Ultra Music Festival Announces Phase Two of Its Lineup

Ultra Music Festival released the second phase of its lineup, and while the biggest names in the list offer no big surprises, a number of other, smaller acts added to the bill demonstrate more of the festival’s forward-thinking approach this year. So here are the titans who will play (again):…

Inked and Loud

Beyond the unending, dentist-office-like whir of hundreds of tattoo needles buzzing on and off, the Miami Tattoo Expo will feature another soundtrack – an impressive lineup of local and national musical acts. While other South Florida tattoo conventions have relied mostly on rockabilly cover bands and the like, the Miami…

Miami According to Brooklyn

“Brooklyn,” as the current day manager of the Vagabond in downtown Miami is known, has done and seen it all around the South Florida music scene since arriving here from his native New York some 12 years ago. Younger types flitting around hipster nightlife know him as the improbably, heavily…

Love She Wrote and Fallen From the Sky

Pat yourself on the back for attending Saturday’s early evening, all-ages extravaganza at Revolution. It’s sponsored by Music Saves Lives, a California-based group on its way to nonprofit status that aims to “create opportunities for people to save lives with simple contributions, and to teach the facts about the effects…

CD Review: hey willpower, Playing Both Miami and West Palm, Jan. 16 and 17

Scottish indie rock act Bis’ overtures were expressed rather neatly in its 1997 single “Tell It to the Kids”: “And now, coming through the airwaves into your home/Introducing the new transistor heroes.” San Francisco’s hey willpower lacks a similar expressive salutation, but it shares Bis’ affinity for trash culture, “kandy…

Yo Majesty to Try Miami Again, Jan. 20 at White Room

Little, it seems, can stop the improbable Tampa-based female party – rap juggernaut that is Yo Majesty. Not even the occasional almost-implosion of the group itself. Early last summer, some undefined internal meltdown sent home half of the group, the gospel – trained vocalist – turned – rapper Jewel B…

Hall & Oates to Play Mizner Park Amphitheatre on Feb. 20!

Credit it, partially at least, to the rise of smooth – jam – loving new indie-ish bands like Tigercity, the Yacht Rock series on YouTube, and the unexpected, fanatical boosterism from people like Travis McCoy of the Gym Class Heroes. The blue-eyed soul duo of Hall & Oates is experiencing…

Random Book Review: Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats

Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter still looms in the margins of jazz history. Until now, her contributions during the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies were known mostly to insiders, aficionados, historians, and journalists eager to sensationalize her association with the death of Charlie Parker, who famously died in her living room in…

Throwback Tuesdays: The Impacts – “Ft. Lauderdale”

Probably the only surf-rock song nearly everyone recognizes is “Wipe Out!” (if you really need a reminder, click here). And the version with which people are familiar is that done in 1963 by the Surfaris, a California quartet still making bank on the nostalgia circuit today. By all accounts, pretty…

Three Local Live Nation Venues Say Bye-Bye to Ticketmaster

This past December, Rolling Stone published an interesting industry – centric article detailing the ongoing business battle between ticket-sale monolith Ticketmaster, and live-show monolith Live Nation. Of course, everybody knows that until very, very recently, Ticketmaster was inescapable, even at certain small venues (locally, for instance, even Culture Room uses…

Introducing Subterranean Finds, a New Crossfade Album Review Column

The last thing the world needs is another rant by some snooty music scribe who actually believes he can peg the next Coldplay or validate some MySpace wannabe. Don’t worry; yours truly doesn’t make any such presumptions. You won’t find any holier-than-thou prognostications here — just good new sounds worth…

Free MP3: New Mayday! Single — “On 2 Somth’n”

When New Times last checked in with Miami’s premier live hip-hop party, Mayday!, we were happy to see they had survived the wave of almost-hype in ’06/’07 and were back to the grind. (Nutshell refresher: The group recorded a track with Cee-Lo and DJ Craze called “Groundhog Day,” played a…

Manager/Booker/Promoter Mike Toms Leaves Churchill’s

Churchill’s at nightPhoto by Tony VargasLongtime Churchill’s Pub manager/booker/in-house promoter, Michael Toms, made his exit from the venerable Miami institution this past January 1. Churchill’s marks its 30th anniversary as a mainstay of the Miami music scene in 2009, and owner Dave Daniels will be taking over the lion’s share…

Free Podcast from DJ Alex Caso Features “Miami Stoner Disco”

Few local DJs in any genre have such a scarily deep and broad knowledge of music as Alex Caso. Able to wax poetic on and dig deep into any genre from psychedelic garage nuggets, to Jamaican rocksteady, to robotic electro, Caso’s consequently spun everywhere from straight-up raves to hipster hotspots…