Arts & Entertainment

The vocal chops Delray Beach's Mike Mineo showcases on his debut album of eclectic pop, Eccentricity, almost make "blue-eyed soul" sound like an insult. First of all, Mineo's eyes are far too chestnut brown for that kind of comparison to pan out. Much like R&B revisionist Jamie Lidell, nothing Mineo does with his voice is completely rooted in the Stax sound, the Motown sound, or the Simon Cowell sound. You can tell that this self-identified goofball has heard and internalized enough of all three styles to be able to inflect flawlessly and tell a unique story through his cracked point of view. It's refreshing to hear someone with a gift for phrasing and wordplay who doesn't have to take himself too seriously either. Admittedly, he approaches Stevie Wonder's timbre on "Believe" — close enough to set off goose bumps. Once you start playing Mineo's music, it's hard to stop hoping to find that same sensation.

In the past decade or so, 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 your 401-K. Luckily, longtime promoters/power couple Garo Gallo and Yvonne Colón are reappropriating the term in a way that will thrill those concerned about the health of South Florida's arts community. For the past year, their space the Bubble has served as a hub for Broward County creative types such as local artists, filmmakers, fashion designers, musicians, and even a puppeteer. Imagine concert-hall-quality acoustics, 3,000 square feet to boogie your ass off or wallflower around in (this doesn't include the giant space outside), two stages, and loads of local art littering the walls by artists such as Lisa Parrott, Erick Arenas, Rachel DeJohn, and Francesco LoCastro. (Fun fact: LoCastro also painted the rad mural that covers the front of the warehouse.) Gallo and Colón conceptualized the Flagler spot years ago as a venue where oft-underrepresented artists can display their work, indie musicians can rehearse and record, and networking and promotion will help solidify the local community. Their vision officially began to materialize in April 2009, when the couple started renting the space. Since then, they've been booking acts, showcasing countless artists, and renovating tirelessly. "This way, we don't have to answer to club owners with bad taste," Gallo quipped when the Bubble first opened. Now, because of the Bubble, we don't have to hang out at such places either.

It's definite: The Caldwell is fusty no more. Its last season, helmed by new Executive Artistic Director Clive Cholerton, was powerful, varied, and risky. He took some knocks for that, of course — nobody much liked The Old Man and the Sea, which in retrospect probably didn't need to be turned into a play — but mostly, the word among theater people is that Cholerton is the most exciting thing to happen to the performing arts in SoFla in years. The first show he mounted while running the theater, an experimental musical called Vices, a Love Story, was nothing short of thrilling; his second effort, the new The Whipping Man, was a trenchant meditation on power and guilt that was lovely, deep, and enlightening; and the masterful The Voysey Inheritance asked Caldwell's moneyed Boca Raton audience to have compassion for, of all people, a Ponzi schemer. That's balls. It was also great theater.

The set for Two Jews Walk Into a War was a painterly representation of a crumbling synagogue in Kabul, which happened to be inhabited by the last two Jews in the country of Afghanistan. You could sense that a lot of love went into the place before it became an object of anti-Jewish target practice. It was full of warm light and, despite the carnage outside, peaceful vibes. The stone floors looked like they'd been worn down by generations of worshipers. When gunshots struck the temple — as they did frequently, serving as a kind of grim rim-shot to punctuate the jokes of the show's titular Jews — they sent up little plumes of dust and smoke, and we could watch the place's deterioration continue with force.

God bless Alexander. Not just because the Fort Lauderdale indie-rock group's charismatic frontman, Ryan Alexander, inserts his passionate religious beliefs and stances regarding poverty, politics, and the human condition into the lyrics. There's a dedication to songcraft here that can thread together neatly like Death Cab for Cutie on record but will turn around and chomp up the stage when they perform live. "Peter, James & John (Backward Math)" from new album The Other Side of Symmetry is a catchy statement, pure and simple, and while the usual trend for alt-leaning rock is navel-gazing, at least this band is trying to strike a positive balance between preaching and preening. Not yet a convert? Look to Alexander's many well-kempt disciples, who always arrive early and provide vigorous support for every electrifying chord — as well as when the guys seductively flop their shaggy hair. Getting a message across is sometimes just as simple as turning up the volume.

Stonefox vocalist Jordan Asher Cruz and bassist Ross Fuentes headed to New York in February, and with them, the blues-infused racket that was their trademark left town too. A whole lot of sweat-soaked and beer-coated warehouse floors went dry, and even more lusty South Florida hearts became famished. In late May, Cruz, guitarist Dave Barnard, and drummer Jeff Rose officially announced they had re-formed sans Fuentes — albeit as Blond Fuzz for legal reasons. With a cover of the Velvet Underground classic "White Light/White Heat" as the new outfit's first official output, none of the intensity was lost. While hacks like Jet keep crashing this Led Zep-inspired garage-rock style into the ocean, Blond Fuzz always gets the balance between retro and modern just right. It could have been a lifetime before another sound so cool and calculated echoed and buzzed from the belly of South Florida.

"Van Go" by Stonefox:

When is barely controlled chaos a good thing? When it's in the service of a happening as inspired and inventive as "Abracadabra." The good folks at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood put the "fun" in fundraising with this event. It all starts with the largess of a hundred or so local artists who donate works that are then put on display for roughly a month. Follow that with a big party, complete with an open bar, catered edibles, and, as emcee, a magician who works the crowd. Then there's the raffle itself. That's when the fun really kicks in, as names are called and people scramble to claim the artwork of their choice. That's right — every ticket holder walks away with a piece of original art from the exhibition. Granted, the tickets are $375 a pop, but show us another raffle where literally everyone is a winner.

Adolescents aren't what they show you in the movies. They aren't trendy girls full of self-confidence or dour baby-faced sages, scuffing their feet and dispensing unspoilt Rousseauist wisdom. Actually, they are painfully dishonest, profoundly uncomfortable little weasels completely preoccupied with proving to the rest of us that they're more worldly than they are. Wiener's performance captured this completely. Playing a 16-year-old girl who was in the process of being seduced by a much older man who, as it happened, had been molested by her father as a child, she play-acted at being coy — and the deeper she went over her head, the more her very innocence seemed pornographic. By the end of her one long scene, watching her share the stage with her seducer was almost too much to bear.

Vices could easily have suffered from too-many-cooks syndrome. It was written by four songwriters, who, judging by the sound of things, had never so much as been in a room with one another. Their contributions, which ranged from cabaret-style joke songs to torchy laments to creepy balladeering, were hammered together into a seamless (but weird) whole by director Jon Rose, who linked the songs with strange washes of electronic noise that, taken in isolation, were the most modern and least classifiable bits of music to appear on any South Florida stage last year.

After you hear a true punk frontwoman with this much intensity, it's impossible to go back to Paramore-quality frontwoman punk. Flees' lead singer/screecher Elyse Perez has all of the weapons of a Chrissie Hynde, a Kathleen Hanna, and even an Iggy Pop packed into her holster of a larynx. From the versatility of this South Floridian's pipes, she could probably sing opera, but she apparently preferred to get a bunch of tattoos and smoke more cigarettes. When someone so fierce tells you "Drink Me," it's not optional — it's something you should have done for her already. Aside from giving off a 'tude you won't trifle with or try to replicate, Perez can do it while looking quite scrumptious, dare we say. Perhaps we dare not, for fear of getting our timid asses handed to us.

MillionYoung's (AKA Mike Diaz) practically put the chill in chillwave with his billowy, midtempo electronica infused with distant vocals. This musical laptop wünderkind from Coral Springs has garnered many favorable reviews, and there's little doubt why after hearing his dreamy, tropical reworking of Mary Tyler Moore's theme "Love Is All Around." And considering Diaz's bookings this year — opening for British upstarts Two Door Cinema Club here in the States and traveling to points near and far in Europe during the summer — it looks like South Florida will have to share its soundtrack master with the rest of the world.

In some parallel universe, Jon Hunt and Jim Radford might be brothers — so alike and yet so different. In the real world, however, the family they share is the Art Institute, where Hunt currently teaches and where Radford taught not so long ago. Both traffic in a sort of cracked realism, although each puts such a different spin on it that the requisite comparisons and contrasts are often exhilarating. Hunt is a trippy postmodernist with a strong surrealist streak. Radford opts for neo-classicism. Together they make for a strange but satisfying symbiosis that this little exhibition cheerfully exploited.

There's an anger shared among old Communists — over their own blindness, over the hideous betrayals of Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot — that Gordon McConnell, as an aging and embittered English Marxist, captured perfectly. McConnell's rage seemed queerly particular: More in the way he glanced around the room than in anything he said. He seemed most of all angered that history has reached a moment when nothing much needs overthrowing. His was the anger of a brilliant and vibrant old man, itching for revolution just for the hell of it, and doomed to misery because it will never happen.

What we like about musicals is the music. What we don't like so much is all the silliness that so often accompanies it. The too-big emotions. The absence of character development or subtlety. The bombast. Well, Vices had none of that shit. It was all brilliant, catchy music with lyrics that were in turn moving, mysterious, creepy, and funny, tied together with thrilling modern dance, courtesy of A.C. Ciulla. Great stuff. Let's see more like it.

The title of this tiny show, which was shoehorned into the Art and Culture Center's smallest display space, is a nifty inside joke that works on multiple levels. First, there's no such artist as Balbone Martinez — the moniker melds the names of collaborators Michael Balbone and Emily Martinez. Then there's the subject matter of several of the works, which appropriate Christian iconography for subversive ends. And finally, there's an implicit dig at two subsets of contemporary museumgoers: literalists who analyze everything to death and the terminally clueless, who never quite seem to "get it." That's a lot of baggage, but these dozen words carry it quite handily.

Brash, ballsy, tuneful, and strange, the musical called Vices rolled back the years at the once-fusty old Caldwell Theatre and made it young again. It was written by a whole flock of songwriters: Michael Heitzman, Ilene Reid, Everett Bradley, and Susan Draus, from a book by Heitzman and Reid. They took on the loose theme of, you know, "vices." The play is a sometimes-violent clash of styles and sensibilities, sewn into cohesion by A.C. Ciulla's inventive, multidisciplinary choreography and director Clive Cholerton's unifying vision. It marked the beginning of a new era for the theater and opened up whole possibilities for the musical genre in general.

So — Laffing Matterz didn't face much competition for this commendation, but that doesn't mean it doesn't kick ass. One of a dozen extremely competent servers brings you a very-decent three-course meal, and then the whole wait staff mounts the stage for 90 minutes of raucous, topical song and dance that is politically acute and naughty enough to make the elder half of the audience blush. New Times' fave: a number in which the actresses morph into a troop of Broadway-obsessed Afghani ladies and then jazz-finger across the set in burqas, singing show-tune classics with Talibanized lyrics.

Always hustling, West Palm Beach's Schife and production partner OhZee have left an imprint on most of South Florida's major hip-hop albums released during the past two years. Rick Ross, Trina, DJ Khaled, and Trick Daddy have all employed Schife's machine-gun snares, booming bass, and insipid keyboard lines. On top of that, Schife can write a booth-clearing hook, and with a cigar-aged voice that can storm out a microphone, he often jumps on his productions as a performer. Additionally, Schife fronts his own group, Karbeen Mafia, featuring members Toe Down and G-Boi. As evidenced on the recently released No Nutz No Money mixtape, the group holds down some of the grittiest rhymes in the 954. As Schife says on "Getting to the Money," "Every time you see us in the building — it's going down."

"Getting to the Money" by Schife & Toedown (Karbeen Mafia):

There are those who complain that art in the postmodern world is too often soulless and mechanical. Then there are those who offer alternatives. Fortunately, the women who run the 4-year-old Girls' Club fall into the latter camp, as demonstrated by this smart, sassy show featuring such "name" artists as Tara Donovan, Annette Messager, Beatriz Monteavaro, Gean Moreno, Carol Prusa, Rosanna Saccoccio, Kiki Smith, and Jessica Stockholder. The idea was to emphasize the human touch by showcasing "Works in Diverse Media Characterized by Intense Hand Manufacture," as the exhibition's awkward subtitle put it. More than 30 artists came through with art that fit the bill, ranging from installations and sculptures to drawings and paintings and everything in between, including video. Not all of those artists are female, even though the gallery specializes in women artists and the theme lent itself to work traditionally associated with women. And almost as a rebuke to local galleries whose shows rarely last a month, Girls' Club keeps its exhibitions up a full year, giving the art plenty of time to seep into the local community's consciousness.

The three great actors of Copenhagen were not meant to play people, exactly, but rather their shades: Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Bohr's wife, Margrethe, meeting in a hazy afterlife and trying to reconstruct what may or may not have happened on a particular night in 1941. Bohr and Heisenberg were quantum physicists, and the models for this play's performances seemed to be the particles the men spent so much of their lives studying. Reconstructing that night, the actors zoom from one state to another — did they stand here? Did they walk there? Did they discuss this or that? — and everything about them, from their faces to their bodies to their voices, seems to be in a state of flux. Each of the actors communicated emotions forcefully without ever seeming to settle on any one in particular, and each spent the evening shrouded in irresistible mystery.

Curating art exhibitions can seem like thankless work. Not only do curators have to deal with the artists themselves, who are often sensitive and sometimes downright temperamental, but they also have to work with museum directors, a notoriously driven lot with, shall we say, healthy egos. As senior curator at the Boca Museum, where she has been since 1997, Wendy Blazier is the unseen hand behind the scenes. She knows what it's like to run the show from both perspectives, having previously worked as executive director and curator at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood for more than 15 years. In the past year, she has worked with living artists (Stephen Althouse, Clyde Butcher, Enrique Martínez Celaya), and she has overseen exhibitions curated elsewhere before they arrived, such as the landmark M.C. Escher retrospective and the upcoming Elvis show. She also manages the museum's extensive permanent collection, a significant portion of which is always on display in the upstairs galleries — a daunting task in itself but just part of the job description for the seemingly tireless Blazier.

Only a hard-working band like Community Property is built to snag two Battle of the Bands victories in one day. On a fateful day in late March, led by ferocious frontman Lucian, this rock and soul quartet ran circles around its competition first at the Seminole Casino's Classic Spring Block Party, then at New Times' own musical brawl. Muscular beyond all else, each Community Property statement tells the crowd "get down with us or get the hell out of the way." Owing bits of its sound to Jimi Hendrix, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and John Belushi's character in The Blues Brothers, the band exudes showmanship that involves executing everything tight as hell and making it look like a gas. Playing a fusion of blues, jazz, funk, and rock 'n' roll is one thing, but flinging oneself across the stage and feeling it is something entirely different.

Just last year, we were welcoming Enrique Martínez Celaya back to South Florida, the artist having decamped from his Delray Beach studio a year earlier and moved back to Los Angeles. But who would have guessed that the itinerant painter, philosopher, photographer, poet, and publisher — he was born in Cuba, grew up in Spain and Puerto Rico, teaches in Colorado and Nebraska, and has shown all over the world — would make a comeback as dramatic as this one-man show? For years, Martínez Celaya has steadily produced some of the most intellectually rigorous art of his generation (he's still in his 40s). With this, his most extensive South Florida exhibition since "The October Cycle" at the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale in 2004, he proved he still has few equals. Although the show included only 19 works, the Boca Museum wisely gave it most of the first floor, and the often-monumental pieces commanded the space with grace and authority. The kicker: The works are all from a private collection, that of filmmaker Martin Brest. Envy was never so easy.

Copenhagen is a play about quantum mechanics. At least, it is a play about the way one aspect of quantum mechanics, called "quantum indeterminacy," mirrors our understanding of history. In particular, it's about our understanding of one weird night in 1941 when Nazi scientist Werner Heisenberg visited his old friend, Niels Bohr, to talk about the Nazi plan to build a nuclear weapon. To mount it convincingly, Lewis had to understand a lot about the trickiest aspects of modern science, and he had to conceive of a way to get the point across to audiences who might understand none of it. His production communicated with remarkable cohesion on every level — from the blocking to the acting to the program to the lighting — and became a strange and frightening masterpiece.

After self-released versions of Astro Coast floated around late last year, Surfer Blood's statement got solid with an official release via Kanine Records in January. Aside from its nationwide acclaim (and inevitable backlash), Astro Coast holds up when viewed through the lens of South Florida's beach-resort culture. "Swim (To Reach the End)" turns JP Pitts' voice into an invigorating hurricane. His commentary on "Catholic Pagans" smacks of the listlessness of living in a region that doesn't always feel so connected to the rest of the country: "Never could be still for long/And I could never hold a job/Coupled with a weakness for cocaine and liquor/Not much you can do for love." Astro Coast turned out to be Surfer Blood's ticket out — and a peek inside what's possible for everyone else.

"Swim" from Surfer Blood's Astro Coast.

Rumor has it that the devil grew a third horn after hearing this Fort Lauderdale outfit's song titled "Eating Drinking Shitting." Frontman Tom Rampage, who cultivates a serious following as bartender at the Poor House in downtown Fort Lauderdale (see more on this below), bellows with such force that any mullets within 1,000 feet start flapping uncontrollably. "Fuck you, motherfucker" is rarely screamed with this level of commitment and with such a thrust from the supporting cast of badass players. And if it isn't already clear, we couldn't give this honor to a nicer bunch of guys.

"Programmed to Kill" by Murderous Rampage:

Where would you turn if you wanted, say, one of the largest selections anywhere of work by the South Florida-based outsider artist Purvis Young? What if you were out to build a collection of posters from every Elvis movie ever made? Who might supply you with autographed Beatles memorabilia or original tickets from Woodstock? Believe it or not, there's a place for one-stop shopping for these and about a million other items, including original works by pop artist Peter Max and folk artist Howard Finster, to name just a couple more. The place in question is Gallery 721, and it comes with a bonus in the form of proprietor Larry Clemons, who will not only sell you a chunk of art or pop culture history but also regale you with the story behind the art object of your choice. Clemons has been operating out of his jam-packed, 6,500-square-foot warehouse of a space by the railroad tracks since 2001, and he's constantly augmenting his enormous inventory. He has the passion of a true collector because he is one, and he'll help you find just the right work of art or artifact to make you feel truly cool.

There was an amused look that Marjorie Lowe wore throughout her one-act performance as Anne, the wife of Jerry — a character well-known to fans of the original Albee Play, Zoo Story, of which At Home is an expansion. She was exasperated with Jerry and even went through the motions of fighting with him — but she didn't really fight with him. That look on her face belied it all, and it was a look of love. In almost every line, Lowe did a masterful job of communicating her and Jerry's shared history; the words seemed to take on shades of meaning that only the two of them could understand, because of their long years of practice. Lowe's performance was understated, wise, and extremely lovely.

Hallandale Beach's Boise Bob is twangin' about a revolution. And unlike Toby Keith, this type of rebellion is several states outside of the Nashville system. Not content to let his toe-tapping, old-time swamp music roll past without an impact, Boise Bob has social politics on his mind that will be on yours if you give a listen. The raw edges of this country-fried punk cut through the bull with a track like Kmart ode "Blue Light Special." "Every time the blue light flashes, you will see the white trash dash in," he drawls in a voice straight out of the Appalachian foothills. Lest we forget Darnell Hotdog's banjo-chomping, Tex Merlot's washboard-scraping, and Owen Cash's washtub-bass-slapping, Boise Bob's backup crew, the Backyard Band, isn't afraid of a damned thing either. Even if it doesn't inspire a line dance, this music has no shortage of inspiring ideas.

SunFest has literally been doing it longer than Lollapalooza, and it's easy to see why. Every spring since 1982, the West Palm Beach waterfront comes alive with a 280,000-strong, music-filled party that's built on solid-enough business practices to keep it going for years to come. The 2010 lineup, which featured genre-busters like Weezer, Nas, Damian Marley, Sean Kingston, the B-52's, and ZZ Top, showed a commitment to snagging credible acts that have proven themselves to be more than a flash in the pan or just a greatest-hits show. The other big success of the festival: It's dirt cheap to attend. While Coachella and Bonnaroo each run well over $200 per ticket, SunFest attendees can settle in for five days of music for about $60. That, and the place never reeks of patchouli.

Since its 1941 opening, the museum has grown dramatically, more than doubling its size with one expansion, completed in 1997, and adding 75 percent more gallery space with another expansion a mere half-dozen years later. The museum now encompasses 122,500 square feet. The collection has grown commensurately, so that it's now up to more than 7,000 works, with substantial holdings in European, American, Chinese, and contemporary art as well as photography. And although a surprising amount of this art is on view at any given time, the Norton doesn't stint on its special rotating exhibitions either. Of the dozen or so from the past year, five were recently on view at the same time, and their diversity is a testament to the institution's creative programming: "Avedon Fashion 1944-2000," "Habsburg Treasures: Renaissance Tapestries From the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna," "Here Comes the Sun: Warhol and Art After 1960 in the Norton Collection," "Paul Fusco: RFK Funeral Train Rediscovered," and "Reclaimed: Paintings From the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker." In the case of an art museum, bigger really is better — it's a matter of having more room for more art, and on both those counts, the Norton wins.

Gregg Weiner was a goddamned fireball in Dumb Show, frying the eyebrows off his audience every night. As a drunken, drug-addicted, philandering actor who's been suckered by two yellow journalists into revealing every vile little thing he's ever done, Weiner was a jitterbugging mass of frayed nerves and wild, mammalian survival instincts. He tore around the stage like a nihilistic bull, every vein in his head seemingly ready to burst in a shower of coke-tainted gore — yet there was a febrile, calculating intelligence that never left his eyes, no matter how wild he became. There were many virtuosic performances in Broward and Palm Beach this year, but only Weiner's was a force of nature.

Clarence Reid's soulful side is hidden somewhere under that supervillain mask he wears as X-rated rapper Blowfly. When he wasn't composing some of the dirtiest raps known to man back in the '70s, Reid could turn on the charm and play his voice like a horn in Miles Davis' grasp. Even through his current thick rasp, the fella who created hits like "Master Piece" and "Funky Party" is still as dynamic as hell. During an unmasked performance earlier this year at Fort Lauderdale's Monterey Club, the Miami resident bobbed and weaved through a set of his classics with the unhinged intensity of a man young enough to be his own illegitimate great-grandchild. In addition to his own soul creations, Reid has penned tunes for South Florida's KC and the Sunshine Band as well. What we're talking about isn't neo-soul, gospel, R&B, or any other subgenre but just the pure, unadulterated soul of a man — with an adulterated mind.

"Masterpiece" by Clarence Reid.

As umpteen karaoke singers have shown, the artistry of Neil Diamond is impossible to replicate. If you don't get too close to Neil Zirconia, who dubs himself "the ultimate faux diamond," it's easy to pretend that the gravelly warble knockoff you're getting is the real gem. Discovered by an Elvis impersonator — how apt — Chuck LaPaglia has delivered sparkling sets of Diamond classics as the Zirconia alter ego for years. Unlike the real Neil, you're often getting a quality steak dinner and cocktails at fine South Florida restaurants while the man in a sequin-covered shirt unloads "Sweet Caroline, "Cracklin' Rose," and "Kentucky Woman" with flair — and if you haven't gotten enough, the wait for another local gig is always a short one. A thrill so cheap rarely feels so good. A Diamond might be forever, but Zirconia lasts long enough for a night of quality nostalgia.