Fidel Nadal Templo August 29, 2007 Better Than: Standing around under the hot, backing sun of Bicentennial Park’s Memorial Fest reggae festival. Fidel Nadal is an internationally acclaimed Argentine reggae superstar. His songs focus on the plight and social issues of the underprivileged. Nadal is old school, starting out in…
It’s sensual, moving and breathtaking all at once. And smooth-delivering Victor Manuelle is a master at it. No matter the subject the Puerto Rican salsa star is a virtuoso at delivering impromptu lyrical soneos that can go on for several minutes at a time. Whether he’s singing about a woman…
Inside Club Dream on August 21, the pressure was palpable. The Miami Beach night spot had been converted into the set of a $150,000 music video for Slip-N-Slide rapper Plies’s hit song “Hypnotized,” which features — who else? — Akon. The day’s shoot began at 12:30 p.m. and kept the…
Tahita Bulmer, the effervescent frontwoman for New Young Pony Club, has got little love for the sort of po-faced, pseudo-earnest bloke rock that’s held her London home in its tatty-trousered chokehold. “It’s been very white, and male, and middle class, or upper-middle class. Women and their histories and their perspective…
When you think about it, Labor Day is possibly the most American holiday we have, trumping even the Fourth of July. Let’s face it: We pride ourselves on our blue-collar roots more than we do on a silly declaration. Therefore here is a handful of songs about the American working-class…
The drum ‘n’ bass tanks keep rolling at Laundry Bar, with DJ Krust manning the booth this week. Krust was originally a hip-hop guy who began DJing in the mid-Eighties at schools and small clubs around his hometown of Bristol in the UK. During the later part of that decade,…
Rich Ulloa can’t contain his enthusiasm. Here he is, arms full of scrapbooks, three of the 20 volumes he has meticulously compiled since the early Nineties. They comprise every scrap of paper having anything to do with singer-songwriter Mary Karlzen. She’s one of the more prolific artists he has managed,…
Rumors of Shine’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. DJ Jonathan Cowan’s club opened to much fanfare in the Shelborne Hotel in spring 2006, immediately garnering kudos for its intimate size and ambience, as well as a jaw-dropping Steve Dash sound system. (It’s one of only a few by the guy…
“Conscious rap” needs to be eliminated from hip-hop’s vernacular — or at the very least, Talib Kweli’s name should be stricken from its rolls. Nobody’s quite sure what the term means: Music that doesn’t focus on rims and butts? Songs wherein the listener’s life isn’t explicitly threatened? Kweli has said…
Some Forgotten Country opens with picket-fence guitar, Harry Smith banjo, and a bluesman spitting marbles: “Going to Atlanta just to look around….” I’ve heard this stoned baritone before, almost 40 years ago. He’s the willing trucker “smuggling smokes and folks from Mexico,” the strung-out hillbilly “with a needle and a…
Panacea’s striking LP, The Scenic Route, ripples with introspective rhymes and production. The creative spark that Washington, D.C.’s K-Murdock and Raw Poetic dubbed Panacea was formed as a side project around a larger hip-hop band called RPM. The Scenic Route’s organic elements would probably spoil in the hands of live…
Earlimart makes the kind of music that keeps you company when you’re feeling the most alone. That doesn’t mean the group’s latest LP, Mentor Tormentor, sounds lonely. Rather, it makes you feel better in the by-yourself times. It does such a good job, however, you want everyone you know to…
If you attend Ozzfest at the Sound Advice Ampitheathre in West Palm Beach on Thursday, check the second stage for the L.A.-based Ankla. And if the band’s crushing, hypnotic grooves move you, good news: The group takes the stage Friday at Studio A for a full headlining set. The band’s…
There are electronic musicians, nonelectronic musicians, and then Miami’s Fitzroy. “I don’t think of myself as an electronic artist,” the Barbados-born singer professes before admitting, “I record my stuff using a lot of synths — both real and computer-based.” Okay. “The songs are then topped off with guitars, bass, trumpets,…
It came from down under: Modular Records, that is, the Sydney, Australia-based label and one of the leaders of the post-rave, post-rock, all-fun Zeitgeist. Thank the label for introducing the world to the warped dance beats of Aussies like the Presets and Van She, or on the guitar side, Wolfmother…
A few years back, The Used’s Bert McCracken and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way were the enfants terribles of the ’00s post-emo/post-whatever world. The duo shared a serious dark streak and a fuck-it-all attitude, seemingly inhaling substances by the gallon and sharing a kind of symbiotic man-bond that defied definition…
Jamaican reggae group, Rootz Underground is playing their first ever show in Miami tonight at PS 14. The group has a powerful video, “Victims of the System” which has been getting a lot of love on MTV’s Caribbean station, Tempo, lately and the band is known for its positive vibes…
Juan Luis Guerra Juan Luis Guerra isn’t much of a morning person. “It took me a while to gather all my senses,” said Guerra. “I’m not used to getting up so early.” But getting up early Wednesday morning proved to be beneficial as the Dominican singer/songwriter led the way with…
Kinky August 28, 2007 The Fifth, Miami Beach Better Than: Once Upon a Time in the West as fleeced by The Thievery Corporation. Or something. Else. Kinky lead man Gil Cerezo The Review: The seven-city Samsung/AT&T Summer Krush series swung into South Beach last night with a set so low…
New York media is reporting the death yesterday of Hilly Kristal, founder of legendary downtown rock club CBGB, which finally closed last October after a 33-year run. Kristal, 75, had been battling lung cancer. Although Kristal talked of opening a new branch of his club in Las Vegas, the forced…
And you thought Bobby and Whitney were bad. Amy Winehouse and her husband, Blake Civil-Fiedler were recently photographed bloodied and bruised after a recent fight in London. It can’t help that paparazzi follow their every move and make matters worse, but the couple could certainly clean themselves up after they…
Josh Smith The Poorhouse August 25, 2007 Better than:Watching Taylor Hicks perform in Boca Raton with a bunch of horny grandmothers The Review: Guitarist Josh Smith played two shows on Saturday and was running on fumes by the time I caught up with him at the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale…
