Some of the most exciting announcements of Art Basel tend to be last minute. And, sure enough, last Friday brought news of one of the most stacked musical events coming to Basel this year. Art Basel veteran and board member of the Brooklyn Museum Swizz Beatz and Bacardi have teamed up…
Five years ago a rugby accident left Florida Atlantic University student James “Woody” Beckham paralyzed from the chest down. But despite the long road that injury would set Beckham down, the injury hasn’t defeated the Coconut Grove resident. “Sometimes I got worn out and tired,” he says. Shortly after his…
It’s that time of year again where people across the nation gather around their dinner tables to give thanks, only to then trample each other the very next morning over meaningless deals. But for one local band, the season inspires a different approach to the holiday. Together with a lineup…
Basel is rapidly approaching this city like a dark cloud full of expensive art and pretentious New Yorkers. But, there’s a silver-lining to this cloud: music. Because while we’ll have to suffer through insufferable traffic and long lines next week, we also get some pretty great shows. You can check…
A year ago, I sat down with Travis Acker and Trace Barfield, two lifelong musicians with years of experience playing in bands and busking on the street. They’d recently warmed to the wonders of electronic production and rededicated themselves to merging the best of IRL and URL into a cohesive,…
February, 13, 2005, at the Staples Center in sunny Los Angeles. There she was: 45-years-old and bald as a lightbulb. Chemo therapy had taken her hair but, it seemed, not much else. The 47th Annual Grammy Awards was perhaps the defining moment of Melissa Etheridge’s career. After being diagnosed with…
Guy Gerber was in his friend’s underground studio in Toronto when we tracked him down. He could have been on South Beach with one of those margaritas with the upside down Corona in them, but he’s the kind of guy who prefers a cavernous recording studio. The place looks like…
When you’ve been in the game as long as Fatboy Slim, you need to spice it up a bit. Sometimes that means orchestrating the crowd at Creamfields festival into a giant smilie. Sometimes that means playing a surprise set for Bansky, and sometimes it means fabricating a story about how…
You’d be wise to hang out around Mana Wynwood this year during Art Basel. Two weeks ago we learned that Jamie xx and Four Tet would kick off the III Points Art Basel Concert Series on Friday, December 4, at the Wynwood venue. And Life and Death will be invading…
Vanessa “Vanne” Dazza seems calmer and more composed than the last time I interviewed her in the spring of 2011. This may be because our first interview was conducted — at the insistence of her band, the “bi-polar power pop” outfit, Radioboxer — inside of BT’s Gentleman’s Club on free beer…
It’s been a classic three years for the Gale Hotel’s LDV Hospitality Group: three years of rockin’ beats at Rec Room, three years of clinking glassware at the Regent Cocktail Club, and three years of delicious tartufo and thin-crust pizza at Dolce Italian. “Longevity in this town is sometimes hard…
When visiting a juvenile detention center to perform a concert with his band Suénalo, Chad Bernstein and the rest of the group tried to lecture the kids about how music could lead them on a better path. There was only one problem: No one was paying attention. That is, until…
Lately something interesting has been happening in the world of Phil Collins. He’s finally getting some goddamn respect. See, for years it’s been easy to take jabs at Mr. Collins. Why, exactly? Who knows. It was a weird mob mentality sort of thing that seemed to spread throughout the internet…
Straight from his dorm room to the depths of the internet, Saint Pepsi quickly became one of the biggest names of the internet-inspired, politically charged genre vaporwave. As his peers sampled Muzak and smooth jazz, Pepsi — real name Ryan DeRobertis — appropriated house hooks and disco melodies, which left…
Musical duo Sam & Dave, the effusive singers behind the timeless hit “Soul Man,” may have come to define the sound of Memphis in the ’60s. But Samuel David Moore was, in fact, born and raised right here, in Miami’s historic — and at times troubled — Overtown. It was…
Somewhere in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Lake Worth, sledgehammering his way through dusty concrete, a pop culture icon recognized the world over struggles with his friends to meet a renovation deadline. “I did ‘Ice Ice Baby’ when I was 16 years old,” the rapper-turned-reality star renovator says. “If you would…
YoungArts Salon Series with Fab 5 Freddy. Wednesday, November 18, 6:30 to 10 p.m. Jewel Box at National YoungArts Foundation, 2100 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-377-1140; youngarts.org. Tickets cost $20 to $35 via eventbrite.com. Fab 5 Freddy may be considered one of the godfathers of rap and hip-hop, but the musician is,…
A military brat, Markus Schulz was born and raised in Germany before moving to Phoenix for his teenage years. He didn’t speak English very well and spent a lot of time alone in his room listening to the radio. Music inspired him, as a teenager he played eight-hour sets on…
Krisp had a somewhat meta approach to songwriting on their latest album, Sonic Monarch. “A lot of the songs, we’re talking about making the songs in the songs,” Juan Ledesma tells us. Krisp will be debuting its vinyl release when they participate in Sweat Records’ Live at Sweat series this Saturday,…
Though he had made several albums, become a regular on the coffeehouse circuit in his native Hawaii, and attained the status of a popular concert draw in Japan, ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro was virtually unknown as far as the rest of the world was concerned. Then a YouTube video of…
Brothers Ali and Basti Schwarz have had over three decades to build up a widespread loyal following under the Tiefschwarz banner. Which is still saying a lot, considering the pair’s relentless stylistic mutations over the years. From the mellow deep house of their early DJ days in Stuttgard, Germany, to…
After the U.K. punk revolution, we needed a break. Because when the anarchy ended and the dust settled, the world realized something: we were sad. That’s when the Cure came along. The four-piece schoolmates from Crawley, West Sussex, England, tapped into a long-neglected nerve in music fans across the globe…
