Touane with Punisher, DJ NovaSaturday, December 20, 2008Blue, Miami BeachBetter than: your average DJ set in a favorable venue. Minimal techno is a bit of an acquired taste, much like straight liquor. Verse and chorus are the requisite ice and soda mixer most social drinkers need in their music cocktail, chords…
Sayre BermanAC/DCSaturday, December 20, 2008BankAtlantic Center, SunriseBetter Than: Volume itself.To say that AC/DC were loud Saturday night is kinda like saying the sun set and the sky turned dark; a statement of fact, perhaps, but pretty much unnecessary. To say that AC/DC were louder than any show I’ve seen since…
So I am a sucker for Christmas, and the Seraphic Fire’s Friday night concert at the Arsht Center made the season for me. Messiah — particularly the hallelujah chorus, was sublime. The small orchestra and beautiful voices organized by Notre Dame professor Patrick Quigley and partially funded by the Knight…
Here’s something for minimal techno lovers (perhaps it’ll cool down enough this weekend for a scarf?). This Saturday at everybody’s favorite micro-dance-club, Blue, Pornograph Events presents a live P.A. by the Berlin-based producer Touane. Born Marco Tonni in Rimini, Italy, he escaped his commercial-house-ridden home country for the techno promised…
And now it’s time for the “I love you like a fat kid loves cake” memorial Worst Lyrics of 2008, March Madness-style tournament, this year a terrifying mélange of appalling oral-sex requests, bargain-bin philosophies, grammatical atrocities, and cringe-inducing pillow talk. To elevate the drama, I provided a trusted colleague with…
For hardcore Morrissey fans, especially those of us in South Florida, 2007 was somewhat emotionally tumultuous. First, he played an amazing summer show here, in support of Ringleader of the Tormenters — good (in spite of the cruel heat). Except the show was at the Mizner Park Amphitheatre in Boca…
In 2008, independent rock returned to the underground, where it belongs. Given the grand catastrophe that is today’s record industry, most major-label executives don’t have the time or energy to convince music fans they might like something a little out of the ordinary. They’re too busy recycling variations on what…
Photo by Jonas Grabarnick/The Opium GroupSomeone whispered “Common’s around the corner” into my ear and disappeared into the winsome mob at Louis. I had been so thrown off by the sensation of an 18th century soldier sweeping party debris across my feet, I hadn’t even realized that I had wandered…
The Italoboyz’s moniker is slightly misleading on a couple levels. First, it’s slightly so, because although Marco Donato and Frederico Marton hails from Italy, the twosome have been based in London since about the turn of the millennium. Neither do they play, as one would assume, Italo disco, or even…
Slip-N-Slide’s 15th Anniversary Party at Hotel Victor in Miami Beach was definitely the best party of 2008. Baby tigers, porn stars, open bars, and lots of millionaire thugs showing off their jewelry. Trina was posing for photos as Keith Sweat performed. I got to sit and talk to Slip-N-Slide’s founder…
A few weeks ago, when Mr. Vegas was in town for the International Caribbean Music Fest debacle — a show where most of the headliners didn’t perform because they never got paid — Vegas was one of the few bright spots of the night. Anyone who was there remembers the…
As the name of this event, and the fact that it’s followed by a numeral, might suggest, the epic December party Candyland started out in the golden age of the Florida rave scene. In the Nineties, it was a guaranteed good-time on the party calendar, one of several large-scale annual…
Any knucklehead with DSL and a laptop can now make an electronic track. With a half hour of clicking and fiddling, you can sample enough cheesy beats and mashups to clog arteries from here to Berlin. Simple dropdown mouse maneuvers can transform electro tracks into progressive house tracks (from dry…
To get an introduction to Jose El Rey (if you actually need one!) and to read last week’s installment of his weekly Crossfade column, Que Pasa, M.I.A?, click here. Maybe it’s my moustache. Maybe it’s the gel in my hair. Perhaps, and most likely, it’s the manner in which I…
In a year worthy of your rage, metal delivered in spades. What with the economy circling the drain and Sarah Palin coming down from the tundra and then refusing to go back, 2008’s been the kind of year that really makes you want to smash your head into walls or…
Most music lovers who enjoy Miami’s multicultural sound know by now about local jam-masters Locos Por Juana. And at this very moment, we can also add the Grammys to their long list of admirers. The local heroes were just nominated “Best Latin Rock or Alternative” for the 2009 awards. It’s…
That’s right everybody, I kissed a girl,” declares Katy Perry to an audience of screaming teenagers. “She was hot, and I liked it!” With that, an entire arena full of teens and tweens begin shrieking the words to Perry’s hit song, “I Kissed a Girl,” so loudly that Perry’s voice…
In recent years, I’ve taken to evaluating, somewhat subconsciously, each new AC/DC album by way of what I’ll now outwardly brand the “Send for the Man” scale. It’s a fairly straightforward system, resting on one incontrovertible fact: AC/DC — old or new, live or studio, Bon or Brian, is never…
What your holiday gift list doesn’t need is a robotic vacuum cleaner. Or an overpriced Walkman with an “i” in front of it. What you need, and what you should be giving to everybody you know, is baby-faced U2. And a bit of crooning reggae. Mixed with a drug-soaked freak…
Alternative rock killed the guitar hero, that axe man who lived on fretboard histrionics. For Louisiana’s Tab Benoit, hot-stuff six-string slinging is all he knows. At 41, Benoit combines two regional styles near and dear to his heart — the incendiary sting of Texas blues with the more laid-back, sultry,…
Anyone familiar with the beach bar culture of Deerfield Beach knows the Resolvers. At times, this five-man reggae band can single-handedly draw everyone within ear range into Kahuna’s, where they have a weekly residence. From that point on, the group starts a party reminiscent of a Jamaican beach bash. They’ve…
Bluesman Seth Walker sings like a man who’s had his heart broken one too many times. Since his genre of choice calls for a bit of misfortune, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t hurt to listen to his songs if you’re going through a breakup — or wish…
