“We’re the last flight of the quill before the keyboard and the console take over,” says Chris Barron, hyperkinetic mouthpiece for guitar-rock groove monsters the Spin Doctors. “Our sound just kind of revealed itself to us,” adds Toronto-bred guitarist Eric Schenkman, “like some kind of crazy sandwich that’s exponential, where…
Sure, they’ve got the maestro, the five-string king, Mr. Banjo, out front. He gets most of the press, and rightly so. He has, after all, taken the instrument places it’s never gone before. But there’s a lot more to the Flecktones than founder/plucker extraordinaire Bela Fleck. There’s harmonica virtuoso Howard…
Graham Parker once expressed sympathy for the people of Russia (before unbundling), whose government fed them so much misinformation, they thought Billy Joel was a rock star. If you don’t get that joke, you belong in Miami. This is, after all, the town where disco never died. John Travolta movies…
Let’s put it this way: One recent weekend night dozens of top musicians gathered to perform an extravagant benefit concert to help victims of Hurricane Andrew. And Gloria Estefan failed to show up! She let everyone down, she doesn’t really care, she is, by all evidence, not going to single-handedly…
Deep rhythm and blues has always possessed a special relationship with gospel. The two musics are flip sides of the same coin, a coin minted with conviction, integrity, and a powerful spirituality. You can say what you want about eyes, but in R&B, it’s the voice that’s the window to…
How does an inspired and original Miami act land a record deal with one of the N.Y./L.A. power axis companies without either going to New York or Los Angeles? They don’t. Well, that’s not entirely true. Should they hook up with some well-connected hot-shot management team that will go in…
A TV talk show recently trotted them out like five-legged cows at a county fair: “black” people who dressed, talked, looked like “white” people. Hair straightened, skin lightened, garb purchased from J. Crew or Land’s End. The word “be” conjugated with object when used as a transitive verb. And there…
ROACH THOMPSON BLUES BAND Roach Thompson Blues Band (Hot Productions) BY GREG BAKER Only four of the eleven tracks are cover versions, a decent percentage for any blues record, a double-dose delight to fans who’ve come to expect a bounty of interpretation from the Roach stompers’ live shows. Thompson’s originals…
“I got into this business to have fun, and I’m not having fun,” pronounced Jorma Kaukonen twenty years ago, explaining his decision to bail out of the Jefferson Airplane. Kaukonen’s jump caught few Airplane insiders by surprise; his waning enthusiasm for the band roughly paralleled the rising popularity of his…
Like any self-important, one-assignment-away-from-the-poorhouse hack, I get a lot of mail — books, tapes, CDs, and a never-ending paper trail of paid-for plugs — all mercilessly encouraging me to heed the coming of the next Next Big Thing. Over the years I’ve become so immune to the barrage of products…
Like any self-important, one-assignment-away-from-the-poorhouse hack, I get a lot of mail — books, tapes, CDs, and a never-ending paper trail of paid-for plugs — all mercilessly encouraging me to heed the coming of the next Next Big Thing. Over the years I’ve become so immune to the barrage of products…
The members of L7 have exactly one thing in common with the Bangles and the Go-Gos: they’re women — or rather, to filch a description from their press kit, “four talented hags.” This year’s most overworked word in rock criticism, “grunge”, cannot be avoided when attempting to describe the band’s…
Like it or not, as we survey the debris of shattered Dade, we must begin to mythologize the devastation of Hurricane Andrew. In the fledgling years of the next century, our children and grandchildren will clamor for stories of the Great Storm of ’92. And because they’ll be products of…
If you’ve been in line at the grocery store lately, scanning the magazine covers while you wait, you may have noticed a trend. Down below the tabloids screaming, “World’s Fattest Cat Saves Babies From Burning Building” or “Aliens Meet With Ross Perot” are the serious mags. Almost all of them…
Front Line Assembly: Thursday, August 27, the Ambassador Club, 1335 S Federal Hwy, Deerfield, 426-0540. Bloodline: Friday, August 28, Button South, 100 Ansin Blvd, Hallandale, 454-0001. File: Friday, August 28 and Saturday, August 29, Stephen Talkhouse, 616 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, 531-7557. Jackyl: Friday, August 28, Good Food Sports Pub,…
(Cue Twilight Zone theme music. Enter Rod Serling.) “Meet Sophie B. Hawkins, age 25. Ms. Hawkins is a native of New York, the daughter of a writer mother and a lawyer father. At the age of fourteen she began taking lessons on African drums and moved in with her teacher…
They arrive at the New Times music-department office every day, flocks of them. Not pigeons. Press releases. Band bios, newsletters, cover letters, itineraries, unspoken quotes, anything and everything record company publicists can conceive of to sell their bands to the press, who in turn will sell same to the public…
Somehow I don’t think the gentleman with the stocking over his head waving the .38 in my face as he herded my wife and me into the back of our video store and demanded the day’s cash receipts would have appreciated the urgency of my making it to Uncle Sam’s…
My lover stood before me coldly emanating disgust, our relationship hanging on a thread of fear and a memory of passion. Dignified in my pain, I sat in stony silence. Inhaling hatred, I closed my eyes and envisioned my frozen heart. I was beyond feeling. Scorned, I walked numbly to…
So a little trip to Lollapalooza ’92 is in order, is it? Miami wasn’t blessed with the presence of the first Lolla tour, so we have no idea what to expect. But we do know that when you pack tons of live music, art, food, propaganda, and other diversions into…
In 1973 the DEA reclassified methaqualone to Schedule I, pretty much banning it from medical use in the United States. Sold as Quaalude, Sopor, and Mandrax, the sedative-hypnotic at one time had been the sixth-most prescribed drug in the nation. In 1975, 16.9 percent of high school seniors surveyed said…
The obvious and easy argument raised by those dinosaurs tenaciously and fruitlessly attempting to make it worthwhile to own a turntable in the 1990s is the Hip-Hop Equation. Rap-music makers have continued the practice of releasing their material on vinyl, usually one song remixed several ways on the twelve-inch, album-size…
