Music

Miles Davis’s electric period — roughly from 1969 until 1975 and then from 1981 to his death in 1991 — hasn’t received the kindest treatment from the jazz cognoscenti. Ken Burns’s lavish PBS documentary Jazz roundly dismissed Miles’s later years, while Wynton Marsalis and others have criticized Davis’s electric music…

All Hallow’s Eve isn’t exactly a Clubbed family tradition. Mom wasn’t the Grinch who stole it or anything, but as kids we never had much holiday spirit. “You ain’t gonna be puttin’ on no mask and runnin’ ’round like a fool. That’s for Satan,” she’d say. “Trick me and I’ll…

The invitation to Select magazine’s launch party the other week read: “Pronouncements of the end of Miami Beach are nothing new.” Not greatly exaggerated, mind you, just not new. Hoping this is just the first of all the season’s parties, hoteliers Eric Gabriel and Caroline Carrara (Aqua and Hotel Leon)…

Snipers, impending war, and an economy that still has indigestion from eating dot-coms. But to listen to penthouse rappers like Busta Rhymes and P. Diddy telling us to “Pass the Courvoisier,” you’d think everyone is safe, rich, and happy, just like Diddy himself, “P. D-I-D-D-Y” in case you couldn’t spell…

Showtime at Mango’s on Ocean Drive. A few moments before six on a Thursday evening, the reggae band once known as Innasense is milling about the postage-stamp stage — checking gear, tweaking instruments, scanning the small happy-hour crowd for babes. 4:20 singer/keyboardist Jimi Dred sits on the side of the…

Enrique Iglesias has always been proud of the fact that his dad never spoiled him as a kid, and that Pops never helped him in his singing career. True, but that says more about Julio’s genius than Enrique’s self-reliance — however insufferable Enrique’s music is, you can’t blame Julio for…

Let’s see, there is Nikki Beach, Anthem at crobar, Enjoy at Tantra. Then again, there’s a slice of good ol’ American tradition: football! Admittedly Clubbed isn’t much of a football fan, but c’mon, the home team is doing so well at this early juncture in the season. You just gotta…

Simón Bolívar’s dream of a unified Latin American republic died hacking and wheezing in Colombia in 1830. Che Guevara’s vision of a Latin American revolution took a bullet in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967. Tonight’s attempt by MTV to rally the region around a music video awards show –…

In the end, it may have taken Carlos Freaking Santana himself to put an end to Latin rock’s favorite sport: Maná bashing. For eleven years, the Guadalajara-based band has been among the genre’s biggest punching bags, derided as fresas (“strawberries” or softies) who make crappy music for preppy kids who…

There are a couple of things stopping U.S. audiences from realizing that World Outside My Window, the debut album from soul singer Glenn Lewis, is one of the more brilliant, satisfying R&B albums of the past year. For starters, Lewis hails from Toronto. When you think of the future of…

If Beenie Man weren’t still smashing it on the ragga circuit, as he has been for nearly a decade, his crossover success in U.S. markets might taint his street cred. But instead, his lyrical skills and charisma just translate, making him a pioneer in bridging the long-puzzling disconnect between Jamaican…

Metro Area transports listeners into an alternate universe, where the lush sounds of Salsoul and Prelude were never overpowered by the harder sounds of hip-hop and breakbeat. Instead, it picks up where Prince and Paul Simpson left off in the mid-Eighties, crafting modern disco, with just enough modern flair to…

Call him precocious or wise beyond his years, but Sondre Lerche is hardly your typical nineteen-year-old songwriter. While most barely legal bards are likely to bang out three-chord tunes about girls, drugs, and the burden of being perennially misunderstood, Lerche has come up with a collection of luxurious, grown-up pop…

We are movin’ on, baby. Decked out in our finest threads. No zoot suits; head wraps and kufis are the now. Cornrows replace pimp hats. Silver and onyx replace Dolemite diamonds and gold. Stones representing cultural heritage dangle on small silver links of ancient tribal significance. Tarheel jerseys and Oxfords…

When Robert Pollard was 21, halfway between Dayton high school basketball stardom and a fourth-grade teaching gig and a few years before starting his lo-fidelity beer-drinking rock band, Guided by Voices, he, his brother Jimmy, and some friends would get together. They’d descend their basement steps and spend hours banging…

“I guess you get to a point in your life when you start asking the big questions, like what does it all mean,” says Eric Knight, sitting in a Kendall Barnes & Noble, reflecting on personal turns of events that have changed his priorities. Sure, the shelves of the corporate…

Miami ska-punk stalwarts Going Nowhere are doing just that, calling it quits after five years and one CD.Thousands of bands (you’ll find at least one in any college town) have paired basic punk with ska rhythms, creating a sound no less enjoyable for its predictability; Going Nowhere was as dependable…

The Rolling Stones’ 1960s catalog has been treated with little respect over the years. Take ABKCO’s abysmal Stones CD series issued back in 1986. Some tracks were mastered on the wrong speed. Worse yet, ABKCO used the Stones’ inferior U.S. catalog as the basis of the collection, rather than the…

On their new album, Germany’s Terranova crew prove that the art of breaking beats is not an obsolete force in music. Drawing influence from the past, Terranova (now Edition Terranova) fuses the classic days of both hip-hop and drum and bass in what may well be the best breakbeat album…

With the excess of empty sugar calories fattening music listeners, Cribabi’s Volume is an example of how a little glucose in one’s diet can be a good thing. The debut of Japanese underground starlette Yukari Fujio and ex-Fine Young Cannibal guitarist Andy Cox, Volume disperses ample supplies of glitter and…