During the seventh-annual Afro Roots World Music Festival, local artists will showcase Mama Africa’s life-giving reach into the community through vibrant performances. A cappella Haitian gospel ensembles the Heavenly Brothers and Young Witnesses for Christ voice praise for soulful synchronism on February 25 at St. John’s. Finally, the flavorful concoction…
Having known each other since forever, it’s no surprise that the Walkmen make intensely intimate music. Featuring ex-members of the semi-hyped band Jonathan Fire*Eater, they sound utterly singular while waxing familiar, like forgotten words on the tip of the tongue. 2002’s sleepy Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone…
It’s said that the best way to be heard is to be misunderstood. Who gets more press than an intentionally vague artist? If this approach works, it might be the only explanation for the cataclysmic success of Hoobastank. The first time their music echoed out of your stereo, maybe there…
When most folks hear the word blues, mind’s-eye images are of ragged old men bellowing sluggish “my baby done left me” tunes on smoke-shrouded stages. Yet blues is as diverse as folk or rock. Case in point: the Winter Blues Bash. Atlanta-based guitarist/singer Roger “Hurricane” Wilson has traded riffs with…
Now that Robert Randolph and the Family Band have paved the way for the lap steel guitar to churchify pop music, we’re seeing a new interest in the origins and current purveyors of sacred steel. Florida, as it turns out, played a crucial part in the origins of the soulful…
Forget the fact that we reside at sea level and the beat of our streets has more to do with bongos than banjos. While the Yonder Mountain String Band’s down-home sound may seem out of step with our urban environs, there’s a definite exhilaration that results when this Colorado quartet…
Highlighted hair, high-end couture, and meticulous makeup jobs were the aesthetic components of the New Romantics, and nobody exemplified this preen ‘n’ dance better than Duran Duran. Icons of the ’80s new wave scene, the polished Brits pierced a hole through the collective psyches with hits like “Planet Earth,” “Rio,”…
It might not sport as many notches on its silver-spiked belt, but this year’s Zippo Hot Tour had something the Vans Warped Tour didn’t: local draw. Fort Lauderdale’s Trendkill battled seven local bands in venues across Broward and Palm Beach, eventually beating out other hard rockers like Higher Zenith and…
After enduring enough anguish to haunt several lifetimes — the deaths of his brother and a band mate, battles with booze and drugs, and two marriages to Cher (commemorated via the aptly-titled Two The Hard Way) — Gregg Allman survives and thrives 35 years after he and the Allman Brothers…
While roots rock is thriving, one doesn’t hear similar tales regarding the roots of jazz. Some older styles of jazz coexist, even blossom, alongside contemporary — bebop, swing, soul-jazz — but the music’s New Orleans origins are often overlooked or written off. Truth is, the real stuff — Luis Russell,…
His band Glassjaw draws comparisons to the sorely missed Faith No More, and Darryl Palumbo isn’t doing much to debunk that association. With Head Automatica, Palumbo follows in Mike Patton’s manic footsteps, forgets his day job, and takes up after-hours flirtation with ubiquitous producer Dan “The Automator” Nakamura. Patton he…
While American folk music has a long tradition of consciousness-rousing songs and singers — especially in the ’50s and ’60s — there aren’t many fashionable equivalents; notable exceptions, of course, are Brit Billy Bragg and Ani DiFranco. Add to that list one Ed Hamell, better known as Hamell on Trial…
At this point, it really doesn’t matter what young Conor Oberst does. There will be those who snivel and crab about what a milquetoast indie poseur he is, while others will crush hard and valiantly defend his talent. But regardless of the fickle wave of opinion, at age 24, Mr…
Calvin Broadus — the former gangbanger you know as Snoop Dogg — makes contagious records, is the star/producer of an award-winning porno he shows no skin in, and is forever at the forefront of funkafied hip-hop pimpdom. Others imitate, but who could possibly rival the D-O-Double-G’s laid-back hustler cool, slow…
What’s the principal difference between the altered-consciousness shoegazer and psychedelic genres? The former utilizes fuzzy distortion mainly on instrumental solos, often with wild abandon; the latter has a resolute, translucent haze of distortion blanketing everything. Were-Floridians-now-Texans Baby Robots derive inspiration from both (“shoegazadelic?”) as evidenced by their 2001 release Lakitu:…
Like his contemporary Carlos Santana, folk singer/acoustic guitarist Richie Havens sometimes says flowery things about heightened consciousness and spirituality that veer toward New Age parody, as if the limits of lovey-dovey idealism and the realities of bad drugs never sank in after Woodstock. But as American history repeats itself in…
It’s ironic that alt-country folkster Steve Earle is performing in a venue called the Carefree Theater. If anyone represents the opposite of carefree, it’s Earle, a turbulent voice of lefty political activism. Earle has been around for three decades and 11 Grammy nominations — including two for his most recent…
This show will be brought to you by the number 3 and the letter F. And that’s F for funk, kids — the sticky, syncopated New Orleans kind originated by the Meters back in the early ’70s. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, listen up: PBS is…
Yeah, meat is murder. Which is one way to describe San Diego-based death-metal band Cattle Decapitation. If some Broadway producer decides to base a musical on the hard-core lives of roadies for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Cattle Decapitation will probably get the nod to write the score…
Everybody does it. Sometimes people even pay for it. The truth is — as I’m sure you know — Cex is well worth the money. To take the metaphor to the next level of freaky-deaky, this type of copulation comes between man and machine. Cex, a.k.a. Ryan Kidwell, is a…
Michael Donaldson, better known as Q-Burns Abstract Message, has had a long and varied career. During the “electronica” hype of the late ’90s, he cranked out everything from turntablist tracks (for the memorable Deep Concentration compilation) to breezy jazz ‘n’ bass and downtempo. If his latest compilation of remixes, Future…
Go ahead and argue, but MOFRO is hands down the best rock band to come out of Florida since Skynyrd. You can keep your whiney emo brats and poseurific rap-metal numbskulls — Jacksonville natives J.J. Grey and Daryl Hance have them beat with an easy and true Deep South soul…
