Gregg Foreman, the mastermind behind the shifting musical lineup that performs as the Rare Birds, is indeed an exotic specimen in Miami. Under the moniker “Mr. Pharmacist” (cribbed from a song by the Fall), Foreman is one of the most prolific rock DJs around town. But even in his native…
The Miami jazz fusion circuit has become somewhat of a phenomenon. Although the genre has existed since the Sixties, a noticeable surge in horns and keyboards has taken over local bands and nightclubs. Suddenly every band is a jazz-funk-rock-R&B crossover. From Brazilian to Afro-Cuban, avant-garde to acid, jazz is quickly…
Grunge as it could only be interpreted on the Sunset Strip, Red Rover is perhaps the ultimate set piece. On Agent Sparks’ debut album, these Angelinos recast mid-Nineties Northwest sludge as artful noise, full of thick, rolling bass lines and sculpted squalls of feedback. The band’s parallel universe imagines Cobain…
Slide Hampton, longtime friend and associate of jazz legend John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, will be leading the moving tribute to this fallen hero at the Frost School of Music. Nine years after his death, Gillespie’s memory lives on in the minds of all jazz fiends. A major player in the…
Brazilian percussion musicians Ney Rosauro, Oscar Lorenzo Fernandez, and Heitor Villa-Lobos will be honored during this concert at the Frost School of Music. The University of Miami Percussion Ensemble will jam along with guests Esther Jane Hardenbergh, Wan Chun Liao, Shannon Wood, and Ney Rosauro himself during a special evening…
Sporting her trademark diamond-encrusted sunglasses and boasting a vocal range that rivals Mariah Carey’s, Diane Schuur knows how to work a stage. This is the first stop on a year-long international tour. Grab a tissue and prepare to be blown away when she croons songs like “Send Me Someone to…
Baby Calendar is a textbook example of how an indie band makes it. Sort of. The trio — Tom Gorrio, Jackie Biver, and Arik Dayan — just issued its first nationally distributed album, Gingerbread Dog, and went on its first Southeast tour this past summer. This month the group plays…
Since Garcia dropped his independently released debut album, Anti-Social, in the summer of 2004 to the tune of more than 25,000 units, the man has been busier than Larry Coker during Hurricanes season. With appearances on MTV ‘s My Block and TLC’s Miami Ink; mixtapes with DJ Drama, EFN, and…
Members of Nation of Islam offshoot the Nation of Gods and Earths (a.k.a. the Five Percent Nation) often point out that their movement is a social one, not a religious one. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a current album that’s preachier than the solo debut from Brand Nubian’s Lord…
Henry Stone gets it right with a benefit CD for Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, a charity that provides rehabilitation services for visually impaired South Floridians. Saxophonist Jeff Zavac honors Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and José Feliciano with renditions of their greatest hits. Perfect to soothe the senses in the…
The two-disc Gigantour DVD documents a 2005 heavy-metal tour that was, in the words of visionary/headliner Dave Mustaine, “for people who love the guitar solo.” In the documentary half, Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy describes his technical-ecstasy band as “the Grateful Dead of heavy metal.” He’s right, though it shoulda…
What constitutes punk rock? Is it a squad of Beach Boys fans donning leather jackets and crooning about drugs and fascists? A bunch of shabbily dressed sods cribbing their poorly executed licks from the New York Dolls catalogue? Sound? Attitude? Timing? What is that indefinable property of punk rock that…
J’Ouvert, a traditional sunrise party that takes place in Caribbean islands during Carnival season, has made its way to Miami Carnival. This celebration, which will go strong until the early morning, will feature the Exodus Steel Orchestra (Trinidad and Tobago), Pepper Pot Steel Orchestra (Daytona Beach), Tamboo Bamboo Steel Orchestra…
Bergen, Norway, offers little shelter from the Northeast winters in the United States; its cold and rainy climate probably soaks wee folkster native Sondre Lerche down to his skivvies. But Norway’s Baard Ldemel, a.k.a. Skatebård, allows none of the grim daily weather outlook to filter into his melodic electronica on…
They play incredibly wonderful music that crosses over genre boundaries, and they play it with an incredibly infectious fervor. The drummer, tambourine in hand, wades out into the crowd, leading an impromptu sing-along. The people respond by joining in. Isn’t this supposed to be Miami? Isn’t that guy with the…
What is it with groups/MCs from hip-hop’s late-Eighties/early-Nineties era trying to resurrect their careers of late? Both Boot Camp Clik and Wu-Tang members are churning out new material, CL Smooth has just dropped a solo album, and even EPMD and A Tribe Called Quest are again doing shows, the latter…
Gothic music’s sibling, industrial, can be tricky to key. Is Nine Inch Nails’s Trent Reznor just a guy who backed conventional rock guitars with a drum-and-synth track? Did Ministry skip industrial altogether, bouncing from synth-pop straight to metal? Are Cabaret Voltaire, Einstürzende Neubauten, Psychic TV, and My Life with the…
Short on personality but high on concept, Give Me a Wall plays like a musical companion piece to The Communist Manifesto. These Leeds-based noise-conjurers wrap their songs’ brittle melodies in appropriately dense postpunk effects, albeit with a far more academic bent than their deranged peers in the now-defunct Test Icicles…
Former Morlock member Jeffrey Luck Lucas parlays his Michael Madsen dead-ringerness into a Tom Waitseye view of Americana, where the proletariat sits at home all the time, bummed to the gills over the city — Memphis, let’s say, even though Lucas is from Frisco — that holds it hostage by…
It’s hugely doubtful this disc will get much attention outside the cabal of indie completists who experience palpitations at the thought of Aloha, unfortunately. And even if you’re down with that, we’re talking about the group’s drummer/second-banana-singer gone solo here. Other curious passersby, however, are in for something resembling a…
Armenian-Canadian Punjabi singer Kiran Ahluwalia leads a Bollywood charge in the forthcoming full-length from Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber, altogether a melancholy, trance-free effort reflective of Leeb’s recent personal woes. “Indoctrination” is a sandblasted what-if of Massive-Attack-as-New-Agers, Ahluwalia’s stupefying range spotlighting the ability she demonstrated helping to soundtrack The Lord…
The members of Future Sound of London enjoy a significance in electronic music that has as much to do with their extroverted technological savvy as their introverted music, both of which are represented on the greatest-hits collection, Teachings from the Electronic Brain. FSOL works along the experimental ambient lines, entertaining…
