Where to place Austin Willacy? Somewhere in the great open plains between Stevie Wonder and Kurt Cobain. Willacy, formerly of the House Jacks, has the voice of a classic soul singer and the songwriting sensibility of a grunge disciple. The result is a fascinating, if prickly, solo debut, American Pi...
From the Condomania Files: Gee, it's funny how a visit from the media can shake up even the most lackadaisical of condo boards. Last week New Times was invited by a resident to sit in on the annual meeting of the Woodsetter North Homeowners Association, a 140-unit group of town...
New Jersey's Yo La Tengo regularly sends reviewers into enthusiastic fits. Over the course of the band's 14-year career, the critical darlings began to attract followers who weren't necessarily rock writers. Now, with their tenth release, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, Yo La Tengo has scaled a new peak...
Spring fashions include lots of pastels, of course. But the real key is that they're casual, yet oh-so-sporty. Did you think our mid-May batch of local CD releases would be any different? Sure, these new ones have less chiffon than in previous years, but let's try a couple on and...
Arthur Keys, two friends, and half a dozen children stand under a melting afternoon sun beside a canal in the western reaches of Broward County, watching the water. Tea-color but transparent, the water's surface is unruffled by wind. Fish appear in small schools close to the bank -- tiny, almost...
Any discussion of James Brown's incredible talent and career will inevitably lead to headshaking disbelief at his longevity and success. But one element that is often overlooked by those who subscribe to the King James version is that JB has always stood in front of the hardest working band in...
I cannot for the life of me remember the first time I watched Jeopardy! I do remember a few games of Trivial Pursuit in which I mopped the floor with my family, my friends, and my family's neighbors, who used to be their friends until one night I whooped a...
The Willard Grant Conspiracy Mojave (Slow River/Rykodisc) Despite the melancholy that permeates nearly every song on the Willard Grant Conspiracy's Mojave, there's something achingly beautiful about the Boston collective's latest album. It's in the way the lush, acoustic soundscapes mingle with gliding pedal-steel guitar and well-placed dollops of fiddle, mandolin,...
Jay-Z Life & Times of S. Carter, Vol. 3 (Roc-a-fella/Def Jam) Essential listening for anyone curious about the evolution of rap, Jay-Z's 1998 hit, "Hard Knock Life," was the last great hip-hop single of the '90s. With its kids-choir choruses -- sampled from the soundtrack to the Broadway musical Annie...
Guns N' Roses Live Era '87-'93 (Geffen) Ten years ago, Guns N' Roses was the biggest rock band on earth, a can-do-no-wrong quintet that made mincemeat out of every tressed and spandex-clad nightmare act on the Sunset Strip. And they didn't even seem to be trying. Although it would be...
Tommy Womack Stubborn (Sideburn Records) Tommy Womack is Steve Earle with a sense of humor. To those (like me) who regard Earle with the awe generally accorded religious martyrs, this is no small claim. But after listening to his breathtaking sophomore solo platter about 12,000 times, there can be no...
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On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon, while the rest of Broward County was frolicking in the surf or paying homage to mammon at one of our many temples of consumerism, six men gather in a sterile back room at the Imperial Point branch library on Federal Highway. Some are wearing...
There's a pile of 34 shoes just inside the front door of Stephen Bonnell's comfortable South Miami home. They came off the feet of the 17 people kneeling or sitting in Bonnell's living room, chanting in unison while facing a small cabinet, the butsudan, hung chest-high on the opposite wall...
Heather Duby Post to Wire (Sub Pop) Singer Heather Duby has one of those haunting, ethereal voices that makes everything she sings just a little bit melodramatic. On Post to Wire, Duby's debut longplayer, love and loss are frequent topics. The accompanying music, however -- cowritten with producer Steve Fisk...
Bordered by plywood and chainlink fences and occupied by a large trailer, the heart of the Deerfield Beach Middle School campus might seem like a construction site. But it's really a destruction site. While the school is packed with 1500 seventh and eighth graders, it's undergoing what the School Board...
Ten eight-week-old bloodhound puppies -- hyped up as only puppies can be -- surround Debbie Roknich as she enters her Wellington yard. Sinking to the ground, she lets the dogs bury her with love. They plant wet licks on her face and gently nip on her clothes. "I love this,"...
Just when Jason Bieler thought he had it made, the bottom dropped out from underneath him. In the spring of 1998, Bieler's band, Flat, had been signed to MCA Records, and its new album was complete and ready for release. But before the champagne was poured, the band found itself...
Lou Bega A Little Bit of Mambo (Unicade/RCA) Mambo has always been a mongrelized genre -- a kind of catchall style that incorporates aspects of son, salsa, and danzón -- the primary goal of which is to get bodies onto the dance floor. But the label, elastic though it may...
Chris Cornell Euphoria Morning (Interscope) Forget the Grammys, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the rest of those jive-ass rock awards shows: The absolute highest honor any pop musician can receive is to be cited in a "musicians wanted" ad. You really know you've arrived when garage bands nationwide place...
Who's the Broward teacher who works only about 18 weeks a year and doesn't teach but gets a $48,266 annual salary? Hint: He gets lots of paid time off because he has other employment at the state capitol doing another job -- which pays him an additional salary, this one...
I've heard of people under general anesthetic who become physically paralyzed but remain mentally alert. They feel the surgeon's scalpel but are helpless and unable even to blink an eye or make a sound. Could you give me the straight dope on this phenomenon? -- Pandora, via the Internet It...
