Nil Lara doesn’t know where he is. He’s not even quite sure what state he’s in. “Nevada?” he screams into the phone when pressed for his exact location. “California?” This is what it’s been like recently for Lara, who, it turns out, really doesn’t know where he is during a…
Sixteen years ago record company executives scoffed at the idea of marketing the work of genre-fusing acoustic guitarists Jorge Strunz and Ardeshir Farah. So after one too many rejections, the duo decided to release their first album themselves. Now, after seven Strunz and Farah albums on a host of labels,…
Three television camera crews, about a dozen radio DJs and print journalists, and some bilingual college students convened in a hospitality room at the Miami International Airport Hotel early one morning in February to await the arrival of the Argentine rock group Soda Stereo. Dressed in stylish grungewear and sporting…
Striding across the polished marble floors of the lobby of the posh Hotel Inter-Continental in downtown Miami, miles vocalist Tod Oenbrink sticks out like a sore thumb. Tall and lanky, decked out in a flannel shirt and long cutoffs, with a shock of platinum-blond hair and fingernails painted electric blue,…
Pay attention everyone/To play son/You don’t need to be strident/Or make too much noise/If you mark out well the beat/With rhythm and with harmony/You’ll see that you’re playing son/With joy, in the Cuban way. “El Orgullo de los Soneros,” Septeto Habanero Like King Curtis offering the musical ingredients of his…
The Mermen A Glorious Lethal Euphoria (Mesa/Bluemoon) The Aqua Velvets Surfmania! (Mesa/Bluemoon) The problem with most of the latest generation of surf revivalists isn’t only that they inevitably must suffer in comparison with the very-much-alive and active Dick Dale, the guy who invented the stuff. It isn’t even that most…
Surveying the landscape of today’s rock and roll underground, it seems hard to imagine a time when there wasn’t any surf music around. Once the twangy, reverb-soaked, early-Sixties commodity that drove Frankie and Annette bonkers as they rode the Hollywood celluloid surf, the music these days is found at all…
The Repilicants The Replicants (Zoo) You belong to a fashionably obscure band, yet you’re yearning for more press. What to do? How about joining forces with a bunch of like-minded alt-rockers and releasing a disc of quirky covers? That’s what the Replicants decided to do, and its members — drawn…
Michael Hurley Wolf Ways (Koch International) The hermit shows his face, puts his name on a CD for the first time in close to a decade, and unveils a grand total of three new songs. I guess he was busy doing . . . well, whatever it is he’s been…
It’s a late April night in Memphis, Tennessee, 1990, and the pint-size reggae innovator Toots Hibbert is standing tall on the stage of the Skyway room in the Peabody Hotel, surveying the crowd gathered in front of him in a slippery, fleshy knot. He’s just blazed through close to two…
The James Harman Band black & white (Black Top) Like many other artists, James Harman makes the most of little, everyday discoveries. Accordingly black & white, his latest release, highlights the Alabama harmonica player’s offbeat songwriting: The rockin’ “Lock Doctor,” which features Iko-Iko guitarist Larry Williams, was inspired by the…
In the ten years since he founded the Mr. T Experience, singer/songwriter/guitarist Dr. Frank has caught a lot of crap from his punk-rock peers. His smart-assed novelty songs and forthright examinations of love and heartache were deemed L-7 almost from the get-go by an audience more interested in power-chord manifestoes…
Just as a child has no intention of creating high art when dabbling with finger paints, South Miami’s avant-punk quintet Kreamy ‘Lectric Santa has little intention of creating proper music when playing their instruments. And even though the band members are all well into their twenties, they have no desire…
Various Artists Color and Light — Jazz Sketches on Sondheim (Sony) Jazz artists have been stamping their imprimatur on show tunes for so long that countless Broadway compositions have entered the lexicon of jazz standards. Certainly the works of Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein have…
Six weeks after the fact, Les Garland is still scratching his head, wondering just what the hell happened. Nineteen ninety-five was a good year for the Box, the Miami-based music-video cable service where Garland works as executive vice president. Advertising revenue for the nine-year-old company had reached an all-time high,…
AC/DC Ballbreaker (EastWest) If, as the rock-and-roll scuttlebutt goes, this is AC/DC’s parting shot, you’d be hard pressed to tell from listening to it. Unlike fellow mid-Seventies vets the Ramones, who helpfully dubbed their reputed-to-be-final album Adi centss Amigos!, the brothers Young (Angus and Malcolm) don’t tip their hands on…
Gaunt Yeah, Me Too (Amphetamine Reptile) If you’re looking to point a finger at the most fertile patch of American punk-rock soil, aim it north to Columbus, Ohio, the home base for an abundance of noise-making underground visionaries, from old-timers such as Mike “Rep” Hummel and Ron House to Monster…
Expertly wielding a pair of crutches, Goods bassist-singer Jim Camacho hobbles off the Tobacco Road stage after an encore for a recent show. The narrow upstairs cabaret is packed with people, so Camacho has to navigate an obstacle course of tables, chairs, bottles, and bodies. No, wait. Although it’s very…
Willy Chirino Asere (Sony Tropical) Family-style salsa pop with a light dance beat best suited for conservative hips has propeled Miami’s Willy Chirino to the top of the Latin tropical-music ranks. And here we go again: His new release, Asere, is as predictable as the menu of a Cuban restaurant…
After his death, the image remains, an embodiment of cool that leaves an indelible impression whether you encounter it on TV, at the movies, or in photographs. He is a man of Italian descent, dark and handsome. Perhaps he is standing around at some swanky cocktail party, tie loosened into…
Just the other day, from out of nowhere, quite unbidden, drifted thoughts of the U.S. Army’s Christmastime siege of the Papal Nunciature in Panama City six years ago. You remember: Guys in combat fatigues bombarding the Vatican’s outpost with cranked-to-the-max classic rock songs in an effort to drive out pock-faced…
I’ve been compiling year-end best-of lists for one publication or another for close to ten years now, and I still have a hard time with them. It’s a daunting, intimidating task; attempting to accurately survey a year’s worth of music in ten short entries can drive a completist insane. What…
