Sax player Eric Allison, looking casual yet distinguished in a black jacket, a light-gray collarless shirt with the top button opened, and dark gray slacks, is in a good mood. Heading toward an outdoor table for a pre-gig meal at Sterling Worth Cafe in Plantation, where he is scheduled to…
Various Artists Caribbean Island Music (Nonesuch) Various Artists The Real Bahamas (Nonesuch) The remarkable source recordings on Caribbean Island Music, as raw as unrefined sugar cane and just as sweet, are spontaneous performances recorded throughout the Caribbean at street carnivals, parades, religious ceremonies, and informal jams. The release features eighteen…
Ani DiFranco Little Plastic Castle (Righteous Babe) Spice who? The real story behind girl power is Ani DiFranco, the singer-songwriter from Buffalo who has just released her tenth album. Though she’s sold more than a million discs, DiFranco has remained true to her independent roots, refusing to leave the label…
If you saw Jimmy Buffett’s musical, Don’t Stop the Carnival, at the Coconut Grove Playhouse last spring, they were the pit band. The Miami-based Iko-Iko have also popped up on Hollywood soundtracks: They recorded “Purple People Eater” (along with Buffett) for Robert Zemekis’ Contact and “Don’t Mess with the Voodoo”…
Big Chief Pony Dancer is bellowing into his microphone like a man possessed. He’s quite a sight on this Saturday night: a burly, curly-haired prankster decked out in a rainbow coalition of beads. To make room for a pair of headphones, he’s removed the oversize and remarkably ornate party hat…
You’re a local band looking for gigs, trying to sell records, and generally taking advantage of every opportunity to be seen and heard. You’ve taped fliers to telephone poles, offered your CD to various record stores, and called every club in town. There’s certainly no substitution for hard work, but…
A little less than a year ago, I was nose-deep in Kerouac’s Some of the Dharma at the Borders Books in Coral Springs when I heard someone playing a flute. A few minutes later, I also heard a synthesizer, and, as if hypnotized, I exited the “Literature” section and moved…
Like David Sanborn or Michael Brecker, Clarence Clemons has played the saxophone for so long and for so many recording artists that his sound has become instantly recognizable. It’s a bit like a favorite pair of jeans: durable, comfortable, well-worn at the edges. Clemons has played with Aretha Franklin, Alvin…
It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, but not everyone is convinced that electronica is worth paying money to hear live. When the British rave band Orbital headlined Lollapalooza in several cities last year, its concerts featured video screens, smoke machines, strobe lights, one giant disco…
Taja Sevelle Toys of Vanity (550 Music) It’s been nearly a decade since The Guy They Used To Call Prince gave Taja Sevelle a record deal. Rather than attending college, the young Minneapolis native moved to Los Angeles, released a self-titled debut, and suffered the misfortune of having her single,…
Rock ‘n’ roll belongs to the young, but in the jazz world, it’s the elders who are revered. With 55 years of recording experience and a reputation as one of the highest authorities on jazz music, the 76-year-old pianist Dr. Billy Taylor certainly deserves his props. Taylor has been an…
Pearl Jam Yield (Epic) Eddie Vedder has always been a better star than an artist, and don’t let any critic who slept through Ten (1991) and raved about No Code (1996) tell you otherwise. He’s best at grand gestures, such as belting out “Alive” or vowing to bring Ticketmaster to…
Remember when indie rock was totally cool? The place to be was Austin, Texas — make that Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which was even cooler. All anyone cared about was the Archers of Loaf, whether Unrest was going to tour again, and what Kim Gordon was up to. Major labels…
For the past two years, Hal Hollander and his country-rock group Kickback have been playing cover tunes six nights a week at venues such as the Hut and Bimini Bay up in North Palm Beach. But somehow Hollander found the time to write and record Strung Out, a CD of…
When the West Palm Beach trio Friction Farm performed for the first time, in the Downtowner Saloon in Fort Lauderdale in December 1996, nobody knew where they’d come from or what kind of sound the thrifty-looking outsiders would produce. But as the gig got underway, the laid-back members of the…
The last time East Indian music was “hip,” four white English lads were directly responsible. The Beatles popularized the sounds of the sitar and the tabla drum in songs such as “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Within You Without You.” As a result an entire…
Instead of watching oversexed Melrose Place characters sleeping around every Monday night, a better way to charge up the libido is to listen to Valerie Tyson’s sultry R&B song stylings at Mango’s in Fort Lauderdale. I went to check out the award-winning singer on a recent Monday night, and she…
Noel Gallagher is sitting in the back of a van, speeding through Fairfax, Virginia, the second stop on the American leg of Oasis’ 1998 world tour. The songwriter for one of the most popular bands in the world is almost impossible to understand: His guttural accent, thick as a bowl…
Linda Smith Preference: Selected Songs, 19871991 (Harriet) Spare, honest, perceptive, and passionate in a peculiarly subdued way, singer-songwriter Linda Smith’s deceptively simple songs seem to have been beamed in from a parallel universe. No fake earnestness. No calculatedly naive idealism. No artifice whatsoever. These nineteen tracks, recorded at Smith’s Baltimore…
The first thing we did in the back room of Desperado’s last Thursday was to obey the instructions of our fun-loving emcee: “All right, everybody’s got to hold up their beers and say, ‘God bless America for sensuous mechanical-bull riding!'” Who was the first bar-owner to eye his bucking, pumping…
Some of Rick Miller’s first sexual fantasies came to him while assembling mobile homes in his dad’s factory in Henderson, North Carolina. A group of cleaning women worked in the factory, and one particularly piqued Miller’s pubescent fancy. “She was about 45 years old,” Miller recalls fondly, “and she wore…
Various Artists Star Rise (Real World) In 1990 Michael Brook, a New-Age guitarist and producer, collaborated with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani singer of Sufi devotional hymns, to create the album Mustt Mustt, an early example of ancient-meets-ambient hybridism. Khan was already a major celebrity in many Eastern countries…
