It’s been a tough few days for musicians as now another legendary recording artist is headed to that great big rock’n’roll party in the sky. Paul Raven, critically acclaimed bassist for Ministry and Killing Joke was found dead over the weekend in Geneva, Switzerland of an apparent heart attack. While…
Regardless of if the rumors are true, word around town these days is that Ne-Yo is fresh out of the closet and proud to be gay. That would be great (and shout outs to Ne-Yo if it’s true) but even newer rumors are saying he vehemently denies it. Booo…hiss. If…
Last Thursday, Lucky Dube’s luck ran out. The South African reggae star was shot dead in a botched carjacking attempt in Johannesburg. Currently, there was no other motive for the killing beyond the carjacking, which was unsuccessful. South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki, has appointed a special task force to search…
“I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven. When I awoke I spent that on a necklace.” Oh Kanye, thou utter no truer words than thee. When it comes to financial planning and money management, the last image that would pop into most people’s minds would be…
Kid Rock The Fillmore Theater Miami Beach October 18, 2007 Better than: A Miracle Whip and Wonder Bread sandwich Love him or hate him, Kid Rock makes an impression. From the moment the house lights went down at Miami’s Fillmore Theater Thursday night, the air in the room was electrified…
Miami may be in the south but it’s about as far from the Blues as you can get. Thankfully, you can break out the bourbon and revisit the hard times this Saturday when James Blood Ulmer, a high-powered, sharp-picking blues guitarist, blows into town. The Village Voice has called Ulmer…
Photo by Jeffrey Delannoy Al Jarreau and George Benson Hard Rock Live October 17, 2007 View the concert slidehow. A good friend of mine recently said to me, “I know you like photographing old people.” Well, in response to that, I have to say that when I have the chance…
It’s a little, well known fact, depending on where you get your news from these days, that Atlanta rapper T.I. is in jail. He was arrested for illegally attempting to purchase machine guns from an undercover agent. I’m not sure why T.I. is trying to be all Charleston Heston on…
Rumor has it the new Spank Rock and Benny Blanco CD, Bangers and Cash got pulled from the shelves of Best Buy this week because management just noticed its x-rated cover art. Apparently, this is all about the back cover where a partially obscured dildo can be seen in the…
Quiz for October, Hispanic Heritage Month: What’s the one Spanish-speaking country that always gets forgotten, or at least saved until the last minute, during Hispanic history celebrations? Although she wasn’t actually born there, Afro-Spanish singing sensation Concha Buika has the answer, and you’ll find traces of it in her emotive…
If you thought Space resident Oscar G’s releases so far contained the darkest, dirtiest tribal house you’d ever heard … well, you’re right. Which makes Saturday an extra-special occasion — a party at his home base to mark the launch of his latest and best mix release. The forthcoming Nervous…
In this month’s Penthouse magazine, 36-year-old Bob Ritchie, better known as Kid Rock, is asked about the title of his latest album, Rock and Roll Jesus. His response: “I believe in Jesus; I think it’s great to promote his name.” It’s the kind of working-class, well-what-did-you-expect, is-he-or-isn’t-he-serious answer that has…
The Miami Beach-based trio Jacob’s Ladder knows that hard, relentless work is the backbone of an, errr, ascent to success. This Thursday marks the beginning of the young band’s fourth recent monthlong East Coast tour, bringing the band’s career performance count close to 300. Seriously these guys have played everywhere,…
Once considered by saxophonist Stan Getz as the natural successor to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, the Tacoma, Washington-born singer Diane Schuur is now in the fourth decade of her award-studded career. To celebrate, in June she released a live CD, Diane Schuur: Live in London, captured at that city’s…
Since 1994, the B-Side Players have stirred the world music melting pot with remarkable vigor. Fusing the sounds of Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, and Brazil with American funk, rock, jazz, and hip-hop, the nine-man San Diego-based outfit has delivered some memorable results. Colin Hay of Men at Work joined by a…
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that the dark side of the Eighties still shadows our soundscape. All it takes is a radio or a healthy addiction to a blog aggregator. Popular acts such as She Wants Revenge, Blaqk Audio, and even Interpol mine those fabled depths for…
The first thing you notice when meeting Chan Marshall, the songstress who performs under the moniker Cat Power, is that she is staggeringly beautiful — sinuous like a model, but shorter and slightly more compact, as if wired to spring forward. Her usually kohl-rimmed eyes are huge and round, darkly…
Amy Lee scares the hell outta me. Oh, it’s not so much that she’s hot or that she’s talented or that she’s famous (though she is decidedly all three), but that she’s sweet. And sweet can be scary, especially when it’s coming from someone so supposedly creepy. By phone, the…
Though the music on Mujer de Cabaret is arguably reminiscent of the Cuban Buena Vista Social Club, there are also clear elements of Dominican musical roots. Often José Cobles (a.k.a. Puerto Plata) plays acoustic merengue — for years seen as a poor man’s version of the genre — and his…
Simian Mobile Disco apes much of what made the late Eighties fertile as well as fetid. On the British duo’s full-length debut, James Ford and James Shaw revel in the pure Hi-NRG and hip-house that propelled Todd Terry, Tommy Boy, and Technotronic. Peppered throughout the melodic electrohaus mélange are nods…
The Thrills’ 2003 debut, So Much for the City, was an idealistic homage to the California myth, as filtered through the Day-Glo haze of wistful Seventies euphoria. Its idyllic imagery summoned up endless vistas of surf and sand, idealized and admired from a vantage point somewhat distant and distinct. It’s…
Zach Condon, Beirut’s 21-year-old frontman, is too young to have any stories of his own. So he imagines other folks’ — and usually folks living on other continents, in other centuries. On “The Penalty,” he speaks from the perspective of a worker caught in a time of plague: “Yesterday fever,…
