A few weeks ago, Bobby Johnston, lead singer for psycho punk maniacs Load, was sitting in the studio of WAXY during the Beast and Baker Show as his band’s raging music roared into the airwaves like drunk Scuds. Between Load cuts, Johnston answered questions about his band, mentioned upcoming gigs,…
Nightlife, over time, renders everyone walking obsessive-compulsive voids, feckless and hopeless, lab rats in a B.F. Skinner universe of degradation. One long wasting in appetite, rats and humanoids doomed to press eager little noses against a pleasure bar, searching for sensation, sustenance, cocaine, and endorphin rushes, accepting rude shocks and…
Is it a scene yet? Whatever you think of the press coverage provided by corporate media outlets A the Miami Herald, New Times, et cetera A you can’t say local original rock isn’t receiving almost as much coverage as it deserves. Cable television offers Music X, Rock Ya Ma Call…
We’ve got five years, man, that’s all we got. (Sorry, Mr. Bowie.) But it’s true, the millennium is quickly running out on us, and I consider it a deadline. People have to turn around what’s been neglected in recent years: Feed the hungry, clothe the ragged, console the hurt, heal…
Another dream of the night, another chaotic cesspool of delights, diversions, and close encounters of the unfortunate kind, the past, present, and future jelling into a tortured narrative, a monologue of narcissism and hurt, the cheap melodramas of darkness. You take a beating out here every day, but the pros…
He wrecked his truck, got stabbed, run over, and lost a finger. His wife ran off with his best friend. He got shot, chased by large crowds of angry people, then thrown in jail. And that was in just one day. So goes the Rex Neilson-penned tune “Thank God I…
Nightlife, a dicey proposition of plugs, hugs, and drugs, hubris and horrors, fair-weather friends and unsavory courtesies. A trade with certain charms, this chasing of trifles, chimeras, and cheesiness: Stick around long enough and the great pageant unravels in a pleasantly deranged manner, a kind of sustaining brain candy. Been…
A beautiful riff that dates as far back as Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” visits town twice this week, showing up in the Floating Men’s “Call of the Wild” and in the lead track of Greg Brown’s latest masterpiece, The Poet Game. It’s just a little high-note-bomp-low-note-sustain, but when played by…
The music industry virtually shut down this past week while every flack, hack, and sad-sack musician in the land converged on Austin, Texas, for the huge showcase convention SXSW (short for South by Southwest). There are panel discussions and such, but the big draw is the bounty of showcases. There’s…
The real-life follies, clinging to the sanctity of good clean fun, faith tested time and again. Till death, or worse yet, unemployment, entrapped within the bell jar of gossip, the cutting wire that dices, dissects, and taints every circumstance. But then, the razor’s edge of columning cuts both ways, the…
Lamenting the demise of the vinyl configuration for recorded music is at this point as tiresome and pointless as the Simpson trial. The “wax” many of us grew up spinning now makes up a minuscule portion A perhaps three percent A of the market. Live with it. And celebrate the…
Vacation time, a brief reprieve from these deranged metropolitan diaries A in truth, we don’t even know what the hell they’re all about A inspiring a curious strain of holiday anomie, the workaday world suddenly robbed of meaning, authenticity, and dramatic interest. Without the small deaths of deadlines, the daily…
This space is devoted to musical reportage and commentary. It is not supposed to be an obituary column. Sadly, fate isn’t cooperating. I remember nights a lifetime ago watching Johnny “Stix” Galway illustrate what great rock drumming is all about. Often those nights consisted of shows featuring the legendary Bobs…
The Replacements were considered by many to be the best rock band in the world about ten years ago. Let It Be (1984) and Tim (1985) captured the foursome at its apex by blending the hard stuff A “Gary’s Got a Boner” and an inspired cover of KISS’s “Black Diamond,”…
Another week, another frolic with mirthmakers of every imaginable breed. A Noah’s ark of dark pleasures, touched by a higher force. On the rounds Saturday night, trudging up and down Washington Avenue, a penitent dragging the cross of gossip through Sodom, witness to the eternal passion play of nightlife. The…
When was the last time you spent a day by the bay at Virginia Key? When did you last take a casual stroll through Bicentennial Park? Or sit down for a quiet picnic on Watson Island? Shaking your head? Okay, let’s try this: When was the last time you visited…
It’s a great life, these postcards filed from the apocalypse, these rhapsodies to a permanent — albeit spectacularly unsuccessful — vacation in Hell. One of our bleaker colleagues encouraging an addiction to darkness, noting that the next angst report may well serve as a handy obituary, rich fodder suitable for…
Sometimes the best way to measure the health of your pond is to find out who’s dipping their toes into the water. On that basis, Miami’s rock scene is robust. Billboard recently visited these shores with a piece that noted that Mary Karlzen, Nil Lara, and several others have signed…
The future must look bright for local polka-punkers I Don’t Know, who use accordion prominently in their songs, and occasionally toss in other instrumentation not normally associated with high-energy rock. First, this week the Rhino label will issue a collection of music by accordion greats (Flaco Jimenez, Clifton Chenier) and…
Unfortunately, a free and vigorous press requires a touch of scandalmongering on the side, something of an unseemly decline from the noble ideals of Thomas Jefferson, a rich, famous, and powerful statesman (think Dallas set on a plantation) whose randy appetite for interracial dating might have made him the perfect…
God help us, but we love this filthy business, despite the inevitable toll of the dungheap: metamorphosing into an unhealthy alien existing on earthly junk food, nothing but a blob of numb ectoplasm with an engorged brainpan, continually force-fed a diet of the unwholesome. Home at last for a quiet…
Isn’t this starting to read like an obituary column? If it isn’t a club closing, it’s a band breaking up — we have some bad news and some bad news. What’s ironic is that 1994 was a boon year for the (inter)national music business. Nearly 200 concerts grossed a million…
