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BEST LOCAL POP BAND

Sunday Driver

Hardcore, emo, pop-punk ... whatever you call it, tuneful rock and roll (a fair definition of "pop") has its share of followers, and performers, in South Florida. Few of the performers are as accomplished as the players in Sunday Driver. Since forming in 1999, the Sunny Isles Beach quartet has released an EP (Third Place Prize) and, this past February, its debut full-length, A Letter to Bryson City, to growing national acclaim. What's the secret? Lots of cross-country tours promoting a sound that balances Alex Martinez's melodic vocals with his and Charlie Suarez's blistering twin-guitar attack. If popularity is the end zone, these cats are in the red zone and it's first down.

BEST LOCAL POP BAND

Sunday Driver

Hardcore, emo, pop-punk ... whatever you call it, tuneful rock and roll (a fair definition of "pop") has its share of followers, and performers, in South Florida. Few of the performers are as accomplished as the players in Sunday Driver. Since forming in 1999, the Sunny Isles Beach quartet has released an EP (Third Place Prize) and, this past February, its debut full-length, A Letter to Bryson City, to growing national acclaim. What's the secret? Lots of cross-country tours promoting a sound that balances Alex Martinez's melodic vocals with his and Charlie Suarez's blistering twin-guitar attack. If popularity is the end zone, these cats are in the red zone and it's first down.

BEST BUS RIDE

Miami-Dade Metrobus Route 3

Nobody truly escapes reality via public transportation, not even on a long day's journey from Government Center to Aventura via Biscayne Boulevard (and on to Miami Beach if you want). Go surreal: Put the L'Avventura in your field trip to Aventura and turn this ride into a mind film. Friends afeared you've vanished to the point no one will ever find you, a cast of thousands, sights to behold or be filmed. Like Antonioni's dense tableaux, you may judge your encounter with mass transit as aggressively alienating and maddening in its slow pace, but by using your Truffaut-informed imagination (after steering clear of an aisle seat) and pretending you're chilling at Cinecitta instead, the vehicle transforms in that day-for-night way. As the Bluebird diesel rumbles north, downtown's hectic sets fall behind and the windows frame unbroken vistas of on-location neighborhoods -- housing, strip malls, construction sites, restaurants. Interestingly costumed extras appear, some more than once, making ominous eye contact or uninterpretable gestures. When you disembark at the mall, you will be astounded to discover that neither David Hemmings nor Monica Vitti is waiting to accompany you to the Gap. Ask the old woman in the heavy coat and sweater or the teenager appropriating black culture with his wardrobe but holding tight that platinum Visa just in case. Maybe Fellini should be your mental guide. At least until you enter the mall and walk head on into its 24-screen multiplex. A comedy turned tragic. So new wave.

BEST LOCAL BAND OF ALL TIME

2 Live Crew

There's an attitude that artistically successful local acts share no matter the musical style. Maybe it's the geographic isolation or just the damn heat, but a detachment from other "happening" scenes affords Miamians musical acts that play by their own rules. With 2 Live Crew this parochialism found its zenith. The sound itself began with the DJ (David Hobbs) and his 808 drum machine (and vast record collection) popping beats that were (and still are, for that matter) infectiously danceable. Mark "Brother Marquis" Ross added some of the best raps ever put down, and the other members (and dancers and audiences) added so much crazy fun that the Crew ended up in federal court more than once and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court. It fought for freedom of speech, against prior restraint, and, in its landmark case, for the right to parody other songs. (Weird Al and other parodists couldn't perform if not for the Crew's fight for the right to mock and mimic copyrighted music.) The Crew didn't invent lewdness, ass shaking, the dozens, or call and response. It simply took all of them to new heights.

BEST LOCAL BAND OF ALL TIME

2 Live Crew

There's an attitude that artistically successful local acts share no matter the musical style. Maybe it's the geographic isolation or just the damn heat, but a detachment from other "happening" scenes affords Miamians musical acts that play by their own rules. With 2 Live Crew this parochialism found its zenith. The sound itself began with the DJ (David Hobbs) and his 808 drum machine (and vast record collection) popping beats that were (and still are, for that matter) infectiously danceable. Mark "Brother Marquis" Ross added some of the best raps ever put down, and the other members (and dancers and audiences) added so much crazy fun that the Crew ended up in federal court more than once and, eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court. It fought for freedom of speech, against prior restraint, and, in its landmark case, for the right to parody other songs. (Weird Al and other parodists couldn't perform if not for the Crew's fight for the right to mock and mimic copyrighted music.) The Crew didn't invent lewdness, ass shaking, the dozens, or call and response. It simply took all of them to new heights.

BEST LOCAL LATIN ROCK BAND

Locos Por Juana

British people know their Latin rock. That's why the BBC named the nine-member Locos Por Juana "The Best Latin Rock Band from the U.S." Right on the dinero. We should feel privileged that, unlike our transatlantic friends, we have many opportunities to check these guys out on their home turf. They just rocked Calle Ocho and are now in the process of putting together their second album, along with a documentary about the Latin rock scene in Miami. They offer an eclectic mix of Latin rhythms with ska, rap, and reggae undertones. Not only is their album fun, but their shrewd studio skills have earned them a Latin Grammy for producing an album by Jorge Moreno. As for wooing America's ally across the pond, consider it a tiny bit of payback for all the incredible music the U.K. has sent to this hemisphere.

BEST LOCAL LATIN ROCK BAND

Locos Por Juana

British people know their Latin rock. That's why the BBC named the nine-member Locos Por Juana "The Best Latin Rock Band from the U.S." Right on the dinero. We should feel privileged that, unlike our transatlantic friends, we have many opportunities to check these guys out on their home turf. They just rocked Calle Ocho and are now in the process of putting together their second album, along with a documentary about the Latin rock scene in Miami. They offer an eclectic mix of Latin rhythms with ska, rap, and reggae undertones. Not only is their album fun, but their shrewd studio skills have earned them a Latin Grammy for producing an album by Jorge Moreno. As for wooing America's ally across the pond, consider it a tiny bit of payback for all the incredible music the U.K. has sent to this hemisphere.

BEST MOVIE SHOT ON LOCATION

Stuck on You

When gross-out auteurs the Farrelly brothers were looking to jump-start their decade-old project, the Siamese twins comedy Stuck on You, where did they go? To Miami, of course, a prime shooting location for such "Hollywood" schlock as Bad Boys II and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Granted, this would-be plea for greater understanding of physically conjoined persons starred slumming A-listers Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear, and audiences gave it respectful reviews when it opened in December of 2003. But really, when is Hollywood gonna start taking us seriously enough to shoot some Academy Award-potential films down here? When Accounting starts asking questions about why movies that have nothing to do with Miami are being shot in Miami? "Because it has great weather, even better dope, and abundant nightlife" is not an acceptable answer unless you're, say, Oliver Stone. Or, apparently, those crazy Farrelly boys.

BEST FILM FESTIVAL

Rewind/Fast Forward Film & Video Festival

South Florida does have a history, and it's damn rich, especially considering the city's relative youth. It begins about the same time Edison invented the movie camera. That's good news for the Florida Moving Image Archive, which collects and restores film and video to add to its visual storehouse -- actually a large, crammed-with-stuff bunker beneath the main library -- of local history. The annual Rewind/Fast Forward fest celebrates the archived celluloid with a show featuring a broad spectrum of works that all use old footage. There was the mind-bending independent feature The Subversion Agency, the Oscar-nominated documentary The Weather Underground, the locally produced 3-D classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, and a slew of entertaining shorts involving creative use of archival film. Never a dull moment when the past meets the present in this forward-thinking but reflective festival.

BEST LOUNGE ACT

ShuttleLOUNGE

When they're not guzzling glowing Blue Hawaiians or tearing through their complimentary lobster plate at the Ramada Inn Melbourne, the fabulous ShuttleLOUNGE, kitschy crooning kings of Florida's Space Coast, can be found in Miami at equally glamorous venues such as the patio of Churchill's. Decked out in obligatory swinger uniform -- flammable polyester leisure suits or loud thrift-store blazers, hefty chains, dark wraparound sunglasses, Camel cigarettes dangling from their lips -- obnoxious vocalist/guitarist the Amazing Dik Shuttle and his unflappable sidekick, keyboardist Cassius Casio KRS "Lejuanlove" Sebastien Bacherat de la Fender Rhodes, throw down loungified renditions of popular tunes with a twisted lyrical bent. Interpol's "Obstacle 1" is morphed with Led Zeppelin's well-worn "Stairway to Heaven." OutKast's fresh "Hey Ya!" is topped off with the B-52's stale "Love Shack." A medley for lovers features the Clash's "Rock the Casbah," Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield," and Steely Dan's "Peg." Like all self-respecting lounge lizards, the inexhaustible duo's set of "stylizations" can go on for hours, appealing equally to cocktail-sipping sophisticates and beer-swilling boors who like a little swagger and subversion with their listening ventures. Barmaid: another Blue Hawaiian. Pronto!

Best Of Miami®

Best Of Miami®

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