Blogs, pop culture talking heads, and seemingly almost everybody else have crapped on Brooke Hogan since the release of her debut album, Undiscovered, in 2006. By now, though, you’ve got to admire the girl’s resilience. As someone raised on punk rock, I never thought I’d defend a pop music/reality starlet…
We’ve written about Ex-Norwegian a lot lately, so suffice it to say we like their updated version of classic power-pop a la Big Star and company. The Jean Marie, too, remains a local favorite, for good reason. Although they describe themselves on their MySpace page as “garage/rock/soul,” live I’ve thought…
I mentioned here previously that out of the six artists chosen as finalists for the Florida Grammy Showcase in Orlando last Wednesday, five were from Miami. They were, to recap, Selena Serrano, Spinlight City, Tristan Clopet & the Juice, and finally local favorites Awesome New Republic and ArtOfficial. I said…
Out of the countless towns he’s played during his band’s national tours, Sammy Gonzalez, bassist of local trio Jacob’s Ladder, still prefers the tiny Frankenmuth, Michigan. An obscure, German-theme tourist destination billed as “Michigan’s Little Bavaria,” Frankenmuth is home to one “amazing promoter,” Jacobs says. “He throws shows at a…
A week ago this past Saturday, Ferny Coipel, frontman of long-running local band Humbert, was in a serious accident while riding his scooter in Hialeah. Coipel was wearing no helmet when he collided head-on with a car, according to a close friend. As a result, he suffered head and neck…
The guys of the long-grinding Miami quintet Alukard hail from all over the city, but have made it their new mission to bring live rock back to the suburban expanses of Kendall, a couple years after staple venue Kaffe Krystal’s demise. “They were known for bringing a lot of emo,…
To view the full slideshow of photos from the club’s opening, click here. Exit Sixty Six, the new big-box club to open in Fort Lauderdale Beach, represents the continuation of two trends. First, there’s the development of fancy Miami club companies opening new venues in Broward. The Opium Group made…
The Columbus, Ohio-based MC Copywrite (sometimes Copywrite 78) is best known, perhaps, to underground hip-hop diehards as a former member of the Weathermen, alongside Cage and the late Camu Tao (RIP). But in the five years since he left that group over personal disagreements, he’s continued his steady solo grind,…
Virginia quintet Parachute has been on the rise since it landed the song “She’s Love” in a Nivea commercial. Suddenly, thousands of women with smooth legs wanted more of those smooth pop-rock sounds. In the resulting buzz storm on iTunes and the like, the song eventually also landed on the…
The idea behind Miami Summerfest is pretty straightforward: a bunch of up-and-coming local acts playing in the sweltering heat of a mostly-outdoors venue on a Sunday (that’s the “summer part”). But seriously, the event doesn’t start until after the sun goes down, and the acts selected so far are pretty…
Austin quartet Goldcure plays a straightforward blend of indie-ish pop-rock, but the Texas still comes through. Guitars are bright, rollicking, and purely American, and frontman Adam Buhman’s rough-edged croon can veer close to twang. But the band’s real talent is in reducing its roots and rock influences to their essences,…
The Maryland pop-punk quintet Count Your Blessings headlines the Talent Farm this Sunday night as part of its “Hip Shakers and Trouble Makers Tour.” Click here to read what Brett Gillin had to say about it in this week’s issue of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times.The band’s debut full-length, Like…
While Respectable Street has booked a number of darkwave and, um, “old wave” groups of late, this is probably its most impressive coup to date in recent months. Peter Murphy, onetime Bauhaus leader and pretty much the granddaddy of all that is goth, plays the club on June 24. Last…
When the mainstream media and trendies of yore decided, in the late 1970s, that punk Version 1.0 was over, the Vibrators never got the memo. Perhaps, in true spiky Brit fashion, they just ripped it up and spit on it. Either way, the London-based band boasts the unique distinction of…
Once upon a time, you couldn’t walk down certain lower Manhattan blocks without tripping over sidewalk vendors’ card tables loaded with cassettes. Sometimes, they’d be bootleg concert tapes, but a lot of the time, they were the latest hip-hop mixtapes. And in the golden age of that form, no one…
When the mainstream media and trendies of yore decided, in the late 1970s, that punk version 1.0 was over, the Vibrators never got the memo. Perhaps, in true spiky Brit fashion, they just ripped it up and spit on it. Either way, the London-based band boasts the unique distinction of…
Local live electronic act organicArma are doubtless celebrating a wish come true. Band leader Dharma has long been an outspoken admirer of the New York art-electro-pop outfit Fischerspooner, hinting to me last winter that he wanted to book them to play at his expansive Awarehouse venue.He may not have accomplished…
The fivesome Clock Hands Strangle are based a little further north, in Melbourne, but have increasingly ventured outside their hometown, recently playing in Miami for an in-store at Sweat. We should be seeing more of this band after the release of its forthcoming full-length, Distaccati. And to whet your appetite,…
The annual Florida Music Festival kicks off its eighth year tonight, and while it’s up in Orlando, more and more South Florida bands are turning towards the multi-day music crawl as a sort of SXSW lite. Billed as featuring 250 performances across 15 stages and three days, the FMF is…
Rick Ross’ cover story for the May issue of XXL was meant to be his hip-hop media comeback, an attempt to quash the corrections officer thing and clear the air on his beef with 50. The thrust of the article is made clear by Ross’ cover line quote: “I’ve never…
A couple weeks ago I got a mailed copy of Elizabeth Goodman’s new Cat Power book, Cat Power: A Good Woman. Although it’s deeply reported, it’s unauthorized; Chan Marshall refused to speak with Goodman for the project, and thus all her quotes therein are indirect. It’s a fast-paced read, but…
Oh, this brings back memories of 1990, when New Kids tickets were impossible to get and the meanest girls in elementary school bragged when they could snag ’em. Tickets for NKOTB’s 2009 comeback tour were easier to buy, and lawn tickets for their Cruzan Amphitheatre date were going for a…
