Listen up, ladies: Tonight (Thursday) Yberclub Cafe Iguana (8505 Mills Dr., Town and Country Center, Kendall, 274-4948) presents the final round of Playgirl’s hunt for the hottest man in South Florida. Winners from the previous weeks’ contests will converge in Kendall to compete for enough cash to keep them in…
Try as I might to find a place in my heart for the local stuff that’s crossed my desk in the many weeks since I last reviewed any South Florida music, my ears — and heart, for that matter — keep taking me back to one disc. The Best of…
A late-model Pontiac sits in the driveway of the stucco house that Juan Pablo Torres recently bought in a planned community mushrooming over a lonely strand of south Dade. Torres cheerily answers the door in shorts and sandals and walks quickly past the pristine living room, where the cushions of…
There’s a lot to like about the version of “Tramp” recorded in 1967 by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. The song was a hit that same year for its originator Lowell Fulson, a journeyman guitarist and singer who to this day still stands in the immense shadow of B.B. King…
New, new, new stuff popping up all around: just what you’d expect in springtime. The boys from the already established gay emporium Warsaw help new kids on the block Zeptepi (1532 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 532-2002) host a gay night this — and every — Thursday night. Dancing and prancing…
Original Soundtrack Love Jones: The Music (Sony Music Entertainment) The re-emergence in the Nineties of films featuring African Americans has reinforced the idea of the black-film soundtrack as an American institution. Outstanding collections such as Above the Rim, Waiting to Exhale, and Juice have continued the tradition set in the…
“If you see a band that you like, you don’t want to wait six to eight weeks before you’re gonna see ’em again. You go home and you tell your friends, and if you could, you’d go see ’em the next night, the next weekend. So we tried to work…
Strange things can happen after death swoops down and pulls someone away. Since absence no doubt makes the heart grow fonder, there is a postmortem tendency to gloss over the shortcomings of the departed — an impulse, natural or otherwise, to find nobility in their flaws, to excuse their faults,…
“This machine kills fascists.” Those were the words scrawled on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, but the same proclamation could just as fittingly have been etched into the microphone of Bill Hicks, the Houston, Texas-raised comedian who was on a mission to expose repression, hypocrisy, and greed through humor until he succumbed…
The club carnival rolls back into town this Saturday, March 22, through Wednesday, March 26, in the form of the Winter Music Conference, bringing much music and mayhem to SoBe. The mega music industry schmooze fest offers seminars on how to make, mix, remix, package, distribute, and sell music, as…
This a good time for the national music industry, what with South By Southwest just wrapping up in Austin, Texas, and Miami’s annual booze-and-schmooze expo taking place from March 22-26 in the form of the Winter Music Conference. I’m not real happy with the music industry right now, though, and…
Fluffy Black Eye (The Enclave) Call it a backlash against the Gallagher Brothers, trip hop, or all things Manchester. Whatever the case, it was only a matter of time before an English band picked up some screaming guitars and told us exactly everything that’s wrong with the world. Such a…
Among those devoted to the preposterous notion that they can support themselves by making music, the recitation of day jobs is a hallowed form of commiseration. At its worst this ritual comes off as a kind of macho bellyaching, a self-pity sword fight. But the day-job comparison has more noble…
A scratchy recording of a vaguely familiar tune plays in the small University of Miami classroom where Paul Austerlitz lectures to a handful of students on the social history of Caribbean music. As a man sings in phlegmy French over lilting guitar and soft percussive beats, Austerlitz explains that the…
The late great rock critic Lester Bangs used to imagine what his records would say to one another if they could talk. Butted up against each other on his less-than-organized shelves, how would they get along? Like, what would Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On say to Sly and the Family…
Out of this world Virtua Cafe, the cyber club and interactive entertainment emporium, reopens tonight (Thursday) in Coconut Grove’s new Streets of Mayfair (3390 Mary St; 567-3070) after closing down its South Beach locale a few months back. Added to the club’s original concept are a restaurant, retail store, and…
U2 Pop (Island) So this is the “next big thing” the music industry has been so desperately searching for? Hate to disappoint, but the U2 of Pop is emphatically still U2 — underneath the electronic trickery, you can hear Bono’s vocal idiosyncrasies, Edge’s ringing guitar, Adam Clayton’s prominent bass. Despite…
Scott Drake is old enough to remember a time when traditional high-energy rock and roll and guttural punk rock shared more than a little common ground — when the squalling racket of the Damned, the Dead Boys, and the Vibrators revealed an obvious debt to the blues-derived work of the…
Everything works out for the best when you just go with the flow, contends Muse vocalist Paul Isaac. A year after leaving Miami for Los Angeles to record its major label debut, Muse is finally prepared to meet the world with an album recorded in Atlanta. Titled Arcana, the disc…
Tony Bennett Tony Bennett On Holiday: A Tribute to Billie Holiday (Columbia) Tony Bennett has nearly always been an anachronism. His career began just moments before his brand of sophisticated, Tin Pan Alley melody was bowled over by the passionate rhythms of rock and roll. A half-century later, with all…
Since most rock critics are neither swamis nor gypsies, they really have no business predicting the future, whether it’s the commercial faring of a new album or the direction an artist’s career will or won’t take. Nevertheless, the Miami Herald’s pop critic and resident Fleetwood Mac fanatic Howard Cohen wrapped…
Let the stars guide you to the grand opening of the Moonlite Caffe (410 Espanola Way, Clay Hotel, Miami Beach, 604-9060) tonight (March 6). The small restaurant/bar features international food delights at all hours of the day, plus an eclectic mix of musical inspirations, from Latin on Thursday to reggae…
