Now that Robert Randolph and the Family Band have paved the way for the lap steel guitar to churchify pop music, we’re seeing a new interest in the origins and current purveyors of sacred steel. Florida, as it turns out, played a crucial part in the origins of the soulful…
It was a scene straight out of an ’80s hair-band video. Stacey — an attractive, sophisticated-looking girl with glasses and tied-back hair — seemed oddly out of place amid the bar full of tattooed arms, loose tongues, and loud mouths. This was a Southern Flaw/Trapped by Mormons show, after all…
There was a time when jet-black locks and an otherworldly gaze were not greeted with a prescription for Zoloft. Ten years ago, Fort Lauderdale culture meant something a little more profound than the Princess Diana exhibit at the Museum of Art. On Saturday, January 29, local DJs Danny Bled and…
The drums whiz who keeps the undulating pulse in the Steve Kimock Band, Rodney Holmes reveals his primary inspiration isn’t a musician at all. “Bruce Lee used to talk about martial artists never being tense but always being ready, knowing when to expand when others contract and to contract when…
In recent years, James Murphy has undeniably helped direct the hipster strata of New York music. DFA, the label that he produces with partner Tim Goldsworthy, is the Neptunes of indieland, lending guidance and technical savvy to a who’s who of exploratory bands, from the Rapture to Black Dice to…
Irony alert: In 1972, 17-year-old Miami singer Betty Wright set fire to the R&B and pop charts (peaking at two and six, respectively) with her swaggering slice of cautionary funk, “Clean Up Woman.” Fast forward to 2003: Ms. Wright — after TV talk show hosting and singing backup for David…
Before the Streets pushed things forward, before Dizzee Rascal fixed up and looked sharp, Rodney Smith — a.k.a. Roots Manuva — set the tone of future-funking UK hip-hop. Back in early ’99, Roots dropped the digitized, high-stepping Brand New Second Hand, double-dipping as innovative producer and basso profundo MC. That…
Forget the fact that we reside at sea level and the beat of our streets has more to do with bongos than banjos. While the Yonder Mountain String Band’s down-home sound may seem out of step with our urban environs, there’s a definite exhilaration that results when this Colorado quartet…
“Welcome to Mu world, bitch! Especially all the haters — I’m about to kung fu you!” Not the warmest welcome from Sheffield, England-based techno punk mutineers, Mu. Comprised of house honcho Maurice Fulton and his performance artist wife, Mutsumi Kanamori, Mu is not so much a band as it is…
Highlighted hair, high-end couture, and meticulous makeup jobs were the aesthetic components of the New Romantics, and nobody exemplified this preen ‘n’ dance better than Duran Duran. Icons of the ’80s new wave scene, the polished Brits pierced a hole through the collective psyches with hits like “Planet Earth,” “Rio,”…
It might not sport as many notches on its silver-spiked belt, but this year’s Zippo Hot Tour had something the Vans Warped Tour didn’t: local draw. Fort Lauderdale’s Trendkill battled seven local bands in venues across Broward and Palm Beach, eventually beating out other hard rockers like Higher Zenith and…
After enduring enough anguish to haunt several lifetimes — the deaths of his brother and a band mate, battles with booze and drugs, and two marriages to Cher (commemorated via the aptly-titled Two The Hard Way) — Gregg Allman survives and thrives 35 years after he and the Allman Brothers…
Let’s be honest. Outsiders have never considered Florida a bastion of electronic music. Sure, we can flaunt Orlando’s breakbeats and, to a lesser degree, the monotonous trance of South Beach. But through the years the Sunshine State’s scene has really maintained respect due to the work of AK1200. Even amid…
After a decade as a rock-anthem-spewing locomotive, Fort Lauderdale’s Crease has nearly arrived at a cohesive, big time-ready persona. The four-piece puts on a serious game face to attack Only Human, its second full-length; this is a band that’s seen the wet end of the music industry stick, having been…
Don’t be fooled by the slick duds and white stretch limo. Urban Mystic, the Fort Lauderdale native rising fast on the national R&B scene, hasn’t let success go to his 19-year-old head just yet. “I try to keep it straight, let the homies know I’m from the ‘hood,” he says,…
You may think you don’t like ska. In fact, you may be 100 percent certain of it, but that’s no reason to dismiss the Toasters. Yes, the band has been ska’s undisputed American flagship act for upward of 20 years, but that doesn’t mean much to the nonaficionado who isn’t…
I have a new thing,” Pee Wee Ellis, the legendary sax man and bandleader of James Brown’s JBs for much of the ’60s, rasps over the phone from his home in England, where he works with fellow legends like Van Morrison and Oumou Sangare. “It’s called ‘smunk,'” he says. “It’s…
It’s ironic that the latest Shady/Aftermath product rollout is titled The Documentary. With its stylized violence and all-American appeal, the consortium bears a closer resemblance to the latest Jerry Bruckheimer vehicle than it does to an Errol Morris film. There’s even a certain formula: Pluck the latest at-risk superstar from…
Though 2002’s Come with Us had the brothers Chemical stirring all their past ingredients in one pot, the promise far exceeded its result. With last year’s greatest-hits package providing a welcome breather for the techno innovators, it seemed a back-to-basics record was in order. But Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons…
Does this ring a bell? A small-town band with a three-letter name attains cult status by issuing a string of entrancing albums full of cryptic jangle and mumbling majesty. Bored, the group eventually starts to tinker with the very formula that put it on the indie-rock map. Yes, Low has…
From break beats to broken beat, Brazilian Girls specialize in a sort of musical globalization and amalgamated planet rock. Imagine being trapped inside a French film: First you’re riding in a horse and carriage on a cobblestone street; then you pass a subway corner where b-boys are break dancing. Nearby,…
While roots rock is thriving, one doesn’t hear similar tales regarding the roots of jazz. Some older styles of jazz coexist, even blossom, alongside contemporary — bebop, swing, soul-jazz — but the music’s New Orleans origins are often overlooked or written off. Truth is, the real stuff — Luis Russell,…
