Miami Music Blog

Yesterday morning, Crossfade contributor Lee Zimmerman gave a pretty thorough run-down of Jackson Browne's show this past Saturday at the Fillmore Miami Beach. Still, sometimes a YouTube video is worth a thousand words, and these two snippets capture a couple themes present in Zimmerman's review. First, despite the solo-acoustic style of the show, the crowd was pretty boisterous. (You can hear a bunch of whoops before this version of "Running on Empty"). Second, while "Running on Empty" is one of his most famous songs, and usually powered by the blast of a backing band, when performed solo it gains a new, wistful quality. YouTube user Teslafied captured two songs from the performance. The video is a little shaky but the audio quality is pretty good. Here are video clips of Browne performing "Running on Empty," and, after the jump, his other monster classic, "Take it Easy."

Lita Ford may have taken a long while out of the spotlight, but the Internet ephemera floating around, capturing her show last weekend at Revolution, proves she's got staying power. There's really something about a woman who owns her sexuality and still kicks ass. Also, her 1988 hit duo with Ozzy, "Close My Eyes Forever," is a classic guilty-pleasure power ballad jam. Well, hell, you shouldn't feel guilty about rocking out to that one in the car alone. None of the people in these YouTube videos from the Fort Lauderdale show do. 

Skot Olsen

​A few months ago, New Times Broward-Palm Beach announced that we would be giving away $4,000 to local artists through our first-ever MasterMind Awards, sponsored by the Amplitude Academy of Musical Arts, a new music school in Boca.

This past Saturday, winners were announced at the Artopia event at Crobar@Exit 66. We received about 165 entries for the contest. The quality and variety of work was amazing.  None of it could be discounted. Difficult as it was to do, the pool was narrowed to 35 entries that our panel of judges looked at closely.  The judges scored those entries.  The Top 13 were announced in last week's print edition, and the Top 4 were given $1,000 checks at Artopia.

The judges were:

-- Janet Gold, visual artist / professor, Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale
-- Michael McKeever, playwright / actor / visual artist
-- Meredith Lasher, producer, Sixth Star Entertainment & Marketing / founder, Women's Theatre Project
-- Michelle Weinberg, creative director, Girls' Club Foundation
-- Brandon K. Thorp, New Times theatre critic
-- Michael Mills, New Times art critic
-- Amanda Magnetta, founder, Bear & Bird Gallery
-- Lori J. Durante, founder, Museum of Lifestyle & Fashion History
-- Tate Ottati, owner, Tate's Comics

And the four winners are:

Kara Walker-Tome, who is usually so busy celebrating other artists that her own incredible skills can go relatively unnoticed. For eight years running, she's commandeered the chic Hotel Biba for a night, making way for artists to set up elaborate installations in each room. More recently, the independent curator has unleashed her guerrilla-style tactics on a self-storage facility. artsitepictures.shutterfly.com

Skot Olsen, who makes elaborate paintings that convey both his love for and awe of sea. He depicts freaky creatures in wild celebrations and rituals; terrible sea monsters and naked ladies; and sea squids who gobble up sailing ships whole. www.skotolsen.com

Victoria Skinner, who blurs boundaries with her cyanotype collages and chimera sculptures. Her work is a mix between human and animal, organic and mechanical, science and art, imagination and knowledge. Her work often achieves what she describes as "a balance between apprehension and amusement, the disturbing and the beautiful." gallery.me.com/vskinner.whnatysh
 
Francene Levinson, a former art teacher who discovered the obscure art of Chinese unit paper folding, "Zhe Zhi." She works now full-time on intricate paper sculptures. Each piece might use 3,500 sheets of recycled paper, and each takes months to create. www.francenelevinson.com

Congratulations to all winners, and we hope everyone else re-enters next year!

After Sleepless Night in Miami Beach this past Saturday, Crossfade's Twitter friends (let's follow each other, I'm at @Crossfade_SFL) and, uh, real-life people were raving about a performance by MASS Ensemble. This Malibu, California-based quartet performs a sort of global, downtempo trip-hop kind of thing, but the musicians do so with "sculptural instruments" they've designed themselves. This includes the awesome "earth harp," which was formed on Saturday by looping some bungee cord-type things for strings over the top of a building. Amazing.

Here's a video of their set in Miami from YouTube, by Tomas Loewy Photography, or user coolpoolmedia.

If you missed it, and it's your kind of thing, you missed out: NeckFace's Devil's Disciple opening at O.H.W.O.W. was one of the best parties on Halloween. And Busy P's set at the afterparty at Poplife didn't disappoint, either. As much as we wanted to hate on it and find the track selection stuck in 2006, Pedro Winter has updated his style and can definitely still get a crowd moving. (Click for our slideshows of the opening and the afterparty at Poplife at Electric Pickle.)

The confluence of everything hipster-ish at both segments of the evening was a little mind-boggling -- ironic costumes, a bustling skateboard ramp, street art, free beer, and so on. But it was a good time, and, if you didn't make it inside, it was documented all over the Internets.

Here's a before-it-happened video, of NeckFace painting the outside of the haunted house he designed for the opening only. It's from YouTube user meetlouiz.

Well, the contemporary flouting of respect for copyrights has provided one great thing. If you miss some big club or music event, you're sure to find it on the Internet, somewhere. "Amateur" videographers and photographers are as good as the pros these days, and YouTube now has HD, so.... I missed the Junior Boys at the Vagabond last Saturday thanks to the flu (boo), but I got to catch, this morning, at least one song, thanks to YouTube user ZManBarzel. Here are the boys doing "Teach Me How to Fight," which, yes, sounds sexy as hell, just like our reviewer said. The picture quality is impressive; ZManBarzel surely knows how to use his zoom in an economical and classy way. Most importantly, the sound is awesome. Enjoy the video below.

Also, not local, but it looks like this person attended the Sonar Festival this year (lucky), and got some similarly good video of Little Boots an Fever Ray. Check them out here.

Who is Brad Paisely? He is a country music star with seven recorded studio albums, all of which have gone at least gold.

According to Wikipedia, Brad Paisley graduated high school in West Virginia. That's about as country as it gets, except for the graduating high school part.

Paisley is currently on his American Saturday Night tour. He recently played West Palm Beach's Cruzan Amphitheater. The video above is a fan-made musical slideshow of the VIP backstage tour they took.

The lady who made it is a big Brad Paisely fan. If you are too, check out her YouTube channel by clicking here.

Some Journey diehards don't like the fact the band still performs under its original name, but with replacement Arnel Pineda, a Filipino former cover band frontman, on vocals. Still, it seems like most fans just want to hear the songs performed live, and well, whether Steve Perry is along for the ride or not. Here's a video of Journey playing at Hard Rock Live last Thursday, from YouTube user thawood2176. Of course, the video's of "Don't Stop Believin.'" Pineda hits all the notes here, but it barely matters, as the song now functions basically as a mass singalong whenever it's played.

 

Wisin y Yandel were one of the first breakout reggaeton success stories. Now they're claiming they're not reggaeton, just pop, or Latin hip-hop, or whatever. Fair enough. Nobody wants to be associated with a one-dimensional genre, and the survivors are all stepping up their game and trying out new styles. WyY have benefited from the sonic expansion, and still remain popular enough to pack the American Airlines Arena last Thursday, and spur fans to post the party all over YouTube.

It doesn't get more pop than a collabo with T-Pain, and Pain himself popped up for an appearance at the concert. Here's a snippet of that from YouTube user LoFuelte305.

photo by Logan Fazio

​Ah, Twitter. How better to vicariously live through events you're not attending, by reading the 140-character summaries posted by celebrities and people who aren't really your friends? So if you missed the Future Classic Festival last Saturday -- dammit, it was a trending topic locally, according to Happn.in -- you can try to imagine it all, thanks to the magic of tweets.

Um, no, really, we love Twitter, and blogging about it seems like an excellent way to sum up the current state of meta-media. Here are some Future Classic tweets from the front lines. BTW, you can follow us at @Crossfade_SFL ... I promise it's not just a bot feed from this blog.

But wait! The Future Classic Festival made it onto another social-type site! Hit the jump for a sampling of YouTube videos of the festivities. (And, of course, check out New Times' own photo slideshow from the event -- click here.)


@nicarlorivera: #IRememberTupac had everyone throwin up westside, last night, at the Future Classic Festival, N.E.R.D Had everyone thowin up that startrak!

@djEFN: Future Classic Festival had some good Arepas! LOL

@godfree: Future Classic Festival - N.E.R.D. performing live... http://twitvid.com/F7933

@ArtOfficialCrew: Some photo-love from last nights Future Classic Festival. http://ping.fm/6MOAZ

@LyriclyInsane: ....with my people at the Future Classic Festival. It's ill but CRAZY hot in this bitch!

@djjessicawho: Future classic festival kinda really dope. Playing later, no clue when

@13o5: ok wow future classic festival was complete caca i mean no band playing shitty music by a digital dj and barely any artwork #fail #miami

@marzonline: City of God (@cityofgodband) just killed the future classic festival!!!!! Omg!!!!!!! NERD up soon!!!!!!

To realize just how truly awesome this last Depeche Mode show was at BankAtlantic Center -- and, well, to realize just how obsessive the band's fans are -- just punch in "Depeche Mode BankAtlantic Center" into YouTube. Despite the band's rejection of most official media outlets' photo requests, a large chunk of the show wound up on the Internet anyways. But if anything, these videos prove how worthy it is to buy a ticket to see these guys the next time around.

While there were the usual iPhones in the air, a few fans in the front rows seemed to be videotaping everything. Here are some of the best videos in HD, from the YouTube user name TheSchemer. Look how young and fit Dave Gahan looks, despite all the crap he's been through. Here's a video of him opening the show with "In Chains," off the band's latest album, Sounds of the Universe. More YouTube videos after the jump.

via ArtOfficial Music's Flickr

​Local live hip-hop favorites ArtOfficial are officially on the verge. Part of this is because the band is all over the social network, on just about every site you can think of. Even Flickr. While looking for Flickr photos of shows from the past weekend, I found these photos the band had uploaded recently from the show at the Clevelander and the Florida Room. You can see more on the band's Flickr photostream here.

via ArtOfficial Music's Flickr

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via Molly Matalon's Flickr

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Solid Sound Studios is a rehearsal studio in Broward off Powerline and Sample that hosts shows in the bottom floor rehearsal space. These consist of kid bookers basically just renting out the space (as it would usually be rented out), and finding local bands to play for free. The show's admission charge covers the rental, the kids buy lots of energy drinks and those weird packaged junk food snacks in the studio lobby, and everybody wins.

Most of the bands' names form complete sentences (my favorite on the current schedule of upcoming shows is Shut Up and Deal), and nobody much over the age of, say, 20 really goes to these unless they've already had business in one of the building's other rehearsal spaces. But it's a safe, alcohol-free place for kids to hang, and there's something going on there almost every night.

This past weekend was relatively slow for "big" shows... But among the most impressive gigs last week was Thursday night at Propaganda, where local guys Stonefox celebrated the release of their sophomore album. For the occasion, they invited their awesome friends from Atlanta, Dead Rabbits. This band is a brother-brother two-piece, just drums and guitar, and they kick ass. (Click here to read a review of that show.)

Both bands played again together at the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, August 1, and Flickr user a_vanderkooy caught these snaps of Dead Rabbits.

via a_vanderkooy's Flickr

Dead Rabbits live at the Poorhouse

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via s0und's Flickr

Gallows

​First, check out New Times' Warped Tour photo slideshows -- click here for the bands, click here for the fans and the fashions.

Saturday proved meteorologically unpredictable in West Palm Beach. This year's edition of the Warped Tour had migrated pretty far north from its usual South Florida venues in Miami or Pompano, prompting lots of grumbling from would-be attendees in Miami-Dade and Broward. Perhaps this psychic energy contributed to the day's on and off rainstorms, which created intense periods of baking humidity after each deluge.

Regardless, plenty of kids went, and left happy anyways, and there is much photographic evidence on Flickr. Let's check out some of the best user photos from the site.

The tattoo-covered aggro Brits of Gallows always make for a wild set and cool photos, so let's start with a few of them, shall we? The photo above, from s0und's photostream, shows how frontman Frank Carter can't be bound by a puny stage.

photo by Nick Lucchesi, Riverfront Times

The Flaming Lips. Who else?

This past weekend, Nick Lucchesi, a correspondent from New Times' St. Louis sister paper, the Riverfront Times, headed to the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago. In a nutshell, here's what he found:

*David Yow of the Jesus Lizard has still got it at 49 years old, even though his stage patter includes some awkward jokes.

*Wavves tried to stem the tide of his encroaching bloggy backlash (fueled, of course, by early bloggy hype) by forbidding a photo pit during his set. Too bad, so sad.

*Matt & Kim are still relentlessly cheerful, and still riding the success of "Yeah, Yeah," while Beirut played to his largest crowd yet.

*And Black Lips are still experimenting with fashionable head gear.

*Batshit Canadian hardcore/punk outfit Fucked Up loooooves the festival circuit -- sure beats sleeping on cockroach-covered floors, says drummer Jonah Falco in this video.

via elireskow's Flickr photostream

One of the biggest shows over the past weekend was the Lynyrd Skynyrd gig this past Saturday at the Cruzan Amphitheatre in West Palm Beach. Sadly, it seems not many people have shared photos from it on Flickr. But I did find this artsy-type shot from the crowd on elireskow's photostream. It kind of  reinforces Skynyrd fan stereotypes, but it's a nice photo all the same.

While folks in the crowd may not be publicly sharing too many still photos yet (hey, feel free to e-mail some and we'll post them), there are tons of YouTube clips of the show. Follow the jump to check out what you missed.

Wish You Were There is a new column on Crossfade highlighting pictures and videos from around the web of the weekend's biggest shows. Click here to see past installments.

via J A I M E's Flickr photostream

There were several (although not obnoxiously too many) photographers at the So Raw Festival this past weekend in Miami, so it makes sense at least some of those photos made it to Flickr. User J A I M E has a bunch of snaps in his photostream that gives a good sense of the fest's low-key, low-bullshit, sweaty and um, interactive vibe. Jacuzzi Boys, playing late on Saturday night, were clearly the local favorites -- and for some folks, dancing in the crowd just wasn't enough. 

via Phinzup's Flickr photostream

The biggest thing going for retro culture lovers over the past weekend was, of course, Hukilau 2009. Los Straitjackets headlined the weekend's biggest show, Friday night at the Bahia Cabana hotel. There are a ton of amazing photos of the whole event on Phinzup's Flickr photostream.

Mr. Bali Hai took a bunch as well, including this one taken aboard the Tikki Beach boat.

via Mr. Bali Hai's Flickr photostream

via Milonakis' Twitpic

Tweet, tweet ya'll! Guess who was spotted yesterday at Poplife's Just Add Water at the Fontainebleau? Funny man/boy Andy Milonakis, who just release a new single "Let Me Twitter Dat" via Diplo's Mad Decent label, wasn't showing off his pre-pubescent body but our cameras caught him enjoying some drinks, which we hope were of the non-alcoholic variety considering last month Milonakis posted a video declaring he was two weeks sober. However, we're doubtful since he Twittered, "Pool party hangover. Shots are always a bad idea. Avoid them." He later wrote, "Its 7am. I'm in Miami Florida and I just had a girl point a loaded gun to my face while I masturbated." Awesome. Check out the full slideshow from Just Add Water here.

Also, if you didn't hear, the fire marshal shut down the Vagabond Saturday night (technically Sunday morning). Our heart goes out to jwhylie, who wrote, "Got to Vagabond only to have the fire marshall shut the place down." While the closure left shinsyotta stunned, "Holy crap. Fire marshall shutting down Vagabond." We are still trying to put all the pieces together as to what exactly happened, but as soon as we do, we'll let you know.

We leave you with the video for Milonakis' "Let Me Twitter Dat" after the jump.

via verymanley's Flickr photostream

Wish You Were There is a new column on Crossfade highlighting pictures and videos from around the web of the weekend's biggest shows.

The biggest thing going in Miami this past weekend was the Poplife 10-year anniversary event, which luckily barely escaped the day's torrential rain. But still, nada about this on Flickr or YouTube -- maybe the inclement weather drove people to leave their expensive equipment at home. No worries, though, New Times' own slideshow of the party is still forthcoming.

Still, all the usual sites were eerily devoid of much music documentation around town this past weekend. Perhaps it really was a few days best left for hibernating.

So, here's a photo of a local band playing out of town -- Fort Lauderdale's Ghost of Gloria, who rocked it in Gainesville on Saturday night. I found the snap above on verymanley's Flickr photostream. You can click here to check out a few more pictures of the show. (BTW, you can still vote for Ghost of Gloria in Hard Rock's Ambassadors of Rock contest finals -- click here.)

Wish You Were There is a new column on Crossfade highlighting pictures and videos from around the web of the weekend's biggest shows.

One of the most anticipated gigs in town this past Saturday was the kick-off of bass god Les Claypool's national outing with Matisyahu. The weather at the Pompano Beach Amphitheatre smiled upon Claypool, who brought his signature technical dexterity and straight-out weirdness to a set punctuated by creative use of a xylophone.

Check out this five-and-a-half minute montage of the show's highlights, uploaded by YouTube user Sabby McSab.

(Update: Sabby McSab himself wrote in -- he is a local graphic/web designer named A.J. Sabourin, and you can visit his web site at ajsab.com.) 

There are also a ton of cool photos of that show, and of the Cool Kids/Clipse bill at the Sneaker Pimps exhibit in Miami, on the real miami vice's Flickr photostream.