Trendsetting celebs like Madonna and Perry Farrell are getting into it. Indie rockers like Yo La Tengo, moe., and They Might Be Giants are singing about it. The New York Times and Newsweek are writing about it. Starting December 25, more than 625,000 South Florida residents will begin celebrating it…
If DJs flock to vinyl like moths to a flame, then Tom Laroc better get used to wiping the bloody debris of other turntablists out of his grill. The man literally has thousands of records, and every Thursday, he brings upward of 2,000 of them to the Pawn Shop to…
With the year running down and school winding up, now’s the time to get some rock in you. Long-running emo/pop/punk band Good Life Cycle is at it again. After dealing with endless, almost Spinal Tapesque, drummer problems and losing its lead guitarist to South Florida’s favorite doom-metal sons, Torche, the…
Although he first landed on the scene in 1989 with his classic Frankie Knuckles collaboration “Tears,” it would be another decade before Satoshi Tomiie emerged in the national dance-floor consciousness with his critically acclaimed 2000 debut, Full Lick. That album featured the hits “Love in Traffic” and “Up in Flames”…
When asked about favorite Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa memories, most people remember the good times. You know, the stuff they write songs about to get you in the holiday spirit — deck the halls, fa la la la, and all that jazz. Now, ask a musician the same question and,…
These were called Al Kooper’s Kapusta Kristmas albums, and they now cost a fortune on eBay. Due to their limited circulation and high appeal, back in the day, most people heard them on second-, third-, and fourth-generation cassettes, and so most people just called them “Al Kooper tapes.” The Kooper…
Hardcore pop-punkers From First to Last have built a reputation for neck-vein-busting live shows, burning up this summer’s Warped Tour and more recently tearing through the mid-American states. Drummer Derek Bloom cites corn-fed crowds that are “completely out of control” — hungry for the screamo-tinged aggression of FFTL’s 2004 Epitaph…
Music fans have come to dread December. Few bands are on tour, all of the year’s good records have already been released, and the sounds of the season are inescapable. But fear not, for I bring unto you good tidings of great joy: your guide to this season’s musical offerings…
Although he took his musical apprenticeship with the legendary Junior Wells, Albert Castiglia doesn’t just cruise through the blues. A consummate showman, Castiglia peppers his performances with witty repartee, offbeat and impromptu asides, original songs, and material mined from a diverse classic-rock repertoire. The Coral Gables homeboy and fixture on…
This winter may have begun with a Bang! at Bicentennial Park, but the dance music festival season traditionally (and perhaps appropriately) always kicks off in Candyland. Held at Nocturnal this year, the annual blowout has been around for even longer than the WMCs and holds the title of Florida’s longest-running…
Why there hasn’t been an A&E Biography dedicated to Miami soul goddess Betty Wright is unfathomable. She’s been writing, singing, and recording fine R&B since the mid-1960s; collaborated with Stevie Wonder (“What Are You Gonna Do With It”); had her own talk show; sang backup for Erykah Badu, Jennifer Lopez,…
“The first thing you do when you get to Montego Bay,” Tony Kelly told me over the phone last Monday, “is get in a cab and tell the taximan to take you to Kingston instead.” Not exactly encouraging advice for me and Inside Scoop, two music junkies taking a 36-hour…
An R&B fable: Once upon a time, performers didn’t employ DJs or lip-sync on stage — there were musicians playing with them real-time live. Call us Luddites or incorrigible old-schoolers, but cuts and samples don’t convey the fiery immediacy and spontaneity of horn-blowers like Pee Wee Ellis. A lifelong member…
It has certainly been a long, strange but beneficial trip for Perpetual Groove since it began touring in the fall of 2002. Singer/guitarist Brock Butler and bassist Adam Perry met in 1998 as freshmen at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Once they added a drummer and keyboardist in…
George Clinton’s musical career began 40 years ago when he literally stepped out of the barbershop with his doo-wop outfit, the Parliaments, and scored big with the hit “(I Wanna) Testify.” Not bad for a teenager from North Carolina. Once the throbassonic mothership from planet Funkadelica landed in his brain…
Picture the following gang of hip-hop misfits: two Harlemites — one an imposing 300 pounds with a Zeus-like voice, the other cherub-faced and sporting an incongruous nasal twang — who interweave sci-fi imagery into their hyperrealist ghetto tales; a dreadlocked freestyle champ with a socialist agenda and a knack for…
Nuh-uh, Gwen Stefani, that is not your shit. At least, according to Madonna, it isn’t — the never-hard-up-for-material girl recently told USA Today that Gwen has ripped her off. “We work with a lot of the same people. She married a Brit, she’s got blond hair, and she likes fashion,”…
A number of long-in-the-tooth retro rockers are releasing Christmas CDs this season (Brian Setzer, the Rev. Horton Heat). And this wacky band of surf rockers sporting Mexican wrestling masks wasn’t going to sit there and watch the others sled by. Like Setzer and the Rev., Los Straitjackets’ shtick is pretty…
I would like to take this opportunity to personally thank the Sony Music Group for its short-lived, ill-fated foray into digital copy protection. For yea, though public outcry and class-action lawsuits have forced the Nipponese entertainment behemoth to discontinue discs preinfected with its heinous spyware, my review copy of Santana’s…
Jazzanova has made its mark on long remixes — at times, exceedingly long — for nearly a decade. The six-member German-based collective (or, as the group’s label name suggests, Kollektiv) is more geared toward interpretation than creation, and this compilation gathers four years of its favorite works, each one an…
Blessed with exotic good looks and a razor-sharp tongue, former water-polo star Sean Henriques reinvented himself as Sean Paul and became dancehall’s urban-crossover poster child — his second album, 2003’s Dutty Rock, knocked 50 Cent from the number-one slot in Billboard. Such success may have gone to his head. The…
That opening count-off on the high hat, followed by that vicious ripping-into by the rest of the band, makes Miami’s Hellhounds reminiscent of second-wave hardcore British punk acts like the Varukers and Disorder, but the comparison ends there. This well-executed version of American hardcore keeps the rhythm section on a…
