In the jam-band world, there is a natural need to fill the void created by the departure of Phish and the Dead — and Tea Leaf Green has met the challenge with flying colors (well… green, at least). Keeping with the jam-band tradition, Tea Leaf Green makes MP3s of its…
Coming on the heels of last month’s Circle Jerks show, Respectable Street plays host to yet another seminal SoCal punk band — Agent Orange. Like the Circle Jerks, the Orange County-based trio, led by guitarist/vocalist Mike Palm, was a forerunner of the early ’80s West Coast punk scene. But unlike…
Despite the fact that his latest album, the optimistically dubbed Face the Promise, represents his first new set of songs in nearly a dozen years, Bob Seger is, to borrow the title of one of his most resilient oldies, still the same when it comes to his blue-collar rock ‘n’…
“I’m sick of being haunted by every cliché that I know,” moans Rock Star Supernova victor Lukas Rossi in “Be Yourself (and 5 Other Clichés).” What a way to sum up this as-seen-on-TV abomination — which couldn’t come up with a less obvious name for its opening track than “It’s…
As much as the term may scream cliché, jam band has come to represent a springboard from which imaginative artists can create progressive variations on the vocabulary popularized by the likes of Phish and the Dead. Formed ten years ago in typical fashion — on the campus of Philadelphia’s U…
Five Star Iris shows all the makings of a radio-friendly rock group. The band’s eponymous debut has all the right ingredients for a Top 20 album — overly slick production, alt-pop melodies, and post-grunge rhythms that occasionally move at a snail’s pace. It’s the kind of thing A&R types eat…
There’s no doubt that Jonny Lang’s blood runs blue. And not just because, you know, human blood is blue before it reacts to oxygen… but because he gets the blues. Maybe that’s why old-timers like B.B. King lined up to record a tribute album to Lang in 2004 even though…
Sure, they’ve got a song called “Ska Is Dead,” but Boca Raton’s Skuff’d Shoes are anything but departed. Neither, for that matter, are the band’s numerous two-tone-toting peers. How else would they be able to pull off booking all these ska fests? This weekend’s Black and White Ska Fest features…
Donna the Buffalo’s eclectic mix of rock, country, folk, reggae, zydeco, and bluegrass isn’t nearly as inexplicable as its handle, which means… well, we’re not quite sure, actually. Suffice it to say, there’s no Donna among them, and there are certainly no big woolly mammals granted onstage access. The defining…
Although Bob Marley’s meteoric career was cut short by a bout with cancer in 1981, his legacy lives on in the Wailers, the band he helped found in the late ’60s and later fronted for much of his career. Few groups would have such an indelible impact, given the fact…
In the early and mid-1960s, while jazz innovators like John Coltrane were, well, innovating, another phenomenon — tagged soul-jazz — happened simultaneously. Soul-jazz groups generally featured an organist playing the robust Hammond B-3, a drummer, a saxophonist, and/or an electric guitarist. Birthed in hard bop’s 1950s cauldron, soul-jazz shunned its…
Following on the heels of Daytona’s “This Is for You Fest,” the Blackbirds, Years From Now, XRadical AttackX, Another Breath, About to Snap, Cross Examination, and Sick of Talk head to Delray Beach to end the year with a hardcore bang. With a few local stragglers also onboard (Barriers Now…
Given their eclectic mix of Mississippi Delta blues, jazz, country blues, roots, and ragtime, the Banyan Street Jug Band might be as informative to scholarly types as it is entertaining. Indeed, its performances suggest the aural equivalent of being whisked back to an earlier era, to places where itinerant musicians…
Local stalwarts the Livid Kittens have been making some kind of rock-oriented racket for a long time now. Combining elements of hard rock, punk, goth, glam, and surf — and filtering it through the rabid vocals of lead kitten Paige Harvey — the unit’s sitting on its latest slab (and…
It can be said that punk-rock vocalists often sound a bit dog-like, what with all the frenzied barking that only a lyric sheet could decipher (though, in crit-speak, the correct term’s probably something like canine-esque). But the ruff-ruff-styled backups on the Sleeparounds’ “Shitty Party” aren’t coming from lead vocalist Devin…
Case. Case… hmmm, is that the rapper who kicked it with Diddy for a while, quit the music biz to become a preacher, and then returned to the game a couple of years ago? No, wait, that was Mase. Case… oh, now I remember. Kind of. He was that supersmooth…
As the voice of Los Angeles’ legendary punk band X, Exene Cervenka learned plenty about what the genre’s all about — being conversational and controversial and not sticking to the narrow confines of three-chord Ramones riffs. With her new band, Exene Cervenka and the Original Sinners, Cervenka has found a…
Ever since he helped form the Squirrel Nut Zippers back in the early ’90s, multi-instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus has made a habit of tapping into one eclectic style after another, inspired by archival genres that rarely turn up on today’s musical radar. Just as the Squirrels mimicked the vintage juke-joint jazz…
In the urban music market’s equivalent of a monster truck radio voice, the ad for the Scream Tour 5 blares: “We Wanna Make You Screeeeeeeeeam!” Well, duh. With a roster like this, it kind of goes without saying that there’s going to be some screaming in the house — lots…
In addition to fruitcake and Carrot Top, the list of history’s true horrors includes the advent of the slideshow party — how many tortured souls have been subject to the interminable boredom, bordering on complete madness, of three carousels of Uncle Morty’s trip to the Grand Canyon? Thank heavens for…
Though they share the same name as a well-known furniture retailer, Miami’s Modernage doesn’t tout comfort or clarity of design. Far from it, in fact — Modernage’s music is seeped in post-punk anguish and intensity, a sound that reflects the anxiety and uncertainty of modern times. Formed in late 2003,…
You can reinvent the wheel, and you can reinvent the reinvention. The Hep Cat Boo Daddies, a rough, tough South Florida power trio, manages to do a little of both, drawing on a diverse amalgam of blues, rock, surf, funk, and rockabilly to fuel their highly charged musical motif. While…
