Miami Indie Rock Outfit Call It Radar Calls It Quits

Here’s an oh-that’s-too-bad item for obsessive watchers of the local indie rock scene. Another band bites the dust — this time, Call it Radar. You may remember the band as its first incarnation, Baby Calendar, who played around town a little more, and were popular with that whole Athens, Georgia-centric…

Last Night: Janelle Monae at the Florida Room

Raina McLeod Janelle Monae performs at the Florida Room at the Delano Thursday night. Janelle Monae Thursday, July 17, 2008 Florida Room at the Delano, Miami Beach She came out from behind a curtain of strobe lights and fabricated smoke, but all of the faux atmosphere in the world couldn’t…

New Pretty Ricky Video: “Knockin’ Boots ’08”

The world’s favorite Miami R&B quartet, Pretty Ricky, just released a video for its latest single, “Knockin Boots ’08.” And again, we’re reassured that the boys are totally celibate virgins…. Kidding! This video is full of grade-A, Madonna-in-the-early-Nineties style beefcake (I guess they needed to save wardrobe budget money? hah)…

Head Spins: Danny Daze

It’s doubtful that DJ Danny Daze digs the road above all else, but he sure seems to be on it a lot. Mondays at Tabu in Vegas, Saturdays at either Slide in San Francisco or Privilege in Pittsburgh — the cat is back and forth from the airport more times…

Toto, Where Are We?

Like fine wine, music often carries with it a sense of place, a terroir, if you will. Southern rock, British heavy metal, South African kwaito, Scandinavian death metal — the imprint of place on these soundscapes is unavoidable and often fairly heavily referenced in the music itself. Some acts like…

Daft Funk

Daft Punk, whose twerping, bleepy music has lately hit such a global chord, has also crafted a distinct visual aesthetic. As an extension of its experiments with imagery, the French duo has established a film production company, Daft Arts, through which it has released its first feature-length film, Electroma. Sure,…

Xperimento

For a band that is considered a side project of the members of Miami-based Locos por Juana, Xperimento has done quite well for itself. In the six years since the group’s inception, it has earned a Grammy, been voted best local band by New Times, and even landed once on…

DJ AM

Adam Goldstein is DJ AM, best known for his short-lived engagement to celebutante Nicole Richie. Or maybe the paparazzi shots of him walking around all lovey-dovey with Mandy Moore. Or his gastric bypass surgery. Or the Hollywood club he owns, LAX. Or the private shows he’s played for Leo DiCaprio,…

Zappa Plays Zappa

Dweezil Zappa can’t stop talking about his late father. “Frank’s music just needs to be heard,” he says. Alongside brother Ahmet and several of Frank’s former sidemen, Dweezil now re-creates his dad’s music on the Zappa Plays Zappa tour, featuring material from the elder Zappa’s mid-Seventies heyday. “People tell me…

G.B.H.

It’s ironic, of course, that consistency, longevity, and predictability have come to be the hallmarks of “true punk,” but that’s where we are more than three decades after Johnny Rotten blew his nose all over things. As Jello Biafra recently sang, there’s all these bands singing their “hits from the…

Three 6 Mafia

When the members of Three 6 Mafia won a 2006 Best Song Oscar for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” from Hustle & Flow, they reacted with so much exuberance that they made Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Jerry Maguire acceptance speech seem restrained — and even though the group is…

Ratatat

True to guitarist Evan Mast’s side career as a graphic designer, Ratatat’s instrumental pop owes as much to the Photoshop ethic as it does to Pro Tools. At times, this Brooklyn duo shoots its wad in the songs’ layouts, as if simply choosing which genres to mix and match is…

Steve Kroon

After years of having worked with artists such as the Temptations, Bette Midler, Kenny G., and the late Luther Vandross, Latin jazz percussionist Steve Kroon has finally released his own album. It’s short, comprising only 10 songs. Of those, nine are instrumentals; the sole vocal track here is a remake…

Children of Boredom

Sometimes a little bit of masturbatory metal revelry is just what the doctor ordered. In the case of Swedish power/melodic/technical metal maestros, that prescription comes filled in the form of Blooddrunk. A 40-minute rampage through crunching riffs, chain-gun rhythms, climaxing guitar crescendos, and the occasional lovely keyboard flourish, Blooddrunk provides…

Black Tide Rocks

It’s safe to assume it was the first time a bunch of West Kendallites appeared in the New York Post’s infamous “Page Six” gossip column. And it’s especially notable because they did so for indirectly inciting a minor riot in L.A. alongside a famously celebrated, then disgraced, then semi-redeemed memoirist…

Nine Years of Poplife

Jose D. Duran Poplife founders Barbara Basti and Aramis Lorie. Nine years is a lifetime in clubland. It’s hard to stay relevant in a business in which the trends change as fast as the minds of the people who frequent it. So when perennial indie party Poplife turns 9 this…