If you’re a musician and a stranger listens to your music at a performance, then walks away feeling moved in some way, the gig was worthwhile. Last Thursday a bearded, homeless man wearing a backpack stopped along Hollywood Boulevard to listen to the comforting sounds of Peter Betan and Marc…
The Headhunters Return of the Headhunters! (Verve) Herbie Hancock turned the jazz world on its ear in 1973 when he recorded Headhunters, an album that combined jazz and funk with the then-outlandish sounds of the synthesizer, an instrument with which Hancock had never before recorded. Headhunters became the best-selling jazz…
Cherry Poppin’ Daddies vocalist Steve Perry — not to be confused with the Journey frontman of the same name — just got off the stage. As part of the punk- and ska-flavored Warped Tour, his band finished performing at the Utah State Fairpark in Salt Lake City minutes ago, and…
Describing music as “something that I need to do to survive,” and comparing its significance to such vital functions as breathing and eating, vocalist-guitarist Rene Alvarez of the Miami-based trio Sixo isn’t ashamed to wear his heart on his sleeve. On wait and see, the group’s third CD in as…
A woman with shoulder-length blond hair and a blue-and-white striped sundress is setting up a PA system in Mulvaney’s Irish Pub in West Palm Beach. She could easily pass for a local college student, one of the many preppies who cruise Clematis Street, where Mulvaney’s is located. But when a…
“Ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-da-da-la-boom-ba,” jazz vocalist Julie Davis cooed in my ear as her husband, guitarist Kelly Dow, watched from a nearby couch. Perhaps I should explain: This impromptu performance was delivered over the phone after I asked Davis to compare herself to her childhood inspirations, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. “Gosh,…
Marc Ribot Marc Ribot y los Cubanos Postizos (Atlantic) The resume of guitarist Marc Ribot is chock full of impeccably hip credentials. Not MTV hip, but rather second-tier hip, a land where rock isn’t simply on the cutting edge but has rounded the corner into avant-jazz and neoblues and droll…
The Pernice Brothers Overcome by Happiness (Sub Pop) Back in the mid-’90s, singer-songwriter Joe Pernice and the Scud Mountain Boys created a kind of minimalist altcountry infused with staggering, unwavering melancholy. Their three albums were littered with alcoholics, drug addicts, suicide victims, and losers in love and romance, with Pernice’s…
Just about every rock band worth its guitar picks started off as a garage band, a gang of skinny, hormone-driven geeks who were able to finagle the use of somebody’s parents’ garage, where they’d play on weekends, annoying the shit out of the neighbors with off-tempo drumming, out-of-tune guitars, and…
Although three of the four members of the North Miami Beach-based rock quartet Atomic Tangerine can’t vote yet, or legally buy cigarettes or Lotto tickets, you can check the “baby face” comments and Hanson comparisons at the door. These guys can rock with the best of the local veterans. Seventeen-year-olds…
Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (Merge) Neutral Milk Hotel may make the world once again safe for altrock. In a subgenre that’s glutted with formulaic grabs for the gold — catchy guitar riffs, slack attitudes, irony-laced samples — the Athens-based band is something of an anomaly…
The unrelenting glare of the hottest June on record pours through the clubhouse door framing the cloudless blue sky. It’s still only morning, yet the temperature outside is nearly 90 degrees. So it’s with irony that the somewhat unruly 19-piece big band crowding the stage offers the opening bars of…
One minute, vocalist-guitarist Gary King is singing and strumming the kind of smooth grooves perfect for lovemaking. The next, he’s expressing his funky, gritty side, a la the “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown. Overall, King’s repertoire is a seamless, soulful fusion of R&B, jazz, rock, and funk — a celebrated…
Does anybody remember the good ol’ days, when MTV videos were filled with lingerie-clad women driving sleek sports cars and hanging out with skinny, long-haired rockers? Bangtoy 69 sure does. Heavily influenced by ’80s metal, the hard-rocking Hollywood foursome — vocalist Marcus Fraunce, bassist Rey Rey, drummer T.J. Storm, and…
Jim Lauderdale Whisper (BNA/BMG) After bouncing from Reprise to Atlantic to the Nashville indie Upstart, neocountry master Jim Lauderdale is back on a major label with an album that neatly summarizes the singer-songwriter’s brilliant, if commercially underwhelming, career. Whisper strikes a balance between the vibrant honky-tonk of his 1991 debut,…
Where Kevin Millard’s right hand should be is something that resembles a seal with a guitar pick in its mouth. It is, in fact, the stub of his right forearm covered with four white tube socks and black electrical tape. Attached to the tape is an oversize pick fashioned from…
Dwight Yoakam A Long Way Home (Reprise) Right in the middle of his fancy acting work in Sling Blade and The Newton Boys, Dwight Yoakam releases an album that reminds us what classic country music is really all about: dumping someone, getting dumped by someone, feeling like crud. In A…
The Cuban saxophonist with the trim, salt-and-pepper beard announces from the stage at O’Hara’s on a recent Monday night that he is going to serenade his young wife. “I have played many arrangements of this song, but I’m going to play it for my wife, Ana Maria, tonight because I…
Where else but Boca Raton’s Surf Cafe would you expect to find the funk-rock trio Camel Toe this Thursday night? “Surf This” — a standout single on their self-titled debut CD — is a two-and-a-half minute, surf-inspired romp that has J.P. Ferris’ guitar echoing Dick Dale in his prime, Doug…
With so many local venues showcasing the jump-swing-blues sound — everyone from O’Hara’s Pub and Jazz Cafe in Fort Lauderdale to Cafe Tu Tu Tango in Coconut Grove — how is an uninformed patron supposed to know what’s worth checking out? “We’re unique because we do covers of songs that…
Arranca is Spanish for “uproot” or “tear out.” It’s also the name of a new South Florida band that tackles Cuban music — and politics — with the energy of old-school punk rock. The band’s frontman and songwriter, Victor Garcia-Rivera, was arrancado from his Cuban homeland at the age of…
Sonic Youth A Thousand Leaves (DGC) Unlike any other album Sonic Youth has released in the last decade, A Thousand Leaves has met with surprisingly harsh criticism. What critics once saw as modernist lyrics, revelatory guitar tunings, and meaningful clouds of feedback have now been redefined as obtuse poetry, meandering…
