The improvement in home-recording technology has caused an explosion of material from bedroom auteurs. But a not-so-funny thing often happens on the way to the iBook: Many performers spend so much time polishing their sonic rocket that their finished products sound slick and lifeless, thereby reducing the initial spark of...
On Damien Jurado's first two albums, Waters Ave. S and Rehearsals for Departure, he liberally blended an almost sprightly pop with a masterfully controlled melancholy, resulting in works of great creative tension. For his next record, 2000's Ghost of David, Jurado gave in to the dark side, fashioning a quiet,...
And fishing Horan from the drink: On April 25, New Times printed a letter from Mickey Baker chastizing columnist Bob Norman for a biased column and Mike Horan, the subject of Norman's column, for being a sore loser in a lawsuit. I am a 25-year resident of Pompano, a lawyer,...
Sheriff Ed Bieluch is decked out in full regalia: green uniform topcoat, slacks adorned with an ankle-to-hip gold stripe, white gloves, and a neck scarf. His hat, broad-brimmed and straight, covers most of his short, white hair. Aviator sunglasses obscure his eyes. As he stands before a throng gathered June...
At first glance, you wouldn't think there's much in common between the ragtag Mad Cat Theatre Company in dirty downtown Miami and the stylish Dreamers Theatre in restaurant-infested Coral Gables. Mad Cat goes for in-your-face gonzo drama and aims for a pierced, punk crowd, while Dreamers opts for more elegant,...
Two older couples -- fairly typical South Floridians -- were making their way through "Richard Pousette-Dart: The Living Edge" at the Boca Raton Museum of Art on a recent Sunday afternoon. As they paused before a wall of several gleefully messy abstracts from the 1940s, when Pousette-Dart was deeply immersed...
What a difference a week makes. In the last issue of New Times, Florida Stage in Manalapan was lauded as the Best Theater in South Florida. Now along comes its final show of the season, Women Who Steal, which is, to be blunt, the worst show of the stage's season...
On dry and dreary Dixie Highway, just north of downtown West Palm Beach--near Cheerful Street and Beautiful Avenue, not far from where Contentment Avenue once ran--Everee Jimerson Clarke sits in a blue, bunker-like concrete building, guarding a storehouse of memory. A broad and handsome woman of 75 years -- graceful...
Alanis Morissette's jagged little thrill has subsided. It's been seven years since her debut stormed pop airwaves and she was crowned queen of angst-in-her-pants self-martyrdom. The underperforming Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie somewhat dimmed the burnished jewels of her tiara, but not enough to knock her out of the palace. With...
A handful of cars dots the fast-food joints along University Drive in northern Davie -- so few it's almost not worth the eateries' while staying open late this oppressively muggy Saturday night in July. Miami Subs, on the other hand, is bustling. Just a quarter-mile from the I-595 ramps, it...
Early electro, the '80s rap cousin that helped spawn both synth-pop and techno, was kinda clumsy. Infectious and freaky, yes, but because of the nature of the early beatboxes, the primal stuff -- Newcleus, the Jonzun Crew, Soulsonic Force -- lumbered along with the agility of Frankenstein. Complex rhythmic momentum...
From the get-go, there has been an appealing pugnacity to the Friday the 13th horror movies. Sure, this enduring franchise was launched in 1980 as a marginally clever knockoff of Halloween and Black Christmas, but in the annals of American pop cinema, the sequels revealed a devil-may-care brattiness all their...
Normally, my jurisdiction as art critic for New Times Broward-Palm Beach extends no farther south than North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art, the inclusion of which I've managed to justify because no other South Florida museum consistently features such vital, cutting-edge art. (The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in...
My husband insists that, good or bad, I always get what I deserve. Which is why, when I got stopped at the metal detector before entering the courthouse for jury duty, he found it hysterical. Apparently, the security guards thought I had a pocketknife stashed in my purse, and I...
Three years have passed since The Phantom Menace thrilled some and infuriated others, yet the schism in the Church of Lucas remains. Die-hard supporters still refuse to admit that Episode I has some truly awful acting, dialogue, and borderline offensive caricatures; and dyed-in-the-wool detractors remain bemused, even offended, that some...
Restaurant critics are often faced with a conflict of interest: We stumble on these great, unknown, hole-in-the-wall eateries that we'd like to keep for ourselves and the few loyal customers they've already won. But such finds are too good for anonymity, so we write sterling reviews about them and publicize...
When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids' stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents' basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form...
On the day the music died for South Florida's classical fans, headaches began for one radio station's general manager. Not Mike Disney, new GM at Party 93 (WPYM-FM), the once venerable WTMI-FM (93.1) that on January 1 went and floozied itself up as a dance-music outlet to woo a younger...
At first, they approach tentatively, their pens and posters timidly extended as though afraid the two men standing beneath the blank movie screen might bite or bark them out of the theater. "No, no," insists Chris Weitz, standing next to his older brother Paul. "I'm happy to sign your poster,"...
Thirty-four years later, Carson has returned to the school to deliver a series of lectures on the power of fable and film as metaphor, and he asked Coppola, whose film was partially inspired by David Holzman, to join him. Carson--who appears in Coppola's feature debut, CQ, and who helped Roman...
Monday afternoon. Mid-April. And it's already blazing hot. In these brief hours of freedom between the last school bell and suppertime, black children in northwest Hallandale Beach hop on bikes, chase one another, throw on skates, and glide down neighborhood sidewalks. Some make the mile-long trek across busy, six-lane Hallandale...
How can I hope to make you understand Why I do what I do? -- Fiddler on the Roof Sitting in the waiting room of Helena Amram's plush Boca Raton suite, you can learn a great deal about the woman before she ever steps out of her office. The walls...
