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ZZ Top
December 28, 2007
Hard Rock Live

Better Than: Not having dared at all.

The Review:

“ZZ Top at the Hard Rock?!?!”

“That’s what I said.”

“Wow! You know that’s one of the few bands I’ve never seen?”

“Really? So you’ll go, then?”

“No, sorry. I’ve got other plans.”

Such was the near-unanimous consensus after a last-minute cancellation from my running mate forced me to madly phone around in search of a replacement for the show. Not that it didn’t promise to be all that and then some – hell, the kitsch factor alone should’ve drawn a million “yays!” – but still, it was almost too absurd to be true.

“You’re going up to Hollywood to see ZZ Top?” seemed to run the refrain. “I can’t believe it.”

But believe it you must, because I went. And in my good pal Justin from Southern, I even enlisted a perfectly swinging replacement.

So there.

Unfortunately we didn’t stay past the third song. Oh, the legendary “little ol’ band from Texas” was certainly up to par, I suppose; it’s just that their par seemed to be a bit shy of above – not too mention well short of their heyday rowdy.

And I should know. I saw them then, in Hollywood no less, at a tin can called the Sportatorium. It was in the midst of their Texas Worldwide Tour, and, befitting the name, they came bearing boogie, blues, cowboy rock logic and, um, steer.

Really.

Well, those ranch days are long gone now. Sure the ranch dressing is still there, as are their trademarked beards. Ditto the beer-barrel boogie. Me being clean shaven and more akin to high balls, however, even at High Noon, kinda left it all one suit short of a gun fight.

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Ah, the New Year. Time of transformation, time of bubbly-spawned magic, time of awkward passes and resolutions you mean at the time. While you're preparing for the long sled ride down Hangover Hill, here's some topical listening material. -- Jeff Shaw

5. Death Cab for Cutie, "The New Year"
"So this is the New Year ... and I don't feel any different." Who among us cannot identify with these sentiments? The ennui associated with arbitrary calendar-flippage? We've all been there at one point, and this captures one aspect of the nouvelle annee experience: sitting around and waiting for life to start. Some years are like this, running in place while holding a drink. Try not to spill.

4. The Zombies, "This Will Be Our Year"
A delicious pop nugget from decades past, this track isn't explicitly about the New Year, but about starting a new romantic relationship with an old friend. The words I'm looking for to describe it are "thoroughly charming." Share it with someone you love -- or ensure that it's playing when a longtime pal you have a crush on walks by. More recently, OK Go covered this song, and that version is also well worth listening to. You can find it here. But I think the video below, with decades-old footage of somebody's parents shot with a Super 8, fits the tune's feel.

3. Asobi Seksu, "New Years"
About a metaphorical rather than literal New Year, this song (which you can hear streaming here) is the finest track from one of 2006's best albums. Yeah, its almost all in Japanese. Yeah, you'll enjoy it anyway, even if you don't speak the language. You can see people wrestling with the tune's English meaning here.

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Go figure.
But you gotta give credit where its due and as of today, Miami's own Flo Rida has bumped Alicia Keys out of the number one spot on the Billboard charts and his song, "Low" has ascended in its place. It's a proud day for South Florida music fans and it's the second time this year (that I can calculate anyway) that a local has held this position. Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" was at #1 for four weeks earlier this summer. "Low" is a catchy enough tune that he might be able to beat Kingston's streak. Even though the song is probably old to most people, "Low" is finally catching on in other parts of the country so props to Flo Rida for putting Miami on top of the charts again.

-- Jonathan Cunningham

Dave Navarro & DJ Skribble
December 22, 2007
Pawn Shop Lounge

Better Than: A fistfight in front of a mirror.

Contrary to unpopular opinion, kids still get riled about rock; when the rock comes dosed with bottom heavy rap, they get really riled. Make that: really, really riled. Witness Dave Navarro’s and DJ Skribble’s Pawn Shop set last weekend, which riled the kids into a swing not seen since the rockers faced off with the Bloods in Boys in the Blackboard Jungle.

And by swing I mean fists – dig? Oh not between the rock and rap crowd, mind you, and not just among the boys, either, but predominately between a gaggle of gals who acted as if they were being initiated into a gang. I’m talking ‘bout a pushing, shoving, cussing, hair-pulling, bitch-slapping cast of nasties straight out of some badass back alley.

Perhaps the lasses simply got fed-up with all the customary seasonal cheer, or maybe they’ve never gotten so close to a certified rock star, but whatever the reason, it was ugly – and I for one wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Neither apparently would Navarro and Skribble, who fed off the feline frenzy with a whole lotta frenzy of their own. You know Dave: the tatted, hatted and pierced six-string slinger whose TV exploits seem to garner more press than his stints in either Jane’s Addiction or Red Hot Chili Peppers. And if you don’t know Skribble, it’s not for his lack of action (he reportedly logs 300 dates a year), airplay (Saturday nights on New York’s WKTU), output (on Oakenfold’s Perfecto Records), pedigree (ex of Young Black Teenagers) or precedent (Skribs first faced-off against Les Claypool when he toured with Primus).

Together the tag team blow it up. In fact, the cats literally blew-out the sound system – twice – during a dashing mash-up of LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.” Of course the system was already reeling after a long, low and booming rendition of The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump,” which had enough bump-and-grind to shut down an arena, so there’s really no blame to name. And neither Navarro nor Skribble seemed the least phased by the defusings.

Hell, if anything, when they came back with Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” and a clash of Notorious B.I.G. and Joan Jett, the dynamite-wielding duo seemed apoplectically giddy at the prospect that it might happen again. Then, to the pump of Yung Joc’s “It’s Going Down,” and the harrumph of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” it did, provoking the crowd to hush into a downright wild.

And inducing me to leave. Call me a coward, but three shutdowns and a cat fight to the retunings of classic neo uber hop rock is plenty. Yet when I left the still boisterous building, it wasn’t as someone who’s had his fill of fun, it was as someone who’d found that there’s still fun to be had – the louder and rowdier the better.

Rock on, brother and sisters. -- John Hood

Personal Bias: I crawled out from under hard rock, so any kinda revisit gets me going gone.

Random Detail: Dozens of Pitbull wannabes sporting Foster Grants leads me to believe there’s still hope in the wild world.

By the Way: Navarro just wrapped his directorial debut – Broken. Find out about it here.

A couple of weeks ago, we posted video here at CrossFade of South Florida's mixtape king, DJ GQ chilling in the studio with his friend DMX. The video ended up all over YouTube, and every other viral video website and essentially played on the fact that DMX looked like he was high enough to eat a comet. It's something that GQ refutes (claiming it was Henny, not drugs that had DMX acting so off the wall) and wants to clear things up once and for all.
Since the video appeared here before all of the hullabaloo started, we feel compelled to offer GQ's side of the story. We'd show you the video again but it's already been taken down.
-- Jonathan Cunningham

IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“It has come to my attention that a video of myself and DMX recording in a studio has fueled rumors that he is taking drugs and that he collapsed at the Sony studios.

It was my people that posted the DMX video on YouTube. Let me set the record straight for all the gossip hounds out there. This video was shot down here in South Florida months ago. DMX had come straight from the airport to the studio, after flying in from Arizona! We downed a bottle and a half of Hennessy before he got on the mic. Is DMX hyper? Yes. Is DMX wild? Yes. Was DMX under the influence of anything else at the time of this recording or at any other time in my presence? Absolutely not!

The fact of the matter is that DMX is an energetic and passionate artist. He is a hip-hop legend and my friend. It was an honor recording “Bad Boys” with him and I will stand by DMX no matter what story anyone invents.

Long live the Dog!!!” -DJ GQ (QMusic Group)

MSNBC is reporting that Jay-Z is resigning as president of Def Jam records at the end of this year. He took over post three years ago when former boss Lyor Cohen left the position to become the chief executive at Warner Music Group.
Yesterday's move isn't surprising (his artists have long wondered if he could actually promote their projects properly with so many other business interests--including his own rap career on the horizon) and this "stepping down" move probably makes sense. He can still bow out rather gracefully--the calls for his neck would only have grown louder if he stayed and now he can focus more on selling clothes, music, vodka, ringtones, gymshoes, stadiums, Budweiser, nightclubs, Bengal tigers, circus midgets, and any other business interest that comes across his mind. All of which he seems to be pretty damn good at.
It was a novel idea, and probably good experience for Sean to head such a big outfit at such a relatively young age, but when he admits to being out of the office for three weeks at time because he's working on his own album, that's not a good look when you're the HNIC. Read more about it here or go here to see what the notoriously opinionated Okayplayer boards have to say about it.
--Jonathan Cunningham

Okay, I admit to reading this on Perez Hilton first, but the Miami Herald's also got the whole scoop. In a nutshell, Mr. 305 got caught driving drunk early this morning. The story kinda deserves LOLz, though, for how ultimately Miami it is. First, he didn't get busted on South Beach, or even downtown -- instead, he was on the Palmetto, near SW 56th Street. And then check how he responded to the cop:

"Come on papo, what's up?''
''Come on, This ain't nuthin. You're wasting your time... Let's not do this, yo."

He managed to list his occupation as "rapper, self-employed," but could not successfully name his ethnicity or weight. Here's Lil' Chico's mugshot. -- Arielle Castillo

South Florida's favorite jam band, the Heavy Pets are rocking a show tonight with Suenalo. For more on the Heavy Pets, check out this recent feature on the band, but if you really want to learn more about them, check 'em out this evening at the Culture Room in Fort Lauderdale. The show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $10. For two solid acts, that's a good deal.

-Jonathan Cunningham

I often forget to check up on Vice's online TV venture, VBS.TV, and that's just as well, because then I would really never get anything done at the computer. Why? Original mini shows that are informative and entertaining, but without relying on a bunch of slick professional "hip" gimmickry. Actually, sometimes the production borders on the amateurish, but it makes the content more believable and easier to connect with.

Probably my favorite aspect about most of the shows is that they let the people in the stories mainly speak for themselves, or they send an awesome person out to get that story. Case in point: the series Soft Focus, in which the painfully stylish, painfully amazing musician Ian Svenonius -- of Nation of Ulysses, the Make-Up, Weird War, etc. -- interviews other musicians he respects. (Past guests: Billy Childish, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, Mark E. Smith of the Fall, and so on).

Some of the latest episodes feature Mr. Svenonius in England (eh, he's there a lot, I once bumped into him on the steps of the British Museum), but the latest takes him oop norf - to Manchester! To interview the infamous Shaun Ryder, leader of the drugged-out, chaotic Happy Mondays, forerunners of the "Madchester" psychedelic dance/rock scene in the late Eighties/early Nineties. None of these names might ring a bell to most in Miami, but, the Mondays' first discs were shaped by an up-and-coming producer by the name of Paul Oakenfold.

Here's the first of four parts of the Ryder interview. Ol' Shaun is still impish and nearly unintelligible with his thick Manc accent. I love the weird, animal-like groan he emits when Ian asks if he's excited about playing in the States. "Eegghghghgh... I don't really DO excited any more!"

Later, Ian posits the statement that after the Happy Mondays, English audiences no longer wanted to just watch a rock band -- they wanted to dance too. Shaun's response? "Ehhh.... I think it was the ecstasy!"

Click here to view the other three parts. And after that, check the episode featuring Miami girl Chan Marshall (a.k.a. Cat Power). -- Arielle Castillo

I'm sure I'm late in the game on discovering this one, but Trent Reznor has proved once again that, love him or hate him, he's always been a forward thinker. Newly freed from the shackles of his contact with Interscope, he's launched a new site at remix.nin.com.

It's a platform for fans to deconstruct Nine Inch Nails songs, remix them, and upload them for other fans to hear and download. There are podcasts, playlists, streams galore of the results, which are mostly sorted through listeners' votes on the tracks.

The site's dark, with tiny type and pop-up flash menus, which makes it a little hard and tiresome to navigate. But it offers a cool spin on fan interactivity (the only caveat: no samples of material copyrighted by anyone other than NIN). Check it out here. -- Arielle Castillo

1. Worst Album: the Arcade Fire, Neon Bible

This cerebral garbage entertained about 100 people, none of whom didn’t either live in Canada or work as a music critic. Speaking of critics, it’s hard to agree with Sasha Frere-Jones about anything, but he was right that the Arcade Fire lacks soul. This is true in both the musical and metaphysical senses.

2. Worst Single: Bow Wow & Omarion, “Girlfriend”

Worse than Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” and much worse than ‘N Sync’s “Girlfriend,” this slow, pandering drivel is the kind of thing that makes you wish Bow was still a pup and Omarion was still with B2K.

3. Worst Wu-Tang Song: “Sunlight”

Wu’s new album is amazing, and I support RZA’s production on it, but on “Sunlight” he falls off the deep end. “And as you play all day like the grasshopper who work and toil like armies of ants carrying stones of soil,” he chants in a series of run-on sentences, “building a home for themselves and storing food. At night we praise Allah and adore the moon in sync like the flow of the Nile, the growth of a child.” Cool!

4. Worst Concert: White Williams (well, in NYC)

White Williams tries his hardest to avoid melody in his songs, and in his concerts he tries his hardest to avoid playing music. This was the case, at least, at his December 10 show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom, in which Williams’ inane, hipster banter dominated the set. During long pauses between songs, we were treated to views of (what I believe was) his MySpace page.

5. Worst Year End Critic's List: The Onion’s AV Club

Topped, of course, by Arcade Fire, the AV Club’s best 25 albums of the year list also featured past-their-prime bands like Wilco and Modest Mouse. I do agree with some of the choices, like Band of Horses and Amy Winehouse, but the main problem is that it includes not a single hip hop album. An online commentator called “Murk” put it best: “You guys are almost as eclectic as Time magazine!”

6. Worst Idolator Feature: Worst Album Cover Of The Year Tournament

It seems that whenever Idolator isn’t bashing Village Voice Media papers for shoddy music writing or dishing out shoddy music writing of its own, it is subjecting us to this never-ending “Worst Album Cover Of The Year Tournament.” It's not at all funny (Vice magazine has been doing this to greater effect for years), but I mainly hate it because they've been subjecting us to it -- and its preliminaries -- since fucking February.

7. Worst Genre: Indie Rock

It’s been fun guys (well, no not really), but it’s time for indie rock to go gently into that good night. Irony, self-consciousness, and beard-stroking aren’t what we need in our music – that’s what we have the McSweeney’s franchise for.

I can't remember what set it off now, but I've been on a massive shoegaze-revisiting kick lately, diggin' up the lovely space-rock extravaganzas I first zoned out to as a teenager. True fans of this stuff in Miami can probably be counted on my and maybe a friend's fingers and toes. (Hopefully some new people got schooled at PS14's recent Sunday-night shoegaze tribute gig featuring local acts like Map of the Universe.) Anyways, Slowdive, Spacemen 3, Swervedriver (and other bands that do not start with "S") -- bring 'em on. But one of my favorites has always been another S-band, the noodling, orchestral Spiritualized (ok, also an offshoot of Spacemen 3, helmed by the genius Jason Pierce).

So, while wasting time on YouTube the other day, I punched in "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space," both the title of the band's 1997 near-hit album, and its title track. You've possibly heard it in soundtracks for TV, film, etc. (most notably stateside in the remake of Vanilla Sky).

My favorite weird YouTube fan-created video for the song was the one below, a creepy but affecting pastiche of melancholy imagery from various movies -- mostly French, but also the Bjork-helmed musical tragedy Dancer In The Dark. (Seriously, that movie traumatized me, and I hadn't thought about it in a couple of years until this clip brought back that same creepy nausea).

Dig it: (the complete list of source films for the clip can be seen by visiting the video's URL):

But then I decided to read the video's comments (a great way to squeeze even MORE time-wasting out of YouTube). And then I realized -- no wonder I instinctively liked this song so much....

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Café Tacuba
Sunday, December 16
the Gusman Theater, Miami

There are very few bands around that can continue to garner new, younger fans almost two decades into their careers. Mexico's Café Tacuba, however, stands as one of those select few. Downtown’s Miami old and marvelous Gusman Theater was brimming with twentysomething hipsters Sunday Night for the last show of the band's latest North American tour. The two-hour performance felt like a greatest-hits extravaganza, with songs from every era of Café Tacuba's almost-18-year career. Even better, everyone in the full-capacity crowd stood on their feet, dancing and singing for the whole duration of the band's performance.

Formed in 1989 in Mexico City, the four members of the band are considered to have created the epitome of the genre known as rock en español. Unlike many later Spanish-language rock acts, who merely paste Spanish lyrics onto a typical rock format, Café Tacuba adopted the anything-goes aesthetic of punk rock and added plenty of Mexican folk touches to their fast-pace, surreal ditties.

The band’s willingness to explore and mix divergent genres has led it to collaborations with ex-Talking Head David Byrne and to live gigs with the always-innovative Beck. So it was no surprise to witness the Tacubas show-off their love for rare beats and imaginative arrangements throughout their gig at the Gusman.

Wearing a white, tailored zoot suit with a matching Humphrey Bogart-era hat, lead singer Rubén Isaac Albarrán Ortega launched into the slow burning “Cero y Uno.” After the song ended, a relaxed and smiling Ortega exhorted the crowd to stay on its feet. Pointing at the theater's famous constellation of painted ceiling stars, Ortega said, “"ook how beautiful are all of those starts, and all of you [the audience] look just like flowers…. Please stay on your feet, do not sit down. Tonight we are dancing.”

And the fans did just that, dancing and singing to old and new songs alike. Of course, a special mention goes to the Mex-style-hip-hop-meets-punk of “Chilanga Banda.” It sounds like a fast, hip-hop take on Iggy Pop’s “Lust For Life” sung in Spanish — with Mexican accordions shimmering in and out courtesy of keyboardist Emmanuel “Meme” Del Real. Accordingly audience members rushed to the stage to sing and pogo along with the band.

Still, even in its punkest moments, Café Tacuba remained focused on their chords. Underneath the catchy tunes and surreal lyrics lies a great live band that knows how to energize an audience with its unyielding charisma. -- Jose Davila

Critic's Notebook

Random Detail: The band paying clips of Mexican luchador El Santo during “Alarma”

By The Way: Café Tacuba just released their latest album, Sino, this last October

Talk about a throwback! Here's some old school Common from 1994 off of his Resurrection album. He was still going by Common Sense at the time and still living on the Southside of Chicago...not doing Gap ads, not making movies, not wearing cardigans, and definitely keeping his rhymes simple and raw. I'm not saying I prefer one style over the other, but this is the Common that most hip-hop heads fell in love with waaaayyy back in the day. Enjoy.

- Jonathan Cunningham

Pregnant chicks are cool, I guess, because they eat like stoners and can hold your beer on their stomach while you play Halo. But I still feel mildly weird about these pictures of Xtina trying to look all uber-slutty with a small human inside her stomach, I guess because a lot of girls my age are having babies and none of them look like her. Maybe I should just knock up hot girls and kill two birds with one awesome leather and denim covered stone. -- Craig Hlavaty