Among the major themes of this year’s 23rd installment of Winter Music Conference are better and bigger. Much bigger. Just check the numbers: 40,000 people are expected to attend various events; 20,000 area hotel rooms are booked; more than 1,780 artists and DJs will perform; over 85 venues will throw…
There’s no two ways about it: SXSW (pronounced South by Southwest) in Austin, Texas, has, by its 21st year, grown into the most influential event in the nation for anyone looking to divine the next trends in music. Oh, um, and drink and eat barbecue and develop (or aggravate) tinnitus…
Born Gloria Fowle in Newark, New Jersey, the original club diva we know as Gloria Gaynor scored her first big hit in 1974 with “Never Can Say Goodbye.” An upbeat dance ditty that showcased disco’s special blend of wistfully bittersweet lyrics, it reached number nine on the Billboard Hot 100…
Check out this clip from a 2006 PBS documentary about the band, in which they perform their song “Hey Eugene.” Pink Martini’s music is the kind of music that makes you want to fall in love. Each album contains all the perfect elements of a relationship — drama, seduction, sadness,…
Between Flo Rida’s ubiquitous “Low” and this, Miami is blowing up the Billboard charts. The boss, Rick Ross, officially released his second album, TRILLA, yesterday, at number one on the Billboard 200, with 198,000 physical copies sold… And, haters, it’s also #1 for legal digital downloads too, as well as…
Day 3, Friday, March 14 I’ll admit, by Friday, day 3 of SXSW, I was already starting to feel the exhaustion a bit, and I was starting to need some motivational cheerleading. Luckily, I got to start the day off easy with the daytime party thrown by the Miami and…
So I’ve finally gotten a decent night’s sleep after getting back on Sunday from SXSW. And, while here in Miami, we have to start down the countdown to WMC (next Tuesday! Get excited)! I still wanted to wrap-up a summary of the live music I saw out in Texas. The…
Everybody and their grandmother, by now, knows at least the chorus and hooks to local guy Flo Rida’s inescapable track, “Low,” featuring T-Pain, that’s spent a bazillion weeks as the number-one pop song in the country. His anticipated full-length, Mail on Sunday, drops tomorrow on Poe Boy/Atlantic. (Wonder what the…
Here’s the second installment from our guest blogger, Sir Winston, proprietor of Churchill’s Pub in Miami. Here are his highlights for SXSW day three, Friday Rachel Goodrich Rachel Goodrich woos new and influential friends Miami native Rachel Goodrich’s three-song set at the swanky BMI/Billboard Luncheon on the lawn was truly…
We asked another South Florida SXSW warrior, the proprietor of the illustrious Churchill’s, to weigh in on his musical discoveries here so far. Pedal to the metal. Well, not just metal, but in fact all genres from alt-country to zydeco…. (Actually that’s a lie; I haven’t seen any zydeco bands…
Reporting in from SXSW in Austin, where the proliferation of barbecue, noise, and way too much free booze is starting to severely hamper my ability to take notes. It’s now day three of the music marathon, and over the last couple of days I’ve caught a few legends, maybe a…
Saturday night’s Eclectic Sounds Unite event at Studio A is something of a locals-only extravaganza, featuring an unlikely mishmash of Miami-bred acts playing everything from reggae-injected punk (Music Is a Weapon) to rock en español (Tereso). Among the up-and-coming standouts are Astari Nite and Rimsky. The former, helmed by the…
Three-fourths of this high-energy quartet hail from South Florida, including its charming, boyish frontman Marco Argiro. All legs and arms, the natty 25-year-old doubtlessly inherited his impeccable style from his father, longtime proprietor of atelier Moda Mario, on Fort Lauderdale’s swanky strip of Las Olas Boulevard. And the entire band’s…
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,…
Thirstin Howl III is probably the most professional man in hip-hop. I arrived exactly a minute early for a recent meeting at the Latin Café on Biscayne Boulevard, and he was already lounging, a half-empty glass of Hennessy and Coke dripping on the table. He was armed with a neatly…
Chalk another victory up for the super-cool promoter folks at New Art School. Their latest coup? The legendary Mudhoney!! I don’t want to use the “g” word (ok, grunge) here, but they were one of the first rad bands to come out of Seattle in the late Eighties/early Nineties. And…
(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…
…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…
This weekend marks the impressive 15th anniversary of the local annual event known colloquially as the Bob Marley festival. Which is more or less accurate; meant to honor the legend’s memory, it’s sponsored by his estate’s official organization, Bob Marley Movement, and each year’s headliners represent various configurations of his…
It’s hard at first to pinpoint what makes mustached local musical sensation José El Rey so damn appealing. Perhaps it’s his music, a low-fi version of classic Miami bass and freestyle, the soundtrack to the youth of all twenty- and thirtysomethings who grew up in this town. No matter how…
