If there’s one thing Asheville, North Carolina, is good at exporting, it’s sure-fire music talent — especially of the Afro-hippie variety. That town’s got more dub, Afrobeat, and West African percussion acts fronted by Anglos than you can imagine. Interestingly, most of them are pretty good, but one Asheville group…
Witness Sigur Ros talking to Luke Burbank, in advance of its upcoming release, Hvarf / Heima. Or, rather, witness Sigur Ros really not sure what to say to Burbank’s line of questioning — a phrase I use loosely. The video is linked here. Now, commenters have been lashing out at…
If you stumble onto your favorite familiar, well-trodden path of earth tonight, you won’t find your weekly drum circle bros. Nay, hand-percussion instruments and less portable toking tools will also be abandoned for the next 48 hours in honor of the two-day stint by jam-band-powerhouse Medeski, Martin & Wood. The…
This is one of the strangest animations I’ve seen in awhile but it goes well with a great song. It’s for the posthumous release of “Nothing Like This” from the late great Detroit producer, J Dilla, and is basically a really cute underwater love story. Go figure? But Dilla and…
I’m not sure how Lupe Fiasco could claim he’s never listened to A Tribe Called Quest before, but the more I think about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. That’s like Norah Jones saying she’s never listened to Billie Holiday. Or Interpol claiming they were never interested in Joy Division…
Guster October 14, 2007 The Culture Room Better Than: And egghead keg party 10 years after graduating college. Thank Zeus for huge favors: Last night Guster did not open for Barenaked Ladies or Toad the Wet Sprocket or Modest Mouse (as they have in the past), nor did they play…
Octopus Project, Humbert, Zombies! Organize!!, Electric Pizza Party City Limits October 9 We rolled up to City Limits just as Humbert, the second band of the night (Emergency Pizza Party had the early slot), was about to play. The lights dropped as the boys were settling in near their instruments…
So it’s been a week since the whole Fiascogate situation that took place at last week’s VH1 Hip-Hop Honors, where Lupe Fiasco forgot two bars to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” during a tribute to the group. I remember hearing him fumble the verse, but didn’t think too much…
Last night, after checking out the grand opening of the Fillmore Miami Beach, I made the short walk down Lincoln Road to the Colony Theatre, to check out a screening put on by the awesome arts organization GenArt. The film? Wristcutters: A Love Story, directed by Goran Dukic. The main…
Photo by Michelle F. Solomon Ricky Martin The Fillmore Miami Beach at The Jackie Gleason Theater October 10, 2007 The Review: The words Fillmore and Ricky Martin somehow just didn’t seem to go together. Ricky Martin opening the Fillmore Miami Beach, the namesake of the Fillmore San Francisco where Jerry…
A full bio on Spanish singer Montserrat? No can do. The events of her past and subsequent rise to stardom are as much a blur as the Latin American style of genre-bending mashups that have catapulted her career. While recently talking via phone, she chatters on cheerfully about the production…
In the new Kurt Cobain documentary, About a Son, the trio’s music is noticeably absent. Instead, director A.J. Schnack lets Cobain tell his own life story by splicing raspy narration taken from phone interviews between the musician and author Michael Azerrad with rich scenes of people and places from the…
The rural Texas-based quintet Fair to Midland holds the platypus-rare distinction of sounding like pretty much no one else in rock music today. Take a track like “Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes,” from the band’s debut album, Fables From a Mayfly, released this past June. There’s a beginning hushed…
Since Hurricane Katrina made landfall more than two years ago and decimated New Orleans, that city’s music community has been almost solely focused on chronicling the psychological and physical fallout of the storm. It seemed like every NOLA-based artist from Lil Wayne to Harry Connick Jr. recorded material to help…
111 SW Second Ave. Fort Lauderdale 954-522-0733 I’m usually pretty healthy, but last week, I was afflicted with a bad case of a jitterbug bite. After two failed attempts (on Friday and Saturday) to find a club where my better half and I could break it down, we crawled into…
Since rap icon Nas stated that hip-hop was dead last year, certain rap artists have gone to great lengths on wax to prove him wrong. Whether you agree with Nas or not, one thing that’s for certain is that Broward County’s Brokensound Blvd is doing what it can to give…
Coinciding with the band’s semireunion (Sorry, Eddie; no matter how good Wolfie is, no Michael Anthony, no reunion), this is the first full-length bio of Van Halen’s brilliant but erratic history. From its origins as a popular Southern California cover band and its rise to rock gods, throughout the book…
Derivative, repetitive, insipid, insincere, and pandering, Songs About Girls also has the worst insert booklet in recent memory — seven pages of will.i.am mugging in a checkered suit. Get over yourself! To be fair, the first song, “Over,” a lover’s lament featuring a sample from Electric Light Orchestra (never a…
For days, all Kenyatta Walton could think about was his chance to become America’s next big singer. The Davie resident spent numerous late nights fine-tuning his guitar skills, polishing his singing voice, and fighting through a cold, all for a shot at making it past the qualifying stages of The…
It’s easy to assume that Natalie Cole’s journey through the music world would naturally be an easy one. As the daughter of legendary crooner Nat King Cole, she’s obviously inherited the good looks and silky voice that helped make her father famous ages ago. Back when she was cranking out…
If there’s one thing Asheville, North Carolina, is good at exporting, it’s sure-fire music talent — especially of the Afro-hippie variety. That town’s got more dub, Afrobeat, and West African percussion acts fronted by Anglos than you can imagine. Interestingly, most of them are pretty good, but one Asheville group…
This is what Ricky Martin would sound like if he had more hair on his chest. The name is Black Guayaba, and it’s a Latin alternative-rock outfit from Puerto Rico that’s funkier than rotten bananas but sweeter than Fiona Apple’s lip gloss. At times, they sound like Stone Temple Pilots…
