Nitzer EbbGrand Central, MiamiSaturday, November 13, 2010Better Than: The Miami Music Festival (at least on Saturday night, at which fans braving the Vivian Girls’ headlining show were tossed out for dress code non-compliance and price-gouged for $10 beers) The Review:Sometimes, when the live music stars align, a venue, audience, and band…
View a slideshow from the concert here.Roger Waters Bank Atlantic Center, Sunrise Saturday, November 13, 2010 After a blinding flash of light, fireworks exploded from center stage. Sirens wailed and a solemn troupe of flag bearers stood ready on a riser. Roger Waters strutted triumphantly to center stage, flanked by…
The Making of Pink Floyd the Wall By Gerald Scarfe (Da Capo Press) While most would agree that Dark Side of the Moon is the quintessential Pink Floyd album (largely due to the fact that it was the record that propelled the group from darlings of the underground to the…
Be sure your creative license is tucked into your wallet come mid-December for the inaugural Zitfest. Set for December 17-18 at the Orange Door, a venue in Lake Park normally reserved for blues shows, the two-day fest should be a merciless, exfoliating blast of South Florida’s finest shades of independent…
The Drive-By Truckers create some of the grimiest alt-country the South has ever heard, and lately it has been in prolific fashion. After dropping The Big To-Do in March, Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and the rest already have a 12th album on the way. Titled Go-Go Boots, the disc will…
Unlike Live Nation or Grand Central, the annual Miami Music Festival failed to make an immediate impact. Now in its second year, it has the potential to overhaul a slice of South Florida’s music calendar, turning the second weekend of November into a free-for-all of live tuneage, booze, and industry…
In cities across the country, party kids with great haircuts and obscure musical tastes go out at night to commune with like-styled radsters. For the past two years in Chicago, a collective called Members Only AV has attracted this crowd with wild indie-electro dance parties at lofts and nightclubs all…
Social Distortion has a pretty messed-up face. Not literally, of course; Social D’s middle-aged frontman, Mike Ness, is surprisingly well-preserved despite a receding hairline and some deep creases across the forehead. Like any punk crew that spent a good chunk of 31 years in the gutter, rocking recklessly, shooting heroin,…
No matter how outdated the goth subculture may seem to others, it still keeps chugging along. And ’80s industrial rockers Nitzer Ebb — made up of Bon Harris, Douglas McCarthy, and Jason Payne — are a prime example. Coming from the same gene pool that bred Depeche Mode and Front…
A band’s hard-core fans will always lament a perceived betrayal of its original aesthetic, audience, and/or values. (Cough, Metallica.) So then kudos to thrash icons Overkill for sticking to its roots and getting better with age. Like, seriously better. Emerging on the New York scene in the early ’80s, the…
Chiodos circa 2010 is a significantly different beast than it was just one year ago. In 2009, the Michigan-based post-hardcore sextet, then led by the charismatic Craig Owens, was still coasting on goodwill from its sophomore breakthrough, 2007’s Bone Palace Ballet. That album had sold more than 200,000 copies and…
Roger Waters has always seemed irascible. His steely scowl crossing his chiseled features conveys deep distrust, and his contentious pronouncements about Middle East politics and his relationship with ex-bandmate David Gilmour reinforce that intimidating reputation. Pink Floyd’s epic The Wall underscored his unsettling observations on the human condition with themes…
Music vet and New Times scribe Lee Zimmerman shares stories of memorable rock ‘n’ roll encounters that took place in our local environs. This week: visiting the Village and second-guessing Satan…Unexpected encounters are often as entertaining as those that are planned. During a trip with my wife to New York…
South Carolina-born Zach Deputy, AKA the human amplifier of soul, croons his way down to South Florida to share his one-man show with curious new ears and enthused followers. Tuesday — that’s tonight — at the Bamboo Stage at Boca’s Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery, his looped-out, beat-boxing dance party…
HansonWith Jarrod Gorbel Revolution LiveSaturday, November 6, 2010Better than: Watching a boy band with choreographed dance moves.Surely you remember those three cute boys from the ’90s who used to provide a serious gender fake-out and their earworm “MMMbop.” Yes, they’re still around…
Just the thought of the Beach Boys brings back childhood memories of sitting in the sun and mentally mapping out the exact location of “Kokomo” (Is it near the Keys? Aruba? Jamaica?). Their songs remind us of simpler times when fun, fun, fun was all that mattered — and we’re…
Levon HelmWith Ray LaMontagnePompano Beach Amphitheater, Pompano BeachThursday, November 4, 2010Better than: A dry seat at a lousy show.Hours of pre-show rain assured that there wouldn’t be a dry booty in the crowd Thursday, but nobody seemed to be complaining about their soggy seat as they took in a stellar…
Looking at the 31-year-old Swedish musician now, it would be hard to imagine that Robyn is cut from the same cloth as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera — minus working for the Mouse. She got her break on the U.S. charts in 1997, thanks to fellow countryman and überproducer Max…
Scott H. Biram and Charlie Pickett might make for an odd couple, but they’re a riveting double bill. For his part, Biram is a rowdy roots rocker, a guy who packs an insurgent attitude and a venomous sneer. His latest album on Bloodshot Records, Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever, offers ample evidence…
Never Shout Never’s music is simple, purposeful, and short. Many of Christofer Drew’s tunes, concentrated on a handful of EPs and the 20-minute mini-album What Is Love?, clock in at two and a half minutes — for an internet attention span. “I think it’s easier for kids to concentrate that…
For a way-too-long moment in the mid-’00s, too many hardcore-offshoot bands boasted names about days/months/seasons or some form of the verb “to die.” The music too was a similarly broad, indistinguishable mishmash of screaming alternating with singing alternating with breakdowns and back again. Buffalo-based lifers Every Time I Die were…
South Carolina-born Zach Deputy, AKA the human amplifier of soul, croons his way down to South Florida to share his one-man show with curious new ears and enthused followers. At the Bamboo Stage at Boca’s Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery, his looped-out, beat-boxing dance party will take multitasking to unimaginable…
