Two words: Hawaiian hip-hop. Not hip-hop made by inner-city Hawaiians but stuff as authentically islander as that flowered polyester shirt you bought at Marshals last summer. Dreamt up by Bay Area producer Jim Greer and multi-instrumentalist Brandon Arnovick, a duo known for its work with Dan the Automator and Galactic,…
Your friends are totally going to make fun of Gwen Stefani’s first solo album. Granted, they have quite a bit of ammunition at their disposal. “Cool,” a synthy pile of schlock about Stefani’s overly coifed marriage (to Bush’s Gavin Rossdale), just sucks. “Harajuku Girls” is amusing in a blippy, ring-tone-happy…
Double albums are inherently problematic: Sheer bulk causes even the best of them to come across as uneven. At first listen, the 13th offering by Nick and his Bad Seeds — the first without Einstürzende Neubauten’s Blixa Bargeld on guitar — is no exception. The rowdier disc, Abattoir Blues, launches…
There’s a great but untrue story of pre-Clash Joe Strummer going into a bar and spotting Graham Parker. Strummer says he saw the Sex Pistols a week before. Asked what he thought of the band, Strummer replies, “Whole new thing, man.” Hearing Devotchka provides the same stunned sense of surprise…
Local underground label Audio Thrift Shop Records might be South Florida’s last bastion of bling-free, un-crunk hip-hop. ATS crews like the Leftoverz and Secondhand Outfit rock dense, dark breaks and spit intelligent, world-weary rhymes that speak far more directly to reality in these parts (shitty jobs, bitter girlfriends, suburban angst)…
A dozen years ago, I went on Crazy Fingers tour. The band worked the South Florida circuit, and my friends and I hit almost every show between West Palm and Miami during the summer of ’92. Back then, they were strictly a Grateful Dead cover band, playing dead-on (pun intended)…
If the jam scene has a supergroup, it’s Garaj Mahal. Guitar virtuoso Fareed Haque has accompanied icons like Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Holland, and Sting. Keys master Eric Levy learned music theory from Haque while studying music at Northern Illinois University. Bassist Kai Eckhardt graduated from the Berklee College of Music…
“I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe/I was not offended/For I knew I had to rise above it all/Or drown in my own shit.” — Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain” “Everybody wants to throw peace signs, talk about ‘Make my funk the P-Funk,’ but man, they just don’t…
We all know the only reason musicians pick up a guitar is to impress members of the opposite sex. Sometimes, however, even the mightiest sexual strummer needs something extra to close the deal. Jon Wilkins, drummer for the Freakin’ Hott (and sometimes New Times freelancer), answers the question: What’s the…
Call it wet, call it wild, just don’t call it dull. 2004 was a year of ups and downs for the local music scene. Plenty of national attention was focused on our golden shores as awards shows flourished, celebs flaunted, and Mother Nature literally tore off the roof. Along the…
Hanukkah and Christmas don’t directly overlap, but when it comes to celebrating the season, any hopes for hearing Hanukkah music are pretty much crushed by the Jewish holiday’s steroid-inflated cousin’s complete domination of December. Hanukkah doesn’t have a chance. The Jewish folk music band the Klezmatics is trying to change…
For hipsters, the coolest things are to be found 20 years ago, the most dreadful things ten years ago. So starting a few years back, we were deluged with ’80s electro and synth-pop, and we pretended to forget jungle ever existed. Electroclash, the first naive sortie by dance music into…
Hip-hop is an elusive mistress. She takes on so many forms these days that it’s a lost cause trying to pin her down. The art form once branded a fad has matured into a complex, well-endowed empire, one that’s skewing younger as it grows older, haunting the inner cities as…
Check out the collective résumé of the Enablers and you’ll find yourself exclaiming “Whoa!” in that oh-so-charming “Joey from Blossom” manner. Members include Rob Coe (formerly of Fay Wray and Cell 63), Dan Bonebrake (formerly of Dashboard Confessional), and his brother Darryl Bonebrake (formerly of the Vacant Andys, among others)…
Compare and contrast: My lovable, irascible grandma, just turned 80 years old, whom I worry about whenever she gets behind the wheel; B.B. King, soon to turn 80 years old, who still works his guitar like his reputation depended on it. I’m not quite sure what I’m getting at, but…
I’m hoping none of you needs an introduction to the Atomic Dog, a.k.a. Dr. Funkenstein, a.k.a. Uncle Jam. You should know George Clinton’s influence on pop, rock, and hip-hop is far too profound to detail here. You might also have realized his music is as scathingly political as it is…
Just like drunkenly photocopying your ass at the office holiday party, New Year’s Eve often leads to fantastic embarrassments. For the rock ‘n roll-inclined, however, these are the golden moments that make life worth living. With this in mind, we put the following question to the Ubiquitous Timb, solo artist…
It has all the right ingredients for prize-winning radio hip-hop: reedy, snake-charming synths; a raggamuffin dancehall hype man; a smooth-crooning homeboy chorus. So why is Lauderdale MC Mike West’s single “Don’t Know Me” so damn sterile? West suffers from the same problem that much of Southern hip-hop falls prey to…
Britney got married. Ashlee was caught lip-synching. ODB died. Congress continued to wring its hands about the legality of downloads, which flourished anyway. Conservative groups condemned sex in popular culture, while Usher’s sultry Confessions shot to number one. A major label signed a guy who can’t sing, can’t dance, and…
In 2004, the line between indie and mainstream rock disintegrated even faster than Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas marriage. Vinyl obsessives mingled with white-hat-wearing fratheads at Modest Mouse shows, Taking Back Sunday debuted at number three on the Billboard charts, and Death Cab for Cutie earned O.C.-sanctioned buzz and a major-label…
Ever find yourself missing the word alternative as a concept, a signifier, a lifestyle? Nowadays, any dudes-with-guitars collective either has to do the Creed butt-rock thing, the whine-incessantly-about-your-ex-girlfriends emo thing, or the get-beat-up-incessantly-by-your-ex-girlfriends indie-rock thing. It’s harder and harder to find the best aspects of each combined: the fist-pumping intensity…
It’s difficult to survey the hip-hop of 2004, more bloated and self-referential than ever, and not imagine the mythical AOR wasteland of the mid-’70s. Like rock before it, hip-hop has easily won a cultural acceptance once unthinkable, and our reward is a parade of Jadakisses and G-Unit solo projects, preaching…
