Music

The very title of the genre “nu-soul” implies a lack of predecessors, at least none not named Gaye, Wonder, or Mayfield. This state of affairs probably has caused Raphael Saadiq to gnash more than a few teeth over the years. Not only did his group, Tony Toni Tone, hold it…

It’s a sign of the times that Eddie Palmieri’s new La Perfecta II is both a joyous return to the enormously influential format of his late 1960s band, La Perfecta, and an unfortunate reminder of how boring most of today’s salsa really is. While much of modern-day salsa seems to…

Think back to what you missed.” That question, asked on “It’s All the Same” from Quit’s landmark 1990 LP Earlier Thoughts, has haunted the Miami pop-punk trailblazers since the summer of 1993, when Quit singer/guitarist Addison Burns fell off a rooftop and pulverized his wrist — suspending the career of…

Historically the most common place for women in the blues is the “my baby done left me” line that’s become a staple of the form. But for the past twenty-plus years, Rory Block has been one of a handful of female artists who have broken the stereotype in a genre…

Like father, like son. Those are words for music industry execs to live by. Especially if good ol’ Pop still has what it takes to sell albums and his last name can help launch his offspring. Of course, show-biz lore is full of children of famous parents who made it…

Gerry Kelly has made a habit of throwing parties for big names inside his nightclub, Level. Tonight the streets outside the adult playground are lined with news trucks. Their long antennas gobble up the evening skyline. Police cars close off side streets and line up along the medians while patrolmen…

You would be excused for suspecting there’s a secret subtext to A Man About a Horse (ECM). Minnesotan guitarist Steve Tibbetts admits that the ebbing and flowing compositions, held together by Indonesian drumming patterns, sheets of feedback-laden electric guitar, and delicate acoustic guitar passages, gang up to tell a story…

For a long time, Ed Hale’s sense of geography depended on rock and roll. “I knew about England, of course, because of the Beatles and the Stones, and I knew about Ireland because of Sinead O’Connor and U2,” Hale says matter-of-factly. “That was the way I related to the rest…

If you’re a DJ duo with exotic names based in D.C., be prepared for the inevitable comparisons with Deep Dish. It was just last year when Deep Dish’s Sharam (Tayebi) & Ali (Shirazinia) released the seminal mix compilation Global Underground21: Moscow and had clubs and charts worldwide buzzing about our…

Don’t get the wrong idea, Kinky is not the Mexican Marilyn Manson; its members don’t wear bondage or leather clothes. They just like the sound of the name. In fact, says singer and guitarist Gil Cerezo, “We are like The Flintstones now, breaking down all the boulders we can to…

Fanning through the clouds of Black and Mild seeded with herb that hover over the entrance to Rain, there’s Maseo, Plug Three of the once and now occasionally popular rap pioneers, De La Soul. Maseo and a posse of hangers-on are near enough to the entrance to be seen by…

When bebop hit the scene, critics and other unhepcats maligned the movement as inarticulate noise with little artistic merit. So it’s only fitting that another clan of outsiders, dance-music DJs, should re-interpret the now-classic sounds of Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and Shirley Horne. Granted this project could have turned ugly…

Black male vocalists tend to break down into two camps nowadays. There are the sweet, almost-too-precious crooners like Musiq and Remy Shand. Then there are the funky-butt stylings of folks like Cee-Lo and his Dungeon Family compadres. Houston’s Big Moe, who waxes playalistic on his latest, Purple World, leans toward…

While it’s true that Afro-Cuban music is the music of West Africa filtered through a distinctly Cuban lens, it’s only part of the story; Cuban music has profoundly influenced musical styles all over the continent of Africa. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Congolese rumba (which mutated into…

Totó la Momposina is a one-woman walking encyclopedia of Colombian musical folklore. She’s also something of a perfectionist. A band with the chops and horn section wielded by her ensemble could easily have cranked out an entire disc of the blazing salsa-influenced raveup that opens Pacantó. The title cut transforms…

As soon as we get there, we’ll call Emilio/I have a friend who’s a friend of a friend/With a direct line to the heaven of so many stars/After that I’ll be running here and there/With Paulina Rubio and Alejandro Sanz/Relax, honey, Paulina’s just a friend. Jorge Villamizar swears it’s true…

Chilean chanteuse Nicole never knew quite what to expect when she arrived at Fun Machine, the studio of producer Andres Levin. The Venezuelan track-doctor behind major projects with Amigos Invisibles, Aterciopelados, and Nicole’s labelmate Jorge Moreno — to say nothing of turns with Nirvana and Tina Turner — could propose…

The atmosphere is a little delirious at Volumen Cero’s rehearsal space in Miami Beach. After ten years of holding together one rock outfit or another, the quartet can hardly stand to wait one more week for Luces (Lights), its major-label debut, to hit the street. To prepare for all the…

They met at a local open-mike night in 1997, and although they grew up across the country from each other, they felt an instant connection, almost as if they were related. An Oklahoma native, Amy Carol Webb learned to raise her voice early, crooning around the Southwest with her three…

Everything you’d ever want to know about Momus — the effeminate, eye-patched, Scottish-born composer, singer, and essayist — is available for your perusal. Through interviews, pop-culture magazine columns, and a voluminous output of smarmy, hermetically sealed electronic-pop albums (more than fifteen since 1982, with more on the way), Momus has…