Fort Lauderdale Jam Band The Heavy Pets Rock Bonnaroo

via myspace.com/theheavypetsAs the sun was setting on Snoop Dogg’s Sunday show at Bonnaroo and the middle fingers that were raised high in the air cheering him on only a few minutes before were put back in their pockets, a dance-funk fusion of keyboard, wailing guitar, funky bass, and steady House-music-ready…

Heavy Pets Play Two South Florida Dates After Bonnaroo

Photo by Brooke McInnes JacquesSouth Florida jam favorite The Heavy Pets will come back for two shows after their Bonnaroo debut this weekend. The quintet is heading to Georgia for two nights right after the festival, but will play Roxy’s in West Palm on June 23. Then three weeks later, the band will come around…

Better Gaelic than Grumpy

There never seems to be too many Irish pubs. They’re as ubiquitous as Chinese restaurants and have come to represent a friendly home-away-from-home for travelers on six of the seven continents (Antarctica has one pub, but it’s English). Delray will add another one Friday when Tim Finnegans celebrates its Grand…

Panda Baby

When Ruth Harkness became a widow in 1936, the majority of her wealthy husband’s estate went to his stepmother. Harness was left with $20,000, which in 1936 wasn’t exactly small potatoes. What she chose to do with that inheritance serves as the premise for the film China: The Panda Adventure…

Comic Relief

Every comedian has to start somewhere. In her autobiography, singer-pianist Nina Simone recalls that even Richard Pryor “shook like he had malaria, he was so nervous.” This past month, Improv Paradise Live has given local comedians a reason to be just as nervous as they compete for $300 and a…

Right to Art

While Gay Pride month is a time for celebration, it’s also a time for deep reflection on how much fighting is left for a community still lacking the basic rights to marry and openly serve in the military. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the United & Proud…

Jason and the Punknecks Does Rock-Country Hybrid Right

The rock-country hybrid is nothing new. Employed by everyone from Garth Brooks to Country Western Troubadour of the Dead Unknown Hinson, subgenres have popped up ad nauseam since the 1950s. See, for example, rockabilly, punkabilly, and even gothabilly. (Who would have ever expected the term hillbilly to get reappropriated by…

Saturday Night: The Bubble Opens With Local Acts and Local Art

The flyer for “The Bubble,” the grand opening of the IWAN Concept Production Facility located off Fourth Avenue and 8th Street in downtown Fort Lauderdale, promised a great show. But the event also marked the beginning of something that was seriously missing in Broward: a hub for local talent to…

Local Singer-Songwriter to Watch: Travis Newbill

The 26-year-old Fort Lauderdale singer-songwriter Travis Newbill writes tunes that are one part quirky acoustic, one part angst, and one part philosophy. With a weekly gig at the nautical pub the Jib Room, a bar off of Oakland Park Boulevard just west of Federal Highway, Newbill fuses pop hooks with…

Picture Perfect

For all those who regret overlooking photography 101 in college, here’s your chance to flex your photography muscles, or index finger, in a free group offered by the Secret Woods Nature Center in Dania Beach. The free photography group will meet on Thursdays from 2:30 to 4 p.m., and photography…

When Musical Worlds Collide, Mash ’em Up

When people think of the Opera, they think of grand-scale performances, box seats, little binoculars that make those holding them seem insanely pretentious, serious lung capacities, and grandiose opera-house architecture. When people think of bluegrass, they think banjo-wielding, grass chewing, down-home honky tonk. These two worlds will collide at the…

Buy a Smoothie, Save a Life

Squeamish about giving blood? Purchase a yummy, painless smoothie from any Jamba Juice located in Florida this week (until Saturday), when the franchise will donate 20 percent of each purchase to the local American Red Cross Heroes campaign. The money raised during this campaign will help continue the services the…

Pop In This Bubble

In the last 15 years it seems we’ve been inundated with bubbles: the dot-com bubble, the housing bubble, the stock market bubble, Michael Jackson’s chimp Bubbles. After all these messes, the term stopped conjuring up images of that beloved bathing staple Mr. Bubble, and became synonymous with the plundering of…

Rock the Mic Night

For more than eight years, the hipster hangout DaDa Restaurant and Lounge has hosted poets, musicians, singer-songwriters, and just about anyone who has something to say or play during its weekly Open Mic night. The event shifted from one night to another over the years, but now takes place on…

Wail Out

There are not one but two bands that currently tour as The Wailers, and it’s hard to keep them straight. The trio the Wailers Band has been around, though not in its current formation, since 1974 and was Bob Marley’s back-up group until his death in 1981. It now, however,…

¡Olé! A Week of Brazilian Cinema

Although Brazil is often associated with beach-bronzed Amazons, Carnaval, soccer, and painful bikini waxes, its cinema has a rich, oft-overlooked history. In 1930, the film Limite by director Mario Peixoto became a silent film masterpiece. In the 1960s, after a military coup resulted in dictatorship, an avant-garde film movement called…

“From Homer to Hip Hop” Lecture Saturday

One of the most important components of the critically acclaimed, thoroughly addicting series The Wire was its portrayal of the current circumstances afflicting those simply trying to survive in the inner-city. Loosely based on lead writer David Simon’s experiences as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun, it is hailed…