In a converted nursery school on Wiles Road, with heavy-metal music blaring behind every door, Andrew Musselman leads me to the classroom where he'll teach his next lesson. He's running late, but that doesn't deter him from giving me the grand tour. As we pass a room with beanbag chairs on the floor, he aims a finger at the Jimi Hendrix poster hanging on the wall. "The student lounge," he explains.

The school where Andrew teaches is unlike any other in Broward County. Here, the students don't read textbooks. They don't take quizzes or read essays either. Instead of desks, they sit behind drum sets, and within every classroom is not a blackboard but an electric guitar begging to be played. It is the School of Rock, a real-life music academy where young musicians from all over Broward County come to be educated in the ways of rock 'n' roll.

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photo CC by 3.0, via Fayetnam on Wikimedia Commons

Abel Tesfaye, the 22-year-old who goes by the Weeknd, is enjoying the first flush of his Next Big Thing success. His show tomorrow at Revolution, part of his first tour, sold out within a day of its tickets' release. Based on his buzz alone, he could easily fill a venue the next level up -- say, the Fillmore -- though creating a packed frenzy is probably the wisest move. (The booking, actually, recalls that of another current superstar -- Lady Gaga -- who played Revolution in early 2009, just as "Just Dance" bubbled over in the U.S.) More >>

via Wikimedia Commons

Jennifer Hudson deserved better blog treatment.

Yesterday was equally appalling and exciting on this blog and across Twitter and other various social media platforms. As a freelancer, I was busy in the morning covering the Billboard Latin Music Conference in Miami, and during a break, I checked my various feeds to see a post on this blog with a cringe-inducing title: "Eight Pleasantly Plump Female Musicians I'd Like to Get Down With."

I quickly tweeted the author, Ric Delgado, that not only was the article sexist but also inaccurate on a few factual fronts. Then I ran out of time and forgot about the post for a little while, figuring it would largely be scrolled past and then lost in the annals of daily blog ephemera.
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To a complete outsider, the name of the upcoming tour by locals Holly Hunt and Scraping Teeth, which begins Tuesday, April 10, at Churchill's, doesn't bode well. Billed as the "Worst Band in America Tour," it's a reference to a dubious nod the latter group earned from Spin magazine in 1993. Considering the band's name, plus the fact that it's led by notorious noisemaker Rat Bastard, well, that means plenty of confrontational volume and almost no concessions made to an audience hoping for melody.  More >>

Focka

A hipster costume is not the sort of reinvention that some of us were hoping for.

​Since the 1999 release of Californication, the musical output from the Chili Peppers has been less than Red Hot. Sure, there's good material on the subsequent By the Way and Stadium Arcadium, and devoted fans may even call one, if not both of them, masterpieces.

However, neither of those records made quite the artistic splash that Californication did. They were more like waves extending out from the creative burst that occurred with the return of key member and beauty catalyst John Frusciante in '99. 

With Frusciante out, the band is back on the road with former backing guitarist Josh Klinghoffer filling his vacated spot. The new formation seems to be vibing well, but the return record, 2011's I'm With You, and the band's current approach is only a small step in an interesting direction, one that whets the appetite for a leap.

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image via Wikimedia Commons

Elton John on the Cher Show in 1975.

​We can likely blame this on the '60s and the musical shift therein, but since the dawn of rock 'n' roll as Serious Art Form, there remains a pervasive opinion that Serious Rock can't also be fun. As a related argument, then, there's also the argument that pop automatically can't be serious or carry any substance. Any "rock" performer who dares to cultivate a purposefully fanciful or contrived image is often critically savaged, while any outright pop act is automatically thought to be an essentially talentless puppet of the industry. More >>

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L your F-ing what off?

​LMFAO is tacky, fratty, loud, goofy, and stupid. That's not the biggest bad of the dance-party duo. Their worst quality is that they're a group that is tacky, fratty, goofy, and stupid that performs for audiences of babies.

This past year, three concerts in particular exemplified the phenomenon of what we'll call "raves for children." Real raves belong in the '90s. Examples of their modern-day incarnations for underagers are the Ke$ha's "Get $leezy" tour, the Black Eyed Peas -- whose final concert took place at SunLife Stadium -- and these guys, LMFAO, who both opened for Ke$ha and played the recent Y-100 Jingle Ball.

Before launching into this old-fart diatribe, let's preface with a few things: 1. Raves and drum 'n' bass nights were fun 15 years ago; 2. Except for a Gathering of the Juggalos, concerts are almost always awesome; 3. Dancing is the best.

Now back to complaining. More >>