By Omar Perez
Originally published in Miami New Times: July 18, 2002
For a long time, Ed Hale’s sense of geography depended on rock and roll. “I knew about England, of course, because of the Beatles and the Stones, and I knew about Ireland because of Sinead O’Connor and U2,” Hale says matter-of-factly. “That was the way I related to the rest of the world.”
Ed Hale transcends musical borders
So it makes sense that it was FM radio, not CNN, that turned Hale on to the globe. More specifically, it was the sad state of music spewing out of the mid-Nineties. Grunge had just blown its brains out, and headless, flannel-wearing chickens rode the momentum over the airwaves, waiting for an inevitable death. Hale’s interest in music almost died with it. Then he opened up to new sounds from other countries, plunging into everything from Brazilian to West African to Italian songwriters and artists. “It started to inspire me,” he says. “You can hear in their music the joy and the passion that they have for making the music, as opposed to here in America. [Here] it’s like they’re making music just to be famous.”
In Dungeon Studios in North Miami, Ed Hale and the Transcendence (drummer Ricardo Mazzi, keyboardist Jon Rose, and newest members Roger Houdaille on bass and guitarist Fernando Perdomo, who’s known for playing in seemingly every South Florida band) are making music too. When high-fives fly around the room after Perdomo lays down a guitar track — a squealing, feedback-driven intro to one of the band’s newer songs — it’s obvious that the members of the group see music notes instead of dollar signs.
One more reason for the band to celebrate is its Rise and Shine debut, which thrives on a mélange of musical influences without paying homage to any one in particular. The opening “Better Luck Next Time” draws from early Bowie elements, with Hale’s English enunciations sprinkled over classic-rock-honed guitars and frolicking pianos, which keep their momentum on tracks like “Do You Know Who You Are?” and “Mother,” where a dreamy haze of guitars gives way to a rising chorus. A rumbling funk bass line starts “The Journey (A Call to Arms),” while a more international flavor makes its mark on songs like the franglais (French/English) “Ma Petit Naomi,” where mariachi horns serenade as electric guitars toast to Americana and beer-and-chicken-wing rock. The upbeat, tribal backbone of “Trés Cool” sees Hale spit out a list of pop culture references and figures.
Considering his rhymes, Hale wonders out loud, “I love rap, but I don’t know if I can rap.”
“He raps like a white boy,” Mazzi jokes.
A military brat, Hale moved from city to city while growing up. While in Atlanta he met Murray Silver, a music critic who co-wrote Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis and taught a music class at an arts college that Hale pursued in lieu of high school. The professor took the young Hale under his wing and signed him to his small label, releasing Eddie in 1987. (The album has since been re-released by Hale’s current Miami-based TMG Records label.) Hale landed opening spots for area acts including the Georgia Satellites and the Alarm, but the musician lifestyle demanded too much of the teen. On his parents’ advice, Hale returned to South Florida, where he once lived in West Palm Beach. “I think I was too young to take care of myself very well,” he remembers. He enrolled at FAU and started taking courses in philosophy.
One day while listening to the radio, Hale heard a woman win a contest who had the same last name as an old friend of Hale’s from junior high: Sabatella. Hale got in touch with her brother, musician Matthew Sabatella, and the two formed Broken Spectacles, a band that made a name for itself in South Florida during the early Nineties. Despite modest success, the relationship among the musicians grew tense. “The only time we would talk was during rehearsal, and when rehearsal was over, we would all go our separate ways,” he remembers. Finally the Spectacles called it quits in 1994. “Years later I get a call from Matt, and we asked, ‘Why did we stop speaking?’ And we both couldn’t figure it out.” Today the two are friends once again.
Broken off from the Broken Spectacles, Hale picked up his guitar and traveled the East Coast as a solo artist for about a year, landing in New York City and releasing the appropriately titled Acoustic in New York. “I was very excited about the music I was making, and the things I had discovered that I couldn’t do in a band,” he says.
Unfortunately he also encountered financial hardship. “I was sleeping on couches and I was really, really broke, and it was becoming unbearable,” Hale says. “I remember standing in front of this McDonald’s on Broadway hoping that I’d get a dollar or two for playing just so I could go in there and get a cheeseburger. As an artist, every day you just wait for that phone call.” Finally around Christmas of 1996, Hale headed to Miami.
The post-NYC period was tough. “I was associating so much negativity with music-making,” he explains. “When I picked up a guitar to write a song, I would feel bad instead of good.” He put away his guitar for about a year and traveled the world for two, immersing himself in every type of music he could find. For a while Hale was hooked on country. “I’d set the nightstand radio to a country station and I really started falling in love with it,” he says. “I liked the way they can fit a thirty-year story in two-and-a-half minutes. And the musicianship is great.
“Who knows, maybe in ten years we’ll be doing country,” Hale quips.
Perdomo counters: “I’d like to try gangsta country: drive-by-on-a-horse kind of thing. Yo yo yo with a cowpoke.”
While Hale was shedding his bad associations, the Bolivian-born Mazzi was looking for a project. “I just wanted to play music,” Mazzi says. “It didn’t matter what it was.” Mazzi, who also was going through a period of musical experimentation, teamed up with Hale in 1998. “His songs are infections,” Mazzi says. “At first you hear them and you think, ‘Why is he doing that?’ and then you go home driving and you realize he has some catchy stuff.”
It was catchy enough for the folks at MTV, which signed a licensing agreement with the band to allow the network use of six of its songs on Road Rules and The Real World. The single “Better Luck Next Time” has been getting airplay in such far-flung burgs as Fairfax, Virginia and Indianapolis, Indiana.
“We all wanted to do something completely different than what we had done in the past with other bands,” Hale says. “We purposely tried not to be a modern-day rock band.”
ED HALE, TRANSCENDENCE RISE TO MUSIC’S SAVING GRACE
South Florida Sun – Sentinel
Broward Metro Edition
Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Author: JASON KNAPFEL LOCAL SCENE
Date: Jun 28, 2002
Remember when rock ‘n’ roll could save the world. … At least some of us thought so. Today, protest songs virtually are gone from the pop music medium.But, there’s a voice that carries the torch for idealism in South Florida. Not that Ed Hale and Transcendence want to be the patron saints of lost rock ‘n’ roll souls. Hale, however, does bear more than a musical similarity to U2′s benevolent globetrotter Bono. He finds that there is an inevitable responsibility tied to his creative expression.
“I think for a lot of artists, no matter what their medium, social and political activism are inextricably tied to the creative process,” Hale says. “The mission is to entertain and to inspire.”
So what is his cause of choice? The liner notes of the band’s latest release Rise and Shine reveals a variety. Take your pick of Web sites from The Covenant House to alternative “radical” book publisher AK Press.
Hale’s social fervor started as early as his first attempt at songwriting. At age 16 he was writing Dylan-fashioned protest songs. That began a musical journey that took him from influences as diverse as the Kinks, REM and Broken Spectacles (with local luminary Matthew Sabatella) to ’70s glam and electronic pioneers like William Orbit. The culmination is his current work with Transcendence.
But eight years since Broken Spectacles broke up, the childhood friends retain a kinship.
“It was like a marriage,” Hale says. “We were four guys who lived together, played together and spent every waking hour together for six years.”
He and Sabatella have been friends since childhood.
“We played our first show together when we were 18 years old. We had absolutely no money and when a club would give us money after a show we would just look at each other and laugh and say, `I can’t believe we are getting paid for this! This is so cool.’”
What separates the best from the rest is a diverse taste in music. And Hale has an insatiable appetite for all things musical. To reference that aforementioned group of Irishmen that inspire him, he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. In his CD’s liner notes he says, “I churn and burn through 10-20 albums a week.”
And it wasn’t until he left the confines of Western music that he became the musician he is today. Everything from Brazilian to African sounds renewed his vigor, after becoming indifferent to his culture’s music.
If Hale were in The X-Files, he’d most assuredly be on Fox Mulder’s side. Why? Well, let’s say that he doesn’t find government cover-ups a stretch.
He dedicates an entire verse to it in the dance grooves of The Journey (A Call to Arms). First they killed Kennedy and covered it up/Then they killed the King and they covered it up …”
He’s also quite clear about his view of the current administration.
“The last few years, there has been a lot of talk about the shift that we are all making in consciousness towards a more peaceful, open-minded and spiritual state of humanity, regardless of what the evil powers in Washington and the media would have you believe,” Hale says.
“Speaking of which, isn’t it ironic that we just experienced one of the most peaceful and prosperous eight years in our history and then less than a year into the new Republicans’ administration, the entire world seems at war?”
He then takes a step back: “I’m not a Democrat by the way, just a watchful ally to the human race.”
Not everything is politically motivated. Better Luck Next Time and Love Is You are both nods to David Bowie. The latter could be an outtake from Young Americans; the former is an ode to passing through life with unfulfilled dreams.
Rock musicians aren’t known for longevity. Could it be that the best tune on Rise and Shine is a telling insight into Hale’s missing out on pop stardom?
“It has nothing to do with the stardom, although that’s a great perk,” Hale says. “The joy is in the music, because writing/ discovering a new song is the most orgasmic thing I have ever known.
“But on a deeper level, I think that for an artist it is that constant craving, nagging suspicion that you are on the edge, and that any minute you have the potential to discover some new sacred ground or solving some holy mystery.”
Jason Knapfel’s local scene appears the last Friday of the month in Showtime. Please send news to Local Scene, 5768 Northpoint Lane, Boynton Beach, FL 33437 or e-mail knapfel@ directvinternet.com.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
World Party – Ed Hale Blends Alt-Rock with World Genres to Tackle Weighty Matters
Originally published in Miami Herald’s Street Magazine on January 25th, 2002
Article written by Rene Alvarez in his Underbelly column just before the release of the new Transcendence album RISE AND SHINE
Rene and I went way back already by the time this article came about. He was the long haired dark and moody chick magnet lead singer for Forget the Name back when I and the boys in Broken Spectacles were just starting to cut our teeth and get our feet wet playing in the local bars of south florida. Rene and and Jose and the rest of the crew were already well established local rock gods. Years passed. We played a shitload of shows together and were always very friendly. But that local comraderie was always accompanied by a subtle competetive vibe that i beleive now is just a natural extension of being young and hot (or perhaps just hungry or ambitious) in any industry. By the time we all went through the fire a few more years, bands breaking up, new bands forming, solo acts igniting and extenguishing left and right, some of our contemporaries ODing or dying in other crazy ways, then the crew who were still alive and kicking and still involved in the music scene in some way or another bonded more and more.
Rene got this job writing for the now defunct Street Magazine. Which was great for the scene because there was a spell when local scene literatti hero greg baker stopped writing about the local scene; i never got the scoop on the details because i was living in new york during those dull days. all i know is that by the time i got back to miami that scene was as dead as it is today. all the local music haunts had been turned into dance clubs and discos. live rock music was hard to find. But soon i started hearing things from people. going to various places around the tri-county area to catch shows. running into the same old crowd. I saw Rene perform with Debbie Duke on bass and Derek Murphy on drums at Power Studios and it just blew me away. i will never forget that night. Nill sang too. And i felt ripped apart by the dichotomy of how good these guys still were and how dead and lonesome the scene was at that point. Miami is not a dead town. It’s just dead to pop and rock music. If those guys were doing shows in the carolinas or new york, they’d pack the clubs.
Long story short Rene starts writing more and more and performing less and less. Nill still packs ‘em in at the Road on his own terms, charging whatever he wants to at the door and is still totally fucking brilliant and the envy of most of us there. I throw a new group together — thinking i wanted it to be the anti-broken spectacles. No four guys all for and one for all mentality, but more of a collective of great players, really culturally diverse, age-diverse, style-diverse, just whoever i met who was great on their instrument, had a good attitude, and dug what we were doing. We record Rise and Shine and give it to a few people before its release. Rene calls me one day and says he is asked to cover the CD release party for Street Magazine and i’m like “you fucker, whats up? Don’t rip it apart too bad.” And we have a good laugh. He emails me all these super-cryptic questions and asks me to send him back answers. Good questions actually. That was how the article came about. There is no text version of the article because the magazine no longer exists, not even online. Too bad. Rene filled much needed niche in that scene for a long time.
The only version that exists today is this jpg scan of the original article. Click on the thumbnail and then click again. It will open in its own window and then you can blow it up to read it.
This is the first official article on Transcendence that I know of.
Ed Hale & Transcendence Catch It Live!
By Frances PerezÂ
Published in New Times Magazine Miami: January 24, 2002
Where:
Café Nostalgia, 432 41 St, Miami Beach
Details:
Performing at 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 30. Free. Call 305-604-9895
Subject(s): Ed Hale and Transcendence
Ed Hale and Transcendence touch down this week with a CD-release party for their new Rise and Shine. Atlanta transplant Hale first appeared on the Miami scene as one of the Broken Spectacles. When the Specs broke for good in 1994, Hale hit the road for two years, traveling the world and picking up French, Spanish, Hebrew, and a slew of musical styles along the way. Now he and his bandmates (Jon Rose on keyboards, Duane Allen on guitar, Ricardo Mazzi on drums, and Stroman on bass) offer what they call “planet music” — a dynamic mix of Brazilian grooves, Latin rock, and mostly English-language lyrics. Hale’s smooth vocals range over guitar riffs, hip-hop blasts, and trance/techno beats. In the words of one of the Transcendence’s latest tunes: “tres cool.”
Broken Spectacles Live Concert Footage 1993
Three songs from a 1993 concert appearance by the band Broken Specatcles featuring Ed Hale and Matthew Sabatella when they were still singing together. The songs are Julian, Your face aint that pretty, and Inaugaration Day. All concert footage of the Specs was thought to be lost until these songs recently surfaced. The venue was dark but you can still see why people were so crazy about that special something that “Eddie and Matt” created when they sang together. Broken Spectacles broke up in 1994. Ed Hale and Matthew Sabatella both pursued solo careers. Sabatella first with the band Sabatella, and then using his own name. He released two albums, Where the hell am I, and A walk in the park. He now performs with the group and under the name The Ramblin Gamblers. Ed Hale went solo under his own name just after the break up. He released one solo album, Acoustic in New York and then formed the rock group Transcendence who have released five CDs. Reunion any time soon boys?
AFTER 2-YEAR BREAK, BROKEN SPECTACLES COMES BACK IN FOCUS
Sun Sentinel – Fort Lauderdale
| Author: | SANDRA SCHULMAN, The Local Scene |
| Date: | Jul 23, 1993 |
| Start Page: | 32 |
| Section: | FEATURES SHOWTIME |
LOCAL ALL EDITIONS
Everybody get ready to give a great big welcome-back round of applause to a band that doesn’t see the world through rose-colored glasses. That’s because the band, Broken Spectacles, took two years off so the members could reassess, regroup and re-evaluate just what it was they were doing gathering glowing press and writing great songs, but playing themselves ragged and getting offered deals they didn’t want.
The time off was well spent. The key word, according to head Spectacle Ed Hale, is “autonomy. The only way to do it right is to do it ourselves.”
Are they ever. This band not only shoots their own videos, but Ed owns the studio, Jeeters in Hollywood, where the band holed up and recorded their self- titled debut album on their CDTV label to be released later this fall.
Jeeters is a full service studio with a repair shop, in-house promotions, a referral service, music lessons, video services and too much more. Why go anywhere else?
I gotta tell you, this 14-song release got deeper under my skin with each listen. It`s lushly produced, with intelligent and hard-to- shake melodies. For a young band (the members are all in their mid- 20s) these songs have age and experience written all over them. Ain`t it Hard and Nowhere are as good as anything on the market, local or national.
In addition to the music, the Specs have a full-out visual show planned for their July 30 debut at
Washington Square
. Four video monitors and half of the objects d`art in Ed`s house will be hanging out on the stage with the band. The guys played me a sample of the videos they will be screening, including pool frolicking, various computer-generated trippy patterns and even a drag show. Nice legs, Ed.
The lineup is Matthew Sabatella on bass and vocals, Dave Rubenstein on guitar and vocals, Donnie Jacobsen on drums, Andrew Fellerman on drums (yes, two drummers), Lisa “Noodles” Hayden on keys and the aforementioned Ed with the great gams on vocals and guitar.
I`m sorry I missed these guys the first time around, but I won`t miss out the second.
See you at the Specs!
Sandra Schulman has been staying up to catch the last band for years. Her column appears every other week. Send info to The Local Scene, Entertainment Dept., Sun-Sentinel, 200 E. Las Olas Blvd.,
Fort Lauderdale, Fl. 33301.
Fixed Focus – Broken Spectacles return with their first live show in two years, a new album, and a new vision
By Greg Baker
Originally Published in New Times Magzine: July 28, 1993
“I will not give up the music.”
– Ed Hale, New Times, November 1, 1989
He didn’t.
He has changed his name — back then he usually called himself Eddie Darling — but the members of Broken Spectacles never used their given names anyway. That’s changed, too. In fact, it seems like everything in the world has changed, except maybe that the sun still rises every morning.
For those not around four or five years ago, the Spectacles were just another local rock band, young bucks with a four-song cassette (One) rich in memorable, melodic songwriting set apart by the group’s unusual configuration — essentially three front men and a drummer. They tore up the clubs, receiving raves across the board. They came to be recognized as one of the area’s best outfits. And then they disintegrated.
Today they recall being “stuck in a rut” — of being just another local rock band. At Washington Square’s Thon ‘91 they violated the club’s sacred “no cover songs” rule by spewing a Replacements tune — “Unsatisfied,” a venomous, angst-laden rage that spoke volumes about the band’s internal situation: “Look me in the eye and tell me I’m satisfied/Are you satisfied?/I’m so, I’m so, I’m unsatisfied.”
For that misdeed they were banned from the club.
Just after that they played their final show, at the now-defunct Island Club in early spring 1991. And they vanished, never to be heard from again. Until now.
In an upstairs rehearsal studio at Jeeters in Hollywood, the Broken Spectacles are setting up to practice. It’s summer, 1993. Ed Hale and David Rubinstein (nee Ruby Dave Haddonfield) tune their guitars. Bassist Matthew Sabatella (nee “Geppetto,” but always called “Matt” no matter what) is calculating time constraints — the band must cut its two-hour-plus live set down to 45 minutes, a task not unlike trimming the fat from a veggie salad. Longtime off-and-on drummer Don Jacobson (nee Donny J.) and new, second drummer Andrew Fellerman are syncing up their dual attack. New keyboardist Lisa “Noodles” Hayden sips from a tall glass of coffee.
Downstairs in another studio a band is practicing covers of Rolling Stones songs. Or maybe it’s actually the Stones themselves. Someone closes the door and shuts out the strains of “Satisfaction.” Noodles taps a key and the synthesized sound of an arena audience cheering wildly fills the room. Matt Sabatella looks toward the mirrored wall in front of him and thrusts his fists in the air, like Springsteen after the second encore. Rock star! Everyone in the room laughs out loud.
This gathering, after all, is not about rock stardom. It’s about changing the world.
Those who knew and loved the Specs of old can forget everything. The chances of them dredging up wonderful nuggets such as “Cawood” or “Twentyone and Seventeen” are slim. “I don’t hate those old songs,” Sabatella says as he fiddles with a stopwatch. “We just have too many new ones. We have enough material for three good sets, so we can do a different show every time out. And we’re ready to move on to the new shit.”
Ah yes, the new shit. During their two-year hiatus the band recorded a dozen songs (plus incidental music sandwiched in, so that’s a rough track count) for release as an album. (They need funding to press and distribute the project, but then again they also need money for rent and the phone bill.) They need money, but that is not what they sing about. In “Kaleidoscope” — which features some of the most intricate guitar exchanges you will ever hear anywhere — they emphatically repeat the lyric “All we need is the rising sun” until you believe it, not just about them, but about yourself. It’s called reaching an audience, and it’s what makes great rock and roll so potentially cathartic, so viscerally powerful. Like a shot of whiskey or a dose of narcotics, it can change you.
The entire album is thickly webbed with complex sonic structures. Bass lines slide and dart in and out of the double drum patterns — Jacobson specializes in the jazzier side, the colors and fills, while Fellerman slams harder — as the guitars do their snake dance and keyboard-generated effects add even more depth. Naturally it takes many listens before I can begin to grasp everything that’s going on at once. That’s not to say it’s muddled or cluttered. Just highly sophisticated.
Hearing the album you might think Pink Floyd. The songs have nothing to do with Roger Waters’s old band, but the multidimensional aspects are similar. If I weren’t watching them play the tunes at rehearsal I would not believe that the sounds could be re-created outside of a high-tech studio. During their long break from the local grind, the members built a studio A Jeeters. “We couldn’t afford to pay a studio to do this,” Dave Rubinstein says, “because we knew we had to use the studio itself as an instrument.”
Early on they intended to record at another facility but the deal fell through. “I told them I was going to build my own studio and they laughed,” Ed Hale says. “But we did it. People started bringing us equipment and we just kept at it till it was done. We cut an album. It’s been great. It’s like, ‘Build it and they will come.’ They have.”
Even so, audio alone cannot contain what Broken Spectacles are doing. The warehouse that is Jeeters happens to be situated next to railroad tracks. When Rubinstein sings about going down to the trestle and catching that train out of town, I expect a locomotive to come crashing through the carpeted walls. The music itself is so multilayered the band decided that the live show must be presented in more tha one medium.
When the Broken Spectacles take the stage at Washington Square this Friday, they’ll be joined by several television sets and big-screen projections. Just like U2’s “Zoo TV” tour A except, of course, the Specs thought of it first. “I think U2 bugs our studio,” Ed Hale says with a smile. “Every time we come up with something, they do it just before us, because they have the money to do it.” The Specs and their associates — working under the aegis of visual co-ordinator Loree Werder — have been shooting and compiling original video footage for more than a year. “And when somebody loves us enough and has lots of money,” says Don Jacobson, “we’ll add lasers and holograms.”
None of this should suggest that the band is copping or hyping. During a break in rehearsal, Hale walks over to the couch where I’m sitting with my jaw dropped in awe. He wants to talk. Not about his band or the songs they’ve just finished playing. He wants to lobby on behalf of the local-music show recently canceled by WSHE-FM (103.5).
Later that night I’m permitted to see the first demonstration of the multimedia presentation planned for the live show. In the sprawling living room of a house a few miles from the studio, TV sets are stacked and channel-switched into multiple VCRs. Sabatella and Hale tinker with the electronics. A sheet is draped on a wall for video projection. And two women A Kerri Boyle and Ali Greenberg — sit on the blue carpet with piles of propaganda. This is another dimension — the band will set up a table with information about various activist organizations. “I know it sounds crazy,” jokes Fellerman, “but clean water is a good thing.” He goes on at length about the importance of not poisoning the Everglades any more. “This isn’t about proselytizing or preaching,” Hale says of the information table. “It’s about having the information available.”
Somehow the topic of vegetable juicers comes up. Someone says that it’d be really cool to have juicers at a show, so people could order their favorite organic concoctions. “But if we decide to ever do that,” Hale says, “we’ll find out U2 already has them.”
In their music the band brilliantly addresses the very technology they’re employing. “Last Song” begins with a cybervocal intro: “It’s a new age, a new dawn, a New World Order carries on/We’ve got digital audio, video, CD- ROM, computers, cable TV/We’re able to call anywhere in the world for eleven cents a minute and then watch it on our video phones/The power of our ideas is endless/It can take us anywhere….” Instruments scream into an explosive cacophony, the song begins to unfold, a Beatlesque brainfry that bands like U2 can only dream about creating. The guitar-drenched chorus cuts through like a psychological knife: “Get off your ass, get off your ass, get off your ass….”
And you do.
I’ve seen the band play two rehearsal sets and I’ve seen a demonstration of the multimedia accompaniment to the live show. I’ve heard the final mix of the album a few dozen times. It’s three or four in the morning and I’m driving south on a deserted I-95 with the Broken Spectacles tape blaring. I’m wondering, maybe worrying, about the impossibility of fairly representing this music in print. It’s too much for words.
In the next lane I catch a passing glimpse of what looks like a mutilated dalmatian, or some other black-and-white dog, twisted into the asphalt. Up ahead on the highway a million red lights are twinkling, and some blue strobes flicker into view — Highway Patrol cars, flares, and then a mangled beyond model-recognition automobile. I assume from the carnage that this was a fatal wreck.
The night is black as the pavement — the new moon has just come in. As I turn onto 836 the impossible light show that is Miami International Airport causes me to hallucinate. The tape blares.
I haven’t had a shot of whiskey or a dose of narcotics all night. But I’m tripping now, my body is trembling and I feel as if I’ve left the planet. I grip the steering wheel hard and try to concentrate. I turn off at my exit and drive into the incandescent kaleidoscope of the billion-bulb cosmos created by the runway lights, Shakespeare’s “burning tapers of the sky” set against Le Jeune Road.
The tape blares.
The music of Broken Spectacles has changed me. And soon, I think, it will change the world.
In a few minutes the sun will rise.
Broken Spectacles perform at 11:00 p.m. Friday at Washington Square, 645 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, 534-1403. Admission costs $5.
Read the original article
Fear and Loathing on South Beach
By Todd Anthony
Published: March 3, 1993
I don’t know whose idea it was to lock Doc Wiley (Washington Square), John Tovar (band manager), Sandra Schulman (Sun-Sentinel, XS), Lisa Cillo (WKPX-FM), Laura Regalado (WVUM-FM), Ariyah Okamoto (Snatch the Pebble), Curt McIntosh (Long Distance Entertainment), Glenn Richards (latent axe murderer), and me in a room without adult supervision, but whoever it was, I want to thank them. The pre-panel discussion was easily the most entertaining part of the whole Miami Rocks weekend. Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek:
Tovar (accusing): “So why doesn’t the Square book bands from Broward?”
Doc (defensive): “We do book bands from Broward.”
Tovar (angry): “No, you don’t!”
Doc (rebellious): “Yes, we do!”
Richards (conciliatory): “They book alternative bands, they just don’t book hair bands.”
Doc (defiant): “We have hair bands!”
Richards (flustered): “I’ve been there when you’ve made comments about poseurs and Broward County! When you’ve said, ‘This ain’t Broward County,’ like it was a bad thing!”
Doc (stubbornly): “We welcome bands from Broward County. What they don’t understand is that when they play a club in Dade, they don’t have a following. Nobody knows who they are. So they can’t come down here with this attitude like they’re established stars. Sometimes they don’t understand that and there are problems.”
Tovar (skeptical): “You just don’t like hair bands.”
Doc (more defensively):”We play hair bands. We don’t put up with shitty attitudes.”
Richards (disbelieving): “But I’ve heard you say …”
Doc (conciliatory): “Okay, hair bands suck. Some hair bands. Our audience is an alternative audience, not a hair band audience.”
And on and on. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Doc and Tovar lock horns. It grew really ugly when Tovar picked up Sandra Schulman and Doc grabbed Laura Regalado and they started beating each other using the two unsuspecting women as bludgeons. Luckily, I was packing my Glock. Tovar and Wiley are big guys A I’d have felt more secure with a .357 A but I fired two quick rounds over each of their heads and they came to their senses in time for everybody to wash off the blood, replace the torn clothing, and apply makeup over the claw marks. We went out there in front of the public and did our panel shtick without a hitch. The subject of hair bands never came up.
One that did come up, however, is a topic Doc Wiley and I are in complete agreement on: Glenn Richards looks demonic with a goatee. No, wait, that wasn’t it A it was that if Miami is going to make a name for itself as a hotbed of original rock, to have a healthy scene as it were, bands and fans alike are going to have to start getting off their asses and supporting each other. Think globally, buy locally. MiRox was a perfect example A the A&R people in attendence were getting so bored some of them even came up to me to start conversations. This was a perfect opportunity for original bands to get out there and schmooze, push the demo tapes, meet the press, network. Where the hell was everybody?
Oddly enough, the East Coast Music Forum panels and workshops were reasonably well-attended, though nothing like last year’s standing-room-only seminars. The bands deserve better. And Club Nu was so empty at times I felt like a night watchman taking a coffee break in an airplane hangar. It was especially disappointing considering that this edition of Miami Rocks featured the most diverse assembly of talent in the event’s five-year history. If a tree falls at Miami Rocks, does it make a sound?
Sparks began flying with the Miami Rocks Out gigs Thursday night. This was not just any Thursday night. It was DJ/promoter/local-music heroine Lydia Ojeda’s birthday (one of the big ones that end with a zero). In her honor Voidville laid waste to the Square, blowing away the zealous, hard-partying horde almost as completely as the half-dozen or so shots of tequila purchased for (and consumed by) Ms. Ojeda in less than an hour. Of course, I didn’t partake because I was working. Anyway, I went on the record as a huge Diane Ward fan years ago A you young whippersnappers out there, ask me about Bootleg some time A but this line-up positively frightens me. Awesome. Addictive. The scariest part is, Ward had a sore throat (bad enough to cause her to bow out of the following night’s opening set). Imagine what the dozens of fans who stood there screaming for an encore as the ‘Ville voided the stage would have done if she’d have been on. Can you say bedlam?
Dennis Britt has been around forever A you young whippersnappers out there, ask me about Watchdog some time A and he’s probably gone through more musical personas than anyone this side of David Bowie. Along the way he’s acquired a reputation as a temperamental genius. Britt has thrown away more good songs than most of his peers will write in their lifetimes. Where someone like Frank Falestra works hard to stay ahead of the pack, Britt does it intuitively. His latest band, the Beat Poets, flash back to the psychedelic rock of the late Sixties, filtering that through a Nineties cynicism. On Thursday night, they took a dissipated post-Voidville crowd on a magical mystery tour of their own. Somewhere out there Ziggy Stardust and Jack Kerouac were smiling.
Over at the Cactus Cantina, Little Nicky and the Slicks were doing a little nicking of their own. Originally a blues band A you young whippersnappers out there, ask me about Fat Chance some time A the Slicks have gone around the rock bend with encouraging results. It’s always a pleasure to watch pros at work, doubly so when they take a new musical direction and make it their own. My only fear is that one of these days, in the heat of the moment, Nicky will unwittingly break into “Margaritaville” in the middle of her set. (See, she’s been on tour with Jimmy Buffett, who wrote the song A oh, never mind.)
As for the “official” MiRox showcases, I’ll leave the reviews to my esteemed colleague, Ganja Baker. I was too busy filching chocolate-covered strawberries in the VIP lounge and searching for Leonard Pitts, Jr., to offer a complete assessment. I thought every band sounded fabulous, and I will soon be mortgaging my house to help Baker sign them all to contracts. Except Natural Causes, who will probably already be gone by the time this article appears. More entertaining than the music, however, was much of the on-stage patter. Perhaps emboldened by the spaciousness of the venue and the dearth of a crowd to fill it, song intros were refreshingly candid.
“This is dedicated to my aunt who was born without fallopian tubes,” said Michael Kennedy of Rooster Head at one point.
“Hi, we’re Miami Sucks, Too!” screamed Bobby Johnston, lead yelper for Loud. (What? It’s L-o-a-d? Are you sure?) “Shiver me timbers and blow the man down! Only on the weekends! For Christ’s sake! All you people are lame as fuck!” spumed Johnston, clearly shortcircuiting before my very eyes. The band made me feel like the doddering old fart that I am.
“Todd, I’m twenty-four, and they make me feel old,” said Eddie Darling/Ed Hale, lead singer of Broken Spectacles, in an attempt to comfort me that had the exact opposite effect. Twenty-four? I have concert T-shirts older than that. Thanks a hell of a lot, Eddie.
WMBM-AM talk-show superhost Jim DeFede brought to my attention one trend that distressed us both A the appearance of skirts and dresses on male musicians. Hey, I saw The Crying Game, and I’m not ashamed to admit I found Del (Dil? Dale?) quite attractive up to a point (a pretty important point, as points go), but I can’t say the same for Rooster Head drummer Mike Vullo. And while I Don’t Know frontman Ferny Coipel is a little shapelier and once tried to bribe me with a canary-yellow Twist Bozoon (you just don’t hear enough good rock kazoo these days), the moustache is a definite turn-off. As DeFede put it, “Whatever happened to the good old days when rock stars just wore their dresses around the house?”
I’m no arbiter of haute couture, but if I see XS music writer Jeffray Hirrall in a skirt, I’m movin’ back to Ohio.