Forgotten Troubadour Rodriguez Makes South Florida Debut

The Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man introduced the world to the forgotten psychedelic-folk singer Rodriguez. One viewing and you wonder how his sound, reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s and Donovan’s, never found an audience. But time and a movie have remedied that error. Rodriguez is now touring the world and will stop at…

Paradise Kitty Adds a Feminine Twist to Guns N’ Roses

If you missed Guns N’ Roses when they played Marlins Park last summer, the rock gods have smiled upon you. You will now have a chance to hear all of their rock staples from Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion in a live setting. There’ll be just one not-so-subtle difference: Instead of seeing Axl Rose at the mike and Slash noodling on the guitar, you will witness Paradise Kitty, the all-female GNR tribute band.

Go Go Gadjet Brings a Taste of Philadelphia to Super Bowl Weekend Party

When Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino booked three Philadelphia bands to play Super Beach Poolside Party during Super Bowl weekend, the Philadelphia Eagles hadn’t yet made it to the big game. “Eagles fans have been through so much disappointment,” says Jeff Tomrell, multi-instrumentalist for the band Go Go Gadjet…

David Grutman Brings the LIV Experience to Gulfstream Park With Post Malone and Ludacris

Mention Hallandale Beach, the sleepy Broward city just over the line from Aventura, and it probably conjures images of bagels, lox, and a giant statue of a winged horse defeating a dragon. You don’t expect bottle service and hip-hop. But with the Pegasus World Cup coming to Gulfstream Park Saturday, January 27, David Grutman, the mind behind Miami Beach megaclub LIV, might change your image of Hallandale.

The Members of Social Distortion Are Punk Rock’s Greatest Storytellers

Started in Southern California in 1978 by a teenaged Mike Ness, Social Distortion was inspired by the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones. Listen to the band’s catalog of seven albums, released sporadically over the past 34 years, and you’ll hear the rebellious spirit of those influences. But lyrically, Social Distortion takes an approach that’s different from that of those two British acts.

Guns N’ Roses’ Anti-Fashion Style Paved the Way for Grunge

The theory of alternate realities posits that right next to this reality are infinite universes, together comprising everything that exists. If that’s true, somewhere out there is a reality where every rock star dresses like a superhero. This is a world where no lip comes near a microphone without lipstick on it, where no T-shirts or jeans are allowed onstage, where Insane Clown Posse is not an outlier laughingstock but the norm in a society in which every rocker is decked out in outlandish costumes, makeup, and wigs.

Comics Set the Foundation for DMC of Run-DMC

The way Darryl “DMC” McDaniels tells it, hip-hop wouldn’t exist without comic books. There sure as hell wouldn’t be any Run DMC, McDaniels’ legendary group that overcame numerous hurdles to bring rap into the mainstream. “I was a Catholic school kid in Queens who got straight As and wore…

The Weeknd Will Croon Until You Can’t Feel Your Face

One of the curses of being a millennial is that 60 years’ worth of musicians got to go through the dictionary and cherry-pick their act’s name before you got around to it. So when Abel Makkonen Tesfaye wanted to christen his dark R&B project the Weekend but discovered there was already a Canadian band that had copyrighted the name, he didn’t give up.

We the Kings Keep Their Florida Roots at the Forefront

As grownups living out their teenage rock-star dreams, it’s only right that the five guys who make up We the Kings named their band after the Bradenton middle school they attended. “We all went to Martha B. King Middle School,” keyboardist Coley O’Toole confirms. “Travis Clark and Hunter Thomsen started…

Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience at the BB&T Center

Brace yourself. Winter is coming. Like all pop culture phenomena, Game of Thrones will not allow itself to be bound to one medium. What began as A Song of Ice and Fire — a series of fantasy books written by George R.R. Martin — Game of Thrones was unleashed onto…

Counting Crows Aim to Cure ’90s Nostalgia and Cancer

Last month, when everyone on Facebook was making lists of the top ten albums they liked as a teenager, a lot of people who came of age in the ’90s seemed to have amnesia. The Pixies? Wu-Tang Clan? That’s your selective memory (or hipster ego) talking. Meanwhile, a lot of…

Boca Raton Teenager Mason Pace Works Hard to Rock

Mason Pace is like any other teenager who lives and breathes rock ‘n’ roll. Except instead of just listening to Led Zeppelin deep cuts and waiting patiently for the next time the Black Keys come in town, the 15-year-old sophomore at Boca Raton’s Saint Andrew’s School spends every…

Billy Joel Is Still a Piano Man

After leaving the heavy-metal band Attila in 1970, Billy Joel found himself working as a lounge singer in a piano bar. In painstaking detail, he recounted that chapter of his life in the song that shot him to fame, “Piano Man.” It’s one of the saddest songs ever written, describing…