Combine the grandeur and rockabilly twang of Texas with the attitude and speed of punk, and the result is a bastard child known as psychobilly. Perhaps now the Quakes have come across a new hybrid of “-billy,” mixing Eighties and rockabilly. Retrobilly? Okay, not really, but the group has done…
What do U2, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Ella Fitzgerald, and Michael Jackson have in common? Aside from being music legends, these artists (and many more) are named on Peruvian percussionist Alex Acuña’s resumé. Further bullets on Acuña’s impressive list of accomplishments include his being recruited for Pérez Prado’s big band…
Val Wisecracker knows plenty about tunecraft, and she’ll share it at the songwriters’ showcase series at the Wallflower Gallery (a three-time New Times “Best of Miami” winner). Val, whose real last name is Caracappa, uses the pseudonym because Caracappa is difficult for journalists and radio announcers to spell and pronounce…
It’s difficult to imagine a guy in a suit writing Criteria’s riff-based anthem rock. That’s why lead singer Stephen Pedersen quit his nine-to-five at a law firm to pursue music full-time. The result of his brave endeavor is When We Break, an emotionally and physically moving album with intelligent lyrics…
Like fellow Vikings, artists, DJs, and quirk-rockers Eirik Glambek Boe and Erlend ÿye of Kings of Convenience, Bardi Johannsson persists in being a hyphenate of performance. The lead singer of Icelandic surfer-songsters the Bang Gang, Johannsson is on a tour of the United States that showcases his tune-mixing abilities. The…
Anna Nalick’s melodic, slightly miffed, but contemplative alt-pop sound is likely to jive with anyone who can confess to having belted out Avril Lavigne’s whimsical “Complicated” while listening to the radio on the way to work. Okay, let’s face it, that would be a lot of us. Also running in…
According to Tango36’s Website, www.tango36.com, the Miami-based musicians make up a rock band that just happens to sing in Spanish. They kind of cut you up and spit you out with that eerie retro goth sound on songs like “Camino al Sol ” and “Vaquero,” but the next thing you…
Hahahelp! fits into a long Miami tradition of experimental noise-trash musicians, in the line of Harry Pussy, Laundry Room Squelchers, Monotract, the Curious Hair, and others. The band exists as a collection of odds-and-sods drums, cheap synthesizers, out-of-tune guitar and bass, and improvised vocals. The group began as a free-form…
A side project of Miami hip-hop group Phoenicia, Soul Oddity fuses Detroit electro with Miami bass funk to create a sound that, if anything, is much more odd than soulful. Founded by producers Romulo Del Castillo and Joshua Kay in 1996 after the two supposedly saw a UFO, the band…
A jazz performance student at the University of Miami, Devin Bing has always been a little bit blue. Growing up in New York, he began playing piano at age six and performing at local blues clubs at age fifteen, and when he was eighteen, he was already headlining his own…
This Miami-based outfit composed of three international talents is a mélange of Spanish rock, pop, and salsa influences. The lyrics have soul; the music has flavor. Erick Bolívar, who began his career as a child singer on Venezuelan television and has written salsa songs for many artists, is the voice…
Classifying themselves as a retro-Latino act, Rhett y Los Borrachos Empeñados have worked hard to perfect the Latin-rock sound they’ve strived for since they began the band two years ago. Their music varies from sensitive soft-rock to faster funk, all the while maintaining the band’s Cuban roots. All four members…
Opening its metaphorical door in 2000, the Green Room is the musical cooperative founded by Colombian-born Jorge Mejia. Though he sports a degree in piano performance from the University of Miami, the 33-year-old Mejia is as adept at New Wave-style rock — something evident with one spin of his first…
If you’re a follower of the local hipster club scene, you’ve probably heard of Marqui Adora. But you’ve probably rarely, if ever, actually seen the group play. Since last year, the moody three-piece has only infrequently emerged from the shadows that inform its dark, postpunk sound. Tonight’s show, though, might…
Of the slew of Big Bad Apple bands to emerge at the beginning of this decade, few have culled the core like the Walkmen. Brash, blasted, and organic, they took what was best about a bar-room brawl and rooted it in the heavens. Best, they did it without the garage-rock…
Above all, Humbert is from Hialeah and proud. A city better known for its equally convoluted politics and street grids than its cultural output, Hialeah’s best-known musical export to date is KC and the Sunshine Band. Still, a tiny subculture of live rock acts has persisted there, and the four-member…
Hailing from the Bronx, the Juggaknots first made waves in the mid-Nineties New York scene with appearances on famed DJ Bobbito Garcia’s radio shows. MCs Buddy Slim and Breeze Brewin spit laid-back rhymes over slightly jazzy beats, perfectly encompassing post-D.A.I.S.Y.-age East Coast hip-hop. Their out-of-print 1996 debut LP resurfaced as…
Whether art, music, or film, Miami festivals are as inescapable as the heat this summer. The seventh installment of the Rock vs. Art series sizzles amid the ranks of fellow fetes with a marriage of underground music and art. The event spans more genres than a worldly DJ’s vinyl collection,…
House, techno, jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, breakbeat. To an outsider, these terms equate to simply “untz, untz, untz.” But for EDM insiders, these subgenres are as distinct as twins are to their parents. Consider T.S. Heritage the ultimate insider. You won’t find him venturing into one of the megaclubs or…
There’s a reason why people brave the lines and the heat and the bums to get into the Pawn Shop Lounge. And though some credit might go to the wonderful bar staff (you go, Joel!), most of it goes to the peeps behind the tables — those rhythmic readers of…
In a world of diminishing returns and softening sensibilities, it’s nice to see five regular dudes find themselves on common ground. They mix it up with enough technical know-how to help them stand out, but not enough to make it boring or godly, though they still retain that endearing rawness…
Ah, just when you thought some guys had vanished, you’re reminded they are still out there, making the rounds, filling arenas and stadiums across the Hispanophone world. A simple singer who has always distinguished himself with bare melodies and the symbiotic relationship between guitar and voice (with the occasional addition…
