In the cluttered, money-mad landscape of modern R&B and soul music, the figures who stand tallest stand alone. Prima donnas like Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill have the creative vision and iron-fisted drive necessary to elevate themselves among their peers; Usher and R. Kelly work their mack-daddy game as lone…
They say hip-hop is a young man’s game, and they’re probably right. Apparently, though, even rappers well past their prime can still hang with the kids if they never grew up in the first place. For proof, just check out the Old School Summer Jam. This throwback party of mid-’80s…
Lock up your daughters, Pompano: The Deadheads are coming. The Deadheads have, in fact, been making inroads in this beachside community for ten long years. It was in May 1995 that Crazy Fingers first unraveled their noodly grooves at Fisherman’s Wharf, the well-worn restaurant and tiki bar that’s the gateway…
Composed of members of Palm Beach County’s most stonerriffic bands, the Gruntled lays a playful pop-rock structure la Mr. Entertainment over Baby Robotsesque shoe-gazer meanderings. The residual lysergic hangover aligns the 12 songs on the band’s self-titled debut in the catch-all descriptor known as quirky and keeps it from finding…
For such a convoluted, self-referential art form, hip-hop constantly — and unfairly — measures itself in rigid, linear terms. Your school is either old or new, your ethos either stratospheric pop or subterranean underground, your bank account padded by zeroes or nothing but zero. Only an elite few hip-hop artists…
Axeman Eddie Turner might be known as a master of psychedelic blues guitar, but his sound owes as much to the folksy slidework of Duane Allman as to Jimi Hendrix’s brain-blistering feedback. Turner has the perfect pedigree for a premier six-string slinger: He was born in Cuba, raised in Chicago,…
It’s not every day you get to talk with one of the architects of modern rock. When Beatcomber was offered the opportunity to rap with Michael Andrew McKagan, better-known to any head-banging child of the ’80s as Duff, he wrapped his bandanna around his leg, fluffed out his bleached locks,…
Being a knockoff band isn’t such a bad thing if you meet two requirements: (1) You can play your instruments, and (2) you’re imitating good stuff. The boys of Jupiter’s Boxelder measure up on both counts, which makes their Deep Water Influence EP a fun if unoriginal ride. Fortunately, their…
Cell phone cameras. MP3-playing sunglasses. Laser-pointing, voice-recording, de-ionizing salad spinners. Thanks a lot, technology — now everything that does anything does something else too. The musical equivalent is of course the Benevento Russo Duo, the Brooklyn-based drums ‘n’ keys outfit that might be the Optimus Prime of genre-crushing hybrid bands…
Forged in the sweaty, Latin juke joints of late ’60s New York City, boogaloo is the fusion of hip-swinging Cuban montuno rhythms and hard-driving American R&B. If that sounds too encyclopedic for you, I’ll put it another way: Boogaloo is genuine dance music: sexy, smart, and thrilling all at the…
Guitar-rocking singer/songwriter Teri Catlin has been a pillar of the South Florida music scene since the mid-’90s. She was honored this past December when her song “Baby” was in the top five of the VH1 Save the Music Song of the Year contest, and she counts Lenny Kravitz as a…
Skampida makes ska’s syncopated bounce and saucy Afro-Latin rhythms the foundation for heavily politicized lyrics. The inflammatory nonet hails from Colombia, a country plagued by social problems and government corruption (not dissimilar to the good ol’ red, white, and blue) and has been using Miami as an outpost for the…
“Frankie was definitely one of the best. He had his very own style, his very own momentum with the crowd. I don’t think that anyone else did it his way.” — DJ Paul Van Dyk Orgasmic, climactic, and maddeningly frantic, Frankie Wilde’s megahouse and two-step booty-trance might be some of…
Good punk is all about vintage. Squeeze the grape before it’s ripe and the result is tart and shallow; let it stay on the vine too long and the fruit loses its freshness and vitality. The juice coming from the Wellington four-piece Odd Man Out is at its prime –…
Post-modernism loves a ripe, juicy contradiction. Words like bittersweet and achingly tender sum up the beautiful tragedy of millennial existence, the quest to make meaning out of mystery. They also describe the wistful, faded glory that the National’s third full-length lowers on the listener. There’s an almost palpable autumnal sensation…
While understated and ethereal in the vein of the Cowboy Junkies or an acoustic Mazzy Star, the songs on Over the Rhine’s latest release, Drunkard’s Prayer, also pulse with a raw tension that comes not from theatrics or volume but patient, dramatic buildup. The Cincinnati duo of Karin Bergquist and…
According to ancient Greek legend, the Hydra was a gruesome, nine-headed beast that roamed the swamps outside town snacking on hapless villagers. Supposedly its breath was toxic, and it was nearly impossible to kill. The same might be said for the remaining members of the Grateful Dead, including Mikey Hart,…
Here’s a ridiculous statement: Fishbone is opening for Slightly Stoopid. Fishbone opening for anyone is extremely stupid. The venerable Los Angeles ska-punk-funk forebears are probably the best live band you will ever have the sweat-drenched, moshariffic privilege of seeing while we still care about such things. They set the stage…
It’s Thursday, typically an off-night for budding social butterflies. It’s pouring buckets, typically a disincentive for bar-hopping alkies. On a strip-malled swath of Federal Highway, John L. Sullivan’s is a high-gloss Irish pub wedged into the generic purgatory of Lighthouse Point. With blue blazers and blond perms gabbing over afterwork…
Ya gotta respect Ates Isildak. First off, dude’s got a name that sounds like an Eskimo fertility god. Second, as Echo Me, Astronaut, Isildak has released an album of lucid, almost transparent guitar and voice studies, so quiveringly intimate that you can nearly feel his breath on your ear. It…
The inevitable indie-funk wave has crashed on American shores, and its salty foam’s getting critics all moist and breathless. We Are Little Barrie is a sly, hopelessly hip introduction to the trend: a tightly wound amalgam of Meters-like funk and Donovan-esque Northern soul psychedelics that’s as authentically British as Austin…
“I must’ve been high on crack, high on crack, high on cra-haaack…” So go the lyrics to “The Game You Play,” one of the more hilarious standouts on the upcoming release by Paul Sennello, a.k.a. P-Man, and his band, Rhodes Gibson and His Orchestra. The name’s an exaggerated mouthful, reflective…
