After leaving the heavy-metal band Attila in 1970, Billy Joel found himself working as a lounge singer in a piano bar. In painstaking detail, he recounted that chapter of his life in the song that shot him to fame, “Piano Man.” It’s one of the saddest songs ever written, describing…
No night carries as much pressure as New Year’s Eve. If the previous year pissed all over you, you still have one night to make up for it. If the previous year was a banner one, you feel pressed to end it with a bang for fear of not rolling…
2016 has been an awful year for music fans. David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, and too many others left us far too soon. Though those titans of creativity can never be replaced, it is a blessing that we live in an era where countless musicians are striving to do just…
It seems like every few years, Hollywood tries to sell us on the idea that musicals deserve a comeback. Whether it’s Moulin Rouge, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, or Into the Woods, it never really brings back a renaissance of those MGM days. While computer technicians are able to make…
Jason D. Shaw encounters an obvious question an awful lot at his bar, Cash Only, the new Fort Lauderdale spot for which he’s marketing director. Patrons waddle to the bar, a guilty look on their faces, and ask the bartender whether the place accepts any type of payment other than…
The phone interview with Anthony Dewar, one-half of the twin-brother lounge-rock band the Dewars, started off kind of stilted. Midway through the conversation, Anthony explained why: “We’re filming a documentary about the tour. Kevin [a filmmaker] is filming me being interviewed right now.” Suddenly I, the interviewer…
Though it’s been close to 40 years since it snowed down here, you can’t accuse South Florida of not getting in the holiday spirit. Everywhere you look, there is a party, concert, or event filled with cheer. So whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus, here…
Commercial radio gets a lot of flak from music snobs. Elitists like music journalists at free weekly newspapers will whine and moan about the repetition of the same tunes played every hour, the quality of those songs on repeat, and even the fact that the stations have too many commercials…
If you put the songs of Amanda Palmer’s solo career into a random playlist, you will hear a beautiful hodgepodge of piano ballads, ukulele folk songs, and even electro Krautrock parodies. She got her first shot at notoriety as a pianist/songwriter in a punk-rock Tori Amos blender with the Dresden…
With 2016 almost in the books, we’ve been wanting to look back nostalgically at the twelve months that just passed. The past year saw legends headline arenas, local bands stretch out their wings, and lots and lots of spring breakers congregating for a festival. With 2017 lurking around the…
Though he’s recently had albums titled Global Warming and Globalization and has an upcoming one called Climate Change, Pitbull has not lately been the most political of rappers. His verses in “Timber” had nothing to do with deforestation, and “Give Me Everything” makes no mention of where he comes down on tax rates…
The official numbers aren’t back yet, but the first-annual Riptide Music Festival was a modestly sized affair with a healthy attendance. Over 20,000 music fans made their way to Fort Lauderdale Beach for South Florida’s second beach fest at the same location, the other being the country-music and conservation-minded…
Twisted Sister frontman Daniel “Dee” Snider could be considered a man of the people. He fought against then-congressman Al Gore on censorship. And Recently, he was at the Standing Rock Reservation with the demonstrators who are currently fighting against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. In between, he’s supporting local…
Though some musicians might feel awkward watching people listen to their recordings, Sam Rosenthal says he will feel no such anxiety when Deja Vu Audio South hosts a listening party for These Fleeting Moments, his band Black Tape for a Blue Girl’s double album. “At a listening party, I don’t…
Riptide Music Festival bills itself as the “biggest two-day alternative and classic hits music festival to ever land on the beaches of Fort Lauderdale.” It not only takes advantage of the beach but is also bringing a lineup impressive enough to keep our eyes off those tan lines. Here are the…
Though they perished thousands of years ago, the Vikings leave a legacy that lives on in TV shows, American football, and, oddly enough, music. “It gives you a sense of being on a long ship sailing across the sea, ready to pillage and burn,” singer and guitarist Greg Moir explains…
Andy Leo sums his band up like this: “We’re the Backstreet Boys of the metal world.” It’s a sort of half-joke, but the five handsome members of Crown the Empire do look a bit like what would happen if you gave a boy band some strong whiskey and a fistful…
Few people on this planet know their way around a guitar like Steve Vai. He’s recorded with Frank Zappa, Whitesnake, David Lee Roth, and even Mary J. Blige, but it is his solo career where he’s been able to write musical compositions that allow him to noodle around the guitar like no…
Thanksgiving is all about spending time with the family. While this is wonderful in theory, in practice it can be stressful as hell when between bites of cranberry sauce, you have to defend to Aunt Gertrude or Tio Raul where exactly your life went so wrong. Fortunately, there…
Writing three autobiographies might seem like overkill. When you played bass for two of the 20th Century’s more significant bands as Peter Hook has, though, there can never be too many memoirs. It doesn’t hurt his cause that interviewing Hook is reminiscent of those…
In 1966, the Beach Boys wrote the seminal psych-rock masterpiece “Good Vibrations” about a girl who put out all kinds of positive cosmic energy. The Hip Abduction, a seven-piece outfit from St. Petersburg, sings about similar “good vibrations” in the 2013 song “Live It Right.” However, the meaning extends beyond…
When Bob Dylan recently won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it caused a lot of controversy. Do songs count as literature? According to the Swedish Academy that decides the prizewinners, they apparently do. This could open the floodgates to rock-and-rollers being championed in Stockholm. In honor of Bob Dylan…
