“It’s kind of like having a child; there’s no secret,” says Al Pitrelli, guitarist and founding member of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. “You give birth to something. You’re there from its inception. You fall in love with it the second it opens its eyes. And 20 years later, you realize that…
The NSU Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale’s exhibition, Café Dolly: Picabia, Schnabel, Willumsen is an excellent showcase of how even when it seems like an impossibility, due to time and geographical distance, different art movements and schools of thought share a common ancestry. Featuring approximately 75 paintings, this show draws…
Failing to impress with its premiere in Milan’s legendary La Scala in 1904, Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly went through a tightening and highly scrutinized revision and a mere three months later, the opera — now one of the most beloved in the world — connected with the discerning Italian audience…
Girls’ Club’s latest exhibit, “The Moment. The Backdrop. The Persona.,” is “an examination of the uses of narrative in contemporary art by women,” according to the news release. The exhibit, drawn from Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz’s collection, is a tour de force by more than 30 artists traversing…
There will be some things that will never die, thankfully. We will not enter the medium debate here (read: vinyl versus CD, etc.), but we will say this: Ever since Eastman Kodak introduced Super 8 mm film into the home movie market in 1965, the format has continued to justify…
Jessica Kross I cleaned some sprouts off some red potatoes, and they sat in the sink, wet and glistening like pomegranate seeds. It was a fleeting thought, them looking that way. A thought I found amusing and privately poetic. I had recently heard that Jeff Tucci had passed. I didn’t…
The Filthy Casuals play an amalgam of styles rooted in rock and blues that display elements of funk, alternative, jazz, and grunge. This young outfit is a product of its building blocks and with many of the quintet’s members stinting in local hip-hop groups, there’s also an airy digital-ness to…
Fort Lauderdale native Kelcie McQuaid has been busy with her art. She had her first solo show this past February at the former Bubble (now Jump the Shark) and was featured during Adam Matza’s record-release party in October at Two&, a show for which she created 46 new mixed-media pieces…
South Florida rapper, Apakalypse has been one of the busier gents of the local hip-hop scene. Just this fall season he’s released two full-length efforts, Future From the Past and Earth’s Special Forces. Either he’s been on an incredible creative kick or he simply has nothing better to do, but…
Many years ago, South Florida had herself some evenings of particular wanton excess that resulted in the Clap. A quad of musicians left to their own devices formed a separate VD-named entity while their bands, Radiobaghdad and the Holy Terrors, took some “much needed time off.” The Clap made a…
When IWAN’s (Independent Working Artists Network) Concept Production Facility opened in 2009, it was a signal that Fort Lauderdale was beginning a climb toward gaining equal cultural footing with post-Art Basel Miami. Named the Bubble after its first event, the venue — an amalgam of gallery space and meeting ground…
Shooters Waterfront is, in a way, a tale of Fort Lauderdale. Forever etched into the city’s inebriated memory as the place to enjoy a fantastic happy hour, a scenic dock, and poolside swimsuit contests, Shooters has decided to shed the party life and mature considerably. The restaurant, one of the…
Conceived in 2009 as a fun way of helping in the fight against cancer, No Shave November is the spiritual cousin of the Movember movement. Founded in 2009 by Rebecca Hill and Bret Ringdahl, No Shave November has grown from an initial pool of about 50 Facebook supporters to a…
Brazil has been getting all the good gigs lately. It got this past World Cup (even though the team was brutalized by the German squad, the nation still reaped in the bucks) and are looking forward to hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. And now, for the third year in…
Cancer is a terrible disease and as such, it must be fought tooth and nail on every front. Breast Cancer Awareness Month is immediately recognized with the world turning pink for the cause. There’s the autism ribbon with its multi-colored jigsaw pattern – again, instantly recognizable. Men haven’t always been…
Amy Fleisher Madden, better known to South Florida’s punk scene as Amy Fiddler, began a strange journey into self-publication and independent record label operating at the tender age of 16. Her fanzine, Fiddler Jones was indicative of the pop punk ’90s with a Cometbus-styled bend that balanced band interviews, reviews,…
September 16 might be the official National Guacamole Day as well as the day of celebration for the Grito de Dolores that began Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla’s fight against the Spanish Crown in the Mexican War of Independence. For some reason, November 14 is National Spicy Guacamole day. While South…
Almost 40 years ago, Paul Hoffman Sr. had a simple dream fueled by the purchase of a small chocolate shop in Lake Worth: He wanted to have a place for his family to work. As noble a goal as that sounds, Hoffman was also a bit of an experimenter in…
No matter how much one would like to turn a romantic eye on one’s teenaged years, the bottom line — or rather, the hard truth of the case — is that being a teenager was a hard time. Sure, there were great moments unadulterated by responsibility or cognizance of maturity,…
Heart With Brynn Marie Hard Rock Live, Hollywood Sunday, November 9, 2014 You wanna polarize and/or destroy musical canons? Go ahead. If you’ve flown into the full fancy of sacrificing a sacred cow, nobody is going to stop you because, clearly, you’re a crazy person. Or maybe you’ve flown into…
Ahh… It is so easy to look south to Miami-Dade and come away as bandits with these “genre” lists. While it is true that there always seems to be a larger pool from which to pick from down there, the current state of affairs in South Florida’s music has made…
Has it really gotten to that point where now DJs, real DJs, suffer the way musicians did when DJs first took over the club scene? Let’s look at the case of Miami Beach, a former Mecca for live music like jazz and soul that thrived and put South Florida on…
