Matt White’s story is truly a grassroots one, in both the prehistoric analog and 21st-century digital senses. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin a couple of years ago, the Englewood, New Jersey native headed back to his teenage stomping grounds: New York City. But rather than immediately duke it…
The stars are aligning over Little Havana for a late entry in the running for best local live jazz show of the year. The stars, in this case, are the gifted violinist and composer Federico Britos, the young jazz-singing and double-bass-playing phenom Esperanza Spalding, and white-hot tenor saxophonist David Sánchez…
There’s a number in Fred Cole’s live set in which he addresses head-on the fact that he is Nat “King” Cole’s “baby” brother. It’s a midtempo blues song that encapsulates the challenges of such a distinction, and his performances of it practically overflow with dry wit and self-deprecating humor. Most…
The legendary Vibrators may be getting long in the tooth, but they’re hardly short on energy and O.G. punk spirit. The quartet could school any spikey-haired-come-lately in true road warrior style and longevity: They got together in London in 1976, broke up for a minute around 1980, and reformed in…
“We enjoy each other as people; we get along and play music we love,” Yellowjackets bassist and cofounder Jimmy Haslip says about the band’s famous longevity. “We seem to have a common goal, and that makes it easy to travel and perform together.” Existing for more than 25 years since…
House DJ Pablo Ceballos is another wunderkind story: Kid falls in love with techno, meets mentor, explodes worldwide. During the early Nineties, bands like Depeche Mode and Massive Attack were among those that attracted the then-teenage Ceballos to synth-based music. Soon he began to gravitate more toward house sounds and…
Not sure if this is true or not, but can’t help but post this link I found on Craigslist today. Someone from Poison is looking to get laid. If you need Craiglist to get the job done, that might be a sign that you’re washed up. –Jonathan Cunningham…
Concert Review The Postmarks & Apples in Stereo The Culture Room 9/28/07 Better Than: Standing around with seven thousand of your closest “friends” at last week’s Interpol concert. As far as cool line-ups go, the Culture Room’s double bill featuring The Postmarks and Apples In Stereo was really a match…
The Slackers September 28, 2007 Studio A, Miami Better Than: That place with the good fried chicken with biscuits and gravy and all the fixin’s The Slackers are all about democracy. After a few wise cracks about President Bush and the state of the war, the band was feeling awfully…
The cast of Stomp, that international theater hit starring a motley gang of percussive dancers, performed at Mansion this past Friday as a special addition to the show’s week-long stint at the Carnival Center. The event, billed as “Stomp vs. DJ Ideal,” wasn’t so much a rivalry between a wax…
Apples in Stereo September 28, 2007 The Culture Room Better Than: Eating a barrel of Count Chocula while in interstellar overdrive The Review: We dig The Culture Room, even if we’ve gotta drive about a million miles to get there. The joint’s dark, the sound’s swimming, and it’s run by…
Broward County’s the Postmarks have the music industry paying attention to their sugary sounds in a big way. It may have taken two years to put out their debut, self-titled album, but now that it’s on shelves, everyone from Spin to the New Pornographers seems to want a piece of…
I like Rilo Kiley. I can’t help but groove to their country-inspired brand of indie rock loosely influenced by Straight Outta Compton, De La Soul, and The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique. I find vocalist Jenny Lewis’s quirky, choppy, and occasionally incomprehensible lyrics and pleasantly girlish voice refreshing. I like when…
BMG will get you gooey Michelle F. Solomon The Blue Man Group Saturday, September 15, 2007 Universal Studios Citywalk, Orlando Better Than: Late night TV’s stupid human tricks. The Blue Man Group has been a staple of Greenwich Village for almost two decades. I saw them a few years ago…
There’s nothing like seeing the “Download” links enabled for the tunes on a band’s MySpace site. Wellll, doggy — free shit! Yessir, Mark Dubin of Fort Lauderdale’s Los Diablos ain’t no cheapskate. “We believe that if people are gonna take time to check out our shows, pay for the cover,…
What has four legs and sounds like Redd Foxx trying to freak up a New Orleans blues bar? The Nashville-based duo Black Diamond Heavies, comprising Van Campbell on drums and founder John Wesley Myers on guitar and blackened throat. The band was actually born four years ago as a four-piece…
Southern California has birthed more successful hyphenated punk bands than anywhere else in the world. From the Eighties punk-metal of Black Flag to the latter-day pop-punk of the Offspring, La-La Land and its environs are the epicenter of anger-with-a-twist. Strung Out’s latest release this past June, Blackhawks Over Los Angeles,…
Cleaveland Jones is a band of mystery, insists its frontman and songwriter, named, also, Cleaveland Jones. “I don’t mind it being a bit confusing or ambiguous,” insists the Ohio transplant, who has been in Miami for 10 years and playing music locally for three. Try to get more details about…
The thing that stokes Mark Caro — alias Tech Itch — the most is his rep as the godfather of dark, hard, experimental drum ‘n’ bass. The thing that least stokes him is what the marginal success of d ‘n’ b is doing to the genre. “There’s too much cheesy…
Saturday night the Southern rock hits of Molly Hatchet — “Flirtin’ with Disaster,” “Beating the Odds,” and “Gator Country” among them — will make a perfect soundtrack to blowing some dough on that not-quite-fast-enough filly. Grown from the same musical soil as Lynyrd Skynyrd, in its Seventies heyday Jacksonville’s native…
Dropkick Murphys w/ HorrorPops September 25, 2007 Revolution, Ft. Lauderdale Dropkick MurphysPhotos by Jamie Puntumkhul Better than: Three accidental fists to the face due to an ardently chanted Oi! trinity. The Review: I have somewhat of an obsession with that span of time between an opening band’s wasted plea to…
Our punk rock icons are aging. Mike Watt now looks more like a retiring shop teacher than a rocking member of the double bass group Dos, and the recent surprise guest on NPR’s quiz show, Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was not a senator with presidential aspirations, it was the…
