Some years ago Magnum Band was part of a spirited Little Haiti scene, when there were clubs and cafés dotting the neighborhood and attracting dancers and partiers of the most festive sort. Now the lights in Little Haiti have dimmed, and some local musicians have forlornly returned to their homeland…
Is it really the end? We fear it is. On a Saturday in February, guitarist Rob Coe and producer Jeremy DuBois are in the upstairs room of North Miami’s Tapeworm studio, mixing songs for a new Fay Wray album. The following Thursday the fiery, clever, and (this description is becoming…
With song titles such as “1 Horse Town” and “Cowboy Ways,” the Holy Rollin’ Hellfires are a little bit country, but a bootload of rock. After a series of rhythm-section changes, the Beach-based Hellfires solidified, released an eponymous CD, and can now be found detonating their yee-haw ya-yas from Fort…
After five years of kicking it locally and fathering some considerable buzz, The Artist Formerly Known as Trick Daddy Dollars has ridden his easy-swinging beats and hard rhymes into the Billboard Top 10. His first LP, Based on a True Story, cracked the R&B Top 100; his followup, www.thug.com, has…
Some local musicians pitch a fit about the lack of a live music scene. After arriving from Los Angeles last year, pianist Arthur Hanlon set out to create a scene. Hanlon’s monthly gig at The Globe in Coral Gables, where he jams with a quintet of outstanding local Latin players,…
It’s after midnight and, three songs in, the ButterClub has mesmerized the outdoor crowd at a local music festival. Before the next selection, singer Rhett O’Neil asks the technical crew to turn off the stage lights. “We’re all friends here,” he says. For the next 90 minutes a couple of…
Rob Elba has distinguished himself as an incisive songwriter and riveting performer both with his former group the Holy Terrors and as a solo artist. This outfit, which also includes members of Radio Baghdad, is something else altogether. In typically ferocious style, Elba and company tear up classic (ahem) tunes…
“The tyranny of the beat” is an apt description of Miami’s club culture, a world where creativity, envelope pushing, and soulfulness are increasingly being shoved aside in favor of generic four-on-the-floorisms. Phoenecia stands as one of a handful of local electronic acts bucking that trend, and Odd Job is an…
The reggae cover bands of Miami probably don’t like getting up there and grinding out “No Woman No Cry” for the eight-millionth time. Alas, that’s what the mainstream market demands. This is a tough town for an original reggae band, particularly one with a political consciousness, but Benaiah continues to…
Decades before the sampling-based, cut-and-paste genre of hip-hop took hold, Jamaican dub was recycling recorded riffs like crazy. And “crazy” is the appropriate word. Extrapolating from reggae’s repetitious, hypnotic intensity, beginning in the early Seventies the Jamaican granddaddy of dub, King Tubby, was not only assembling the most psychedelic pop…
Miami’s beat-maestro extraordinaire DJ Craze is everywhere these days, winning the International Turntablist Federation’s scratching competition in Amsterdam, jetting off to Calgary, Canada, for a club date, and receiving accolades from the New York Times. His full-length debut Crazeë Musick is set for release later this month on San Francisco’s…
It’s fascinating to watch a high-quality band mature, especially when it’s fronted by a talent like Demetrius Brown. As Manchild’s singer-lyricist-guitarist, Brown has proved himself a prolific artist, penning more than 100 songs and performing countless gigs since 1992. Because he is best known for his phenomenal guitar incantations, his…
Combining techno and organic music is not exactly a revolutionary idea anymore. Plenty of groups, from Dubtribe Sound System to Medeski, Martin & Wood, have successfully merged the dance-driven grooves of the turntable underground with the in-the-moment excitement of an improvisational live performance. But few artists can mix the two…
The population of accordion players in South Florida nearly triples this weekend when the Cajun/Zydeco Crawfish Festival 1999 arrives at the Fort Lauderdale Stadium. Don’t be put off by the goofy ads for the event, which focus on the multitude of food and beer vendors, neglecting to mention even one…
South Florida’s youth isn’t known for its radical political activism, especially when it comes to creating art. So how’s life in Miami for the politically conscious ska-flavor punk band Against All Authority? Just fine, especially because they’re not here very often. But even when the Miami septet is in town,…
Lester Bowie Brass Fantasy The Odyssey of Funk & Popular Music (Atlantic) William Hooker The Distance Between Us (Knitting Factory) Delightfully audacious in both concept and execution, the new albums by revered jazz avant-gardists Lester Bowie and William Hooker are just the kind of screwball longplayers that are anathema for…
The Beta Band The Three E.P.s (Astralwerks) It struck me as odd to discover that Britain’s hottest new “techno” act, the Beta Band (in the States they’re on Astralwerks, a label shared by the Chemical Brothers, Air, and many other hip Euro-techno acts), actually sounds more like an older British…
Cuban bands have been touring the United States with such frequency these days that their appearances in American concert halls, at festivals, and in clubs almost seem commonplace, even in the politically charged environs of Miami. After all it was only a year ago that singer Issac Delgado and his…
They’ve been in self-parody mode for so long it’s safe to write them off these days, but give credit to the Cramps for this: They’ve steered numerous punk kids and hipsters toward some of the greatest lost classics in the pantheon of trashy rock, bizarro rockabilly, and fuzzy garage stomps…
“I thought I could find him before the police did,” Gary Indiana says with a laugh from his upstate New York home, referring to his initial attraction to the media spectacle that was the Andrew Cunanan manhunt. With the killing of Gianni Versace, however, a murder spree that already had…
Until recently the designation “big in Japan” was, for all intents and purposes, a slap in the face to most pop and rock musicians. Now with heavyweight trendsetting labels such as Matador and Grand Royal capitalizing on Japan’s newfound, growing, and supercool reputation for quixotic and innovative musical hodgepodges, other…
The word “cool” connotes many things, but when singer Cassandra Wilson uses it to describe her musical approach, she has a specific reference in mind. “I speak about coolness in terms of the Yoruba definition,” Wilson elucidates. “It’s a word that describes art and implies grace under pressure and a…
