While we update Crossfade a bunch of times a day, the Miami New Times still features a fresh crop of music news weekly, including features that go into more depth than the usual blog post. This week, Christopher Lopez gives the run-down on Choc Quib Town, a Colombian urban fusion group playing at Kukaramakara this Friday night. Here's a bit from the feature:
Courtesy of Nacional Records Check out a feature on ChocQuibTown.
"The idea behind the group," Tostao explains, "was to put our Pacific coast on Colombia's musical panorama. You hear about the cumbia and the vallenato, but the Pacific coast region is hardly ever recognized for its music. So we wanted to put our region on the map musically."Click here to read the rest of the article.
In 2000, they formed the group with that goal in mind. It's one they continue to achieve, though the task of defining the group's sound is not exactly cut-and-dried. "We're not a salsa group," Tostao says, "or a folkloric group or a group who does funk or hip-hop. But rather we're a group that fuses those four main elements."
In another feature, Lee Zimmerman catches up with Justin Hayward, frontman for the Moody Blues, who play Bayfront Park Amphitheater this Friday. Another short excerpt:
"We had a couple of hit singles in the '80s, 'Wildest Dreams' and 'I Know You're Out There Somewhere,' and I think they brought a new core audience," he says. "And a lot of the older fans have come back. Their kids have grown up and it's OK to go to a concert again, and they're coming back to see us again... people who knew us from the '60s and '70s. In the '90s, PBS was always very good to us and we did a lot of concerts for them. A lot of people came to us through that kind of message. So it's a very mixed audience, and I hope there's something there for everybody."Click here to read the rest of the article.
After that, we've got John Hood's weekly DJ column, Head Spins. This one focuses on Top Feelin, which you can read here, in case you missed it on the blog earlier this week.
Finally, the paper's Live Wire page of short concert previews, the rundown on a few different shows: The Damon Fowler Group at Tobacco Road tonight, Off With Their Heads at Churchill's on Saturday, D.O.N.S. at B.E.D. on Tuesday, and Steel Pulse at Revolution on Wednesday.
