… and from there we ended up at the Culture Room around midnight on Wednesday, May 30, just in time to watch the always-entertaining and gotheriffic Fort Lauderdale outfit the Wicked Screaming Squirts pack up their collection of props. Then we managed to find a safe refuge from which to…

Tampa-based metal band Savatage isn’t known for subtlety or graciousness. But the band members outdid themselves when they visited Boynton Beach club Orbit on May 19 as part of the group’s Poets and Madmen tour, according to some of the venue’s employees. “If they come back,” fumes Orbit manager Pete…

Where doth hipness dwell in Fort Lauderdale these days? For those bored with drum-machine karaoke at the Elbo Room (which everyone should witness once just to calibrate the ol’ suck-o-meter) there are a few places sure to satisfy your musical appetite. Perhaps the most consistently hopping place in terms of…

Anyone who’s ever been in a band knows the deal is as precarious and passionate as any marriage. Groups break up, members are replaced, and creative differences tear folks apart, but politics is usually not a top reason for strife among working musicians. Unless you’re in the complicated universe that…

On a recent weekend, while driving around suburban Broward County — west of I-95, which I used to consider unworthy of my presence (until I moved there) — I was listening to Mos Def’s excellent 1999 release, Black on Both Sides. It’s a great record, and if you don’t have…

Tom Reno is laughing in the face of music journalism. Hapless scribes try to describe the music he makes with his band, the Mercury Program, and none of them is getting it right. Reno may not have a pat answer when it comes to name-tagging the Gainesville band he’s captained…

‘Allo, guv’nah! In keeping with a strict spring-cleaning policy enacted a few whippens past, the lads at Bandwidth Central are clearing the decks of detritus — or at least the latest stack of local discs that we’ve been fortunate enough to accumulate. I’m pleased to report that some are actually…

The British neo-glam rockers of Placebo have become the most blatantly formulaic band in modern memory, conceptually lashed to an m.o. that’s hurtling down the freeway, rapidly accumulating mileage. In five years of existence, Placebo hasn’t found the time to rotate the tires or change the oil. Black Market Music…

If you missed the Poor House performance of Dr. Madd Vibe (a.k.a. Angelo Moore from the band Fishbone) April 24, you lost out. About 50 folks turned up to investigate Moore and his exuberant spoken-word performance. Dressed in a tall top hat parked on his clean-shaven cranium, tails, suspenders, and…

Sometimes you can take one of life’s blind curves too fast. And that’s how you wind up in situations like this. If you’d told me two years ago that I’d be spending a Friday night at a Vanilla Ice concert waiting for Lenny Kravitz to walk in, I’d have laughed…

A long, long, long time ago (November 1991, to be exact), when Bandwidth’s frequency range was tender, green, and underdeveloped, yours truly got to hang with Dr. Alex Paterson, wing commander of the ambient/dance outfit the Orb. At the time I hadn’t heard any of the band’s music (this was…

“Ask me a question; I’ll give you my answers,” announces Don Cohen, owner and founder of Musicians Exchange in Fort Lauderdale. “I have a lot of opinions about things.” He sure does. After all, it’s been almost five years since the city condemned the original Musicians Exchange headquarters at 723-735…

Injustice continues to haunt Death Becomes You, the shockingest, rockingest troupe Coral Springs has ever birthed. Bandwidth’s last DBY installment documented the lads’ shunting at the Orbit club in Boynton Beach back in February, when they were scheduled to open for Insane Clown Posse but were turned away at the…

You haven’t forgotten Modern English, have you? Dontcha remember that one time they stopped the whole world? Melted for us, they did. But that was long, long ago (just check the date range of this greatest-hits collection), and the British act never forged a legacy beyond one-hit-wonder status. Life in…

Rick from the Ex-Cretins and I were thinking the same thing: “I packed way too many pairs of shorts for this trip,” he groused, as we stood outside the Buffalo Club on East Seventh Street and grimaced at the maliciously cold gust of Austin evening air attacking our tender South…

“All I know,” says Tom O’Keefe, “is that this is the first time in nine years I’ve been interviewed.” After starting Neurodisc Records with his business partner John Wai in 1992, O’Keefe has realized his dream of a full-time, behind-the-scenes, music-business job. But since the Sunrise-based company is nearly invisible…

Three peninsular bands are making the trek to Austin next week, not to engage in psychological warfare against the newly installed dauphin of the Bush dynasty (you know, like Poppy did to Noriega) but to strut their respective stuffs at South by Southwest, the massive music-and-media conference that sends the…

There’s a smart-ass in every crowd. This time it was one of our own, the one cheeky enough to utter the remark designed to get a rise out of former Marilyn Manson guitarist Scott Putesky during the debut of his new band, Stuck on Evil, at the Poor House February…

Woe unto the lowly melodica. Why must it be consigned to the Fisher-Price page in the annals of great instruments? I can handle the nicknames: The pocket piano, toot-flute, blow accordion, wind piano, melodeon, melodyhorn, pianaca, and hooter all offend me not. But it still is shocking — shocking! –…

Life usually doesn’t play fair with Death Becomes You, Coral Springs’ favorite goth-rock horror show. I know this because I’m lucky enough to receive regular transmissions from drummer Christopher Lee, who is more than willing to report, in detail, every happening that shapes the band’s existence. Many of these updates…

On December 31, 2000, downtown Fort Lauderdale simmered, set to boil over with giddy tourists. Inside Lord Nelson Pub, though, it seemed that Hashbrown’s bubble had burst. The hard-funk quartet had already played one set from its cramped corner of the British tavern and had just launched into its after-midnight…