paul McCartney (July 24). Then, I went after the Who for selling out (August 14). Almond came roaring back with a…
Elegantly Wasted INXS (Mercury) It’s sort of endearing the way Michael Hutchence thinks he’s still sexy, kinda like that fading jock who gets all decked out for a sandlot game and insists on hitting cleanup. The ball may not carry as far as it once did, but the swing’s always…
The line that separates evocative rock and roll romanticism from facile pop blatherings is too thin for just anyone to navigate, and it’s one that James Taylor has never treaded with much grace. The possessor of an occasionally affecting voice, and a confessional lyricist who helped popularize the pathos, angst,…
On MoJazz Cafe’s last night, this past Sunday, owner Mo Morgen looked like a man in his element. His club was packed close to capacity, the music was sizzling, and cigarette smoke clouded the air so densely that Morgen could barely find the microphone. “This is what it’s like in…
Big Trouble in the Mystery House of Joy The Fool (The Fool Records) For two years running, this New York quartet has played the H.O.R.D.E. tour, without so much as an indie label deal. Nice trick, huh? Wanna know how they do it? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt that singer/songwriter…
In underground rock and roll clubs, they are referred to in snarky tones as Marilyn Hanson. The Internet is infested with hate pages aimed at them. And media outlets such as VH1 found ways to simultaneously bitch-slap the boys of Hanson while playing their videos all the while. The omniconspicuous…
Guitarist Scott Nixon sits strumming in the pin-drop quiet of the Space Cadette recording studio. Behind him the blue and beige burlap-covered walls display a mural — an intricate depiction of human bones and machine gears. In the control booth, as engineer Frank Albergaria adjusts the sound levels, Alfredo Galvez…
