Last Night: Matt Pond PA and The Walkmen at Langerado Matt Pond PA, The Walkmen March 7, 2008 Langerado, Big Cypress Reserve Better Than: A hot-buttered steam bath. Matt Pond PA If there were two more incongruous acts to stage in the swamplands, I can’t think of ’em. I mean,…
I was all set to badmouth Vampire Weekend when they were to take the stage at Langerado yesterday, but the Ivy League louts denied me the privilege. Seems a little TV show called Saturday Night Live trumps Big Cypress, so the boy band decided to stay home and do their…
Nile As is so often the case with metal shows, there are too many bands on this bill. While there’s a certain bang-for-the-buck factor, in all honesty – and with no offense to the other three bands – this show could easily be whittled down to Nile and Warbringer and…
The long-haired, natty Lazaro Casanova got his start playing at the now-defunct old Malibu Grand Prix’s infamous Full Moon parties, int he Nineties. But he really became a local marquee name as the musical selector du jour for the main rooms indie-ish dance parties in Miami, most notably at the…
This quartet specializes in face-melting volume, pounding riffage, and a churning, breakneck-speed riffage section. But don’t tag ’em with the “m” word – Torche is a band possessing the rare ability to create heavy, heavy sounds that remain versatile and nuanced. With a floating overlay of intelligent, almost shoegazey textures,…
Within a span of months, the kiddies of Black Tide have shot from totally unheard-of to total buzz band for lovers of heavy music, appearing in the like of Spin and Revolver. And they are, in fact kiddies – the oldest members of the quartet are 19, and the frontman,…
Jacek Gancarz Click here to see a slide show of the concert. Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin with Hurt and Seether March 6, 2008 Cruzan Amphitheater Better Than: A cold beer on a hot night. Allow me to begin by saying that I commend everyone that made the hellish…
It’s not often that you encounter a soul singer who’s as visually intriguing as Somong. Born of mixed Korean and black heritage, this Palm Beach County resident is making a name for himself with a style that’s all urban pop (think Casely) yet with more of an ethnic twist. His…
Ska has its detractors and its aficionados, and both tend to do a disservice to the music’s actual value. With its surface flash of bouncy rhythms and bright horns, ska very easily pulls you in or turns you off. The people who dismiss it as too cute for their liking…
Few modern jazz guitarists today have had the opportunity to collaborate with as many artists as Missouri’s Pat Metheny has throughout his career. Joni Mitchell, Milton Nascimento, and Jaco Pastorius are just a few of the recording giants Metheny has worked with over the years, and he briefly lived here…
For every musical prodigy, there will be a score of rabid critics eager to decry and defame. This is certainly true for Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang. His was a troubled career from the start. At 9 years old, after winning contests and playing highly regarded public recitals, Lang Lang…
Ky-mani Marley rocking in front of thousands of fans. 15th Annual Caribbean Festival AKA The Bob Marley Festival Saturday, March 1, 2008 Bayfront Park Amphitheater Better than: Staying home and listening to Exodus on repeat. Over the weekend, one of Miami’s most treasured music festivals returned to the city for…
Austin’s mega music festival, South By Southwest (SXSW) is almost here and there’s a bunch of great bands from around the world that should be headed to Texas for it next week. Last year was a special treat as the Good, the Bad, and the Queen seemed to descend on…
Jose Gonzalez February 29, 2008 Artime Theatre Better Than: Sitting in an isolation tank in the middle of Biscayne. Miami is so much fucking cooler than most people give it credit for. We’ve got the Book Fair, we’ve got Winter Music Conference, and, of course, we’ve got Art Basel Miami…
Three weeks ago, I spoke on the phone with the two women who will be starring in Florida Grand Opera’s upcoming production of Tosca, Giacomo Puccini’s great opera about a brave, doomed painter, a jealous, doomed singer, and a very-mean (and very-doomed) police chief. One of these interviews was published…
The Gipsy Kings didn’t set out to redefine world music. They didn’t intend to scandalize the world of traditional Flamenco music through their inclusion of pop instrumentation and rock song structures. They just wanted to make pretty girls dance, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The history of the…
(Via Idolator). Liberal mag Mother Jones did us all the favor of putting together an imeem streaming play list of songs used during military prison interrogations, according to various leaked documents. And I have to say — I, too, would crack pretty quickly if forced to listen to “Babylon” by…
The Really, Really Good Looking Tour: Cobra Starship, Metro Station, We the Kings, the Cab Wednesday, February 27, 2008 Culture Room Better Than: The programmed sounds coming from your 1985 Casio keyboard. The bands on this tour could have held an open casting call, but they wouldn’t have found a…
…when you can use VOCALOID, a totally fascinating, vaguely unsettling singing synthesizer program from – where else? – Japan. It doesn’t just do the robot voice box or vocoder sounds – this one actually sings, mainly through the reedy female voice of a fictional character, Miku Hatsune (based, however, on…
For starters, you gotta love anyone who can bring that sharp-tongued Simon Cowell close to tears. That’s exactly what transpired when Paul Potts auditioned for Britain’s Got Talent, the U.K. version of American Idol. His show-stopping performance mesmerized YouTube gazers worldwide and made the onetime supermarket stocker and mobile-phone salesman…
You’ll have to go to Albertsons to get it, but Smokey Robinson now has his own line of grocery products, aptly titled “Smokey Robinson Foods.” They feature select meals he’s fallen in love with while touring for the past 50 years. Sure, he’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer,…
Talented songwriter k.d. lang has clearly learned a few things from spending so much time around Tony Bennett. The two have been recording together since they released 2002’s A Wonderful World, and on her latest disc, you can hear the influence of Bennett in her approach to singing. The Alberta,…
