Concert Review: Auteur Explosion XI at Cinema Paradiso, November 21

Auteur Explosion XIWith Soma, Sage and Tag, and the ShutterCinema Paradiso, Fort LauderdaleSaturday, November 21, 2009Better Than: Any chic gallery on Las Olas or a drunken stupor on Himmarshee.The Review:In this land of palm trees and Tommy Bahama shirts, the fact that the monthly Auteur Explosion has survived this far…

Q&A with Cassy, Playing at the Electric Pickle on Saturday

Despite the hordes of electronic dance music artists living and working out of Berlin — natives and foreign transplants alike — few embody the spirit and sound of Berlin’s contemporary EDM scene as fully as DJ/producer Cassy. Born Catherine Britton in England to a Caribbean father and Austrian mother, Cassy…

The Bacon Brothers Perform at the Lyric Theatre Sunday

If you thought that the fact he’s only 6 phone calls away from everyone in the world made Kevin Bacon cool, prepare to be blown away. He sings. He and brother Michael (can someone start a 7 degrees of Michael Bacon meme, please) have been performing as The Bacon Brothers…

Concert Review: The Ska Is Dead Tour at Culture Room, November 19

The Ska Is Dead TourWith Deal’s Gone Bad, Voodoo Glow Skulls, Mustard Plug, and the ToastersCulture Room, Fort LauderdaleThursday, November 19, 2009Better Than: Remembering the misled late-’90s mainstream notion of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones supposedly epitomizing ska.The Review:In 2009, ska sure isn’t the healthiest genre of underground music. But it…

Caliente! Music Festival, This Saturday at the AAA

I’m going to resist the urge to use the name of this weekend’s festival in question in some ill-conceived pun or a shoddy play on words, and just power through right into the info you seek. I’m also going to try to ignore that little bit of track music that…

Joker and MC Nomad

Straight out of Bristol, Joker is a 20-year-old wunderkind whose hybrid club experiments might be the next big step in the ongoing evolution of dubstep. Just don’t tell him that — like many stridently independent studio jockeys, he shuns genre tags. (Joker prefers to describe his tunes, cryptically, as “purple.”)…

Arboles Libres

This past February, as a trifle, two buddies got together to jam through free-form guitar exercises while smoking a bowl for the good of mankind. It should have been a one-time thing, but it took root, grew wildly, and flowered excessively. Now, almost a year later, that early impermanent duo…

The Sixth Annual Organic Hip Hop Artist Showcase

Every year, the Organic Hip Hop Conference rallies conscious troops from all over the continent and beyond for a weekend of fighting for better communities through activism, vegetarianism, and music. Sponsored by nonprofit organization Difference Makers and Urban America newspaper, the 2009 edition will kick off this Friday with a…

Jackson Browne

As both the precocious bard and poet laureate of the Laurel Canyon elite, Jackson Browne created a late-’60s/early-’70s repertoire that found him standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other notables of the day. Alongside peers such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Browne helped define the West…

DJ T

Proof that music journalists are sometimes good for something, Thomas Koch, AKA DJ T, made his true mark in the industry by founding Groove magazine some 20 years ago. With Koch at the helm as editor and publisher, it quickly became the bible in his native Germany for everything related…

Megadeth

One of the most tragicomic moments in the 2004 Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster features not the band but rather Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine. In a touchy-feely on-camera counseling session, Mustaine reveals some major inferiority issues with Metallica’s drummer, Lars Ulrich. He even seems to come uncomfortably close to…

Concert Announcements: Jay-Z and The Subdudes

A couple strangely grouped show announcements today. First, the jam train continues to roll through Broward with The Subdudes scheduled to play Culture Room on January 30. The NOLA based bluesy funk rockers have been together for 22 years (with the occasional hiatus for side projects) and have put out…