I plead ignorance. I beg forgiveness. On behalf of the entire music industry. I first saw Mother’s Finest live in early 1980 at the cavernous and generally worthless Hollywood Sportatorium as opening act for Aerosmith. It was weirdness, a racially different (and mixed) gang playing fried, get-it rock as sloppily…
While the new Bad Company follows the pack of Nineties bands spewing another mouthful of mainstream pop, one Brit-rockin’ black sheep has gotten the flock out of the commercial scene to explore his roots in the blues. Ex-BadCo singer Paul Rodgers is moving backward to a time when the music…
“I didn’t like the way he cocked his hat and he wore his gun all wrong” A Joe Ely, “Me and Billy the Kid” Heroes are hard to find, or so the saying goes, which makes it all the more important that we appreciate them when they do come around…
It’s been a long and winding Drive for these inside outsiders Leonard likes ’em. And how many local bands can say that? For Drive Choir — of whom the Miami Herald’s Leonard Pitts, Jr., once wrote, “they certainly sounded good” — praise is not unusual. For a critic at this…
Although the “big” acts at the Chicago Blues Fest may continue to ring in your ears long after the fact, it’s often the sidewalk musicians or the back-alley bar bands that leave the most lasting impressions. Sure, Albert Collins grinded his ax with his teeth, but that dude with the…
So this man arrives in heaven, natty in a white suit coat and shoes shined to glare, and the security guard at the pearly gates greets him with a clipboard and a pen. “Name?” “James Brown,” says the man. “Yeah, right, and I’m St. Peter.” “My name,” the man repeats,…
Like Athens (Georgia, that is) in the Eighties, Seattle in the Nineties has been scooped and hyped ad nauseum as the Scene of the Minute. The airways are rife with some thing called “the Seattle Sound,” and the runways are featuring the bold, new look of “grunge” (as if Seattle…
The sinewy young tough with the skull tattoo etched into his bicep is beating a hasty retreat from Washington Square. On his way to the door, he passes under the white board across which is scrawled, in multicolored lettering, “Wednesday, March 3, Worst Band in America!” “What’s the hurry?” someone…
Tragically Hip Fully Completely (MCA) By Steven Almond We don’t honestly expect this band’s third full-length to score their deserved breakthrough, particularly if Americans prove as lazy and gullible as usual (did someone say “Donny Osmond comeback”?). But hey, Michael Jackson’s face is still structurally sound. Anything’s possible. Less insistent…
Come all ye faithful, be ye friend or be ye foe, and throw down your weapons, toss out your prejudices, shred your inhibitions, lift up your arms and rejoice. For there’s a new and pure and mighty sound on the horizon, and it knows no color other than kaleidoscopic, and…
They kicked up a lot of dirt on their way out of the local scene and into the national spotlight. The road that brings these guys back into town seems free of the obstacles they tore down on their way out. They’re our own homegrown rockers, Saigon Kick. But let’s…
Bassist Bobby Reynolds likens the phenomenon to “a skin graft that didn’t take.” Since taking the MCA plunge, Reynolds’s band, the Mavericks, has been on a wild ride. From Hell to Paradise, their major-label debut, corralled a herd of glowing reviews from the likes of USA Today and Billboard. Yet…
You wanna play your little games, I’ll play your fucking little games. I heard all the rumors, the innuendo, the kvetches, gossip, and comments during Miami Rocks! (a two-night showcase of local bands at Club Nu on February 19 and 20), Miami Rocks Out (a pre-showcase smatter featuring several dozen…
Some musicians are satisfied with past accomplishments, basking in the gold and platinum records collecting dust on their walls. Others look at the past as exactly that, and move toward new beginnings, new directions, particularly the direction that leads toward the top of the charts. Guitarist and singer Ted Nugent…
I don’t know whose idea it was to lock Doc Wiley (Washington Square), John Tovar (band manager), Sandra Schulman (Sun-Sentinel, XS), Lisa Cillo (WKPX-FM), Laura Regalado (WVUM-FM), Ariyah Okamoto (Snatch the Pebble), Curt McIntosh (Long Distance Entertainment), Glenn Richards (latent axe murderer), and me in a room without adult supervision,…
Admittedly what most people remember from the movie The Big Easy is either the steamy love scene between Dennis Quaid and Ellen Barkin or Quaid’s cockeyed Cajun accent. Louisianans from Thibodaux to Natchitoches howled at Quaid’s mangling of the vernacular, especially the way he said “cher” (it’s pronounced “sha” as…
They hang there framed and encased in glass, preserved memories of Miami’s occasional reach up into the stratosphere. If you crane your neck back far enough, you can read the names: Ted Nugent, the Eagles, Yngwie Malmsteen, Bob Seger. All have gold or platinum records, all a part of music…
Want a surefire way to silence a South Beach conversation? Mention that your next assignment is none other than Neil Diamond. And watch as a rash of too-cool profiles creep into question marks. But the faces won’t be asking who. They’ll be asking why. Why Neil? Why now? And then…
Call him Paradox Pierce Pettis. So close to stardom his diehard corps of fans can taste it, Pettis himself still says, “I’m about as obscure as you can get and still be doing this.” The comment might be borne of humility, but it’s also the plain truth. One need only…
Maybe it was the fact that when they released their first full-length cassette, they designed each one for its individual purchaser. Maybe it was the night they opened for Nuclear Valdez at a packed University of Miami patio and took everyone on an unforgettable mystery tour. Maybe it was the…
A pretty big record company A eastwest records america A has just released an album by, and begun a hype blitz for, a band called Deep Jimi and the Zep Creams. They are from Iceland and, as their name suggests, they have a fondness for a musical style twenty-some years…
Only in the rarest instances is a band’s chosen name relevant to anything. (Names given to bands, on the other hand…) When too much is made of a moniker, it’s usually at the hands of some naive and marginally literate music writer, desperate for something semi-interesting to write, concerned mostly…
