Morphine Yes (Rykodisc) This is one of those albums you respect much more than you like. You know — the kind you listen to over and over in an attempt to let it grow on you, before slipping it quietly into the CD rack where it will remain for quite…
The calendar says it’s 1995, but the vibe in rock and roll these days is decidedly mid-Seventies. As the Jimmy Page-Robert Plant juggernaut makes its way across the land, we’re reminded that the biggest draws in last year’s fair-to-middling concert season were highly profitable treks by the likes of the…
“Fuck it, we drove.” Milk Can’s Joel Schantz didn’t mean to encapsulate the mindset of the entire Dade County delegation in attendance at the recent Southeastern Music Conference in Tampa with his offhand remark. But as anyone familiar with Milk Can’s body of work can attest, Schantz has a gift…
Kenny Neal Hoodoo Man (Alligator) Kenny Neal is a bluesman through and through. He won’t knock you out with guitar gymnastics a la Buddy Guy or stun you with his voice like Luther Allison or cause you to do double takes on his harp licks as you would with Sugar…
Tommy Anthony doesn’t look like a pop star. He has the rough-hewn features and stocky build of an ex-football player. (In fact, if you pry a bit he’ll admit he played a little semi-pro ball with the Miami Storm.) The bandanna he frequently sports atop his head gives him a…
A corridor on the second floor of Miami Children’s Hospital in southwest Miami is set aside as the Observation Unit, a part of the sprawling medical center where sick and dying children are treated. At the end of the hallway on a recent afternoon, a group of women could be…
“Well, I’ll tell ya,” drawls tenor-sax great Illinois Jacquet by phone from his home on Long Island, “they say you always return to the scene of the crime.” Jacquet is referring to Fort Lauderdale, where he will perform with his big band on Saturday as part of the Bonnet House…
Over the years, Miami has had trouble living down its bad boy image, even among rock stars. A besotted Jim Morrison was so disgusted by the vibe here that he flashed the natives his weenie. Bob Marley did him one better by croaking here. And Bruce Springsteen stopped one of…
Laurie Anderson’s first CD/ROM, The Puppet Motel, just released by the New York software company Voyager, offers six hours of music and talk during a tour of 30 virtual rooms. Entering these meticulously detailed 3-D environments, which she designed with graphic artist Hsin-Chien Huang, users can take a stab at…
Toadies Rubberneck (Interscope) One month ago in Austin, Texas, during the annual South by Southwest Music & Media Conference, Toadies singer-songwriter-guitarist Todd Lewis tested the working order of a peculiar-looking two-microphone setup prior to the band’s 40-minute show at the cavernous Liberty Lunch club. As he did so, moving his…
It’s almost ten o’clock on a Saturday night, and 77-year-old Emilio Mario Valdez is planted firmly in front of the stage at Churchill’s Hideaway, waiting for the set by I Don’t Know to begin at the rough-and-tumble, turn-it-up-full-blast rock dive in Little Haiti. Watching intently as the first band of…
Compile a list of the best Latin jazz piano players and the obvious will appear: Eddie Palmieri, Papo Luca, Hilton Ruiz, Oscar Hernandez, Michel Camilo, Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Not as obvious, but right up there: Paquito Hechavarria. Any musician or jazz fan who has lived in or passed through Miami during…
They induced the best national acts to play in a small barroom, and now they’re shutting down. Blame the owners. Blame South Beach. Blame yourself.
Kirsty MacColl Galore (I.R.S.) Kirsty MacColl’s clear, breathy voice; knack for effortless hooks; and (occasional) biting wordplay have made her a star in her English homeland since the early Eighties, when she recorded her bouncy, rollicking “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis.” Here, however, she…
Skip James was a liar. He was also a thief, a drunkard, a pimp, a womanizer, a misanthrope, and a murderer. Oh, and one thing more: a brilliant blues artist. That pretty much sums up Stephen Calt’s I’d Rather Be the Devil A Skip James and the Blues, an insightful…
The spectral presence of a seemingly ordinary piano emitting music without the aid of human fingers has become, if not common, not especially alarming. Barely an eyebrow is raised when they’re sighted boisterously playing show tunes in hotel bars, or providing promenade music from a platform in the center of…
About seven and a half minutes into the ten-minute “Mother,” the final piece on the Balanescu Quartet’s 1994 CD Luminitza, violinist Alexander Balanescu almost inaudibly murmurs the word mother several times under the sound of the quartet’s gently cradling strings. His voice provides a peaceful catharsis, both child and man…
Marianne Flemming III Chords & a Bridge (Mermaid Records) Despite the album’s title, Marianne Flemming’s acoustic-guitar driven music, at its best, surpasses the usual rock and roll formula. At the deep end it can touch and chill you, as on the beautiful “Out to Sea”; at the other side of…
Funny, they don’t look like brothers. Self-described “South Carolina redneck” guitarist-vocalist Sean “Birdman” Gould stands a smidgen under six-foot-five in green Chuck Taylor hightops with red and yellow laces and the words Right and Left scrawled across their respective toes. A profusion of freckles dots his face and limbs. The…
Twelve years ago, during the all-star ARMS Concert (Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, et al.), a benefit for Faces bassist Ronnie Lane and others stricken with multiple sclerosis, a lone figure marched solemnly through the aisles of Madison Square Garden holding aloft a handmade sign. It read: “Plant and…
In the 1960s, Brazilian musician Tom Ze took part in founding the polemical popular culture movement tropicalismo, with a group of like-minded compatriots that included Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa. But while his collaborators emerged from a period of political strife to achieve international fame, Ze, the story…
James Cotton’s voice has always been cottony. Whether pouring out his soul on a Jimmy Reed heartbreaker or wailing Wolflike, the bluesman sounds as if he has a mouthful of grits, a lungful of smoke, and a jones for some whiskey to wash it all down. Unfortunately, the years haven’t…
