Miami Music Matters

The Grascals Headline 33rd Annual Everglades Bluegrass Festival This Weekend

Bluegrass fame and fortune is a tough road to hoe, unless you've been anointed by a country music legend. Fortunately for the Grascals, a group of nashville veterans with enough combined  experience to write a Time-Life series, Dolly Parton absorbed them in 2004 as both her opening act and her backing band - and the group hasn't looked back since.

While their full-time gig with Dolly ended back in 2005, the band and the icon frequently collaborate with each other. The Grascals breakthrough single was a cover of "Viva Los Vegas" featuring Dolly. Dolly also appears on their current single "I Am Strong" - from their new record "The Grascals & Friends - Country Classics With A Bluegrass Spin." The song is a touching tribute to St. Judes Hospital, which benefits from the sale of the record.

The Everglades Bluegrass Festival takes place Tonight - Sunday at Greynolds Park, 17530 W. Dixie Hwy. North Miami Beach. Three day passes are $55.  1 day admission on Friday and Sunday is $20. Saturday admission (The Grascals headline Saturday's bill) is $25. Admission for kids with a paying adult is free. For more information call: 305 358 1800.

 

Dragonette Plays LIV's Dirty Hairy Anniversary Party Tonight

If there's one thing the folks at POPLIFEcan't get enough of, it's Canadian electro acts who sing about making sexy time. So it's fitting that tonight's soiree celebrating two years of their "Dirty Hairy" party at LIV features Canuck quartet Dragonette, who broke onto the scene a few years back with the uber-catchy ode to getting busy: "I Get Around." 

 

  As with everything over at LIV,  partying with Dragonette is a little pricey. $30 buys a lot of poutine. But if you ever needed a soundtrack for a hump day slump-buster - tonight is the night. It's hard to be more titillating than Dragonette. And if their throbbing odes to knocking boots lead you to meet Mrs. or Mr. Right-Now - the Fountainbleu is upstairs for your convenience.

Bobby "Blue" Bland Headlines Miami Blues Festival Saturday @ James L. Knight Center

While the lineup for the  New Orleans Jazz Festival is chronically bogged down with enough wayward jam band acts to keep the Crescent City smelling like patchouli for an epoch, the fifth  annual Miami Blues Festival is headlined by Bobby "Blue" Bland, a living music legend who is without a doubt the world's greatest living Blues singer.

Bland first came to prominence in the late 1950s, when he cut a string of smoking tracks for  memphis label  Duke Records, most notably "Little Boy Blue" - which tagged him with his stage name that continues to stick with him today, a month removed from his 81st birthday. In the early 1960s, Bland crossed over to the pop charts with "Ain't Nothing You Can Do." Unfortunately, much like the late, great Solomon Burke - both musical and political segregation kept Bland from being the pop superstar his awesome vocal talents warranted.

But better to be a living legend, than a prematurely dead icon. Bland's Blues, Rock & Soul contemporaries may be better known to the average music fan, but save for Bland's ex-collaborator B.B. King, they aren't still on stage, knocking out audiences worldwide.

Joining Bland Saturday Night at the Miami Blues Festival are Miami Soul legend Lattimore ("Let's Straighten It Out"),and southern blues artists Mel Waiters, Sir Charles Jones and Theodis Ealey. Tickets are $49.50 and $57.00. Doors are at 7PM.

 

ANTiSEEN Will Destroy Them All Thursday Night @ The Monterey Club

It's been 18 years since ANTiSEEN first rolled into Broward County and blew my mind at the ambassador bar in Deerfield Beach. Despite there being only a dozen folks in the audience, the destructo rockers from Charlotte, North Carolina damn near set fire to the joint with their pure rock and roll energy and noise for the sake of noise. What would be by-the-numbers punk rock in anyone else's hands, is sublime in Antiseen's, thanks to singer Jeff Clayton's Alice Cooper-By-Way-Of Ric Flair stage persona and the so-wrong-its-right way guitarist Mighty Joe Young beats harmonic distortion out of his stratocaster.

Clayton also has amazing taste in cover tunes, as evidenced by the "Hell" covers Lp which features ANTiSEEN deconstructing Sun Ra, Curtis Mayfield, Jack Starr and The Anti-Nowhere league, and The Talking Heads along with a pre-racist Skrewdriver song, thrown in to confuse wingnuts and the PC brigade simultaneously.

In the past decade, ANTiSEEN have been embraced by the grease-monkey crowd, thanks to a hearty endorsement by #1 ANTiSEEN fan Hank III - who has Clayton's image tattooed on his rib cage. So it is fitting ANTiSEEN are playing their first gig in South Florida in six years at the Monterey Club - the home of old punks and guys who work on cars and PBRs simultaneously. 

It is true that the Monterey might be a little small for Clayton to do a back flip through a flaming table. But every time ANTiSEEN have found themselves in Gordon Solie's territory, a little kayfabe comes out - usually involving a broken beer bottle and the permanent scar on Clayton's forehead. So if you go to the ANTiSEEN's ferocious hour of rock and roll power Thursday night - and if you like George Jones, Motorhead, The Ramones or anything else that's good you should - don't wear white. The ANTiSEEN embody many things - and most of them leave permanent stains.

 

ANTiSEEN Performs Thursday, February 17th at The Monterey Club, 2608A South Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale. Admission is $8. Doors are at 9PM. For more information: 954 598 1987

 

 

 

Voices United Premieres "Break The Chain" At Tower Theater Thursday Night

For over 20 years, Miami's Voices United performing arts program has churned out musical theater written by kids, for kids. Their touring company plays nearly every community event it can, and has taken them as far as South Africa and Turkey.  Their annual musicals regularly sell out 1000-seat theaters. If Woody Guthrie's acoustic guitar killed fascists, Voices United's secular gospel of positive thinking and breaking down cultural barriers kills complacency and small mindedness.

After Voices United branched out into recorded media in 2009 with the 3-track "Voices United" CD EP, VU director and founder Katie Christie set her sights on on making a feature film. The result, "Break The Chain" is a semi-autobiographical account of a kids performing arts orginization that gets a second wind. It makes its world premiere at the Tower Theater Thursday night.

One of the actors in the "Break The Chain" ensemble cast is Jaylon "Thunder" Ballard, who possesses the most powerful soul voice heard in these parts since Alston records was churning out hits by Timmy Thomas and Betty Wright.

Admission to "Break The Chain" is $40 and includes adult beverages for those inclined to imbibe and a dessert bar for teetotalers.  The Tower Theater is located at 1508 Sw 8th st in Little Havana. Doors are at 6PM, Showtime is at 7PM. Advance tickets are available here.

 

 

Dreaming In Stereo 2 Is For Lovers

It is no accident that Dreaming In Stereo spent the last few weeks recruiting people to kiss on camera for yesterday's video shoot for "Part Of Your Life," the first single off the band's second Lp. "Dreaming In Stereo 2"  seduces your ears like a smooth lover, whispering sweet nothings, mellotrons and soft guitar melodies until you blush and relent to its charms.

As long as your expectations don't involve getting off the love seat, the album's charms are plentiful - if a bit mysterious. Listening to the hodgepodge of early 70s FM radio guitar licks laid down by bandleader/lead vocalist Fernando Perdomo, it's hard to imagine he was born in 1980. His lush soft rock soundscapes repudiate any musical ideas hatched after 1974. Punk? Metal? Postpunk? Grunge? Indie Rock? Electro? Never happened!

As there are legions of folks who wish none of those movements occurred, Dreaming In Stereo 2 has a potentially vast audience. Unfortunately for Perdomo & crew, most of those people only listen to classic rock and oldies stations. And by large, those folks wouldn't be caught dead at a SXSW showcase, or anywhere else "new music" goes to be discovered. But  if a VW commercial can make Nick Drake posthumously popular, surely a path to popularity exists for Dreaming In Stereo.

The first step on that (goodbye) yellow brick road takes place at Dreaming in Stereo 2's record release party Sunday night at The Stage Miami, 170 NE 38th st. Admission is free. If you'd like to preview the record, the tracks are up on the Dreaming In Stereo facebook page.

Ex-Heartbreaker Walter Lure Brings NY Punk L.A.M.F. To The Monterey Club Friday Night

In 1975, guitarist Walter Lure was playing a gig in Queens with his band the Demons, when Ex-NY Doll Johnny Thunders drafted him to join his new band the Heartbreakers. Music hasn't been the same since.

While the Dolls had the energy and the threads to bridge Glam to Punk, The Heartbreakers took the ball and ran with it - beating Chuck Berry riffs like Chuck owed them money, instead of the other way around. When they landed in the UK to do the infamous "Anarchy Tour" with the Sex Pistols, they blew their musical children off the stage every night - and could have become the biggest thing since sliced bread, had they managed a decent mix of their only studio album L.A.M.F.  But there was too much junkie business, and eventually the record came out sounding like a muzzled beast instead of an attack dog. The record sold just enough to achieve "legendary" status, but not enough to keep Thunders and Nolan in junk, so Nolan bailed back to the states, and the Heartbreakers status as a band went from musical killing machine, to chronic musical disease, only playing occasional "rent party" gigs until Thunders' death in 1991.

Lure busted out of the cycle of musical poverty by becoming a successful stock broker on Wall Street, so it's fitting that he's hooked up with south florida punk rock lawyer extraordinare Charlie Pickett to play the Monterey Club Friday night.  Between the two guitarists, there will be enough rock and roll education onstage to warrant giving an honorary masters degree in punk to anyone in attendance.

In these times, $8 for a musical education is hard to pass up. Even if you are a "London Boy."

 

 

Rat Bastard's International Noise Conference Takes Over Churchill's Pub This Thursday - Saturday

(photo: RadiO ShOck)

Back in the 1980s, you didn't need to set your sun dial to the second week in March, as the carloads of drunken college kids in town for spring break did it for you.

Thanks to a prostitute-patronizing,beach wall-building, fun-killing Vice-Mayor, the 21st century version of "Where The Boys Are" happens during the second weekend in February at Churchill's Pub during local noise legend Rat Bastard's International Noise Conference.

While the wet t-shirt contests have been replaced with dudes rolling around on the floor making noise with devices ranging from a mic'ed up glass plate, to toy instruments - The INC is every bit as worthy - if not more so -as  a celebration of rebellion against convention.

Sure, some of the participants at INC are No Wave retreads like NYC's RadiO ShOck, who pretend to have song structure and melody in between skronks. However the great majority of acts at INC take after Rat and don't bother with the formalities. A visit to the you tube page of Washington DC's Twilight Memories Of The Three Suns shows is summed up succinctly by one commenter: "Looks like the world's worst acid trip. Yuck!"

But one person's bad acid, is another's pure Owsley. The INC may induce headaches to the average music consumer, but they probably don't belong there anyway. Running away from ear damage has never been this much fun. And if you can't take the sonic boom, your wallet won't be lighter for it. All three nights of INC - 24 hours of music in total - are free.

French Composer Yann Tiersen Plays Grand Central Wednesday Night

French Multi-instrumentalist/composer Yann Tiersen has two distinct musical personalities. The First, is as the minimalist, accordion-heavy composer of the Amelie score. Fans of his franco retro-pop are usually shocked to find that Tiersen has largely abandoned the sound that made him famous in favor or an electric guitar heavy, post-rock assault that's more in line with his teenage love for joy division than his accidental brushes with Jacques Brel.

But while the Rhythm Foundation may be shocked on show day to learn that they haven't booked a "roots" act as per their usual fare, the kids at Grand Central will happily eat up Tiersen's My Bloody Valentine-inflected "La Terrasse" from his 2005 lp "Les Retrovailles" and new material from last fall's "Dust Lane" album, which he previewed at the uber-trendy Coachella Festival last year.

In order to encourage the rhythm foundation to "accidentally" book more avant garde acts that usually miss South Florida, I'd recommend a strong showing on hump day. Who knows? If this gig works out, perhaps Tom Waits might finally grace us with his presence.

 

Aussie Synth Pop Trio Cut Copy Will Not Be Playing Vagabond Tonight - But Their New Record Is

 It's winter, when every trendy act not playing the festival season in Australia should want to play Miami - but for reasons dumber than a Farrelly Brothers Movie, most hipster bands don't want to cross the mason dixon line. So what's Vagabond going to do with their live friday night this week?

A "record release" party for Kangaroo Synth Poppers Cut Copy! That's right, instead of actually seeing a live band play - you can listen to their new album ZONOSCOPE  with your friends in a bar, and dance  when it's appropriate.  If you close your eyes, you'll almost be able to see three skinny aussies channelling  their parents' New Order and Depeche Mode records.

Or, you can just add the band on Twitter and listen to it at home on your couch. Your choice.