Before relocating to South Florida, I witnessed an endless procession of Cuban groups visit my then-hometown in the wake of Ry Cooder’s Buena Vista Social Club project. For a time it seemed every musician from the island who could claim an affiliation with this or any other famous Cuban act…
When Cowboy Junkies first introduced their lazy take on the blues, their somnambulistic approach earned them such nicknames as Quaalude Junkies. The band slowly (how else?) developed a sound that was part country and part languid rock, synthesizing the spirits of Lou Reed and Hank Williams. Sixteen years down the…
Anyone with even a passing interest in adult films has by now witnessed the ubiquitous Ron Jeremy grunting and sweating his way through scene after scene, with starlet after starlet, looking like a hirsute Jabba the Hutt as he displays his prodigious, um, talent. After 23 years in the business…
By brewing together the addictive rhythms of folkie reggae, old-school ska, samba, Middle Eastern wailing, and flamenco and topping it off with a potent street blend of THC and sugared caffeine, Manu Chao proves he is a true international troubadour. Culled from the boulevards and bodegas of the world’s borderlands,…
History has a funny way of tampering with the legacy of Echo and the Bunnymen. The band itself often clouded the issue of its importance with half-hearted and half-headed albums. But just as history can obscure, it can sometimes sharpen focus, and the four-disc collection Crystal Days 1979-1999 does just…
Gathered from a series of 1999 shows that featured a who’s who of contemporary pickers and twangers, this benefit album is most satisfying when performers address the theme of the concerts indirectly, if at all. A case in point is Patty Griffin’s “Mary,” which laments both the Virgin Mother’s loss…
Outlasting many of his dancehall contemporaries, Yellowman (Winston Foster) is still going strong at age 42. Promoting his humorous brand of slackness, he packs his albums with bawdy rhymes, though he has relaxed his almost militant macho pose the last few years and added songs that decry racism and discrimination…
There I was, hopped up on goofballs, crashed out in the freak room with the other layabouts, feeding Chee-tos to the ferret and watching another episode of B.J. and the Bear. But my bliss done got broked by an ill-timed phone call from one of those overearnest young suburban musician…
Chris Carrabba — the one-man acoustic emo-rock army known as Dashboard Confessional — is exhausted on this steamy February night at Orbit in Boynton Beach. He has just completed The Places You Have Come To Fear the Most, his second album in nine months. And he’s weathered a controversial switch…
Lush lasted much longer than anyone expected it to, what with the one-trick-pony nature of its guitar-driven sound. Any way you cut it, seven years was far too long a musical life span for a group that had such an incredible diminishing return on quality songs. Still, it should be…
The strange antics of Keith Thornton — the rapper alternatively known as Kool Keith, Dr. Dooom, or Dr. Octagon — began well before his pioneering work with Brooklyn’s Ultramagnetic MCs. His unpredictable, often psychotic wordplay is obviously informed by time spent in a Bellevue Hospital straitjacket. After a pair of…
Free drinks and I’m there. They were pouring ’em strong Saturday, August 11, at the Lounge on Clematis Street as we all celebrated the launch of Closer magazine, a product created by Rodney Mayo (owner of Respectable Street, Dada, and the Lounge) and Steve Rullman (impresario of TheHoneyComb.com). The glossy…
In what surely ranks as the year’s most laughable use of subliminal art, Nikka Costa’s flawed debut album is festooned with photos of a neon star. She’s a star all right: an ambitious singer-songwriter with impressive retrofunk chops, swarthy good looks, and a gospel-influenced vocal style. On Everybody Got Their…
Funk-rock women in love often run afoul of an uncomfortable truth: Grrrrs and purrs don’t mix. “It’s hard to be a girl in a rock band and to write a true love song, as opposed to an angry-love-bitch song,” admits theStart vocalist Aimee Echo. Yet on the Los Angeles band’s…
Mad props are in order for the young South Florida bands that have hooked up with some high-profile gigs this summer. First and foremost, congratulations to Coral Springs can’t-do-wrong lads New Found Glory. The sing-along punk-pop unit is still touring the country’s summer shed circuit with Blink-182, which brought the…
The world of rock ‘n’ roll perfected a ruthless form of ageism long before the practice became the bane of the rest of America’s workplaces. This rule of arthritic thumb dictates that once you’ve moved on from Clearasil to Monoxodil, you’re expected either to keep rehashing the songs from your…
Don’t look around this summer for our local little lovely lads of Stuck on Evil, featuring former Marilyn Manson guitarist Scott Putesky. After this week’s bon-voyage show at the Metal Factory, they make an enthusiastic little seven-week traipse through the verdant countryside. “Forty-four shows,” worries singer J.C. Reilly. “We’re gonna…
In 1997 Rebecca Gates became the sole Spinane when long-time musical partner Scott Plouf took the drum stool with Built to Spill — leaving Gates to craft the masterful Arches and Aisles (the band’s epitaph) alone. After Gates’s subsequent move to Chicago, she entered into a period of reflection about…
Often the best pop music requires a compromise from the listener. Bob Dylan’s coyote howl may grate like sandpaper, but tremendous rewards await any who approaches his early recordings with an open mind. And so it is with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. I balked upon first hearing Wainwright’s 1998 debut album…
Jose Flores, Corky’s southpaw singer-guitarist and Freddie Prinze Jr. look-alike, sizes up the rabid pack of 100 twentysomethings inhabiting Churchill’s in Miami’s Little Haiti on a steamy Friday night. “Tonight someone asked us what our mission was,” Flores announces. The audience lets out a deafening roar, obscuring his explanation. As…
Steve Earle has beaten so many demons (the bottle, heroin addiction, bad marriages, worse managers) that seeing him emerge as country music’s poet laureate is not at all surprising; he’s a man of conscience and truth who’s not afraid to put his neck on the line. Since cleaning up his…
Do you like change? Change is good! Some say it comes only from within. I had some in my pants pocket once. But this latest upheaval has left two of the area’s best-known alternative acts irrevocably altered. Disconnect, which boasts members from Miami and Weston, is temporarily disconnected; leader Juan…
