George Clinton & the P-Funk Allstars The Awesome Power of a Fully-Operational Mothership (550 Music/Epic) When funk genius George Clinton is on — when he’s really on — his music summarizes the entire history of R&B at the same time that it shimmies ass-first into the future. On T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M, his…
David Ball knows what it’s like to be at the wrong end of a recording studio, staring into the Plexiglassed control room as the session producer inside stares right back, neither man happy with what’s being captured on tape, each for entirely different reasons. For Ball, it happened back in…
In a typically tight-lipped understatement, Harry Pussy frontman Bill Orcutt describes his group’s most recent tour as “uneventful.” Nevertheless, Miami’s supreme noise ensemble experienced several firsts during the monthlong trek through clubland, which had them logging about 10,000 miles in a cramped van along with Siltbreeze labelmates Un, a Philadelphia…
thursday august 22 Sweet Mickey: The Haitian sounds of compas ring through Rezurrection Hall at Club Nu (245 22nd St., Miami Beach) tonight as Sweet Mickey and King Posse take the stage. Sweet Mickey swings compas from nice to naughty and back again on the group’s most recent disc, Toutse…
thursday august 15 Dawn to Dusk: Director Larry Miller and choreographer Grace Campbell present France Luce Benson’s play about affirmation through culture and knowledge, Dawn to Dusk. The protagonist Aduska explores her personal history, as well as the history of her African and American ancestors, in order to improve her…
Allapattah is an unlikely place to find a kingdom. A mostly industrial landscape dotted with paint-chipped garages, dingy warehouses, and an endless line of pawn shops and used-car lots, the north Miami neighborhood bears the distinctive marks of urban blight, and it wears them with neither shame nor pride. It…
Some things are too good to be true, whether it’s ten CDs for a penny or John Lydon swearing he’ll never again be a Sex Pistol. Such was the case at the August 4th show at Bayfront Park, a multiartist reggae blowout thrown by Jamaica Awareness in celebration of Jamaica’s…
The four members of Cheap Trick have been to the mountaintop of rock and roll fame and celebrity. They’ve stood on its hallowed peak and surveyed with satisfaction and accomplishment the years spent kicking and scratching and clawing their way up that mountain: the early years of failed record deals…
Various Artists America Is Dying Slowly (Red Hot/Eastwest) After releasing seven successful AIDS benefit compilations that focus on genres ranging from dance and jazz to indie rock and country, the Red Hot Organization has put out its first hip-hop record: America Is Dying Slowly (note the acronym). But with African…
A voice-mail offering left for me last month by an unnamed reader, who objected to my not-so-nice comments regarding a cassette release by a local band: “You know, it really pisses me off that you writers think you can just say anything you want. These musicians put a lot of…
“We play a lot. That’s what we do.” Rocket From the Crypt head pilot John “Speedo” Reis is pragmatic about the San Diego punk group’s nonstop touring schedule and prodigious output. In the five years they’ve been together, Rocket has cranked out a staggering amount of high-quality material for a…
thursday august 1 Naturalist Lectures: Summer is the time to look out over your yard (if you happen to have one), survey your domain, and realize that a crappy little mower and some hedge clippers aren’t going to cut it, so to speak. With this idea in mind, some local…
Screaming Trees had just ripped into “Nearly Lost You” when I spotted him — a dusty-haired kid of about fourteen, standing alone, mouthing the words to the band’s 1992 hit. He was like a lot of the other people who gathered in West Palm Beach last Thursday beneath a scalding…
Keb’ Mo’ Just Like You (OKeh/Epic) Alvin Youngblood Hart Big Mama’s Door (OKeh/550 Music) California-born bluesmen Alvin Youngblood Hart and Kevin Moore (Keb’ Mo’ for short) share more than just a label and a birth state. Both men are in their thirties and are equally dazzling guitarists and vocalists. More…
Before the road dust had even caked on their vehicle, Coral Gables jazz-rock eccentrics the Jongleurs were forced to cut short their first full-scale tour when their Ford Club Wagon van took a nasty tumble. The quintet was leaving Savannah, Georgia, in the late morning sunlight on July 12 en…
Metallica Load (Elektra) Soundgarden Down On the Upside (A&M) For headbanger careerists like Metallica and Soundgarden, heavy-metal angst can present some real artistic problems when all those bad vibes and bad-ass guitar riffs start sounding like the same old bitch-and-boogie. But as their latest albums indicate, Metallica knows this and…
“Radio has pretty much disappeared as an art form and it’s getting worse day by day,” says Greg Baker, the former music editor for this paper and, along with Steve Alvin, host of The Beast & Baker Show, quite possibly the best thing you’ll find on the AM side of…
Way back in 1983, when the loud-fast acceleration of hardcore punk had turned the music into an atonal sonic speed race, a little-known band named the Melvins decided to slam on the brakes. Formerly a garden-variety, slash-and-burn combo, this Aberdeen, Washington, trio decided to play it slow. Real slow. Grindingly…
thursday july 18 Art Hour Concerts: Meza Fine Arts (275 Giralda Ave., Coral Gables), a gallery devoted to works by Latin American and local and national American artists, becomes a music venue six nights a week, with regular weeknight concerts and special Saturday dinner concerts. Every Thursday singer Malena Burke…
For more than a decade, Elvis Costello has been toiling away in the gap that separates blind ambition and tedious experimentation — a willing slave to the concepts and conceits of high art, a poster boy for creative indulgence, able to rock out only with other people’s songs. In the…
thursday july 11 Miccosukee Freedom Festival: Once fervent enemies, cowboys and Indians appear to have made amends, at least for commercial purposes. Accordingly, the Miccosukee Tribe hosts Randy Travis as the headliner for its fourth annual Freedom Festival. Travis gained considerable attention with his 1986 major-label debut Storms of Life,…
“The blues is alright” goes the refrain of the anthem of the same name, a regional Southern hit back in the mid-Eighties for its writer, vocalist/guitarist Little Milton Campbell, a 40-year veteran of the blues club circuit. The song has become Milton’s signature track and is already something of a…
