Every couple of years there’s a new buzzword for urban underground music from the United Kingdom. In the Nineties, it was drum ‘n’ bass, trip-hop, and basically everything originating in Bristol. When those two genres reached their peak, then came UK garage, based on hardcore breakbeats and featuring some MCing,…
The great cultural seesaw between New York and Miami tilts southward, sending one of the Big Apple’s icons sliding into Twilo, fittingly enough. The transplanted superclub, nixed during Rudy Giuliani’s near-thorough cleansing of high-end places that tend to dump heaps of bloody MDMA casualties at emergency room doors, will be…
Some misled souls out there are trying to do something “creative” with their reggaeton videos. They’re shooting them in locales outside Puerto Rico (Tito El Bambino) and getting artsy via grainy montages of Latin culture (Don Omar). What a shame, after they had the perfect reggaeton video down to a…
For all the disaffection you might feel over being spoiled with another Paul Van Dyk performance in Miami, one look at his roots is enough to see he has had quite the struggle getting here. “At one time I only earned one deutsche mark a day,” he reminisces of the…
Zach Lewis has experienced the intense scrutiny that accompanies performing a one-man show. With a laptop and an electric guitar as his only companions onstage, he is solo act Disposable Thumbs. Auditory deception strikes listeners who have not seen Lewis strum his guitar and tap his MIDI pedal, for Disposable…
November 24 will be a busy day for the Beddy Ford Band, because the quartet will be headlining two shows in Miami. Beddy Ford employs the most phenomenal, state-of-the-art sound equipment to create its original sound, reminiscent of Nirvana-era Seattle. Though the band’s hardware is expensive, the boys dress casually,…
Known as the formal successor of the legendary Eighties Spanish pop group Mecano, La Oreja de Van Gogh has a way of taking the genre to new frontiers. Deeply manifested in the bandmates’ music is a prodigious ability to spill their hearts out through solid keyboard strings and bass lines,…
Peter Rauhofer was raised in the angular and restricted channels of the Viennese music scene. But alas, deviancy would come in the form of the progressive Radio Luxembourg and young Rauhofer’s cassette deck, with which he’d waste hours taping the sweet new jams floating across the airwaves. So now, twenty…
Way back, Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids would rent a van from Crease and cruise down from Broward to play what became known as the “chocolate cow” shows (don’t ask, don’t tell) at the perfect rock and roll club, Washington Square in South Beach. And even then, clueful rock…
Linkin Park and Evanescence achieved massive success in the earlier half of this decade for two reasons: inflated, therapy-session-worthy you’ve-got-your-stadium-rock-in-my-techno hooks and angst-ridden, anthemic sentiments universalized to the point where listeners could locate themselves and their own unique problems therein. Young Love, an NYC band fronted by singer/songwriter Dan Keyes,…
Born in the 1970s in southwest Detroit, Rolando grew up heavily influenced by his Latin rhythms and percussion. When he heard DJ Jeff Mills mix as “The Wizard,” he discovered the sounds of techno. Through a mutual friend, he was introduced to “Mad” Mike Banks and promptly became a member…
With the exceptions of a couple of appropriate jags and ledges, the musical mountain scaled by Diane Ward is almost perfectly vertical. Despite her lithe blond beauty, she was a hard-hitting drummer who sometimes shattered sticks until, damn near twenty years ago, she stepped from behind the kit to front…
Scotty’s Landing is laid-back, even by South Florida standards. Flanked by Miami City Hall and the infinitely more expensive Chart House, it’s tucked behind one of several marinas that line the water along Coconut Grove’s South Bayshore Drive. Unadorned and nondescript, Scotty’s is little more than a canvas-covered wood deck…
They are festive, bright knit garments in solid colors or, at their jazziest, maybe an animal print. Their most distinguishing characteristic, though, is a neckline crowded with all manner of shiny baubles, mainly rhinestones and bugle beads. And these tops are often abandoned by the dozens, criminally forgotten in the…
With a Diddy-approved platinum debut album, New Joc City, and not one, but two smash hit singles (“It’s Goin’ Down” and “I Know You See It”) that have gotten more rinse than a laundromat washing machine, Atlanta rapper Yung Joc is among 2006’s greatest pop music success stories. And although…
The Oski Foundation will headline at one of Miami’s most creativity-friendly venues, the Wallflower Gallery, at its grand reopening celebration in early December. Mixing a smorgasbord of genres and musical styles, the Oskis, since their 1999 inception, have conquered more than 100 local spots, including Tobacco Road, Churchill’s, and Señor…
Emerging from the post-Sublime era, these two bands have been rocking it nonstop since the mid-Nineties. Pepper, the Volcom band from Hawaii, is receiving much-deserved acknowledgment through additional sponsorships from major corporations such as T-Mobile. Pepper’s vibe makes you want to dance your ass off, while heartbreaking lyrics remind you…
In their live sets, the Coffin Caddies incorporate the technical underpinnings of punk and innovative twists. Singer/songwriter Rei Horror believes that real life is too difficult to write about and that fictional subjects are more entertaining. As a result, the band’s lyrics are based on videogames, comic books, and movies…
If Tobacco Road were a person, it would be pinching the nurses at Shady Pines and talking smack about Eliot Ness while it cackled its dentures off. The city’s oldest bar/restaurant/café turns 94 on November 17, an occasion that will be marked by an eight-band Miamipalooza on three stages. “The…
Variations on jazz come particularly from the Caribbean and most notably Cuba. Miami-based duo Pan con Bistec melds Latin jazz with original arrangements influenced by the rhythms and musical stylings from North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean, including Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, candombe, swing, bebop, R&B, and funk. Comprising Uruguayan…
Though few luminaries from jazz’s golden era are still alive, and though performances from that small group become increasingly rare, the question remains: Why should you see one of them today? Well you could reason that you probably won’t get another chance because they’re getting old. But you have to…
By his own admission, John Taylor lives a charmed existence. Deliriously wealthy, strikingly good-looking, happily married to a successful entrepreneur, and a founding member of Duran Duran, one of the most successful British groups of the past two decades, he can claim the quintessential rock star existence. After reuniting with…
