Since opening a year ago, the Electric Pickle has emerged as a bastion of quality underground music in a city otherwise tyrannized by commercial and ostentatious nightlife. Its weekly bookings showcase some of the top global contemporary electronic music talent, but in a refreshingly inclusive, no-bullshit setting. Thus, the Pickle…
The quirky and quizzical Keller Williams once again returns to South Florida with his one-man band. He’s a festival staple and always a highlight in that setting — but his club shows are downright rapturous. No matter how big the room, K-Dub always procures a basement-party sing-along vibe. A true…
The dance music underground might be rocking bleepy techno and dark-wave house from Europe, but the stuff that really moves the masses combines the synthetic strings of trance with the tough percussion of house. One look at the most popular DJs in the world, from Tiësto to Deadmau5 to Kaskade,…
Punk band reunion tours are each unique, but not like snowflakes — more like small-town Fourth of July parades, in that there’s a constant trade-off between reassuring familiarity and the flinching overcompensation of old people with streamers. The Cro-Mags should fare better, or at least fall toward the former; the…
If you’ve ever been to a Jimmy Buffett show, we’re just preaching to the choir when we say it’s a one-of-a-kind experience. The Parrothead community is one of the great followings in music history, on par with Deadheads. Arriving at the venue, you might be momentarily disoriented by the atmosphere,…
What we know for sure: West Palm Beach’s Cruzan Amphitheatre will host the traveling version of the Bamboozle Festival on May 25. Specific acts for this date have not been announced, but a little checking in on Cobra Starship’s Too Fast for Love dates with 3OH!3 confirms that these two…
The namesake guitarist of the Damon Fowler group may look, at first, a little too fresh-faced to really know about the blues. And yes, Fowler is a cherubic Gen Y-er, but he already boasts more than a decade on the live circuit. Growing up in the Tampa Bay area, he…
Aholsniffsglue once made crack cocaine out of Ajax and battery acid, smoked it with the Dalai Lama, and became obsessed with stripes and circles. True story.Give thanks the art world appreciates the kind of compulsions that drive people past the brink of madness, are willing to pay for it, and…
In this era of dime-a-dozen indie electro-pop duos, one contemporary act stands apart from the rest for sheer substance, stylistic originality and emotional rapport, and that’s Ontario, Canada’s Junior Boys. Crooner/co-producer Jeremy Greenspan and partner Matt Didemus first began their collaboration in the early 2000s, the fruit of which were…
PalefaceThe Show is on the Road (Ramseur Records)Paleface’s journey has been a rocky one. He’s been picked up and slammed down by major labels, battled substance abuse, and had Beck crashing on his couch (okay, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad). But as one of the founders of New York’s…
One of the longest-running roots reggae bands around, Steel Pulse now boasts a list of former members as twice as long as that of its current lineup. Only two of its current players have appeared on all 11 of the band’s studio albums: keyboardist and backing vocalist Selwyn Brown, and…
In what may be a somewhat dubious distinction, D.O.N.S. is best known to many clubbers as a remixer of Technotronic’s immortal “Pump Up the Jam.” Some 16 years after the original track’s release, in 2005, the Hamburg, Germany-based producer managed to take his reworked version high into the reaches of…
For a town so obsessed with dance music, Miami has very few nights devoted to straight-up house. Not electro-, not tech-, just house. And so, besides Aquabooty’s epic events, Backdoor Bamby at the Vagabond has become a required stop for hungry house heads. Titans like Louie Vega and Jellybean Benitez…
Honeyboy Edwards destroyed a sold out house at Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre last Saturday night with a set so full of Delta you could feel it in your bones. The 94-year-old Edwards, who just won 2010’s Life Time Achievement Award at the Grammys, played with backing by Steve Arvey on…
To view a slideshow of photos from the show, click here.Holly MirandaWith Tegan and SaraSunset Cove AmphitheaterFebruary 21, 2010Better Than: Having to brave a bunch of Brooklyn hipsters for some true New York cool The Review:Had Holly Miranda heard that I came to catch her Sunset Cove show straight from…
Click here to view photos from this event.Amanda Blank with special guest Spank RockSaturday, February 20, 2010Electric Pickle, MiamiBetter than: That other white faux hipster hop singer Ke$ha.She may be just some white girl from Philly, but Amanda Blank has been doing her thing since 2005. Her rhyming skills come…
For going on two decades, German DJ/producer Marc Romboy has established himself as one of the preeminent figures of electronic dance music through a rare combination of innovative vision and heartfelt reverence for the classic forms. A childhood fascination with synthesized sounds, via the likes of Kraftwerk, got Romboy hooked…
Since Grass got a much-heralded makeover, including new expanded indoor seating, it was unclear what was going to happen to its lounge-within-a-lounge, The King is Dead. Well, the King is very much still alive (horrible, but I couldn’t resist, sorry). It’s just getting a major entertainment revamp. Past offerings there…
Spank Rock at MansionPhiladelphia MC Spank Rock played a rather odd booking at Mansion Friday night. We are used to seeing the man perform in downtown venues not South Beach megaclubs. Click here to view the full slideshow.Jay- Z at BankAtlantic CenterTemporarily renamed the Jay-Z Center, the rapper superstar kicked…
Click here to view a slideshow of photos from the show.Jay-ZWith Trey Songz and Young JeezyBankAtlantic Center, SunriseSaturday, February 20, 2010Better Than: Listening to the AutoTuned train-wreck on “We Are the World 25 for Haiti.” The Review:Jay-Z’s last two appearances in South Florida, both in 2008, were each in downtown Miami…
Last time Milwaukee hipster hop MC Juiceboxxx performed in Miami, he got everybody sweating at Poplife. This time he returns to the city in the midst of Winter Music Conference along with Puppy Hearts.The 23-year-old is on the road in support of his debut mixtape, Thunder Zone Volume One, which…
Hearing Damage: The Rat Opera is one of those little artistic things that pop up that are so uniquely weird and South Floridian. Yes, it’s an actual opera about longtime local producer and noise god Frank Falestra, a.k.a. Rat Bastard. It debuted last year at Tobacco Road and Churchill’s, but…
