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,…
If there’s one thing Asheville, North Carolina, is good at exporting, it’s sure-fire music talent — especially of the Afro-hippie variety. That town’s got more dub, Afrobeat, and West African percussion acts fronted by Anglos than you can imagine. Interestingly, most of them are pretty good, but one Asheville group…
Witness Sigur Ros talking to Luke Burbank, in advance of its upcoming release, Hvarf / Heima. Or, rather, witness Sigur Ros really not sure what to say to Burbank’s line of questioning — a phrase I use loosely. The video is linked here. Now, commenters have been lashing out at…
If you stumble onto your favorite familiar, well-trodden path of earth tonight, you won’t find your weekly drum circle bros. Nay, hand-percussion instruments and less portable toking tools will also be abandoned for the next 48 hours in honor of the two-day stint by jam-band-powerhouse Medeski, Martin & Wood. The…
Guster October 14, 2007 The Culture Room Better Than: And egghead keg party 10 years after graduating college. Thank Zeus for huge favors: Last night Guster did not open for Barenaked Ladies or Toad the Wet Sprocket or Modest Mouse (as they have in the past), nor did they play…
Octopus Project, Humbert, Zombies! Organize!!, Electric Pizza Party City Limits October 9 We rolled up to City Limits just as Humbert, the second band of the night (Emergency Pizza Party had the early slot), was about to play. The lights dropped as the boys were settling in near their instruments…
So it’s been a week since the whole Fiascogate situation that took place at last week’s VH1 Hip-Hop Honors, where Lupe Fiasco forgot two bars to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” during a tribute to the group. I remember hearing him fumble the verse, but didn’t think too much…
Last night, after checking out the grand opening of the Fillmore Miami Beach, I made the short walk down Lincoln Road to the Colony Theatre, to check out a screening put on by the awesome arts organization GenArt. The film? Wristcutters: A Love Story, directed by Goran Dukic. The main…
