The music industry as a whole isn’t exactly known for taking care of the workers who create its main commodity. Yet Florida Music Association (FMA) executive director Helaine Blum insists that the Tampa-based nonprofit organization exists to help musicians develop the skills needed to journey unscathed through the financial minefields…
As soon as I started working at New Times last November, before I had even memorized my new phone number, the demo tapes started pouring in. I must have received at least five my first week here — little C-60 missives from this band or that singer/songwriter, usually accompanied by…
Austin: A Goethe Wanna-be After reading Tom Austin’s final “Swelter” column (March 7), I was reminded of the absolute relief I felt when I sold the Island Club and closed the doors for the last time. I had a wonderful and loyal staff, a good clientele, and a host of…
Austin: Swooning over Swelter I’ve never set foot in a South Beach nightclub. I haven’t even a passing acquaintance with the frivolity, venality, and fabulosity rampant in the world Tom Austin has covered in “Swelter” as a reporter for New Times. I have, however, been a devoted reader, plowing to…
“After the accident, like the next day, we made a conscious decision that if there was any kind of passion in our music, any kind of legacy we wanted to create, we had to keep doing this.” For Squirrels guitarist Travis Tooke is ruminating on the aftermath of the September…
There’s some new blood over at WSHE-FM (103.5), but don’t worry: “South Florida’s rock alternative” will most likely continue to serve up Deep Blue Something’s unctuous hit “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” as well as what the station calls “Excellent Eighties” tracks from New Order, U2, R.E.M., and other modern-rock radio regulars…
This is the last “Swelter,” the end of the road. It’s time to say goodbye to all that, keep things short, sweet, and even more about me than usual. I’ve had a long enough run, God knows, given that the first column appeared on August 21, 1991, which translates to…
There are certain perks to living in Miami, but at times it’s rather like being a typecast actor, vainly struggling to escape some early career embarrassments and forge a new image of professional seriousness. Of all the baggage associated with the city, none is more crippling than the idea that…
Don’t bother asking Michael O’Brien why his band the Eat has become an underground legend in punk circles. With equal amounts of humility and bewilderment, he’ll tell you he has no idea. “We’re all totally clueless,” admits O’Brien, the 39-year-old guitarist and vocalist for the Miami quartet, whose 1979 single…
When Lobbyists Rule the World I was intrigued by Jim DeFede’s analysis of the Miami Herald’s American Airlines upgrades-to-commissioners expose (“Smeared for Takeoff,” February 22). As I read the Herald’s front-page article, I was amazed that our principal daily newspaper would publish such a trivialized deja vu and that the…
What happens when the denizens of Miami’s punk-rock underground enter the historic halls of Tobacco Road? Well, a lot of yelling and screaming, for starters. None of it, however, came from the club’s second-floor stage. Star Crunch Records, an independent label based in Miami, was invited to hold a February…
Haiti — Kurzban’s Cash Cow Regarding Elise Ackerman’s article “Perilous Journey” (February 8), attorney Ira Kurzban’s efforts on behalf of Haitians are hardly altruistic. He has been retained as Haiti’s general counsel [in the United States]. According to the Miami Herald, Kurzban “paid his own firm $298,798 for services in…
Jim Mullin’s column last week incorrectly reported that the Miami Herald had not published the names of members of an ad hoc sports arena committee headed by Knight-Ridder chairman Tony Ridder. In fact, a partial list of names was published February 7 in a late edition of the paper, which…
Tony Ridder’s performance last week before the Dade County Commission was truly inspirational. The Knight-Ridder boss was there in his new role as leader of a group of private citizens whose desperate mission is to appease zillionaire sports moguls Micky Arison and Wayne Huizenga and find a way to build…
Like many frustrated surfers on the commercial radio airwaves, Michelle Naples finds cultural comfort in the eclectic programming of WLRN-FM (91.3), Miami’s public radio station. And like a lot of listeners with bigger hearts than bank accounts, Naples wanted to help the station, which is feeling the crunch of recent…
Of all the luminaries who have passed through Miami, Kenneth Anger — avant-garde cinema pioneer and author of the Tinseltown trash classics Hollywood Babylon and Hollywood Babylon II — may be the most remarkable. Anger has been flown in as a featured attraction of the Miami Film Festival and the…
Punk Floyd It is sadly ironic that New Times music editor John Floyd chose the weekend of the Miami Bob Marley Festival to expose your readership to a poorly researched, out-of-the-loop article and his negative personal opinion of the state of reggae music (“Lively Up Itself,” February 8). Sadder still…
HABDI’s Stinking Mango Syndrome Kudos to Jim DeFede for his expose “Flying Blind” (February 1). The giveaway of Homestead Air Force Base to HABDI stinks! This kind of government-in-the-moonshine runs contrary to the basic nature of the democratic process and reminds me of the one-candidate elections held in Cuba. The…
Among other charms, Miami has very little in common with the rest of the U.S. It’s a Disney World devoted to decadence and twisted family values, a festering tank town hacked out of the swamps and overrun by psychotics, crooks, and visionary hustlers. In this tropical gulag of American exile,…
It’s no doubt too soon to start yammering about the rebirth of South Beach as a mecca for live music, but things in the glitzy, neon-soaked district may at least be on an upswing. Two club owners have somehow found the courage to open their doors to local, national, and…
There’s Cash in That Trash Great article by Sean Rowe on Mt. Trashmore (“Our Garbage, Ourselves,” January 25). There are a few things New Times should know about Dade’s incinerator, officially known as Resources Recovery. It is much more than an incinerator; it employs a front-end processing system that recycles…
Miami approaches its centennial celebrations, and during certain moments it feels as if I’ve been on the job for a hundred years. Amid a profound delirium, my early days of discreetly licking Julia Tuttle’s ass for invitations to tea have yielded to the current epoch of scattershot sycophancy extended to…
