Here’s an oh-that’s-too-bad item for obsessive watchers of the local indie rock scene. Another band bites the dust — this time, Call it Radar. You may remember the band as its first incarnation, Baby Calendar, who played around town a little more, and were popular with that whole Athens, Georgia-centric…
(Photo from ArtOfficial’s Myspace page) Amazing. Over 1000 bands nationally who competed in the Last Band Standing contest, judged by Perry Farrell, to play an opening slot at Lollapalooza. And among the five finalists is a band from Miami — ArtOfficial! What’s more, they’re the only hip-hop group in the…
So Fort Lauderdale’s hardest working hip-hop crew, Major League, have a brand new video that they just released a couple of days ago. They shot it, directed, and edited it themselves and the song is appropriately titled “Grustlin” since what these guys are most known for, aside from having good…
I’ve been singing ‘We are the youth gone wild’ for 20 years, man… I’m fuckin’ 40!” Sebastian Bach exclaims over the phone before telling me to hold on a second. There are some voices in the background, then some shuffling sounds, and then he’s back. “Sorry, dude; I’m getting my…
On a recent Saturday night, the tiny space of Sweat Records in Miami’s Little Haiti is filled with curious scene kids awaiting an avant-garde performance. At first, it’s unclear if any of the local bands are going to be worth a damn, but there’s an audible buzz that picks up…
Sigur Rós’ latest is positively festooned with danger signs: first album to be mainly recorded outside its home base of Iceland, first to feature a track sung in English, and the first co-produced by a big-shot dial-twister (Flood, of Depeche Mode fame). Somehow, though, this series of seemingly suspect compromises…
At 95 years of age, Mississippi Delta-born pianist Pinetop Perkins is still an active performer and one who is still able to hit his piano’s keys with amazing dexterity. The proof is on this beauty of a blues CD, in which the veteran shares the spotlight with an array of…
It takes only a cursory listen to Aimee Mann’s alluring new album to affirm that the only thing possibly forestalling a commercial connection would be its inexplicably feisty title. Too bad; the songs on this disc are among the best of her ever-evolving career. While there’s some similarity to Mann’s…
There’s no denying that Fourth Dimension is one of South Florida’s hardest-working reggae bands. The group gigs constantly — at least four or five nights out of the week — playing all three counties in South Florida (none of that Miami-only bullshit), and they’re actually worth a damn when they…
Did music really used to be less complicated, or does it just seem that way? Maybe it’s just that life used to be less complicated, and music is simply a mirror of its times. Or something like that. Whatever the case, Two Men With the Blues was recorded live at…
It’s safe to assume it was the first time a bunch of West Kendallites appeared in the New York Post’s infamous “Page Six” gossip column. And it’s especially notable because they did so for indirectly inciting a minor riot in L.A. alongside a famously celebrated, then disgraced, then semiredeemed memoirist…
I’ll just come out and say it: The Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino horrifies me. It’s a depraved place full of slot machines, waitresses in hot pants, and plenty of people betting way more than they can afford. But that grand little nation of contrived decadence also fascinates me…
Danny Daze As far as local DJs go, Danny Daze easily comes in as one of my top five favorites. Why? Because he is better than most DJs in the nation, and even better than most DJs who have come to rule the blog house “genre.” But I sort of…
Ernest Barteldes Latin Alternative Music Conference, Day 4 Saturday, July 12,2008 Central Park Summerstage, New York With no more panel discussions to attend anymore, we headed out to Central Park’s Rumsey Playfield during a mild Saturday afternoon for the final round of concerts for this edition of the LAMC. Like…
Ernest Barteldes Latin Alternative Music Conference, Day 3 Friday, July 11, 2008 Roosevelt Hotel & Prospect Park, New York On the second day of panels and networking at Midtown’s The Roosevelt Hotel, former producer Moses Avalon discussed the various pitfalls faced by young musicians in the dog-eat-dog world of show…
Ernest Barteldes Los Fancy Free perform at the Bowery Ballroom Thursday night during the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York. Latin Alternative Music Conference, Day 2 Thursday, July 10, 2008 Roosevelt Hotel, S.O.B.s and Bowery Ballroom, New York On the second full day of the Latin Alternative Music Conference…
Move over Fillmore Miami Beach, Bayfront Park Amphitheater is about to get in on some of the Live Nation action. Whether you love or abhor it, Live Nation, one of the nation’s leading concert promotion companies is set to take over the operation of Bayfront Park Amphitheater in Downtown Miami…
Ernest Barteldes Cucu Diamantes, lead singer of Yerba Buena, performing at Central Park in New York. Latin Alternative Music Conference, Day 1 Wednesday, July 9, 2008 Central Park Summerstage & Mercury Lounge, New York An overcast sky over Central Park and a severe weather forecast that never came to fruition…
When I was growing up, my father and brothers were very competitive, or, more accurately, completely ruthless at videogames, board games, sports, bowling, air hockey, and especially go-carts. My dad is a great man, but he would completely kick my little toddler ass at Candy Land and any other board…
For all his obsession about writing the “perfect” pop song — a preoccupation that has always made Weezer records sound forced and constricted — Rivers Cuomo comes pretty damned close at the start of this album with a refreshing, ultracatchy ditty named “Troublemaker.” Finally, Cuomo and the band deliver the…
For a while, the groundbreaking work credited to early Tommy Boy Records alumnus Steve “Steinski” Stein felt destined to elude mainstream acceptance forever. While classic Tommy Boy hip-hop gets mined for celebratory collections on a regular basis, Steinski’s DJ compositions — slick marriages of turntable stunts and manually chopped samples…
Singer/songwriter David Berman is as much of an ironist in life as he is in art. Note that after landing in rehab following a Xanax overdose (an act with sardonic aspects of its own), he belatedly embraced Judaism — a belief system he’d never taken that seriously despite his band’s…
