I Am Spoonbender’s newest release is one step further out into a mystic world of its own creation, wherein future, past, and present collide amid the flashing neon lights of the anarchist disco. Each track is painstakingly detailed in the colors and sounds of communication-obsessed ’80s pop, and while the…
Some good records came out last year, nationally and regionally, by gum. They sure did. So we polled a bunch of local music lovers and compiled lists of their favorites. Some said they didn’t listen to much new music; others said they didn’t buy in albums in 2002, and some…
Arranged in a semicircular bouquet of white gloves and tuxedos, 14 “gentlemen songsters” from Yale decorate the table of American culture with a cappella harmony almost a century in bloom. For the past 94 years, the Whiffenpoofs have passed on a musical tradition that includes classic ballads, jazz standards, and…
Once upon a time way back in the early 1990s, a clan called Wu-Tang formed, with GZA “at the head.” Two years after its seminal 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang, the Clan issued its twin classics: Method Man’s Tical and GZA’s Liquid Swords. Each album placed urban and kung-fu mythology…
I’m into poetry. I wrote a few lines. Don’t worry; I offer just a few. This one details the passing of time: “The past is thirsty, and the present is an athlete with no feet.” Do you like it? How about this one? “In the branch of hell, there are…
From the mighty blast of reverb that opens “Satisfy My Mind,” the first song on Dual Mono, it’s evident that Cincinnati garage kings the Greenhornes are serious about the degree of “authenticity” with which they re-evoke those precious ’60s sounds. But it’s their aggressive blend of “authenticity” mixed with raw…
Be warned, America: Fashionable guys in skinny ties are once again running amok in the musical landscape. “I wish I had an explanation for it,” shrugs mop-topped Steve Bays. In just three years of existence, the Hot Hot Heat frontman/pianist and his bandmates have transformed from obscure British Columbian synth-punkers…
Cheap Trick’s late-1970s heyday seems ancient history now, but the band never went away. Although nothing has come close to the success of Live at Budokan — which inspired the term “big in Japan” — the band’s largely ignored output from the ’80s and especially the ’90s remained consistently strong…
In these post-everything times, good camp is hard to find. Nothing undercuts mockery quite like objects of derision that winkingly acknowledge the cheesiness of their work, or worse, seem to have created their work for the sole purpose of inciting listener animosity. That’s why Blind Guardian and Symphony X are…
When one man gets so many people to move, he has to be considered a leader of some kind. Ministry of Sound favorite Paul van Dyk, a German producer, remixer, and DJ, must therefore be one of the biggest leaders in the electronic sound market. Bringing traditional song structure to…
Almost in time for Christmas, it’s Local CD Roundup time! The good-hearted souls from Fourth Dimension (fourthdimension@hotmail.com) — Fort Lauderdale’s competent if not convincing reggae act — can often be found performing at Tarpon Bend downtown. On their recent disc Around the World, Steve, Carlos, Pierre, and Ilich praise Jah…
In their decade-plus as one of hip-hop’s most consistently brilliant outfits, Philadelphia’s Roots have received far too much attention for being (gasp!) an actual band and far too little for the fact that they’re a really damn good band. And now, with Phrenology, Illadelph’s finest stake a claim as much,…
Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez are two-of-a-kind polar opposites. Marketed as bronze bombshells, they’ve crossed freely between black and white pop realms like few other stars. Their bastardized African-American music has been partly legitimized, perhaps, by their multiracial status (Carey is a bit of everything; Lopez is pure Puerto Rican,…
Nearly 25 years ago, Gilberto Gil hit big in Brazil with a Portuguese version of Bob Marley’s anthem “No Woman No Cry.” Now the Brazilian legend pays tribute to the Jamaican legend once again, this time with an entire album honoring the king of reggae. In Brazil, Marley and reggae…
Ever since Tommy Iommi invented doom rock, drugged-out bands all over the world have done their best to outsludge one another. Outfits like Godflesh, Eyehategod, and Sleep ruled the ’90s doom scene with drop-tuned guitars, shrieked vocals, and plodding tempos, leaving burnouts, metalheads, and ex-punkers drooling happily in their wake…
Fifteen years ago in West Palm Beach, music and people were joined in a union that has lasted longer than the average broken marriage in this country (11 years, in case you’re curious). Respectable Street Cafe, one of the best venues in which to catch live independent musicians in South…
Nearly three decades after roots reggae bubbled out of a handful of recording laboratories in Kingston, Jamaica, and spilled onto the world’s airwaves, only a few of the original practitioners can still command a stage. There’s Winston Rodney of Burning Spear; Neville “Bunny Wailer” Livingston, the last of the original…
By all rights, downtown Hollywood should be Broward County’s best bet for weekend fun. By the time the county gets to building its long-promised greenbelts and bike paths, the city’s urban renaissance should be in full swing. Helping fight the good fight is the City Link Music Festival, which moved…
It’s been a great year for reissues. The resurgence of interest in overlooked post-punk classics has led to the rerelease of Cabaret Voltaire’s entire back catalog as well as label Soul Jazz’s In the Beginning There Was Rhythm, a collection of seminal recordings from such early ’80s artists as the…
It’s 2012. The Democrats have regained control of Congress, nascent life forms have been discovered on the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy, and the pop charts are dominated by scraggly, European quartets whose ten-minute songs are the least odd thing about them. Surely, the future is strange only in our…
The new TLC record feels less icky to me than the last Who tour, but I’m not sure why. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey explained their quick return to the road in July with a well-paid session guy in John Entwistle’s place as a tribute to the enduring spirit of…
On a grassy patch outside his Hoffman Gardens public housing project in early-1980s Hialeah, teenager Ricardo Fernandez spent hours practicing break-dancing moves. Little did he know he’d work over the next two decades to keep the form alive. The Havana-born Fernandez — a.k.a. Speedy Legs — came to South Florida…
