We have come a long way since July 4, 1776. A real long way. But pseudo-commentary on the Bush administration aside, one thing a bunch of dead, crusty white dudes will not deny is that at least nowadays we have a whole bunch of options at our disposal! This coming…
Jose El Rey If you haven’t seen local artist Jose El Rey perform live yet, you are missing one of the best spectacles out there. He easily won my heart over when I saw him perform at White Room earlier this year. And when he gave his cousin (niece?) Yarisleydi…
Bryan Falla Wisin Y Yandel Saturday, June 28, 2008 American Airlines Arena Better Than: Watching your mom and dad grind inappropriately to “Noche de Sexo” at last year’s New Year’s party. By 8:45 p.m., the arena had filled up almost entirely and the crowd was antsy. With every cadence, every…
Sayre Berman Keyshia Cole Lil’ Wayne, Keyshia Cole, Akon and more at SummerFest 2008 Saturday, June 28, 2008 BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise Better Than: Throwback hip-hop fest Power House from the ‘90s with a side of Pop Rocks and OE. For South Florida hip-hop enthusiasts, Saturday night’s South Florida SummerFest 2008…
If you’re not familiar with local avant jazz guru Kenny Millions, then you’ve got some catching up to do. The man is a saxophone virtuoso and if you listen to his music, without knowing anything about his storied past as a musician in other cities, you get the sense that…
Nic Fanciulli In a sort of last minute booking, British DJ extraordinaire Nic Fanciulli is stopping by the Vagabond Saturday night for its Back Door Bamby party. Don’t know who Fanciulli is? Well let me expand your musical knowledge. He’s a British house DJ that is associated with acts like…
They’ve got perhaps the best DJ collective name of all time, and that alone is reason to pay these guys some attention. And when you think about it, if you’re an audiophile, what else turns you on more than good music? Based out of England, Johan Karlberg and Etienne Tron…
At the heart of Negroni’s trio are father José Negroni and son Nomar, both hailing from Puerto Rico, plus a rotating pool of guest bassists. They’ve been making strides in the international jazz community since the release of their first CD, Naturaleza/Nature, in 2003. A music professor and classically trained…
The 32-year-old house producer and DJ known as Laidback Luke first got his kicks in his native Holland as a graffiti artist. When the thrill of the physical and legal danger wore off around the mid-Nineties, he turned to music. Still, he preserved the sly cunning of the graffiti writer…
Rock geeks across the county have already shuffled (real rockers don’t run or flock) to check out MoCA’s superhip summer exhibition, “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967.” But the whiz-bang opening, featuring bands in a soundproof box, and free “What Would Neil Young Do?” was…
Logan Fazio Modest Mouse with The Dirty Dozen Brass Band Friday, June 23, 2008 The Fillmore, Miami Beach Better Than: The mental meltdown scribbling in your seventh-grade diary. Modest Mouse and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band kicked off their North American tour together last night to a packed, enthusiastic audience…
Montserrat She doesn’t sound very concerned with how many bodies will – or won’t be – occupying seats inside the Byron Carlyle in Miami Beach on Wednesday night. “That’s out of my control,” says Spanish soprano singer Montserrat. “As long as the people there accept my work and I’m able…
Like Green Day, Rancid was once reviled as a band of poseurs by much of the punk-rock intelligentsia but is now seen as a standard-bearer for the genre — and sheer persistence is a big factor. Early discs such as 1995’s And Out Come the Wolves were so derivative of…
One could say Jamaican singer Papa Winnie had a serendipitous hand in the creation of O Rappa, the Rio de Janeiro-based fusion reggae/funk-rock band that performs this weekend in Pompano Beach. In 1993, Winnie arrived in Brazil for an extended tour with no backing musicians. A pick-up band was quickly…
The most bizarre voice in rock these days belongs to Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock. His Tom Waits-esque yowl guides an array of drunken characters through the churning guitar swirl that has been the band’s bread and butter since its earliest recordings with Calvin Johnson. Now proud members of the…
The course for superstar trance DJ Paul van Dyk is all-ahead full. In Between, his fifth album of original songs, remains the record he’s been giving the most push since its release in August last year. And deservedly so, what with the high-profile collaborators who appear on the album, such…
Mudhoney With Birds of Avalon and the Getback Friday, June 13, 2008 Churchill’s Pub, Miami Better Than: Most other new-jack “indie” shows I’ve seen in the past couple of months. The Review: I was originally going to take a vacation from scribbling notes at shows and just check out this…
Ivon David Rojas Last Night: The Cure Friday, June 13, 2008 BankAtlantic Center Better Than: Explaining to your parents why straight guys can wear lipstick. Diehard fans of the Cure were in luck this Friday the 13th when the band performed a set lasting more than three hours, including four…
According to a press release that was forwarded to me a couple of days ago from the incomparable Afrobella (who you all need to check out), Bejan superstar Alison Hinds is performing an intimate concert tonight in Fort Lauderdale. Her gig tomorrow night in West Palm Beach at the South…
Pearl Jam Wednesday, June 11 Cruzan Ampitheatre, West Palm Beach Better Than: Waiting another five years for the guys to come to town. Flashing lights, smuggled cameras, and lots of hoopla inside of the Cruzan Amphitheatre signaled that something big was going on. Last night, Pearl Jam opened up their…
Let’s put it this way: When was the last time you heard a non-bling-oriented MC not say modern hip-hop is a fucking old mess? For some rappers, making inflammatory statements about the state of the game might simply be part of the business plan. Brooklyn MC AZ has been uttering…
“Big in Serbia” might sound like a joke to the public at large, but dance music cognoscenti know better. Balkan beat conductor Marko Nastic is huge in his home country, but he’s also making ripples in the global sine-wave ocean. He discovered electronic music courtesy of an uncle who spun…
