Back when its sole, self-titled album dropped in 1998, Black Star set the standard for intelligence and poetry in underground hip-hop. Rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli had already built individual reputations on the East Coast mix tape and open mic circuit, both espousing a knowledge-first philosophy of street survival…
After taking a look at this week’s cover story, you’ve probably surmised that New Times has happily retired to the lounge for a mid-summer reprieve. And while Dik Shuttle is our own fabulous local raconteur, a Dick by another name — that being Cheese — has gained notoriety on an…
Since this week’s mondo lounge spectacular has brought us to the bustling intersection of Suave and Debonair, it’s only fitting to have a seat on the divan next to one of the true masters of the genre. Juan Garcia Esquivel — known to his highballing fans simply as Esquivel (ESS-kee-bell)…
When Green Day left Lookout! Records in 1993, the label sounded off not with an alarm but a ka-ching. The Berkeley band’s first two albums remained in Lookout!’s back catalogue and raked in more money than owner and co-founder Larry Livermore ever thought possible for a punk indie. In 1997,…
Despite what you Mastodon fans might believe, there is no sound in the world heavier than a pipe organ. For truly Earth-shaking proof, check out Summer Sundays at the Console, a casual concert series revolving around the $1.2 million baby at Palm Beach’s lovely Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church. Installed in 1999, the…
They’re saying it’s the hottest summer on record, which is maybe why the raucous rock quotient has taken a slight downturn recently. On a normal Saturday night, the Red Lion would probably feature some thrashtastic local ragers with those amps that go to 11. But in the midst of a…
Experimental pop is a dicey label. At first take, the two words seem an oxymoron. But consider the Arcade Fire and the Mars Volta: Each is in its own way described dead-on by the term, which is vague enough to avoid reductionism but still evocative of the razor’s-edge tap dance…
Rock is dead. Long live rock! What fad are we on now? 2003 opened the door to the garage-rock revival revival. New new wave crashed onto our shores last year. Ask bomb-blastic NYC psych rock trio the Secret Machines and they might tell you we’ve hit reset and are back…
As a SoFla kid growing up in Sun Britches and striped gym socks, Beatcomber spent many prime, prepubescent summers slip ‘n’ sliding in the backyard grass and riding bikes around his still ungated neighborhood. Of course, sweltering afternoons were often most enjoyable inside, collapsed under the A/C, nosed up to…
Not a week after Beatcomber railed against the general mindlessness of local rock cockfights (a.k.a., battles of the bands), we bore witness to yet another travesty of musical justice. Osiris Rising, a Coconut Creek goth-metal four-piece, was robbed of certain victory at one more in an endless stream of shady…
It takes some patient, ear-to-the-speaker listening before Jamie Lidell’s off-kilter, glitch-funk tendencies come to light on Multiply, but that sultry subtlety makes the album a repeat-play sleeper. Straight out of the box, Multiply bubbles with Stax/Volt soul, easy, husky, and heartfelt, Lidell’s affable vocals colored a vibrant shade of Otis…
At the height of the alternative surge of the early ’90s, Live — with a long i, named after the setting in which the group felt most at home — embodied the best of American pop. The outsider band from Pennsylvania tapped into the national consciousness with a string of…
It was almost 2 a.m. this past Thursday, the second of two consecutive nights to which Beatcomber volunteered its ear as a judge in the Vans Warped Tour Battle of the Bands. The last band standing after the three-week, six-night competition at Alligator Alley will ascend a stage at Pompano…
Tiptoeing along with cinematic flourish and blunted swagger, Al Valient’s debut EP is smart, subtle, and shifty. A native of El Salvador, Valient is something of a nomadic producer who’s worked in Germany and Central America but currently calls Miami home. For the past couple of years, he’s been a…
Despite a name that sounds like some kinda tree-hugging, spoken-word collective, Green Poet Experiment is actually one lone guy from Jupiter playing pensive, acoustic folk music. Todd Colucci does a lot of standard acoustic strumming, but check his self-produced Flags and Dreams, set for release this summer, and you’ll also…
“Parts of Mississippi still suck,” says Luther Dickinson, lead singer and guitarist for the North Mississippi Allstars, “but I’ll tell you — the Hill Country is a really enlightened place. I can’t explain why, but we’ve always had wonderful experiences there. I think the music always brings people together, just…
It’s been a long time coming, but Fort Lauderdale rapper Mike West is finally set to drop his full-length debut, A Westside Story Chapter 1. Hungry fans — and there are many — will have to wait till August to get a hard copy in their hands, but if you’re…
“On the day that Dennis Brown’s lung collapsed, spring rain was misting down on Kingston/And down at the harbor, local cops were intercepting an inbound shipment…” It’s a long way from the cornfields of Iowa to the hills of Jamaica, but lo-fi hero John Darnielle’s “Song for Dennis Brown” divines…
Yeah, it’s another battle of the bands. And yeah, it’s at the snuggest lil’ venue in Broward, Alligator Alley. But rather than fight for cut-rate studio time, a chrome-plated trophy, or dubious bragging rights (because who judges these things, anyway?), the winner of this particular sonic imbroglio will ascend the…
Following in the glorious, hook-heavy wake of epic rockers like Cheap Trick and the Replacements, Watershed plays exactly the kind of brash and heartfelt music Fort Lauderdale fiends for. Thing is, the up-and-coming fourpiece is from Columbus, Ohio, and it’s blazing across the country in a terminally unhealthy van. Its…
Known primarily for his role as bassist in Béla Fleck’s Grammy-winning New Grass Revival band the Flecktones, Victor Wooten is a phenomenal composer and bandleader in his own right. Widely respected by fellow musicians and acclaimed by the bass cognoscenti (he’s the only three-time winner of Bass Player magazine’s Bass…
Somewhere between MTV, Quentin Tarantino, and cinéma vérité — which is true film for you Francophobes — stands the iconic reggae gangster film Rockers. Shot on location in the shanties, villages, and jungles in and around Kingston, Jamaica, Rockers debuted at Cannes in 1979, on the same night as Apocalypse…
