In 1997 Rebecca Gates became the sole Spinane when long-time musical partner Scott Plouf took the drum stool with Built to Spill — leaving Gates to craft the masterful Arches and Aisles (the band’s epitaph) alone. After Gates’s subsequent move to Chicago, she entered into a period of reflection about…
Often the best pop music requires a compromise from the listener. Bob Dylan’s coyote howl may grate like sandpaper, but tremendous rewards await any who approaches his early recordings with an open mind. And so it is with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. I balked upon first hearing Wainwright’s 1998 debut album…
Jose Flores, Corky’s southpaw singer-guitarist and Freddie Prinze Jr. look-alike, sizes up the rabid pack of 100 twentysomethings inhabiting Churchill’s in Miami’s Little Haiti on a steamy Friday night. “Tonight someone asked us what our mission was,” Flores announces. The audience lets out a deafening roar, obscuring his explanation. As…
Steve Earle has beaten so many demons (the bottle, heroin addiction, bad marriages, worse managers) that seeing him emerge as country music’s poet laureate is not at all surprising; he’s a man of conscience and truth who’s not afraid to put his neck on the line. Since cleaning up his…
Do you like change? Change is good! Some say it comes only from within. I had some in my pants pocket once. But this latest upheaval has left two of the area’s best-known alternative acts irrevocably altered. Disconnect, which boasts members from Miami and Weston, is temporarily disconnected; leader Juan…
Against the shadow of a day’s stubble, a half-inch of gravity-defying ash hangs from a wrinkled Marlboro at the corner of the DJ’s mouth. A look of intense concentration crosses the face of Corrado Bay (Corrado Bailone) as he studies his turntables and threads a new beat into the groove…
For a region crying out for folk music that hasn’t been dumbed down to the lowest common Dylan cover, the departure of Chris Chandler was disastrous. The witty, erudite, nose-thumbing strummer forsook South Florida in January, moving to Seattle and then Pittsburgh as part of a strategy to conquer the…
Say what you will about the strip mall, that ubiquitous bastion of South Florida culture. Some misinformed newcomers will maintain that there can’t possibly be any value in the much-maligned cinder block collars that ring our plentiful parking lots. In some parts of Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties this…
In this day of manufactured boy bands prancing around in matching designer wear, Gorillaz takes the concept of constructed image to the next level — that is, to the virtual world. The cartoon character- based band — helmed by Damon Albarn (Blur’s clever, clever pretty boy) and Jamie Hewlett (creator…
In reaction to the social mores that marked Victorian England, the British demimonde found a way to take the starch out of its collars by perfecting the confessional smut novel. Sure, France likes to believe that its raunch is saucier, but the French are far too sexually comfortable to imbue…
Back when Robert Pollard’s liver was pinker, Guided by Budweiser earned its cult stripes with a simple and foolproof formula: lo-fi, anthem-baiting sketches that recalled midperiod Beatles/Who, sported intentionally vague lyrics, and rarely exceeded two minutes. Pollard hasn’t stopped honoring his forefathers of the British Invasion, bowing and scraping to…
Nothing about the most recent King Crimson album — last year’s rather inert ConstruKction of Light — hints at the unstoppable power of the band’s live shows, where disciplined musicianship and unbridled fun collide in a shower of sparks. The group’s mercurial leader, guitarist Robert Fripp, has altered the lineup…
Hunting autographs at C.B. Smith Park in Opa-locka, neighborhood kids hurry past the unguarded gate backstage where hip-hop act Iconz is waiting to perform. With their debut album Street Money, Volume 1 approaching gold, the rappers headline the ninth annual Janet’s Youth Talent Showcase, sponsored by Jah-Net’s Jamaican Cuisine, and…
Backstage at a Dead Can Dance concert, summer of 1996: I was buried in the bowels of the Boulder Theatre, playing fanboy, soliciting autographs from band members, drinking their beer, and waiting for my turn to schmooze with Brendan Perry, the band’s sepulchral-voiced leader. Perry, sucking on a 22-ounce bomber…
The thing is, Joe Satriani actually seems to get it. A few years back, on some TV documentary about the role of the electric guitar in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, the legendary Long Island lick-monster openly declared that technical skill had nothing to do with one’s ability to…
Having never before attended a Depeche Mode concert and owning only one of the group’s records, 1986’s Music for the Masses, I may not be the best one to ask whether the group’s July 6 concert at the National Car Rental Center was a good one. But judging from the…
With the glut of Nu Metal purveyors in the marketplace all vying for space on festival side stages, the bands that get themselves noticed have to project something slightly out of the ordinary — a tough assignment in a genre where full-body tats and piercings utilizing more stainless steel than…
The KROQ Weenie Roast in Irvine, California, is the last surviving progeny of the carnival sideshow atmosphere made famous by Lollapalooza. Each year hordes gather to brave an always intense heat and watch that year’s hottest bands play to a baked crowd. Surprises have been plentiful: In 1998, for instance,…
This group’s Sub Pop debut is a smarmy cabaret in celebration of life lived in licentious excess. Comprising former members of the VSS, a vein-scraping precursor to “emo” that found a few lucky fans, and then known as the Slaves, Pleasure Forever melds the sperm circus of the Doors, Freddie…
I had written this record off as too easy. Lead singer/songwriter Jim James’s heart-o’-gold voice so expertly mimics Neil Young’s — right down to that constant sense of aching that hovers under the surface of every single nasally drawl Young spouts — that I wanted to throw it aside in…
On John Vanderslice’s second LP, printed lyrics have been replaced with a series of handwritten letters from Jesse, our strange protagonist who is trapped in Antarctica, lost without GPS coordinates or Internet access. After a few listens, the fact becomes clear that each of these lonely and reflective missives corresponds…
Marilyn Manson’s pissing match with God continues — stop the presses! For a guy who’s written almost as many suicide anthems as Barry Manilow (when’s the last time you heard “It’s a Miracle” and didn’t want to bump yourself off?), yesterday’s dog-eared nemesis, still regarded as a “shock rocker” in…
