No matter if you’re a Christian, Buddhist, Darwinist, or one of those folks who stick a Jesus-as-fish icon on your car, you must accept the fundamental tenet that we as a species are of the ocean. Whether by God’s hand or some other primal force beyond human cognizance, the cool…
For nearly three decades, Doctor Ali-Tyson Cool — world rag popping champion, friend to the homeless and the famous, supreme self-promoter — was one of South Florida’s more colorful characters, a peacock even in the exotic aviary that is South Beach. Yet when he drowned early this year in a…
Resigned Michael Penn (57/Epic) Michael Penn is best remembered for two radio hits (“No Myth” and “This & That”) that are now nearly a decade old. His last disc, Free-for-All, came out a full five years ago. So it’s good to hear him return with a pop album as assured…
In underground rock and roll clubs, they are referred to in snarky tones as Marilyn Hanson. The Internet is infested with hate pages aimed at them. And media outlets such as VH1 found ways to simultaneously bitch-slap the boys of Hanson while playing their videos all the while. The omniconspicuous…
Essential Hot Sauce 1 jar or bottle (re-use store-bought sauce bottles) 1 jarful water 1/2 jarful distilled white vinegar A bunch of fresh hot peppers (any variety, as long as they’re hot) Boil water and pour into jar. Let it sit there while you boil vinegar, and mince, chop, and…
It’s a beautiful word to say, capsaicin. A beautiful thing, too, the oil in hot peppers that makes them hot. Say it: cap-say-ih-sin. Cures arthritis, gives life to an impossibly scrumptious seafood soup, makes the world go round. Or, actually, the world going round makes the capsaicin: dirt, water, air,…
I find the song selection and those songs’ ordinal placement on Bruce Springsteen’s chart-topping Greatest Hits album transcend any chronological approach, but more important, you must use a yellow bowl with soapy water to fight aphids. Not red or blue or even off-white — yellow. My dad taught me that…
This Saturday the place to be is actually two places. As mentioned here last week, the Florida Music Association presents an expo and a concert on Saturday, although it turns out that only the show will take place at Button South — sixteen acts on two stages (see our “Calendar”…
Send a professional photojournalist into the streets to capture images of the homeless and you’ll likely end up with portraits of a cliche. The rough, craggy face of a battered soul, perhaps lighted from the side to elicit pity. A broken man — or woman — framed by squalor. A…
Basta! It’s like a joke, a running joke, a sick joke. Yes, another important local rock club is shutting down. This time it’s Rosebuds, which for sixteen years (five times longer than the Talkhouse) has provided a stage for rock and roll, in the past few years concentrating on metal…
One of the coolest-vibe clubs on South Beach, one with extra friendly service and reasonable prices and a clientele made up of people whose company actually was enjoyable — and one with excellent live local music — has closed its doors. Blue Steel might not make news like the Stephen…
A corridor on the second floor of Miami Children’s Hospital in southwest Miami is set aside as the Observation Unit, a part of the sprawling medical center where sick and dying children are treated. At the end of the hallway on a recent afternoon, a group of women could be…
Florida is best known in the rap world for a genre called bass, that beat-heavy, thump-thump-boom sound you actually can feel coming out of chopped-down cars around town. Bass music is like other rap forms but with more beats per minute and a woofer-blowing emphasis on, well, bass. It was…
A few weeks ago, Bobby Johnston, lead singer for psycho punk maniacs Load, was sitting in the studio of WAXY during the Beast and Baker Show as his band’s raging music roared into the airwaves like drunk Scuds. Between Load cuts, Johnston answered questions about his band, mentioned upcoming gigs,…
Is it a scene yet? Whatever you think of the press coverage provided by corporate media outlets A the Miami Herald, New Times, et cetera A you can’t say local original rock isn’t receiving almost as much coverage as it deserves. Cable television offers Music X, Rock Ya Ma Call…
We’ve got five years, man, that’s all we got. (Sorry, Mr. Bowie.) But it’s true, the millennium is quickly running out on us, and I consider it a deadline. People have to turn around what’s been neglected in recent years: Feed the hungry, clothe the ragged, console the hurt, heal…
Toadies Rubberneck (Interscope) One month ago in Austin, Texas, during the annual South by Southwest Music & Media Conference, Toadies singer-songwriter-guitarist Todd Lewis tested the working order of a peculiar-looking two-microphone setup prior to the band’s 40-minute show at the cavernous Liberty Lunch club. As he did so, moving his…
He wrecked his truck, got stabbed, run over, and lost a finger. His wife ran off with his best friend. He got shot, chased by large crowds of angry people, then thrown in jail. And that was in just one day. So goes the Rex Neilson-penned tune “Thank God I…
A beautiful riff that dates as far back as Louis Armstrong’s “Wonderful World” visits town twice this week, showing up in the Floating Men’s “Call of the Wild” and in the lead track of Greg Brown’s latest masterpiece, The Poet Game. It’s just a little high-note-bomp-low-note-sustain, but when played by…
Ever since the camera was invented, it has been used to capture images of despair and destitution, evocative glimpses into the eyes of the less fortunate. Now one advocate for Miami’s homeless has devised a way to focus the lens a little differently. “The idea is to get the homeless…
A paved two-lane street called Arthur Lamb Jr. Road snakes through the 1000-acre island known as Virginia Key, veering here and there as it nears the public beach area at its farthest eastern coordinate from Rickenbacker Causeway. At one point, the road empties into a small parking lot. Nearby a…
Marianne Flemming III Chords & a Bridge (Mermaid Records) Despite the album’s title, Marianne Flemming’s acoustic-guitar driven music, at its best, surpasses the usual rock and roll formula. At the deep end it can touch and chill you, as on the beautiful “Out to Sea”; at the other side of…
