In December’s Vibe, Mary J. Blige said that even though she’s comfortable revealing her abs in photographs, “I ain’t giving you titty, nipple, pubic hair or damn near clitoris.” While that’s certainly the most colorful quote uttered by a public figure in 2005, Blige’s comment actually runs counter to the…
Like truants and delinquents at military school, the men of 31Knots roar with frustration, but they never lose their discipline. The wiry trio strikes a good balance between emo and math rock, with riffs that forgive lines like “Hell hath no fury like me.” There’s a lot of clockwork in…
Listen closely to their second full-length and you can actually hear the members of Mason going through puberty. Which is to say, there’s a lot of straining, questioning, aching — and not a little whining — wrapped up in You Were Supposed to Be Beautiful. If that sounds intolerable or…
Detroit, May 2003, the “Gangster Bass Tour”: Dan “Doormouse” Martin, a six-foot-tall electronic musician sporting a beard and an all-too-revealing cheerleader outfit, screams across the stage, commanding DJ Baseck to do jumping jacks. Miami native DJ Otto Von Schirach stands off to the side, scared shitless, as a naked Baseck…
Phil Spector’s legendary “Wall of Sound” is the inspiration for this massive, engrossing collection of early-’60s girl groups. While Spector’s best-known sides are absent, it’s amazing to hear how creatively energizing his hits were during a brief period usually disparaged as a downtime in “rock’s maturity.” Among the standard swooning…
When the Xbox 360 hit stores last month and the system sold out within hours, a Berkeley business professor commented on the genius of Microsoft’s marketing. “Shortages create a whole mystique of desirability,” the prof said. Ryan Adams, take note. With the release of 29, Adams’ third album this year…
Some soul singers have sung their joy — Sam Cooke and Stevie Wonder not least — and made their best art. But Anthony Hamilton comes from a bluesier tradition, with a lilting, earthbound voice that knows struggle, and he came with a masterwork in 2003’s heavy Comin’ From Where I’m…
The Strokes were labeled the saviors of NYC’s rock ‘n’ roll scene when they oozed out of hipster enclaves (and, er, prep school) in 2001. But in the ensuing years, all of the tricks that made the fab five so exciting — snappy hooks, half-drunken confessions of love, and off-balance,…
Beck’s 2005 Guero album, hailed as the folk-rock-rap-whatever successor to his ’96 landmark Odelay, reveled in the artist’s usual ironic self-awareness. The title, for one, translates to “white boy,” belying a record drizzled in country twang, Mexican slang, grungy hip-hop, orchestral bossa nova, and funky electronica. Now out of that…
OK, people: No dwelling on that bitch Wilma. And no bitching about your dwelling in 2005. South Florida took some shots, both on the chin and at the bar, during another mercilously hectic, predictably unpredictable year. The real movers and shakers of the music scene are learning — slowly but…
So barefoot-boogie hippies rub you the wrong way. Or maybe you’re more open-minded than the typical cranky-pants, scene-sucking elitist. Either way, hopefully you’re savvy enough to realize that shortcut labels like jam band and indie rock better describe a band’s business approach and fan base than its sound. This year,…
While hip-hop continued to get mo’ live in ’05 and indie rock further honed post-punk/emo’s affectations into something more genuinely affecting, the arch-paradigms from the past 12 months of electronic composition seemed more concerned with looking in than locking in. For the most part, top producers haven’t seemed as worried…
2005 was a year of exploration and expansion in urban music. Against a Matrix-like background of corporate-controlled radio and TV, iPod-enabled consumers demanded more musical choices and were rewarded by indie labels that stepped in to provide an alternative to mainstream mediocrity once again. For every lackluster commercial effort (like…
As Curtis Armstrong’s Miles tells Tom Cruise’s Joel in the 1983 hit comedy film Risky Business, sometimes you just gotta say, “What the fuck.” In Joel’s case, this phrase is employed with a shrug of the shoulders and a sly smile: “What the fuck, let’s go for it.” In mine,…
In 2005, pop music was rock music. Between Kelly Clarkson’s tarted-up “Since U Been Gone,” Ashlee Simpson’s raspy, Courtney Love-after-a-bender vocals, and Hilary Duff’s collabs with her Good Charlotte boytoy, Joel Madden, even the biggest top 40 starlets liked their guitars cranked up to a sassy 11. Elsewhere, rockers in…
Trendsetting celebs like Madonna and Perry Farrell are getting into it. Indie rockers like Yo La Tengo, moe., and They Might Be Giants are singing about it. The New York Times and Newsweek are writing about it. Starting December 25, more than 625,000 South Florida residents will begin celebrating it…
When asked about favorite Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa memories, most people remember the good times. You know, the stuff they write songs about to get you in the holiday spirit — deck the halls, fa la la la, and all that jazz. Now, ask a musician the same question and,…
These were called Al Kooper’s Kapusta Kristmas albums, and they now cost a fortune on eBay. Due to their limited circulation and high appeal, back in the day, most people heard them on second-, third-, and fourth-generation cassettes, and so most people just called them “Al Kooper tapes.” The Kooper…
Music fans have come to dread December. Few bands are on tour, all of the year’s good records have already been released, and the sounds of the season are inescapable. But fear not, for I bring unto you good tidings of great joy: your guide to this season’s musical offerings…
Why there hasn’t been an A&E Biography dedicated to Miami soul goddess Betty Wright is unfathomable. She’s been writing, singing, and recording fine R&B since the mid-1960s; collaborated with Stevie Wonder (“What Are You Gonna Do With It”); had her own talk show; sang backup for Erykah Badu, Jennifer Lopez,…
“The first thing you do when you get to Montego Bay,” Tony Kelly told me over the phone last Monday, “is get in a cab and tell the taximan to take you to Kingston instead.” Not exactly encouraging advice for me and Inside Scoop, two music junkies taking a 36-hour…
Picture the following gang of hip-hop misfits: two Harlemites — one an imposing 300 pounds with a Zeus-like voice, the other cherub-faced and sporting an incongruous nasal twang — who interweave sci-fi imagery into their hyperrealist ghetto tales; a dreadlocked freestyle champ with a socialist agenda and a knack for…
