Top Five Picks for Local, Beach-Friendly Bands at SunFest 2013

Each year, West Palm Beach is granted its fill of national acts thanks to the waterfront concert SunFest. This year, there’s a buttload of big names, like Smashing Pumpkins and Slightly Stoopid, Kendrick Lamar and Black Crowes. But the folks behind the scenes are no dummies; they know that South…

Top Ten Best Acts to Perform at SunFest 2013

If we are superior at anything at New Times, it is at having opinions. We’re talking like we even have something to say about the kind of toilet paper your mom buys (leaves stuff in our butts!) or the size of raindrops falling from the sky (they’re too skinny). So,…

SunFest Secrets Uncovered: Tips to Maximize Your Festival Experience

Don’t blink too long, or it’ll already be SunFest! For the average downtown West Palmer, our whole year revolves around this five-day festival of awesomeness. It’s basically the only time any huge national music acts come to Clematis. Oh, and wait, there’re like 50 of them! For the newbie, this…

STS9 – Revolution Live, Fort Lauderdale – April 26

When New Times sat down with STS9’s David Phipps last week, the moral of the interview was that great music comes from a combination of talent and intention. The band’s goal, as Phipps put it, is to make music that makes people feel like “this is the best life ever.”…

Rush – BB&T Center, Sunrise – April 26

While you could argue that there are two types of people in the world, those who like Rush and those who don’t, I don’t think that’s quite right. There is, however, a line in the sand with which you can divide serious students of rock ‘n’ roll, and that line…

The Dream of the ’90s Is Alive at SunFest

When we think of the ’90s, our chemically damaged brains get flooded with remembrances of outdoor music festivals, tattoo-covered girls, excessive body piercings and poorly-kept facial hair. It was a simpler time, and George W. Bush was just another guy in Texas. SunFest promises to transport those of us that…

Mad Men: Ten Potential Rock and Roll Tie-Ins for Season Six

I wouldn’t dare make any suggestions to the brilliant minds behind the AMC tv series Mad Men. They’re doing just fine on their own, blowing our minds each week with witty quips and pitch perfect illustrations of the emptiness of our consumerist culture. But I couldn’t help to notice that…

Justin “Bluntin'” Bieber: Tour Busted for Bags of Bubonic

At the very beginning of 2013, we declared that Canadian Tweety Bird heartthrob extraordinaire, Justin Bieber, was going to the year’s Pothead to Watch. And while we maintain that Le Biebz is rapidly degenerating into a perpetually tardy, perma-smelly pothead, and that his mounting, life-consuming addiction to reefer has him…

Mad Decent Block Party Heads to Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale

One of Diplo’s greatest creations is the Los Angeles-based label Mad Decent. Together with Major Lazer cohorts Jillionaire and Walshy Fire, he’s built an EDM empire that is actually, and undeniably cool. Mad Decent, is taking its annual Block Party on tour this summer, making its South Florida stop at…

STS9’s David Phipps Reminds Us That “Musicians Are Human Too”

A popular Season 9 episode of South Park titled “Die, Hippie, Die” depicted jam-band culture as a bunch of bleary-eyed people who mumble about saving the world while not ever doing much besides bobbing their heads to “crunchy grooves,” all spaced out on the reefer. If psychedelic-flavored concerts these days…