When Cezar Santana arrives, acoustic guitar in hand, at Gil’s Café on 71st Street near Collins Avenue, he expects the unexpected. He’d received a call from his friend Gil Santos, inviting him to take a turn at the new café Santos was about to open in NoBe, the increasingly South…
I don’t want to be known as Cancer Boy for the rest of my life,” sighs Eric Alexandrakis. “You know, “That musical cancer guy.’ But it is a marketable thing.” Alexandrakis, a Miami-based multi-instrumentalist who produces homemade pop songs in relative isolation, doesn’t make his bouts with Hodgkin’s disease the…
On October 15, 2001, Derrick Morgan was awarded the Order of Distinction from the Jamaican government for his enormous contribution to the distinct culture of the island. “I’m so humbled that my country really recognized me and give me this honor before I’m dead, because many people get this honor…
In the freezing pressroom, a husky man in his early forties shivers in shorts and a T-shirt and eyes the sandwiches set out on the table for whoever has a hankering. He rubs his arms, shakes his legs, and takes a deep breath before talking about his latest release, En…
In his tiny bedroom at the top of the steep, white-tiled stairs of his family’s modest South Miami-Dade townhouse, Richard Rippe strikes a blow against everything that is wrong with the music industry. The 24-year-old’s Afro-topped, six-foot-three frame is folded over his Apple PowerBook, his long fingers gently brushing the…
Matthew Sabatella is back to music-making after his self-imposed three-years-plus immersion in cyberspace. Putting his own music career in mothballs, Sabatella set up the online music company SlipstreamPresents.com in early 1998. This week he’s finally found the time to release a followup to his 1997 album, Where the Hell Am…
In the recording industry, a picture can be worth more than a thousand words. For Puerto Rican model-turned-singer Shalim, a picture in the hands of Emilio Estefan, Jr., was worth a recording contract. The son of singer and comedian Charytin and television producer Elin Ortiz has been in front of…
Punk/ska/reggae band The Monjees is currently at work at the University of Miami studio recording what will be its first album, due out early next year. Singer Paul Orehovec and his fellow Monjees — Andrew Stoch (trombone, keyboards), Aaron Seiden (bass), Jason May (drums), and Harry Gamez (guitar) — together…
Omar Gonzalez speeds down the highway in a burgundy minivan to a gig at the Marlin Hotel. “I hope this promoter doesn’t make a big deal about being late,” says the Oski Foundation frontman as he switches lanes. Heavyset and five foot eleven, the man known as Oski is calm…
A few hours before the annual Power 96 (WPOW-FM 96.5) blowout at the American Airlines Arena, DJ Eddie Mix eases down among the empty seats and adjusts his backward baseball cap. As music director for “the most listened-to station in South Florida,” Eddie lives up to his name by mixing…
Sophomore year, 1991. The darkness outside presses like ears up against the windows of a coffeehouse in the woods. I am sitting about three feet away from her as she stands at the microphone, guitar in hand and each of her fingers taped like a boxer. The strings of her…
In a flowing white tunic, the band leader takes up his mallets nimbly like a new appendage. With a subtle four count, his hands maneuver in quick jumps around the concave surface of his steel pan while the band follows with what sounds like a jazzy calypso tune. The plinky…
Heavy beats burst out of car windows across Opa-locka as Trinidadian-American pirate radio DJ Gisselle “the Wassie One” Blanche blasts the latest hip-hop-flavored release from soca queen Alison Hinds. Inside a tidy house on the city’s north side, the big bass of Mixx 96 FM gives way to the tickling…
The four guys lunching at the Beach all look the same, but one lets it be known who the boss is. “I am,” says Cuban-born A.T. Molina, his face hidden behind translucent glasses and a hat, hip-hop style. In the bustling restaurant, people talk and nosh noisily while Molina –…
As spinoffs go, Tom Tom Club came with a remarkable schematic for success. Jettisoning the intellectual elitism that had a grip on their full-time group, Talking Heads, drummer Chris Frantz and his wife, bassist Tina Weymouth, founded their side project on the premise of funky, beachcombing fun. It worked, too:…
Yeah, mate, think I’ve had enough of this heat,” says Dave Ralph without preamble as he strolls into a South Beach coffee shop on a recent summer evening. Wearing sandals, days-old facial scruff, and a white T-shirt depicting the Berlin airlift, the DJ announces that by the time this article…
Yat-Kha’s end-of-the-century Delai Beldiri was a glorious freak show that counterpoised stone-age shamanic Siberian throat singing with Sixties-era rock-combo amplification. No matter how many times I played it, the album never ceased to startle me. But its successor, Aldyn Dashka, is so well crafted, so heady with one good song…
The North Miami Beach offices of Starline Communications look more like a guy’s dorm room than the headquarters of an up-and-coming media enterprise. Posters of Eve, Piccolo, and Eminem smother the wooden panels of the dimly lit four-room suite where hip-hop personalities hang and Jesse Coleman and Danny Compodonico –…
To see it from Birdman’s eye view, the sparse crowd for his Friday-night set recently at Churchill’s might signal a lack of appreciation for the veteran rocker’s special brand of music, a sort of southern Florida culture on the skids. But maybe it was just the shitty weather. Either way…
When singer-songwriter Fred Neil passed away at his Key West home at the age of 64 last July 5, a fabled part of Miami history died with him. In the eyes of American hipsters of the Sixties, Neil embodied Coconut Grove at a time when the city had a major…
Squirming in lawn chairs beneath the afternoon sun and listening patiently to loudspeakers blaring Gloria Estefan’s greatest hits, jazz fans at Bayfront Park watched a stage crew move equipment and tweak microphones for 45 minutes. Sweaty and polite, the crowd represented just the multiethnic mix Music Fest Miami, an event…
He may be from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but few DJs have become more synonymous with Miami than David Padilla. His seasoned sound has been the driving force behind not only his lengthy South Beach residency runs but also the ReMix Party, a roving bash now in its fourth month…
