Five Questions With ... DJ Joshy Josh

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?Joshy Josh is a journeyman DJ in South Florida who skims the fine line between South Beach and downtown. Some people know him as the spectacled dude with long hair and the perpetual three-day college professor beard, but most know him for his DJ sets of fun. Crossfade caught up with him recently for the rundown.

Crossfade: First, to get it going, let us know who you are, where do you come from and what do you do? 

Joshy Josh: I'm Joshy Josh. I was born in Philly and lived in Chicago for a bit and now I'm in Miami for a bit. My musical background is playing in bands, but that didn't work the way I liked and DJing was the course that seemed to make the most sense for me at the time. 

Okay, you've been DJing around town for a while now in hotspots like Purdy and joints in the downtown area; anywhere else? Any residencies? Places you'd like to spin at?

I have done gigs at most of the downtown spots. We have a weekly party called (786) on Wednesday nights at Purdy Lounge. And then I go where I'm needed. I like to keep my options open. I also really enjoy the nights I am at Fox's. I dig that place! 

DJ Supreme La Rock Spins Tonight at Champion Sound at Electric Pickle

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via myspace.com/mrsupreme
?He's done disco, mixed Afro-funk, Brazilian, and classic rock, and spun at huge venues all over Vegas, L.A., and Vancouver. He's even played dance, Top 40 hits, and '80s tunes for the hipster kids at Santos Party House in New York City. But what DJ Supreme La Rock is best known for is his touch with underground hip-hop and funk. He's celebrating Lumin's birthday and bringing a bit of Seattle soul to the weekly Champion Sound party at Electric Pickle tonight. Crossfade caught up with him by phone earlier this week.

Crossfade: You play it all pretty much. Just for the Electric Pickle, are you gonna stick to soul and funk? 

?Supreme La Rock: I always like to say whatever I play is funky. No matter what kind of music it is it's funky, but mainly I'm going to stick to the funky stuff [for this show]. I grew up in Seattle and my parents listened to funk music. As a kid I'd always get into their records. It's just always what I listened to.

What kind of funk artists inspire you? ?

It's a lot of independent things and artists that never really blew up on a major level. There was so much good music but they hardly had enough money to even record and stuff, let alone press the record up. So you find obscure stuff and it's so good and nobody's heard it.

Q&A With John Joseph of the Cro-Mags, Playing Churchill's This Sunday

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courtesy of punkhouse.org
?If you spotted John Joseph on the street and didn't know any better, you'd probably quicken your pace. Though he's now 47 years old, the New York hardcore god is a compact, tattoo-covered package of brawn who could easily kick the ass of a poser half his age. And at one point, as the frontman of the notoriously volatile Cro-Mags, he probably would.

Yes, the Cro-Mags's most famous album, 1986's Age of Quarrel, was a brutal piece of work. A couple of indicative song titles: "Show You No Mercy" and "Street Justice." It charges with punk fury, but in its sonic pummeling, laid the groundwork for the heavy-ing of hardcore. The record can sound downright melodic compared to the thuggish, breakdown-addicted straightedge hardcore acts of later years, but the initial seeping-in of metal was groundbreaking.  

But times have changed. These days, Joseph is just as likely to hold forth on healthy, interconnected and sustainable living as he is on the laws of the street. He was at the forefront of what was dubbed, for better or for worse, the "krishna-core" faction of early New York hardcore. And though he broke with the religion's controversial establishment, ISKCON, he still follows its original principles as set forth by its founder, Swami Prabhupada. 

And in Joseph's view, the latest karmic violators are corporate agricultural titans like Monsanto. For a brain-melting trip that will leave you questioning everything you eat, just get him talking about industrial corn and soybeans. (Or check out his new book, Meat Is For Pussies, due out April 15.)

Q&A with Jeremy Greenspan of the Junior Boys, Playing Electric Pickle on Friday

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In this era of dime-a-dozen indie electro-pop duos, one contemporary act stands apart from the rest for sheer substance, stylistic originality and emotional rapport, and that's Ontario, Canada's Junior Boys. Crooner/co-producer Jeremy Greenspan and partner Matt Didemus first began their collaboration in the early 2000s, the fruit of which were the first couple of Junior Boys EPs and 2003's debut album, Last Exit on KIN Records.

Their second full-length album, So This Is Goodbye was released on Domino Records in 2006, and with various remixes and support from the international EDM community, including tracks featured on Sander Kleinenberg and Ghostly International compilation mixes, the duo began to garner serious acclaim. In 2008 they were invited to mix Get Physical Music's Body Language 6 compilation release, further establishing them in both the indie dance and underground techno scenes.

2009 saw the release of Junior Boys' third and most ambitious studio album to date, Begone Dull Care. This endearing collection of delicately-crafted lyrical electronic pop tracks has found them an even broader audience, what with the track "Dull to Pause" chosen as the Starbucks iTunes "Pick of the Week" in August 2009, among other accolades.

Many of you will recall Junior Boys' last Miami performance for a packed room at Vagabond, where their emotionally-searing rendition of all the crowd favorites left more than a few people enthralled. Jeremy Greenspan is back in Miami on Friday night to play an exclusive DJ set at the Electric Pickle's One Year Anniversary Block Party, and we took up the opportunity to catch up with him for a brief Q&A. Read it after the jump.

Q&A with Marc Romboy, Playing the One Year Anniversary Block Party at Electric Pickle on Friday

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For going on two decades, German DJ/producer Marc Romboy has established himself as one of the preeminent figures of electronic dance music through a rare combination of innovative vision and heartfelt reverence for the classic forms. A childhood fascination with synthesized sounds, via the likes of Kraftwerk, got Romboy hooked on electronic music, and with the advent of house and techno in the '80s he delved head-on into original production work, employing classic early tools like an Akai sampler and Roland TB-303 synthesizer to develop his own sounds.

By the mid '90s Romboy and partner Klaus Derichs were heading Le Petit Prince, one of Germany's foremost techno imprints in its heyday, and championing the sounds of artists like Phuture, Microwave Prince, Emmanuel Top, and Thomas P. Heckmann until the label's demise in 2000. The following decade saw a bout of intensive international touring during which Romboy cemented his reputation as a world-class DJ, and by 2004 he returned to A&R work with the launch of new label Systematic, marked by the release of debut single "Every Day In My Life" produced in collaboration with Booka Shade.

Two artist albums and further collaborative work with American house/techno legends Robert Owens and Blake Baxter, along with more contemporary cutting-edge artists like Gui Boratto, Stephan Bodzin, and Spirit Catcher, have demonstrated Romboy's creative fluidity and broad perspective as a producer, embracing the future while paying homage to the past. Marc Romboy will be headlining an all-star lineup at the One Year Anniversary Block Party at Electric Pickle on Friday, one of only two exclusive North American dates for his "5 Years of Systematic" tour, and we couldn't pass up an opportunity to pick the man's brain on the cusp of his Miami performance.  

Read the full Q&A after the jump.

Q&A With Norwood Fisher of Fishbone, Playing Culture Room Tomorrow Night

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Photo by phivephotography.com
Though Fishbone's home turf -- South Central L.A. -- may not have been a typical rock and roll breeding ground, plenty else about the band's birth was fortuitous. The band's early musical brew, heavy on ska, reggae, and a liberal helping of rock, was largely created in an incubator. (These were the early '80s, when underground music news traveled through fanzines on actual, you know, paper.)

Still, it unwittingly dovetailed with the genre-bending post-punk and so-called "Two-Tone" ska revival over in England, which eventually washed back to the shores of mainstream-ish America through bands like the Clash. This, in turn, musically fortified Fishbone other like-minded Southern California acts, including a pre-stardom No Doubt, and helped to touch off what was later known as the "third wave" of American ska.

By the same token, as the '80s progressed, Fishbone itself, never one to have much truck with stylistic complaints, later veered in another direction. Out went most of the straight Jamaican rhythms, in came a new distortion and heaviness, as well as a marked funk. Again, the band found itself at the crest of a movement -- the so-called burgeoning "alternative" scene spearheaded by fellow SoCal scenesters like Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Later funk-rock acts like Incubus point to this era of Fishbone's output as particularly influential).

Early Warning: Aholsniffsglue Art Show Shakedown Street Birthday Fest With Tony Touch

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Aholsniffsglue
Aholsniffsglue is all over the fuckin place; street signs, corner walls, toilet seats, gas pumps. We heard he owns his own trucking company, Ahol Dumps. People say he's the one been killing all those horses in the Redlands. Some lady in line at the store told us that Aholsniffsglue is actually a 13 year old Japanese girl who is very good at computers.

The truth is Aholsniffsglue is an artist and a party maker. See the expert do both at his upcoming Butter Gallery art show, "7.625 Fl Oz.," with tremendo afterparty at Shake at the Vagabond with DJ Tony Touch on Thursday, March 11.

Five Questions With Cuci Amador of Afrobeta

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Cuci Amador is the effervescent frontwoman of Afrobeta, a Miami favorite who's currently finishing up a new studio album. Crossfade caught up with her recently to ask her about her musical background, new projects, and that recent almost-Grammy.

New Times: Let's get some things out of the way first. Where do you come from, what is your name and more importantly, if you had to choose between rescuing an Atari 2600 or Taylor Dane from a burning building, who would you rescue? 

?Cuci Amador: My family hails from Cuba. My nickname is Cuci Amador. Cuci is pronounced Coo-SEE and comes from "cosita" which means "little thing." Amador is my grandmother's maiden name, translated in English as "lover." I guess Cuci Amador means "Little Lover." I think if I had to save an Atari 2600 or Taylor Dayne from a burning building, I would save Taylor Dayne. ColecoVision was a superior system.

Okay, you've established a pretty solid pedigree locally and a fan base through your work in Afrobeta and with Jose el Rey and the Miami Bass Warriors. What can you tell us about those projects, and is it true the City of Miami is planning on taxing Smurphio's hair? 
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Afrobeta is developing nicely! It started as a beta project and we are happy to be working on our debut album! We've teamed up with a local indie label started by two of the Ultra Music Festival co-founders, Russell and Charlie Faibisch. You can look forward to a release party announcement soon! Yes, the City of Miami has approached us about taxing Smurphio's head space. It's a roving piece of real estate that has been valued at over $1.2 million. Our lawyers are looking into it.

Q&A With DJ MGA, of Fox's Shuffle Tuesdays

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This interview is with up-and-coming local DJ Matthew Andrews, a.k.a. MGA. Folks might know him from some downtown hotspots like the Vagabond, where he pops in for the occasional Friday set. His main gig, though, is holding it down in South Miami, at the long-running Shuffle Tuesdays party at Fox's Sherron Inn. Visit myspace.com/shuffletuesdays for more information about the party. 

New Times: I guess we'll start this off with the typical shit that usually starts these things. What is your name, age, shoe size and where do you hail from?
 
MGA: Matthew Andrews is my name. I'm 30 and anything having to do with my shoes is a sensitive topic, and I hail from Miami.
 
You're relatively new to the South Florida scene (in a sense). How do you describe your DJ style?
 
I am not relatively new to the scene, I am new to this scene per se. I have been following electronic music since I can remember. As for my DJ style, I have truly fallen in love with all types of indie music whether it is the rock aspect or the experimental types of tunes I find. I've always loved dance music since the days that I followed electro breaks, drum'n'bass, and house. Dance music is what I do, '80s is what I grew up on, electronic beats are what I found, and I simply combine these influences with what I do behind the decks. I try to knock heads off with great tunes.

Q&A With Monotonix, Playing Respectable Street Tomorrow

photo by Josh Sisk
?A virgin encounter with the Israeli rock trio Monotonix inspires extreme gut-level reactions. First, there's the fact that often, one can smell the band coming -- these guys spend a lot of time on the road, far away from home. Then, there's this motley crew's looks, which are hardly indie pin-up friendly. Guitarist Yonatan Gat looks like late-'60s Abbie Hoffman beamed into 2010 without a shower, and drummer Haggai Fershtman has most often been compared to Borat. Frontman Ami Shalev looks a little like a viking shrunk down to gnome size, a hairy 44-year-old whose stage wear frequently consists of no shirt and obscenely tight athletic shorts.

Finally, there's the infamous Monotonix live show. This threesome has no use for a stage. Rather they'll start the set camped out in the middle of the floor, audience often timidly surrounding them in a circle. They won't end the show in the same place, though. It's a good bet that by then, Shalev will be hanging from a rafter, Fershtman might actually be drumming while crowd surfing, and Gat, well, he'll probably be out of the fray -- someone's got to actually play steadily. 

Along the way, Shalev will go batshit. He'll throw garbage, dousing himself with garbage juice. He might steal your beer, or drink it out of his own fetid sneaker. He might kiss you. He might lead the crowd in confusing forward and backward counts of random numbers. He will probably sweat profusely on you; it's nearly unavoidable. He will be completely unpredictable, leaving a wide swath of the equally terrified and exhilarated in his wake. The show isn't violent -- but that fourth wall is definitely shattered, and unless you're prepared to stay on your toes, a raincoat might not be a bad idea.
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