Miami’s Spam goes Trans-Oceanic

26 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Home, Latin Jazz, On Music

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DJ Le Spam anchoring The Spam Allstars

A version of this piece was posted by Artburst Miami  in April, 2017

Ask about the Miami Sound to 10 people in South Florida and you’ll get 11 different answers. And yet, for more than 20 years, the Spam Allstars, a group founded and anchored by DJ Le Spam (aka Andrew Yeomanson), has been an unquestionable reference in the Miami music scene. For a city with a notoriously short memory and an insatiable appetite for the latest shiny thing, it is a remarkable achievement.

The Allstars’ music is an untidy mix of turntable scratches, loops, samples and spirited live playing. It’s built on driving grooves that draw freely from funk, R&B and Afro-Latin music, topped by shout-out-loud, jazz-inflected improvisations. And it’s also music that makes its statements subtly, making you move while threading the needle through Miami’s music and social history, with echoes of local labels such as Deep City, Saadia Records and TK Records, and the layers and layers of sound from the Caribbean and Latin American migrations.

DJ Le Spam and The Spam Allstars are presenting Trans-Oceanic, their new album, 10 years in the making, in a party at the North Beach Bandshell, Saturday, April 29 at 7:00 p.m.

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Looking ahead to a weekend of music — and back to the week that was

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in Home, Jazz, Latin Jazz, On Music

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If you can manage to be in more than one place at a time and you happen to live in Miami these days, congratulations, next weekend is made for you. The rest of us, mere mortals, if we like music, we’ll have to make some hard choices. Below, a few lines on Omar Sosa, James “Blood” Ulmer and Sammy Figueroa, all appearing in the area this weekend. (Also, DJ Le Spam and the Spam Allstars, another personal favorite, present Trans-Oceanic, their 10-years-in-the-making new recording, at the North Beach Bandshell, Saturday. More on that later.)

So, for your consideration …

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Innovative rock and jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth dies

16 Sunday Apr 2017

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Allan Holdsworth

British guitarist and composer Allan Holdsworth, influential in both, progressive rock and jazz, died Sunday, according to a Facebook post by his daughter Louise. No cause of death was announced. He was 70.

Holdsworth is perhaps best know as a member of progressive rock groups such as Soft Machine, Gong and UK, a supergroup of sorts also featuring former King Crimson members drummer Bill Bruford, keyboardist and violinist Eddie Jobson, and bassist John Wetton, but his remarkable solo career includes more than a dozen albums under his own name. While he never quite achieved a broad popular acclaim, his influence among guitarists was wide and substantial. For many of them, the title of a Guitar Player Magazine cover story on Holdsworth in 2008 said it all, he was “The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever.”

He possessed a highly original and sophisticated harmonic and melodic approach and an astonishing technique. He was an early, and persistent, champion of the SynthAxe, a guitar-like MIDI controller invented in the early 80s and no longer available. (Check his 1986 recording Atavachron). Whether playing the SynthAxe or a conventional electric guitar, Holdsworth favored very distinct, liquid, horn-like single note lines that often seemed to defy not just convention but gravity.
It was his very own “sheets of sound” approach and it evoked intriguing comparisons.
“I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of the guitar,” guitarist Robben Ford is quoted on Holdsworth Wikipedia page. “I don’t think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can.”