Styles come and fads go, yet thankfully, the funk always lurks, its spirit manifest in different forms and from unlikely tributaries. Believe it or not, New Orleans’ Johnny Sketch & the Dirty Notes hail from classical-music backgrounds. At Loyola U., goat- eed bandleader Johnny Sketch (a.k.a. Marc Paradis) majored in…
What started off as a “shits ‘n’ giggles in the basement” kind of band has grown into an unstoppable street punk/Oi! force to be reckoned with. The Dropkick Murphys even have a competitive hockey squad in the Boston area! So ten years, five full-lengths, and a bucketful of singles later,…
If necessity is the mother of invention, then South Florida’s lack of concert venues has given birth to some truly bizarre music-scene mashups. Local promoters have always had to improvise to make shows happen, which is why we’re now used to folk strummers at sports bars, hip-hop at Irish pubs,…
Justin Warfield is a sonic chameleon, shifting and evolving with the times since the age of 14. He was a teenaged lothario rapper who recorded the cult gem My Field Trip to Planet 9 in 1993; a frontman for various short-lived projects, from the trip-hop group One Inch Punch to…
To properly assess the import of last month’s release of The Essential Kenny G (coughoxymoron!coughcough), Outtakes put the word out that we were looking for a true-blue G lover to question. The only tip we got led us to Nelson Pierre, a 51-year-old, Haitian-born handyman from Delray Beach. What follows…
A monument stands at the center of What the Toll Tells, Two Gallants’ sophomore album, and like any dramatic reminder of a dark era passed, it inspires some serious introspection. At almost ten minutes in length, “Threnody” is exactly what its title suggests, a poetic song of lament — specifically,…
Lately, labels not known for heavy music (Drag City, Matador, and now Kemado) have been releasing albums by long-haired knuckle-draggers: Pearls and Brass, Early Man, and the Sword, respectively. And Age of Winters is a capable attempt to seize the throne of heaviosity from High on Fire and/or Mastodon. It’s…
Although he crafted beats for hip-hop’s finest (A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Pharcyde, Busta Rhymes, Common), the name J Dilla, a.k.a. Jay Dee, is still largely unknown outside of hip-hop’s cognoscenti. All that will change in ’06 — if for no other reason than Donuts was released the…
Aceyalone’s 2003 album, Love and Hate, inspired a lot of hand-wringing, as critics bemoaned the glaringly obvious gap between the MC’s slick, flowery raps and his bullshit-ass beats. It looked like he’d hit a career zenith with 1995’s All Balls Don’t Bounce (reissued in 2004) and wasn’t destined to produce…
Let me tell you something: Duwayne Burnside can flat out play guitar. The son of veteran bluesman R.L. Burnside, Duwayne grew up in Senatobia, Mississippi, playing the deep blues with his father and other heavy dudes like Albert King, B.B. King, and Bobby “Blue” Bland in and around the Hill…
Palm Beach County has Don King as its overly verbose, residentiary pugilistic promotator. Now Broward can claim its own fight night major-domo in a low-key dude known as Loki. “I have two loves,” Loki says, “hip-hop and boxing. So I wanted to bring a new twist on the MC battle.”…
Walking into the Fort Lauderdale offices of Eulogy Recordings is more like reaching an intersection than a destination. One route — past the standard plastic furniture, fax machine, and copier — leads through the typical, successful American business manned by a small, efficient staff. The other winds into the isolated…
If you’re like me, there have been a thousand nights when you’ve watched some caterwauling hack destroy a good band with bad singing and thought, “Dude, even I can sing better than that.” Hopefully, you’ve got more balls than most and would actually be willing to prove it with a…
Steve Rullman continues his run as one of the area’s most consistently creative talent scouts. Thanks to Rullman’s wandering eye and good taste, the Western Massachusetts-based Red Door Exchange is making a three-date run through South Florida this week. RDE plays the kind of smirking, intimate rock that made Sebadoh…
With their 1998 debut, the boys and girls of Nashville Pussy declared Let Them Eat Pussy. Seven years later, they’re still all about the muff. Their latest album, Get Some!, opens with the holler, “Well, all right, who wants some pussy?” The quartet’s two superhot, supercrass female members, guitarist Ruyter…
Singer Billy Corgan is alt-rock’s Barry Bonds, a star whose outspoken awareness of his own singular gifts make him unpopular and somewhat undervalued. Last year, with Bonds nursing injuries, the San Francisco Giants trotted out younger replacements who couldn’t come close to matching his performance. Similarly, with the Smashing Pumpkins…
Orlando, March 1993, some forgotten dive bar. Standing beside a small, sticker-laden Toyota are four fanzine-peddling teenagers from Palm Beach County. The reason for their three-hour sojourn: to get an interview with the evening’s headliner, NOFX, the clown princes of punk rock. At the time, Orlando was as far south…
“Oh my goodness. Oh my God.” Langhorne Slim is on his cell phone, ambling through Manhattan’s Chinatown toward Little Italy. Some noisy commotion has stopped him in his tracks. “My friend, if only you were with me right now. You would see — there’s all these Hassidic Jews, and there’s…
For the third year running, the International Noise Conference will take over South Florida. The free, three-day fest draws musicians, experimentalists, collectives, people who bang on stuff, sonic S&M fans, and other envelope-pushers from all over the country. Miami’s own Frank “Rat Bastard” Falestra, one of INC’s main instigators, has…
With delicate tunes and referential album titles like The Boy With the Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian main man Stuart Murdoch is a cult artist who has more or less birthed a scene of pop miniaturists known as twee. But Murdoch is moving ever closer to potential fans who are…
Even as it ages, Generation Hip-hop will never appreciate classical music to the same degree previous generations have. We’re myopically fixated on rhythm, so despite the bombastic, dramatic heights a 60-piece orchestra can achieve, unless there’s a bangin’ kettle drum break, we’ll probably shrug it away as lame. Fortunately, there’s…
The smoggy synths and heavy beats that permeate the music of Anticon acts Subtle and Themselves can be traced to Jel, the DJ and sampler artist who has just released his second long-player. Soft Money boasts contributions from labelmates as well as a couple of guest raps — including Poor…
