Meritocracy is not a word that leaps to mind when I think about the music biz. Merit, after all, has never counted for much in the face of balls-out profiteering. Which is just one of the reasons I joined the cult of Ani DiFranco about four years ago. In a…
With necessity being the mother of invention and the club circuit desperate to keep the kids coming, shiny and new one-nighters are popping up everywhere. The latest slew of theme parties runs the gamut of clubland with at least one option for everybody. On Friday relive the days of polyester…
It has been in production far longer than I’ve called Miami home, but it appears the film East of Overtown is actually inching toward completion. After nearly seven years of snail’s-pace production, this chronicle of the glory days of Overtown and the racial tension that’s been brewing in Miami and…
Rahsaan Patterson Rahsaan Patterson (MCA) At the 28th annual NAACP Image Awards on February 8 in Los Angeles, Prince was honored with a “Special Achievement Award,” presented by Stevie Wonder. Prince told the attendees that he first heard Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life as a teenager and that…
“We are not into biases or limitations,” says Michael Roderick as he sits in a dimly lit studio at the 54th Street Music House in Hialeah. “There are no boundaries, there are no lines — that is the full intention of music, of communication. The only thing that creates a…
Dig out your gold chains and your Fila cap and boogie down to the Cameo Theatre (1445 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 532-0922) on Friday, April 18, for a mega bump and grind session with rap masters Run-D.M.C. and partner in crime Jam Master Jay. The boys from Queens who took…
The second-floor nightclub at Yuca restaurant on Lincoln Road is no ballroom; it’s more of a low-ceilinged cocktail lounge. When Tito Puente and his big band played a brief set there last Thursday, the thirteen band members were tightly packed on the small stage. The brass section had little elbow…
What you bring to a Van Morrison concert in the way of expectations no doubt depends on the extent of your exposure to this odd man and his equally odd career. That career is so lengthy and vast — loaded with mainstream pop hits, standards of album-rock radio, adult-contemporary ballads,…
When talking to Metallica’s vocalist and founding guitarist James Hetfield, the first thing that strikes you is that he seems a lot nicer than the guy behind that famously abrasive shouting and those furious, cathartic lyrics. From 1983’s Kill ‘Em All (“There is a feeling deep inside/That drives you fuckin’…
Tonight, April 10, marks the debut of the new Club St. Croix (3015 Grand Ave., Coconut Grove, 446-4999) in the charming village of CocoWalk. The island-inspired club opens with Carnival-theme festivities that include stiltwalkers, jugglers, magicians, and monkeys (and we’re not referring to the patrons). Stranger creatures dwell in the…
Jim Dickinson does a great imitation of Bob Dylan. So great that it’s impossible to convey in print just how the Memphis pianist/producer nails the nasally cadence of the master’s oddball speech patterns. So let’s just say it’s something he picked up while recording with His Majesty this past January…
Al’s Not Well Glitter (Panacea) Most bands, even the great ones, have about three songs on which all their tunes are modeled. Just listen to the entire Nirvana catalogue. Some bands work with even less: The Ramones have two songs — a fast one, and a faster one. During the…
Listen up, ladies: Tonight (Thursday) Yberclub Cafe Iguana (8505 Mills Dr., Town and Country Center, Kendall, 274-4948) presents the final round of Playgirl’s hunt for the hottest man in South Florida. Winners from the previous weeks’ contests will converge in Kendall to compete for enough cash to keep them in…
Try as I might to find a place in my heart for the local stuff that’s crossed my desk in the many weeks since I last reviewed any South Florida music, my ears — and heart, for that matter — keep taking me back to one disc. The Best of…
A late-model Pontiac sits in the driveway of the stucco house that Juan Pablo Torres recently bought in a planned community mushrooming over a lonely strand of south Dade. Torres cheerily answers the door in shorts and sandals and walks quickly past the pristine living room, where the cushions of…
There’s a lot to like about the version of “Tramp” recorded in 1967 by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. The song was a hit that same year for its originator Lowell Fulson, a journeyman guitarist and singer who to this day still stands in the immense shadow of B.B. King…
New, new, new stuff popping up all around: just what you’d expect in springtime. The boys from the already established gay emporium Warsaw help new kids on the block Zeptepi (1532 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 532-2002) host a gay night this — and every — Thursday night. Dancing and prancing…
Original Soundtrack Love Jones: The Music (Sony Music Entertainment) The re-emergence in the Nineties of films featuring African Americans has reinforced the idea of the black-film soundtrack as an American institution. Outstanding collections such as Above the Rim, Waiting to Exhale, and Juice have continued the tradition set in the…
“If you see a band that you like, you don’t want to wait six to eight weeks before you’re gonna see ’em again. You go home and you tell your friends, and if you could, you’d go see ’em the next night, the next weekend. So we tried to work…
Strange things can happen after death swoops down and pulls someone away. Since absence no doubt makes the heart grow fonder, there is a postmortem tendency to gloss over the shortcomings of the departed — an impulse, natural or otherwise, to find nobility in their flaws, to excuse their faults,…
“This machine kills fascists.” Those were the words scrawled on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, but the same proclamation could just as fittingly have been etched into the microphone of Bill Hicks, the Houston, Texas-raised comedian who was on a mission to expose repression, hypocrisy, and greed through humor until he succumbed…
The club carnival rolls back into town this Saturday, March 22, through Wednesday, March 26, in the form of the Winter Music Conference, bringing much music and mayhem to SoBe. The mega music industry schmooze fest offers seminars on how to make, mix, remix, package, distribute, and sell music, as…
