While some might assess the recent breed of jam bands as successors to the Grateful Dead, this Mr. Know-It-All maintains that the worthiest heir to the Dead legacy is just another band from East L.A. Los Lobos measures up where it counts: musically. Like the Dead, they embrace roots music…
Downtown Miami’s I/O continues to play host to long-lost hip-hoppers on the comeback trail. Black Moon, Digable Planets, and Fatlip have all spit to South Florida fans in the past few months, and now underground legend Masta Ace gets his turn. Ace sprouted from the Brooklyn projects into critical acclaim…
If the name Mike Miro isn’t yet on the tip of clubgoers’ tongues, it soon will be. Once a faithful visitor to the Edge (now Revolution) during its mid-1990s all-nighters, Miro recently assumed his post as an up-and-coming progressive house/trance DJ. Following the hallowed paths of local figurehead Austin Leeds,…
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…
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If you need any further proof that Europe has cornered the market on weird, shtick-pop detritus homage, Stereo Total ought to settle the issue. The duo, composed of French femme fatale Françoise Cactus and German übermensch Brenzel Göring, has existed on the fringe of art-pop trash acclaim for ten years…
For hip-hop purists, Common and Kanye West’s collaboration on Be is akin to the genre’s prodigal son meeting King Midas on the road to redemption. A succession of mid-’90s classics — 1994’s Resurrection and 1997’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense — established Common as one of the most talented…
Unlike Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 unplugged masterpiece, the Boss’ latest is a big-production acoustic venture, larded with atmospheric keyboards, earnest mandolins, and all the accouterments money can buy. To his credit, Springsteen has crafted his finest album in years, far better than dronefests such as The Ghost of Tom Joad…
A word of caution to the 20 diehard Gorillaz fans who have held on since the “cartoon band” debuted four years ago: Blur’s Damon Albarn is the only contributor to return for Demon Days. While the same fictional characters fill the liner notes, every real-life musician has been replaced, and…
On its seventh record, Portland trio Sleater-Kinney finds itself in the same predicament as its heroes Sonic Youth and tour mates Pearl Jam: It’s honed its sound so precisely that it has to decide where to go next. With The Woods, the answers are jumping to indie-label heavyweight Sub Pop,…
While artists these days are obsessed with sex of the romantic, psychological, and gynecological kind, few are as playfully raunchy as Blowfly. The funk musician who’s also called Clarence Reid charmingly reduces the act of making love to its nasty, all-too-human essence: pussies and dicks, cunts and cocks (or, in…
When the Black Crowes and Velvet Revolver play back-to-back South Florida shows, it’s not tough to spot the trend: Tomorrow’s bleeding-edge anachronism is surely surly ’90s alt-rock. Goodbye, jittery and angular. Hello, brash and swaggering. Every tie-dyed longhair and half-drunk frat boy who flocked to downtown Fort Lauderdale hours before…
What was show business like before Survivor made stars out of nobodies for eating a horse’s ass or American Idol dolled up the willing in order to exploit their mug first and then their pipes? Apparently, at one time, there was some real work put into stardom. People had to…
Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a better bill than Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers paired with their special guests, the Black Crowes. They’re both traditional rock bands initially inspired by retro references, Petty and pals offering homage to the Byrds while the Crowes mimic Free, the Faces, the Stones, and…
If you read these pages reverently, then you’ve probably been following the progress of one Mrs. Judy Blem and her struggle to keep original music alive and low-cost in Broward County. In her latest arrangement, it seems Blem has found the right place for the right tunes. Cheers, Fort Lauderdale’s…
Just what Miami needs: another fabulously chic, grossly overpriced temple of sin. Multimillion-dollar dance club Nocturnal opened its doors at the beginning of May and has already garnered serious buzz because, well, Miami loves a serious buzz. While the upstairs roof deck — replete with downtown views and a fog…
It’s a warm Wednesday night in Delray Beach, and David K walks into Dada bearing a gift. Paleface’s Multibean bootleg is nothing to look at — just an 80-minute disc in a square white envelope with a circular window. But to adherents of a loosely defined genre called antifolk, the…
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,…
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…
Smart-asses in more ways than one, Daron Malakian and Serj Tankian may not be the first to have read media critic Danny Schechter while playing Slayer and actually absorbed both. But on Mezmerize, System of a Down’s third and most consistent album, the front men, now equally billed, revive a…
If you were to hear one of Celso Fonseca’s mesmerizing bossa novas perambulating from the radio, you might think it was Joao Gilberto making a comeback. There are the same tricky, stop-start rhythms Gilberto (now in his 70s) used to employ, the same softly percussive guitar playing. Maybe Fonseca’s singing…
Thanks to Weezer’s synthesis of naked self-pity and grungy power chords, many credit the group’s 1990s output for today’s Dashboard Confessionals. In reality, the quartet gave suburban kids sanitized versions of Pavement and Sebadoh, along with a narcissism on par with that of the hair-metal icons that vocalist Rivers Cuomo…
