After almost 50 years in the spotlight, Mose Allison remains a pianist, singer, and songwriter with a dilemma. It seems the blues roots of the Tippo, Mississippi, native clash with his current jazz identification, creating something of a categorization crisis. Although Gimcracks and Gewgaws, Allison’s most recent release, beautifully exhibits…
“We are not underground or commercial: We are hip-hop.” So write the Arsonists in the liner notes to their full-length debut LP, As the World Burns. If that statement of purpose isn’t clear enough, this Brooklyn-based, five-man crew breaks down its shtick even more clearly on the track “Underground Vandal,”…
Besides the irresistible dance-floor groove of Haitian compas, another musical style that combined seemingly disparate elements such as vodou rhythms and rock guitar emerged in the ’80s as rasin (roots music). Popularized by groups like Boukman Eksperyans, Samba Yo, and later by Boukan Guinen, rasin’s lyrics addressed a wide range…
Live music may be limping ’round these parts, but at least local musicians look out for their own in times of trouble. At old rock and roll suturer Churchill’s Hideaway (5501 NE 2nd Ave., 305-757-1807) this Saturday, area bands stage the first of two benefit shows (the second is at…
The altrock movement of the early ’90s came as a welcome antidote to the slick sheen of popular music that had dominated the radio airwaves in the previous decade. After a long absence from mainstream exposure, progressive sounds began to receive the recognition and respect they had lacked for so…
In Kool Keith Thornton’s world, the traditional rap skit often takes a turn toward the disturbing, but not via hoochie-mama sex scenes or gangsta violence (to which rap fans, of course, have become accustomed and inured). No, Keith’s raps involve dramatic elements such as a quiet scene in which he…
Cuban Roots Cuban Roots Revisited (Cubop) If Cuban Roots Revisited were simply a tip of the hat to an influential Afro-Cuban recording of 30 years ago, it still would be worth the time and effort. The original Cuban Roots album, released in 1968, was enormously influential (and currently impossible to…
Cuban Roots Cuban Roots Revisited (Cubop) If Cuban Roots Revisited were simply a tip of the hat to an influential Afro-Cuban recording of 30 years ago, it still would be worth the time and effort. The original Cuban Roots album, released in 1968, was enormously influential (and currently impossible to…
Faces The Best of Faces: Good Boys … When They’re Asleep … (Warner Archives/Rhino) Respect never came easy for Faces, even during their early-Seventies heyday: Written off as a stumbling, inferior version of the Rolling Stones when they weren’t regarded as merely the back-up group for its vocalist Rod Stewart,…
Musical rebellion American style too often amounts to little more than bawdy lyrics, guitar noise, body piercings, tattoos, ambiguous sexual identity, and ultimately meaningless tussles between artists and the recording industry. Madonna manipulates images of women, and risks upsetting those who already had written her off. Pearl Jam takes on…
It’s a summer day in Brooklyn, and the dogs barking, cars passing, and a female voice speaking in the background all suggest Blondie guitarist Chris Stein is taking a stroll while talking on a cell phone. “This is good,” he exclaims. “Wow!” Stein isn’t excited to talk to a reporter…
Recognized along with Massive Attack and Portishead as one of trip-hop’s architects, Adrian Thaws, a.k.a. Tricky, has always been the most downbeat of the bunch, with each of his records filled with murky textures and beats caught between laid-back hip-hop and near-somnambulation. The music’s sensual creep was best described by…
Perhaps I’m dating myself, but the first record I ever owned was a K-TEL compilation that included hits by Rick James, the Police and, my personal favorite, “Rapture” by Blondie. In fact I listened to “Rapture” so many times that to this day, it’s still committed to memory word for…
Some music genres measure success with hit records, others with critical kudos. But in the world of bass, the sound of breaking glass can be the ultimate compliment. “A guy came up to me at a car show when he found out who I was,” recalls Neil Case, better known…
Ruben Blades’s Tiempos may surprise fans who identify the singer with the socially conscious salsa that was his trademark in the Eighties, a time when his albums served to introduce more than a few Anglos to Latin music. His introspective new release consists of fourteen interrelated tracks that, at times,…
Grady Champion is nothing if not an opportunist, in the best sense of the word. When the limelight is nearby, he’s not too shy to step right in and reap the rewards. For evidence check out the April issue of National Geographic magazine. The venerable publication’s feature on the blues…
The search to find what wasn’t there has brought him back to you. — Skip Spence, “Cripple Creek,” 1968 There are few albums in popular music as elusive as Skip Spence’s Oar. Spence made a name for himself in the ’60s as a drummer and guitarist, respectively, for the Jefferson…
Harry Connick, Jr.’s new album Come by Me features a picture of him, his hair tousled, his tie askew, his face plastered with a little Mona Lisa, and he’s doing this swinger thing with his hips. Okay, I guess you have to admit that the man is sexy (I’ve always…
For his second effort with side project Those Bastard Souls, head Grifter David Shouse assembled four of his friends and formed a proper band. The result was Debt & Departure, an album that delivers its strengths in the quieter moments befitting the melancholic title. Those Bastard Souls first formed under…
In 1995 Juan-Carlos Formell came to Miami for six weeks from New York City to perform Cuban classics with his band at Calle Ocho’s Café Nostalgia. Although the gig was successful enough, another Miami experience had a more profound influence on Formell and his music. One afternoon he accompanied conga…
While driving to work, you suddenly realize you left your CDs at home. As you flip indifferently through the local stations, ignoring Ricky Martin, Mega 103.5’s disco, and Orgy’s cover of “Blue Monday,” you’re reminded of why radio sucks. So you decide to give Florida International University’s new FM station,…
