With Halloween coming up, we asked a few rock stars to share some personal ghost stories. James Valentine, Maroon 5: [We recorded our latest, It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, at Rick Rubin’s allegedly haunted house]. One night, when I was there alone, I saw a figure walking up the…
Avril Lavigne should be looking over her shoulder with chicks like Ryan Joy around. The Tampa-based minidiva manifested a love for show biz at age 10, taking up voice lessons in the hope of someday becoming a part of the cultural landscape like her childhood heroes Kiss, Mötley Crüe, and…
Electro-rock remix superstar Tommie Sunshine has one of the most formidable resumés in music, but ’tis beauty that whips this beast. Sunshine — a ZZ Top look-alike, with his long, scraggly beard and Cousin It hair — has remixed them all, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Good Charlotte, Ladytron, Avril…
Annie Lennox has sung onstage with greats like Aretha Franklin and David Bowie. She has recorded alongside Al Green and Paul Simon. She has won four Grammies, seven Brit Awards, a Golden Globe, and an Oscar. She has sold some 80 million records with her former band the Eurythmics and…
In 2004, Hustler magazine named the Genitorturers “world’s sexiest rock band.” It was about time: Throughout most of the Nineties, you could catch the band’s erotic blend of heavy metal and BDSM performances at clubs like Washington Square in South Beach. The band soon became famous for piercing fans’ penises,…
Ben Harper’s bandmates from the Innocent Criminals are in the middle of pillaging several newly arrived boxes. The first copies of their CD, Lifeline, have just arrived, and the musicians are grabbing stacks with each hand. Meanwhile, Harper, who has already gotten his share, is shuffling about their rehearsal space…
It’s a sweltering afternoon in the impoverished Miami district of Overtown. In the nearly treeless neighborhood, cracked sidewalks typically remain vacant this blistering time of day, but today they’re brimming with hundreds of enthusiastic residents. DJ Khaled — with a little help from hip-hop celebrity friends Busta Rhymes, Trick Daddy,…
San Francisco-based indie rock band The May Fire is just like its Bay Area stomping grounds — lively, imaginative, and capable of creating a harmonic convergence of seemingly contrary styles and ideas. The band features former Miami resident Catty Tasso as lead singer and guitarist; musically it incorporates surf rock…
Derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere, and pandering, Songs About Girls also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory — seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Get over yourself! Let’s be fair, though: The first song, “Over,” a lover’s lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never…
Fabric mixes often include a production or two by the DJ at the disc’s helm. But on Fabric 36, Chilean-born, Germany-based techno/house DJ/producer Ricardo Villalobos dismisses the idea of featuring any other artist on the track list. Instead he has crafted 15 of his own tracks (some with collaborators) and…
Band of Horses’ lyrics are drenched in utopian platitudes (“Lucky ones are we all till it is over”) and cringe-worthy pillow talk (“When you smile, the sun it peaks through the clouds”). The weakest songs seem ready for a campfire sing-along; the group’s touring bassist, Bill Reynolds, even comes from…
Evanescence October 23, 2007 BankUnited Center Better Than: Entering a bat cave with an angel by your side. It seems only natural that Amy Lee is perfectly at home in arenas. After all, her voice is the size of the sky. Even at a coo, it rises from the horizon;…
Troubled female rap star, Foxy Brown, keeps digging herself a deeper and deeper hole. She’s had a long list of legal troubles over the past year and a half, which exclude the fact that she temporarily went deaf and has also seen her music career come to a staggering halt…
Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Cat Power October 22, 2007 Studio A Better Than: Finding out Syd Barrett still sings in honky tonks. The Review: The last time I caught Cat Power at Studio A, it was just her, her pain, her anger and her keyboard – and a crowd of…
Just got an amazing press release from the guys of Humbert, the local band most associated with La Ciudad que Progresa — Hialeah. If you’ve been to any local shows some time in the last 14 years, you’ve seen Humbert. If you’ve been totally oblivious, this is part of what…
Ky-Mani Marley has a new reality TV showing airing this week on BET J that should be worth watching. The Jamaican-born, Miami-bred artist always stays busy–either writing new music, working on films, or hustling in a variety of positive ways. He’s currently on tour doing 50 dates with Van Halen…
Poco/Firefall October 20, 2007 Gulfstream Park Before Uncle Tupelo, before Son Volt, before Steve Earle, before the other champions of roots rock and insurgent Americana, there were bands like Buffalo Springfield, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Poco, groups that helped etch a well defined link between rock ‘n’ roll and…
Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget “Now go and get your money little Duffle Bag Boy … cos I ain’t ever ran from a nigga and I damn sho ain’t bout to pick today to start runnin …” Now where was Lil’ Wayne when you need him? This past Saturday’s…
James Blood Ulmer October 20, 2007 The Colony Theatre, Miami Beach Better Than: A back alley brawl between jazz and blues. The Review: Back when I first moved in New York, one of the greatest musical pleasures I had was catching James Blood Ulmer get all “avant-gutbucket” at a dingy…
Hot Hot Heat October 19, 2007 Culture Room Better Than: A B12 shot of mid-‘80s nostalgia. The Review: I hate beginning with a negative (there’s too much bad in the world already), but I will say this: if I never had to stand through another song by Bedouin Soundclash, my…
Hot Hot Heat October 19, 2007 Culture Room It’s exactly 8 p.m. when I pull up to the parking lot of Culture Room. The night air is surprisingly cool and comforting as I freak out about not being able to find parking. A few maze-like trips through the lot yield…
The Skatalites: Many Rivers to Cross. More Jamaican Artists that you can shake a stick at. Bergeron Rodeo Grounds October 20, 2007 Better Than: Watching the Miami Dolphins lose to the New England Patriots in the ‘Manhandle South of the Panhandle.’ Jamaica as a nation has an incredibly rich musical…
