After nine months of warehouse hibernation, they’re back in the local spotlight, finishing their first release as a signed South Florida band. It’s day ten at Gled Studios, and while the ink is still drying on their contract, the three original members, one newcomer, and former Saigon Kick drummer Phil…
Steve Ellis doesn’t seem to mind his day job as much as he resents the difficulties of finding the right musicians to work with. He will moan on at length about the trouble he’s had putting together a band and a sound he’s happy with, but you have to drag…
By Bob Weinberg Jazz and blues. Blues and jazz. These bastard sons of the same mother have become so intertwined they’re often taken for one another. Once was a time, not long ago, record sellers and radio charts made no distinction between the two. New Times puts blues and jazz…
Reverend Billy C. Wirtz Pianist Envy (HighTone Records) By Bob Weinberg The cover photo shows the tattooed Rev with his leopardskin-go-to-Hell boots plunking a Shroder-size toy piano while dreaming of a baby grand. Pianist Envy! Get it? (On a label called HighTone, yet.) All that’s just a taster of Wirtz’s…
In this great future you can’t forget your past So dry your tears, I say — Bob Marley This is not a story about Bob Marley. That story’s been done and done and done to death. We know Robert Nesta Marley died on May 11, 1981, in Cedars of Lebanon,…
Listen to the music. It contains every variant of truth and lie. The music carries the capability of generating fantasy, turning it into reality. It can turn reality into fantasy. Music is art. And so by both definition and simple observation, rock and roll made by area residents is art…
In an Argentine restaurant on Coral Way trombone player Juan Pablo Torres and percussionist Giovanni Hidalgo are working their way through a pile of grilled beef and talking tango. A restorative midday breakfast of stuffed large intestine, blood sausage, and cold Heineken stems the drain of the previous night’s descarga:…
Hee, hee! Greetings, my fine fettered friends, and welcome to another foul feast in the Haunt of Fear. This is your shriekchef, your delirium dietician, ready with my bubbling cauldron, filled with my latest reeking recipe. So relax on that marble settee there and I’ll begin by feeding you the…
Melissa likes girls. Now can we please move on? Five years ago Melissa Etheridge told New Times readers that she had no idea what ingredients go into the recipe for rock stardom. That was back in the spring of 1989, on the high heels of her startling first album. She…
“I had a job but I got laid off,” Buddy belted, answering his vocals with a stinging Strat riff. “I had a heart but it got too soft,” the crowd shouted back, filling in the next line of the John Hiatt tune from Buddy Guy’s breakthrough album, Damn Right I’ve…
On a weekday afternoon Churchill’s Hideaway is not crowded. Elbowing the bar are two older men in dress suits, and a younger man in similar garb. There’s a talkative woman, a couple of average looking guys in jeans, and a truck driver who looks like an actor playing the role…
Taj Mahal Dancing the Blues (Private Music) By Bob Weinberg “Blues ain’t nothin’ but a good man feelin’ bad.” It’s a common misperception. In fact, an old blues album I picked up even has an ad inside the jacket for an antidepressant drug. But if you’re listening right, you won’t…
It hit him hard, the passing of a good friend. “I’m dead on my feet right now,” says blues guitarist-singer-songwriter Bob Margolin in a weary drawl. Just the other day saxophonist Fats Jackson, best known for his work with Elmore James and Little Walter, had gone on to his final…
The rock of South Florida’s Sixties is about to be born again, thanks to a reunion of some of the era’s stars. Exactly 28 years ago, the WFUN-AM Boss Survey had the Kinks at number one with “A Well-Respected Man.” Also hitting the charts that week: Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones,…
As the demand for new and innovative music increases, some bands are becoming tougher to peg. Their music contorts, manipulates, stretches to create new variations within a genre. Rap borrowing from rock and jazz, jazz from rap and rock, and rock from everything. There are even degrees of rock ranging…
Traditionally, thanks to an embargo between two sovereign nations, Cuban music floated across the Florida Straits by way of bootleg copies or, in the case of internationally recognized bands such as Irakere, through a third country. In the latter case, the act tours abroad, a performance is recorded, licensed, and…
Do these things really happen? Johnny Clyde swears it’s true. He was about fifteen, gawking at an electric guitar in the window of a music shop in Houston’s Third Ward district, when a man approached him and asked if he had a band. Turns out the guy owned a local…
Most musicians resent categorization, hate being compared to other musicians. Critics, on the other hand, rely on comparison to give consumers some idea of the band’s sound — oh, dude, it’s like if Deborah Harry fronted the Beatles (or whatever). The musicians are right, really — it’s pretty much an…
“You Better Get It in Your Soul.” Bassman Charlie Mingus’s song title could be considered the watchword of jazz in the Sixties, especially for African-American jazz musicians. Young piano virtuoso Herbie Hancock created the greasy R&B monster jam “Watermelon Man.” Established piano man Horace Silver rolled out brass-fueled fandangos such…
Koko Taylor Force of Nature (Alligator) By Bob Weinberg If any singer can be considered a force of nature, it’s Koko Taylor. Howlin’ Wolf knew it the first time he heard her in a Chicago nightclub; before Koko’s mike had been turned off, she was signed by the erstwhile Mr…
Eddy the Baptist. It’s not what most South Floridians think of when they hear the name Eddy Grant. As the artist himself readily admits, the knee-jerk response to that moniker is “Electric Avenue.” Boosted by exposure on MTV back when that moribund institution was still a scrappy, eclectic upstart, the…
While Eddy Grant’s endeavor to socafy the world through his Ice label is a fresh twist, he’s hardly the first pop star to turn up his own imprint. Long before he traded in his name for a psychosexual doodle, “retired” from studio recording, and announced his intention to concentrate on…
