Head Spins: Chris Graham

If you’ve been anywhere at night over the past decade and a half, you’ve collided with Chris Graham, that dread-topped insider who seems to be everywhere at once. Back in the 1990s, he’d spin at any fest in town, including Zen and Ultra, and would often be among the core…

Head Spins: DJ NVS Styles

Beginning this Thursday, if you’re down enough to hit the main room at Karu & Y, you’re gonna get blasted with some of the meanest, keenest, leanest hip-hop ever to wax. You’ll hear East Coast. You’ll hear West Coast. You’ll hear it dirty. But mostly you’ll hear the M.I.A., in…

Last Night: Ray LaMontagne at The Fillmore Gleason

Ray LaMontagneApril 30, 2009The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason TheaterBetter than: Hearing a gruff James Taylor front The Band in the early ’70s — had you never seen either James Taylor or The BandJohn HoodI’m gonna get a lot of flack for this, but here goes:Last night Ray…

Singer-Songwriter Ray LaMontagne Plays the Fillmore Miami Beach

There might be no singer in songdom today more reticent than Ray LaMontagne. Painfully quiet and notoriously aloof, he’s shy not just around the media — he’s shy around everyone, even his fans. Which makes him perhaps the last person you’d think would want a career in the public spotlight…

Head Spins: DJ Knowledge

Before the house turns totally to house music Saturday nights in that downtown megaclub known as Space, all kinds of other action is kicking throughout the joint. A lot of that action goes down out on the club’s infamous terrace, under the stars and in the shadow of a skyline…

Head Spins: DJ Knowledge

Before the house turns totally to house music on Saturday nights in that downtown megaclub known as Space, all kinds of other action is kicking throughout the joint. A lot of that action goes down out on the club’s infamous terrace, under the stars and in the shadow of a…

Saturday Night: Tom Jones at The Fillmore Gleason

Tom JonesSaturday, April 25, 2009The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason TheaterBetter Than: A time-capsule set to 1971Of all the many remarkable things to be said about seeing Tom Jones stage these days — and trust me, there are many remarkable things to be said — perhaps the single…

Last Night: Living Things at Culture Room

Living ThingsWednesday, April 22, 2009Culture Room, Fort LauderdaleBetter Than: Any damn glam rock band you’ve ever heard up close and personal. First things first: Last night Living Things played in the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I dig Culture Room. In fact, I’ve spent…

Tom Jones Swivels into the Fillmore Miami Beach

If someone were to tell you the next pop superstar would be named after the bastard son in one of the English language’s first — and finest — examples of the novel, you’d probably scoff. If someone also happened to mention the book in question was more than 200 years…

Head Spins: DJ La Trice

Whoever said models can’t cut it on the decks obviously never met model DJ La Trice. Featured in campaigns for Nicole Miller, Pantene, Ed Hardy, and Converse, and found on the cover of glam rags such as Pasha, La Trice definitely has the kind of look folks want to know…

Rescue Me from Boredom

Way back in the early ’90s, when MTV still actually played music, the network ran a series of sepia-toned, faux-infomercials featuring a fast-talking, wise-cracking, chain-smoking Beantown escapee named Denis Leary. Leary was pissed and he wanted you to know it — pissed about R.E.M. and the save-the-world types; about David…

Head Spins: DJ Lady Anime

She’s the queen of the darker scene,” promoter Notorious Nastie says of DJ Lady Anime, the copper-maned head spinner for some of the Black Magic City’s more shadowy evenings. See, Nastie and Lady Anime go back, all the way to Hialeah in fact, where both self-dubbed “ghetto goths” grew to…

Head Spins: Claudio Holze

Sunday afternoon on the Miami River. Skyscrapers glisten at a near distance, a whispering breeze sweeps in off a randy Biscayne Bay, and pleasure craft bob at arm’s length, seemingly to the beat of an electro anthem. The chatter is quick, the chatterers are giddy, and even in their seats,…

Kill Miss Pretty

Kill Miss Pretty. If the name alone doesn’t get you, the band just might. The Boynton Beach-based act is a soul-stealing threesome comprising pixie-throated singer Alicia Olink and Ouija board-wielding axe men Russell Rogers and Martin Davis. And thanks to its out-there style and tunes, the band could very well…

Last Night: The Cleveland Orchestra at the Knight Concert Hall, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts

st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:””; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} –> The Cleveland Orchestra The Knight Concert Hall April 4, 2009 Better than: ‘A Sleigh Ride Through…

New World Symphony’s Mini Concerts

This past November, Miami’s New World Symphony held its first mini concerts at the Lincoln Theatre, and the sold-out crowd almost couldn’t believe its ears — or wallets. Works by Maurice Ravel, Aaron Copland, and Samuel Barber performed live, each for less than the price of a latte? Clearly our…

Funny, Not Fuzzy, Kiwis

Flight of the Conchords might have concluded its second season on HBO (and, if rumors are true, the show might be gone for good), but that doesn’t mean you’ve gotta give up on “New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a-cappella/rap/funk/comedy folk duo.” Why? Well, for the next two months,…

New World Symphony Revives Its $2.50 Mini Concerts This Friday

This past November, Miami’s New World Symphony held its first mini concerts at the Lincoln Theatre, and the sold-out crowd almost couldn’t believe their ears — or their wallets. Works by Maurice Ravel, Aaron Copland, and Samuel Barber performed live, each for less than the price of a latte? Clearly…

Last Night: Amanda Palmer at Culture Room

Amanda PalmerSaturday, March 28, 2009Culture Room, Ft. LauderdaleBetter Than: A televised confessional.If there’s a better way to preface a Culture Room show than by hitting the legendary Mai-Kai, I don’t know what it is. When that show happens to be by Dresden Doll baby Amanda Palmer, well, the prefacing is…