Blogs

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!!!!!!