Mannheim Steamroller

Mannheim Steamroller is comin’ to town, which doesn’t automatically mean Santa Claus is along for the ride. Like the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Steamroller is best known for concert spectacles in which classical music and standards are rockified for the holiday season. Originally concocted as an alias for record producer/composer Chip Davis…

Ricky Skaggs

You don’t rack up country credibility by wearing big hats and shiny shirts, although the current crop of Nashville movers and posers might suggest otherwise. Better to emulate the trajectory Ricky Skaggs has followed for the better part of the past four decades and return to your roots, or in…

Miami Movement

This weekend marks the impressive 15th anniversary of the local annual event known colloquially as the Bob Marley festival. Which is more or less accurate; meant to honor the legend’s memory, it’s sponsored by his estate’s official organization, Bob Marley Movement, and each year’s headliners represent various configurations of his…

Kryptonite Metal Fest

An anti-harmonic convergence takes place at Tobacco Road on Friday when the 30-band Kryptonite Metal Fest touches down. DJ Oski and QueenOfTheScene.com are handling the event, which will spotlight bands from all over the state playing 30-minute sets. For this minipalooza, The Road will have stages set up in the…

Amerykah Badu Comes Back Funkier Than Ever

In case you didn’t already know, Erykah Badu’s long-awaited album, New Amerykah, Part One: 4th World War is in stores now. The album came out yesterday on Erykah’s birthday and it’s tight. Yesterday was also Ky-mani Marley’s birthday…and it seems that a musical lovechild between the two artists must be…

Last Night: Leon Russell at the Culture Room

Leon Russell February 23, 2008 The Culture Room Better Than: And old 45 and a Kleenex. There are very few songs that I’d travel some seventy-plus miles to hear sung live – very, very few. But among that short list is Leon Russell’s “A Song for You.” Covered over the…

Last Night: Jose El Rey at Poplife

Click here to see a slide show of the Jose El Rey’s performance. Jose El Rey at Poplife February 24, 2008 White Room Better Than: Shopping at Flamingo Plaza Local musician Jose El Rey is the embodiment of the Cuban stereotype. He is flirtatiously misogynistic, unbelievably crass and sports a…

Langerado’s Official Line-up

Since this festival is only two weeks away, you might as well start mapping out your plans for Langerado weekend now. It’s March 6-9, which is right around the corner. Here’s the official line-up with set times for all the bands that you want to see. Friday and Saturday are…

Last Night: AB Quintanilla and the Kumbia All Starz

A.B. Quintanilla being interview by a reporter at his Listening Party. A.B. Quintanilla & The Kumbia All Starz Listening Party February 20th, 2008 The Raleigh Hotel Better Than: Staying at home and listening to a 20-second song snippet from Amazon Oeuvres, Champagne, and Cumbias? Last night’s listening party sponsored by…

Apocalypse Now

Will the world end by the year 2013? According to local left-field hip-hop duo Junc Ops, the answer is a resounding yes. Conceived by producers PG-13 (a.k.a. Paul Gaeta) and Kentsoundz (Kent Hernandez), Junc Ops’ debut album, 2013, is striving to put the weird back into the Magic City’s hip-hop…

Transatlantic Tracks

Not unlike many musicians in Cuba or Brazil, the members of Peru Negro demonstrate strong African influences in their sound. Of course, it’s mostly thanks to the Africans who were tragically taken from their continent to be enslaved in the Latin American country during the 16th and 17th centuries. Forbidden…

Go Folk Yourself

“Come all ye rolling minstrels,” invited Sandy Denny in the 1969 Fairport Convention ditty “Come All Ye.” “And together we will try/To rouse the spirit of the earth/And move the rolling sky.” Opening what many consider the quintessential folk-rock album, Liege & Lief, “Come All Ye” was a clarion call…

George Jones

Johnny Cash once said, “When people ask me who my favorite country singer is, I say, ‘You mean, besides George Jones?'” Nicknamed “No-Show Jones” in honor of all the gigs he missed as a result of his drinking/drugging/God-only-knows, the now-76-year-old Jones still ranks second to Eddy Arnold for the most…

Q-Burn’s Abstract Message

Truth be told, Q-Burn’s message is no more abstract than “get thee under the mirror-ball and shake yo’ ass.” The former Rollins College (Orlando) DJ is a master at blending software and electronics with live instruments to create bump-and-groove house tunes, weaving his own guitar riffs and drum breaks into…

Barry Manilow

Like Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow knows the value of old songs. But unlike Stewart (who caught his third career wind by recording 76 albums’ worth of tunes your grandma got busy to back in the day), Manilow has slowly been working his way through the 20th Century, beginning with the…

Cobra Starship

This emo supergroup began as a lark in 2006, when the blogosphere had Snakes on a Plane fever. Gabe Saporta, frontman for New Jersey rockers Midtown, was recruited to pen a song for the movie. But the flick turned out to be an overhyped washout that couldn’t even muster enough…

José El Rey

What do PerezHilton.com, El Cerro Market No. 7, Máxim en Español, botánicas, Mary’s Coin Laundry, and your heart have in common? Those are places where José El Rey resides. Let’s face it: The kingdom of Hialeah was up for grabs, and this man rose to the challenge. Living in the…

Bob Mould

As a member of legendary Minneapolis underground band Hüsker Dü and leader of the wildly acclaimed Nineties outfit Sugar, Bob Mould was known for blanketing bleak tales of relationship woe with layers of electric guitar and driving choruses. Having settled comfortably in Washington, D.C., he turned his attention to electronic…

Dead Meadow

“I can’t tell if we’re running from or coming to,” singer/guitarist Jason Simon muses on the folky, eulogic “Ain’t Got Nothing (To Go Wrong),” his voice dripping with idiosyncratic weariness. He could easily be opening up to a lover, making a statement about the accelerating decline of Western civilization, or…