In terms of bleep-bloop music, few do it better than the French. Over the past decade, Pedro Winter’s Paris-based Ed Banger Records has dropped some of house music’s dopest seven- and twelve-inches, CDs and MP3s. Celebrated as one of electronic music’s most prominent labels, the Ed Banger family of artists…
Ricardo Arjona isn’t your average Latin pop star. Don’t expect to catch him staring longingly into the camera or frolicking in the surf with some leggy beauty in his music videos. If you’re hoping for a heartthrob, look elsewhere — though we’ve been told he has a certain rugged appeal…
Underground R&B sensation and Odd Future fellow Frank Ocean is catching some static from the Eagles’ Don Henley. The singer isn’t feeling Ocean’s “American Wedding,” which samples the old classic “Hotel California.” Henley threatened to sue Ocean if he performs it again, and now the performance videos on YouTube are…
Former Experience and Band of Gypsys bassist Billy Cox met Jimi Hendrix when they were stationed together at the same army base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Legend has it that one rainy night, Billy heard a guitar screaming in the service club. So he went inside and introduced himself to…
Holy time lapse! Even with that extra day tacked on to the end of the month, February flew by and gave way to the madness that is March. And in Miami, that means 128 BPM bass drops and bleep-bloop electro bangers. With Winter Music Conference just two weeks away, EDM…
Holy time lapse! Even with that extra day tacked on to the end of the month, February flew by and gave way to the madness that is March. And in Miami, that means 128 bpm bass drops and bleep-bloop electro bangers. With Winter Music Conference just two weeks away, EDM…
Man, 2 Chainz is tall. We were going to guess six feet five inches. But one of those oh-so-reliable Internet answers sites lists his official height to be exactly six feet eight inches. Whatever the number, he needed every bit of it to remain visible over the mob of hangers-on,…
Hank III might be Satan’s favorite grandson. His daddy was a cactus, his mama was a bear trap, and he was born with his boots on in a river full of moonshine. At age 11, he ripped out his own throat and cooked it over a forest fire. The next…
Art and politics can make strange, confusing bedfellows. German playwright and all-around commie Bertolt Brecht would say: Unless your work directly protests the global capitalist hegemony by alienating the bourgeois theatergoing audience, it amounts to little but titillation for the ruling classes. On the other end of the spectrum, though,…
Though obviously rooted in the beat matching and live mixing of the disc jockey, the mashup, as we know it today, is a distinctly ’00s phenomenon that revealed itself at the very beginning of the decade. And the modern blueprint for expertly splicing together two songs (often from mind-blowingly disparate…
No genre has been more ripped off, watered down, and straight-up bastardized than techno. To the layperson, say a classic-rock aficionado or maybe a jazz head, the mere mention of this Detroit-bred electronic music genre (and really, less a conventional genre than an unwieldy collection of variants, everything from minimal…
Over the past 17 years, Romeo Santos and bachata boy band Aventura have won the overflowing adoration of prepubescent girls, their mothers, and 35-year-old guys in white pants who love to dance. In the process, Santos and sidekicks scored a surplus of American Music Awards, Premio Lo Nuestro statues, and…
Certain fans might believe Michael Jackson is still alive. But most of us suspect he’ll never emerge from his coffin “Thriller”-style for a glorious comeback. So barring a supernatural turn of events, Cirque du Soleil’s the Immortal World Tour, directed by ex-MJ employee and dance guru Jamie King, is probably…
Wanna lead a blessed existence full of irie vibes? Simply abide by these nine Rasta-approved rules of conduct and you shall bask in the radiant glory of the Zion Lion: (1) Grow that ganja; (2) get dreaded; (3) praise Jah; (4) start an Ital diet; (5) smoke that ganja; (6)…
Tommy Stinson is a good bassist and a tremendous fella who’s best known for being in both the Replacements and Guns N’ Roses. As he told us, dealing with the outsize egos of Paul Westerberg and Axl Rose hasn’t been easy. But it’s certainly had its rewards. Stinson has now…
At the climax of his glory, Davy Jones left millions of teenage pillows soaking hot and wet with culture-lust. The “Daydream Believer,” popular member of The Monkees, singer, actor, and icon got back all that karmic heartache in the form of massive coronary failure that left him dead at home…
We probably don’t need to tell you that the Brits rule electronic dance music. London, specifically, has been an EDM capital for decades, and the scene doesn’t ever seem to stop flourishing there. Artist collective and label Air London, for example, has become synonymous with top-notch underground tech-house. And its…
When French musician Anthony Gonzalez started recording as M83, his deeply dreamy signature sound was a total anomaly. The year was 2001, and the electronic music world was still deep in the throes of proggy four-four beats. Meanwhile, the cool-kid rock scene was about to get warmed up by a…
In one of the last week’s less predictable music developments, Lil Wayne announced that Cash Money Records had signed Fred Durst-led late ’90s relics Limp Bizkit. Does this mean we could be in store for a late ’90s nu-metal revival? The four year period right before the end of the…
The Allman Brothers are legends of Southern rock. And they rep Georgia hard. But their Florida roots are stronger than a Daytona chrome pipe. Michael Allman, son of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and guitar god Gregg Allman, tours all over America spreading his family’s blend of roots, rock,…
You don’t need a passport, green card, or visa to experience some of the best music in the world. You just need to hit the North Beach Bandshell on April 13 and 14 for the tenth annual Heineken Transatlantic Festival. Seun Kuti, the prince of Afrobeat, and his band the…
Led by the adorably lazy-eyed Thom Yorke, Radiohead kicked off its first U.S. tour in four years last night at the American Airlines Arena. Backed by an “earnestly excited and giddy” AAA crowd, the Oxfordshire group dropped a 23-song set on Miami that spanned the band’s 20-plus-year history. Sandwiched between…
