The Pharaohs Awakening (Luv N’ Haight/Ubiquity) The Pharaohs In the Basement (Luv N’ Haight/Ubiquity) Like James Brown on a psych-jazz bender or Charles Mingus dabbling in avant-garde funk, the Pharaohs cut a singular path up the center of R&B, making room to further explore the sonic innovations introduced in the…
It’s no mere coincidence that the lineup for this year’s Miami Latin Jazz Festival spans the gamut of Afro-Cuban music history. That’s exactly what organizer Arturo Campa had in mind for the second annual staging of the blowout, which is being held Saturday, February 15, at the Gusman Center for…
Christian rock. The very name suggests something sterile, lame, weak. There’s something not right about it. Like a middle-aged man crashing a rock and roll teen party, busting a dance-floor move in a hopeless attempt to show his kids that he’s still got a finger on the rock and roll…
Graham Parker Acid Bubblegum (Razor & Tie) Acid Bubblegum is meant to be a return to form for Graham Parker, a reprise of his classic Seventies days as a bitter, punky pub-rocker. The album is certainly filled with bitterness, and for a while that’s okay. The opening track, “Turn It…
If you could genetically engineer the perfect human female to interpret the decadent Twenties-era cabaret music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, you would probably come up with Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull, whose fresh blond beauty as a Sixties convent-girl-turned-pop-princess has since given way to a burnished, worldly, hard-edged appeal, has…
Last year about this time I wrote a fairly scathing diatribe for New Times about the sorry state of reggae, which ran to coincide with the third annual Bob Marley Festival. It generated some heated letters, as well as a few nasty phone calls, but after re-reading the piece the…
Tonight (Thursday, February 6) South Beach’s Bash (655 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 538-2274) hosts the launch party for Generation X, the new Saturday-night what’s-hot-what’s-not TV show (check your local listings for channel and time). The hourlong, bilingual program is filmed entirely in Miami and features spots on nightlife, fashion, music,…
Snoop Doggy Dogg’s new album, Tha Doggfather, was meant to herald a new phase for gangsta rap’s biggest star, but not under such sad circumstances. The murder of Tupac Shakur, a peer, a friend, and the only other artist close to Snoop’s stature at the leading rap music label, Death…
Rain is falling lightly when piano player Paquito Hechavarria gets the bum’s rush from a Coral Gables restaurant. The musician is three nights into a gig accompanying a blues singer at Mike’s Hideaway, an upscale eatery that boasts a pristine white baby grand but few customers for dinner on a…
Bid your fondest farewell to Lua (409 Espanola Way, Miami Beach, 534-0061), the South Beach club that has provided much of the pomp and circumstance on the beach for the last three years (that has to be some kind of record on South Beach). On Saturday, February 1, Lua celebrates…
Various Artists Enzso (Epic) How to describe this record? Well, let’s begin with the basics. This is a compilation of songs by the Eighties New Zealand pop band Split Enz, original home to Crowded Houseniks Neil and Tim Finn. The songs, however, have been translated into orchestral arrangements by keyboardist…
Lou Barlow first appeared as an unsettling blip on the radar screen of Eighties postpunk. As the tape-looping bassist for Dinosaur Jr. and then as the original lo-fi bedroom bard of the early Sebadoh records, Barlow seemed like nothing more than an anomaly, an angst-ridden character bent on upsetting the…
Tonight (Thursday) help celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Sunshine Jazz Organization of South Florida at South Beach power haunt Amnesia (136 Collins Ave., Miami Beach, 531-5535). An unforgettable evening full of legendary tunes awaits when the organization, dedicated to keeping the tradition of jazz music alive, pays tribute to…
RuPaul Foxy Lady (Rhino) Like gangsta rappers, RuPaul — a black drag queen/diva/talk-show host — is into beats and poses. And like all the best gangstas, RuPaul Charles is most interested in using his funky beats and flamboyant pose to get down to the heart of the matter. Unfortunately many…
Get ready for radical times as party promoter Bobby Radical churns out some new nights. Start the weekend off early at Polly Esther’s (841 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 535-5633) tonight (Thursday) at “Phunky”; you’ll find two decades are better than one as the Seventies meet the Eighties. Expect to hear…
Lonnie Smith Trio Purple Haze: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix (MusicMasters Jazz) The first time I saw Jimi Hendrix, at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 1967, he was just what his legend says he is: an exploding orgasm, pulling notes and sounds from places you could not see, leading…
If it seems like there’s a ska show coming to South Florida every week, maybe it’s because there is. For the last two years, ska bands from across the country — from Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, practically everywhere but the music’s homeland of Jamaica — have made Miami…
Careerists are rare in punk rock, but not as rare as you might think. The Queers, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and Minor Threat/Fugazi auteur Ian MacKaye have all been entrenched in this fickle, youth-obsessed genre for well over a decade, and there are a few groups from the first wave…
Bill Orcutt’s new debut solo album is both a reiteration of Harry Pussy’s complex noise experiments and a move away from his main band’s barely controlled sonic assaults. Issued last month on the mighty fine NYC indie label Audible Hiss, Orcutt’s untitled set (actually, the spine reads Bill Orcutt “Solo…
Sun Ra The Singles (Evidence) Even in death space-traveling jazz man Sun Ra makes listeners choose sides. His admirers, whose numbers include Phish, Michael Ray’s Cosmic Krewe, and George Clinton’s P-Funk mob, remember him as a madcap entertainer and an eccentric, creative genius. Many avid jazz buffs give Ra his…
Teddy Morgan is only 25 years old, but the blues-guitar hotshot brings to his playing an economy, precision, and taste that is rare among the young guns currently slugging it out on the modern blues circuit. One listen to Morgan’s fine second album Louisiana Rain (Antone’s/Discovery) proves he has little…
Acoustic rock and quirky pop take over Tobacco Road (626 S. Miami Ave., 374-1198) tonight (Thursday), as women of rock Diane Ward, Magda Hiller, and Marianne Flemming do it In the Round for a night of soul-stirring sounds and some pretty nifty guitar playing. The ladies take the stage at…
