Early August is the pinnacle of the summer doldrums. Even the last of the snowbirds have abandoned us for their houses in the Hamptons or on Martha’s Vineyard, and the locals are sitting in their homes with the air conditioning on full blast. In an area that makes a sizable…
The Go-Go’s are indisputably the greatest girl band of the 1980s, but they fizzled out halfway through the decade. Their third record, Talk Show, failed even to go gold, a stunning defeat following the rampant success of Beauty and the Beat and the still-reasonable sales of their sophomore effort, Vacation…
With all the hype that surrounds film festivals in South Florida, the little guys sometimes get lost in the shuffle. Sure, the Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach international film festivals receive plenty of well-deserved attention; the geography-specific fests (Italian, Central American, Cuban, and more) also get their fair share of…
A few months back, the folks at Festival Tribe Events had a vision. They wanted a mini-Woodstock monthly event where hippie kids could get together and listen to their local Grateful Dead cover band as well as the tribal percussion, jam-based noodling, and other musical bits and pieces so near…
When Amanda Dunbar was a tyke, she had the same artistic talent as most other kids; a stick figure here and a doodle there. But at 13 years old, she and a few friends decided to take an after-school art class. The teacher, Curtis Ferguson, handed out paint, brushes, and…
Ludwig van Beethoven will forever be remembered as a failure in his contributions to beach culture. Most historians agree he was a poor surfer at best, and any who adheres to the controversial “Beethoven as Beach Volleyball Champ” theory are usually blackballed from intellectual gatherings. But despite these obvious shortcomings,…
“There’s a couple films in the show — like “For the Birds”; “Ghost of Stephen Foster”; and “Rejected,” which was nominated for an Academy Award — that generally might not be in Sick and Twisted because they’re not very edgy. But they’re very high-quality productions. So it sort of rounds…
Betsy Ross’s name will forever be linked with flags, rocking chairs, and red, white, and blue thread. But the Fourth of July show at Orbit by the local band that bears her name will solidify another association: aggressive rap-metal. Pete Gross, late of industrial-rap mayhem bringers Collapsing Lungs, wanted to…
In the history of rock ‘n’ roll, perhaps no one has sold out with more success than Rod Stewart. The sad part is that he didn’t need to. Stewart’s first five solo albums blended folk and rock and kicked some ass. This was much to the dismay of Faces, the…
People usually associate the War Memorial Auditorium with graduation ceremonies, computer sales, and the gun shows that are a godsend for all the people who need guns but can’t be pestered with mundane details like background checks. It is not, in short, generally used as a concert venue. But this…
If Deerfield Beach is nothing more to you than a couple of exits whizzing by on your daily commute, then you need to stop and smell the mangoes. With its 16th Annual Mango Festival this weekend, the Broward/ Palm Beach border town demands recognition for both itself and Mangifera indica…
The XVI International Hispanic Theatre Festival kicked off June 1 at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach with a production of José Assad’s Cenizas Sobre el Mar. That’s “Ashes on the Sea” for all you English-speaking types. But even if you need translation to understand theater from South America, you’ll…
“You know, between getting punched in the jaw and hit in the nose, it was a blurry evening at best,” says Bret Michaels. “C.C. was just gone, and at that point in my life, I wasn’t in much more sober shape.” By all rights it should have been the end…
Last year saw funk-jam band Deep Banana Blackout at what was probably its biggest crossroads since it was founded in 1995. With eight members to pay, money was very tight. Putting out albums on its own label, while doing a lot to maintain creative freedom, was doing absolutely nothing to…
While the leaders of the free and not-so-free worlds (read: United States and China) continue to argue over a high-priced spy toy, Chinese men and women several rungs down the political ladder from these world leaders demonstrate that we all really can just get along. The Yunnan Provincial Song and…
After polka’s heyday came and went, most folks thought the accordion was history. It had its 15 minutes, a few people with strange taste in dance got down to it, and the instrument forever disappeared from fashion. But the squeezebox lives on. An entire region of the United States owes…
For the fourth year running, the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami holds its annual teen day Saturday, May 5. Strangely it has chosen as the theme “Back to the Eighties II.” This seems an odd choice, since the teens of 2001 were born between the years 1982 to…
Kiddie crazes have a way of becoming preteen cultural cartels. Witness Pokémon — it’s a card game, no it’s a TV show, no it’s a movie! Or what about Rugrats? It’s a TV show, no it’s a comic strip, no it’s a movie! The list goes on and on, from…
Janet Leigh once admitted that, since her infamous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, she hasn’t taken a shower. When you’ve been traumatized like that, there are really only two possible responses — either develop a love of baths or drastically reassess your personal hygiene priorities. But as much as…
One of the great moments of crowd participation at Grateful Dead shows was when someone started up the chant. If enough people were on the ball, soon 20,000 would be calling out, over and over again, “Let Phil sing! Let Phil sing!” Jerry Garcia, 50 years old and not looking…
Separated from the rest of the world by approximately one million square miles of water, the island nations of the Caribbean have developed unique cultures. The Florida Atlantic University Caribbean Festival, which kicked off March 26 and wraps up Saturday, has done a nice job of representing this diversity. And…
Fat Mike leads something of a double life. While he thumps bass and wails vocals for famed punk group NOFX, he also heads his own record company, Fat Wreck Chords. Record companies, as any punker worth his blue Mohawk knows, are the target of some of the most heated vitriol…
