RESPECTABLE STREET: School of Rock All Stars Touring Performance w support from local SOR bands from: N/S Palm Beach, Boca, Pompano, Coral Springs, Broward, Fort Lauderdale
REVOLUTION LIVE: KISS America, Diary of an Ozzman
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Panteon Rococo
THE PEACH: Freestyle Fridays
BAR NANCY: Breaking Sound
ARTS GARAGE: Sam Morrow
OLD SCHOOL SQUARE: Spred the Dub CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Grin Cynic
THE WOLFSONIAN–FIU: Into the Stacks: Rituals SAVOR CINEMA: Bring It On
7/27
FILLMORE MB: The Marias, Automatic BOYNTON AMP: Boynton Night Market feat. Spred the Dub, Making Faces
REVOLUTION LIVE: Still Alive, Foo Fight
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Art of Go-Go Culture Fest
RESPECTABLE STREET: Disco Never Dies
RESOURCE DEPOT: Family Workshop
BAR NANCY: Main Street
ARTS GARAGE: Start Me Up! Rolling Stones Tribute
OLD SCHOOL SQUARE: Johnny Dread
7/28
FILLMORE MB: The Marias, Automatic REVOLUTION LIVE: Lil Poppa
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: International Ballet Festival
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Road To Nowhere
7/29
THE PEACH: Comedy Workshop / Open Mic, Drawing / Acrylics Class
7/30
THE PEACH: The Disconnect Open Mic
7/31
RESPECTABLE STREET: Cassadee Pope, The Foxies, Natalia Tayler
THE PEACH: Artist Talk & Critique, Creative Corner, Wacky Wednesdays, Pottery & Pallette
DIIV
by david rolland
Beyond what might or might not be a generous paycheck and the ephemeral prospect of “exposure,” opening for an arena act seems a thankless job. Audiences are at best uninterested, arriving late and gabbing during your set. At worst they’re openly hostile, booing and jeering that the opener is not who they paid a fortune to see.
And so last October when DIIV handled warmup for Depeche Mode at the Kaseya Center in Miami, it was impressive to see how the band approached their opener status for a legendary band whose music couldn’t be more different from their own. DIIV just didn’t give a fuck. They played their dreamy, effects-pedal-heavy brand of shoegaze for 30 minutes as though it was just another show, completely indifferent that no one in the gargantuan arena was there to see them. They were just there to make beautiful music. Whether it was a basement rehearsal or thousands of people clad in black waiting for “Enjoy the Silence” seemed to make no difference to them.
The four-piece began in Brooklyn in 2011 with the more spellcheck friendly name of Dive. Over the ensuing thirteen years they put out a quartet of dream fuzz albums that seemed to drink from the same well of inspiration as My Bloody Valentine and Lush, with androgynous vocals backed by dense melodic instrumentation.
Their newest collection of songs, Frog in Boiling Water, is a concept album in the tradition of Radiohead’s OK Computer or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Its through line is a world going to hell and a population largely blinded by capitalism and self-involvement to the increasing state of emergency. The album’s first video, for “Brown Paper Bag,” features a mock Saturday Night Live performance with DIIV introduced by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, of all people, followed by a mock commercial of a company called Soul Net, also the title of a new song. DIIV will bring this music and worldview to more intimate settings where, as headliners, they should have the audience’s full attention. DIIV, Horse Jumper of Love and Dutch Interior play 8pm Sunday, July 21 at The Ground in Miami. diiv.net
CANNAVISION
by tim moffatt
Drummer Tyler Schwarz spent a decade behind the kit and on the road with West Palm Beach’s most celebrated indie band, Surfer Blood, until Covid descended on the world and prompted Schwarz to rethink his priorities. With the music trade reeling from disruption, Schwarz found himself in Northern California pursing his other passion, for cannabis cultivation. As he embraced agricultural life on another coast, making music seemed like a part of his past.
But not forever. After two years out west, Schwarz decided to bring his cannabis craft to Florida. His musical side came back with him. “Delving deep into that scene,” Schwarz tells PureHoney about his time in California, “I fell in love all over again (music and weed).”
And that’s how the seed took root for CANNAVISION, an epic, one-day, cannabisthemed music festival that Schwarz is putting together at Terra Fermata in Stuart with help from supporters including concert promoter Al Beltran of Treasure Coast Live and a trio of cannabis enterprises: Sunnyside Dispensary, Cresco Labs and MMJ Health
CANNAVISION is promising an adventurous live experience for the cannabis- and musicinclined. Taking inspiration from freeform radio stations such as New Jersey’s WFUM, the inaugural lineup encompasses rock, rap and jam. Performers include Truphonic, Sir 7000 & Ambeeka, DirtBike and TC Silk. And yes, Surfer Blood.
He calls the vendor array at CANNAVISION No. 1 “an experiment. We have community garden center Pinder’s Nursery with beautiful florals for sale,” he says. “Live flash sheet tattoos by Dots Noah, Sara Glass Ceramics offering amazing pottery, Salt & Pine Vintage with curated festival looks, food trucks, glass blowers from across the region, and to top it off a half pipe and skate jam with crews from all over Florida.”
Schwarz hopes it’s the first of many CANNAVISIONs. “I’d love to make it an annual event,” he says. “I’ve dreamed of bigger venues but I love the grassroots feeling of its home at Terra Fermata.” He’s already thinking about future muscal lineups. “Anything goes,” he says, “from polka and metal to deep house and roots reggae. We welcome everyone!”
CANNAVISON kicks off at 4pm Saturday, July 6 at Terra Fermata in Stuart.
AUTOMATIC
by tim moffatt
Mages and saints astounding the masses with displays of alchemy and sorcery. Snake oil sellers offering medicinal wonders to tantalize paying crowds. What was once considered magic is often the fiction before the science becomes fact. Today, of course, we know too much — or think we do — to buy what’s happening right in front of us: It’s sleight of hand, parlor trickery. Yet once we’ve debunked the act, it still feels like being cheated out of cash. Because the world can grow a little darker without that magic.
Crazy ideas becoming less mystical on contact with what we call progress is a theme for Australian trio Automatic on their latest album, 2022’s Excess. Wielding a retrofuturist sound, Automatic eye one decade of culture — the 1970s — encountering another — the 1980s — and the upshot of that collision. “That fleeting moment,” in the band’s own words, “when what was once cool quickly turned and became mainstream, all for the sake of consumerism.” It’s also an intriguing look at how artistic passion can feed a popularity that puts that first, animating passion at risk. Band members Izzy Glaudini (synths, vocals), Lola Dompé (drums, vocals) and Halle Saxon Gaines (bass) have talked about trying to manage those long-standing tensions, alongside the particular Gen-Z challenges of inheriting a world seemingly gone mad.
In their their music and elsewhere, Automatic are grappling with the perception that stalks women in the music industry of “female” as a category and an exploitable brand, all while they’re fighting for their growth as uncompromising artists. They name-check righteous influences such as CRASS and hi-NRG composer Patrick Cowley while making music that would make Kraftwerk and the Tom-Tom Club proud. Their credo is solidarity in the face of impossible odds.
All these ideas are wrapped in a framework of science fiction that might soon become fact once we’ve scorched the Earth beyond human livability. Automatic are your soundtrack for cackling at the cracking of society as capitalism crumbles before an unknown future and today’s magic becomes tomorrow’s monotone.
Automatic and the Marías play 8pm Saturday and Sunday, July 27 and 28, at the Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater. automatic.band
SELA SHILONI
HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE
by david rolland
Digging through the Internet I couldn’t find how exactly the Boston-born, Brooklyn-based indie trio Horse Jumper of Love chose their name, but thankfully their sonic output has a deeper digital imprint than their origin story. Over the course of soon to be five albums, they play a mellow, fluid form of rock with slowcore and slacker influences. It’s reminiscent of what you would hear in ’90s college radio from bands like Low, Luna, Granddaddy and Dinosaur Jr. — music that’s kind of mellow but has a bit too much of an edge to qualify as folk.
In the video for their moody single, ”Wink,” released in May, singer-guitarist Dimitri Giannopoulos, bassist John Margaris and drummer Jamie Vadala-Doran play in a beautiful park as a bird of prey flies overhead. It’s a wistful hint of a forthcoming album, Disaster Trick, set for release on August 16. “Wink” also has a literary bent, as it’s based on a Russian short story, “Leaves,” by Moscow-based author Dmitry Bakin. “The story is partly about people leaving their home for something better, but when they return they are back to the same place they started,” Giannapoulous said in a statement announcing the new album. “The story shed some perspective on my own life and the ebb and flow of pushing forward for something better and going back to your old ways.”
Disaster Trick was made in a different circumstance from its predecessors, Giannopoulos went on to say: “This was the first album I’ve ever done where I went into it with a very clear mind. In the past, we would just show up at a studio, drink, and record. Here, everything felt purposeful.”
Fans will be able to hear these new songs and older ones played in a more sober mindset as Horse Jumper of Love, opening for DIIV, make their second appearance in Miami. Their return follows a Miami show last summer at Gramps, where they went back and forth across the border of being the loudest quiet band and the quietest loud band around.
Horse Jumper of Love perform with DIIV 7pm Sunday, July 21 at the Ground in Miami. horsejumperoflove.com
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THE MARIAS
by olivia feldman
When singer María Zardoya and drummer-producer Josh Conway of The Marías ended their romantic relationship in 2022, things for the whole group could have gone south. The two did start the band while they were dating, after all, later recruiting guitarist Jesse Perlman and keyboardist Edward James along the way. After all the momentum represented by The Marías moving to a major label, touring to great acclaim, and collaborating with trap icon Bad Bunny, a romantic split sounded like trouble.
Yet the Los Angeles foursome has re-emerged sounding stronger than ever. Submarine, their sophomore LP released in late May, followed a months-long hiatus sparked by Zardoya and Conway’s breakup. The group’s dynamic changed, but in the best ways: They learned how to collaborate more fully, with Perlman and James’ more integrated into the creative process. The results are audible on Submarine.
While the cover of their debut album, Cinema, is an intense red, Submarine’s is a calming blue. It took inspiration from “Three Colours: Blue,” a 1993 film with Juliette Binoche as a woman who responds to a catastrophic loss by rejecting the world around her, only to learn that our human bonds tug at us even through personal devastation.
The connectedness that we so crave and need is prominent on Submarine, which explores how grief can produce both isolation and a sense of freedom. The album’s first single, “Run Your Mouth,” sees Zardoya crooning her initial discontent after the breakup, with airy guitars sailing over chill synth melodies and groovy percussion.
A melding of genres like dream pop, jazz and downtempo — and a few Spanish language tracks that stay true to Zardoya’s Puerto Rican roots — makes Submarine a true pleasure to hear. Some of the best music comes from intra-band conflict. If it didn’t, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom never would have existed. It’s time to add Submarine to that list.
The Marías play with special guest Automatic at 8 pm Saturday and Sunday, July 27 and 28, at the Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater. themarias.us
STEEL PULSE
by abel folgar
If reggae is the vibrant music of Pan-Africanism, England’s Steel Pulse are the militant child of the Jamaican diaspora rising against societal ills and political fuckery. For 49 years, they’ve been leading the good fight, spreading awareness and combating ignorance through intricate roots reggae that draws from global rhythms and punk attitude. Formed in Birmingham in 1975 by singer-guitarist David Hinds, Steel Pulse stepped into the British Caribbean music and burgeoning punk rock scenes with politically charged lyrics and dedication to roots reggae as a Rastafarian voice of the striving underclasses. They quickly gained a reputation for powerful performances and social activism, and their critically acclaimed 1978 debut album, Handsworth Revolution, established them as a force in reggae and beyond. The band’s critiques of racism, poverty and inequality resonated with audiences worldwide, and their 1985 album, Babylon the Bandit, won the Grammy for Best Reggae Album.
Their twelfth and latest studio album, 2019’s Mass Manipulation, followed 15 years of studio silence and embodied one adaptation to the shifting economic landscape for musicians: It was released by reggae mainstay VP Records and the Rootfire Cooperative music nonprofit that makes zero-interest micro-loans to performers and guarantees them 100% ownership of their work. Anchored by Hinds and longtime bandmate Selwyn Brown on keyboards and vocals, the album extends Steel Pulse’s activist musical legacy with impassioned vocals, blistering horns and rhythmic chanting. Their creativity and vision shine through in compositions reflecting the diasporic arc: “Rize” and “Stop You Coming and Come” evoke past struggles and African heritage; ”Justice in Jena” and “Human Trafficking” highlight ongoing racial intolerance and exploitation.
The album blends urgent melodies and thought-provoking lyrics about rejecting false ideals and aiming for higher goals. Also Grammy-nominated, it upholds Steel Pulse’s uncompromising ethic with a powerful call for unity and social justice. Joining Steel Pulse will be Jamaican artist Jesse Royal, one of a new generation of roots reggae musicians revitalizing the genre at home and globally. His 2021 sophomore album, Royal, received a Grammy nod and ranked as a fan favorite on multiple streaming services. Steel Pulse and Jesse Royal perform 7pm Friday, July 19 at Miami Beach Bandshell.
Montgomery, Jr. Building Worth Beach, FL 33460
SCHOOL OF ROCK
by carly cassano
The 2024 School of Rock AllStars Tour is really multiple tours in one heady week, July 22-27, all landing at some of the best indie venues in the country, including South Florida’s own Respectable Street in West Palm Beach.
Only one percent of the School of Rock student body — more than 64,000 teenaged musicians worldwide at over 370 locations — is selected for summer U.S. dates featuring talent from regional cohorts at venues in their geographic areas. The AllStars Team Southeast playing locally showcases School of Rock house bands from Broward, Pompano, Coral Springs, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and North and South Palm Beach.
Lindsey Mills, singer-songwriter and bassist for Surfer Blood, is the general manager of School of Rock Boca Raton. “I wish I had a supportive, inclusive environment like the one at School of Rock when I was a young musician,” Mills tells PureHoney. “It gives students of all backgrounds and identities a rare space where they have full permission to chase their creative spark and express themselves.”
To get a taste of what these youthful rock ’n’ roll recruits go through, check out the newly released School of Rock AllStars Tour Documentary about the 2023 tour. “You’re gonna see transformed kids,” Rik Alison, director of Philadelphia’s founding School of Rock Main Line, says in the film. “Playing music together, it’s like a primordial thing and it really breaks down all barriers.” From thousands of applicants, lineups are selected during a live audition round. Within a few days, student musicians ages 13-17 are hopping on tour buses with their regional bandmates, and choosing, rehearsing and performing beloved rock songs by the likes of The Beatles, Queen, Santana and Tool.
Learning ins and outs of touring — setup, teardown, engaging with venues, supporting fellow bands on bills — is another essential part of the experience. To quote AllStars 2023 performer Liza Lampert, “School of Rock has taught me how to be a kinder, more considerate musician, team member and person.”
School of Rock Allstars play 6pm Friday, July 26 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. schoolofrock.com
THE AQUABATS
by abel folgar
Is it 30 years in teal or aquamarine? Truth be told, no one here’s an expert on color theory but if teal is a clue, the self-professed crime-fighting prowess of the Aquabats is as sus as a Miami Dolphins Super Bowl ring in the same three-decade sample. But jokes aside, Huntington Beach’s greatest ska-punknew-wave-power-pop outfit’s been rocking superhero theatrics like no other. And that’s enough hyphens for now.
Now fully presenting as a rock band, the Aquabats formed in 1994 in Orange County, California, where the founding core of vocalist Christian Jacobs, aka The MC Bat Commander, trumpeter Boyd Terry and bassist Chad Larson, aka Crash McLarson, quickly gained a cult following with their energetic performances and catchy, quirky songs.
Their debut album, “The Return of The Aquabats,” released in 1996, set the tone for a bevy of well-received full-lengths and myriad even-quirkier solo projects by the dozen-plus members who’ve cycled through over the years. In addition to their music career, the Aquabats created and starred in the television show, The Aquabats! Super Show!, which aired from 2012 to 2014 (with a two-year YouTube revival in 2019-2021) and followed Jacobs’ turn as creator of Nickelodeon’s wildly popular kids’ musical series, Yo Gabba Gabba!
Their seventh album, “Finally!” has, well, finally arrived and it continues the catchy pop vibes. Fans will be happy with the return of Terry – better known as Catboy – who left the band in 2002, and of guitarist Courtney Pollock, aka Chainsaw the Prince of Karate, who had jumped from the Battle Tram back in 2006.
Adding to the fun will be Angeleno ska reggae band, the Aggrolites. Fans will remember them from episode three of YGG’s season one and their slightly unhinged performance of “Banana.” Feel free to bring giant inflatable versions of the iconic fruit. Ska punkers Left Alone, also from the greater L.A. area, round out the evening’s entertainment. Led by former PCH Club owner Elvis Cortez, Left Alone are closing in on 30 years of staunch DIY living.
The Aquabats with The Aggrolites and Left Alone perform 6pm Friday, July 19 at Revolution Live in Fort Lauderdale. theaquabats.com
DANIEL MARTIN DIAZ
by kelli bodle
“Think of symbols as memes or viruses; they have their own lives and appear in different places,” says the PureHoney featured artist for July 2024, Daniel Martin Diaz, who might deserve some credit for the viral hold that cryptic imagery continues to have on the popular imagination. Self-taught, raised Catholic, and obsessed with the spiritual and surreal, Diaz says in an interview, “I view symbols as charged vessels handed down through generations.”
He was a telling choice, then, to create the eerie, alien Tarot cover for “Existential Reckoning,” a 2020 album by the enigmatic rock band Puscifer. He illustrated the viewers guide to HBO’s Game of Thrones, giving the bound volume a suitably strange medieval-magical quality. Another of his artworks, a DaVincian hybrid of sci-fi and the occult first commissioned by the omnivorous musician Barclay Crenshaw, turned up in “The BanderSnatch” episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror.
Diaz was also tapped to create both gold and platinum album certification designs for Atlantic Records. Through the vehicle of archaic symbology, he has effectively infiltrated the music and television industries.
A variety of subcultures claim him, from sacred geometry Facebook groups to Chicano lowrider car clubs to the editors of the pop surrealist bible Hi-Fructose. The similarity between these diverse admirers is their love of his diagrammatic illustrations. “My aesthetic resonates with individuals who share similar thoughts and perspectives,” Diaz says. “I believe that we are all on a quest to uncover a deeper meaning to the human experience, which is perhaps the central theme that underlies my work.”
As meticulously drawn as medical illustrations, his imagery combines the physical with the metaphysical. Some drawings appear almost as ciphers for decoding ancient secrets with an array of esoteric symbols surrounding enigmatic figures. Recurring elements are spaceships, geometry, pyramids, religious iconography, sheet music, and the Tarot.
“There is a threshold where science can only answer the questions we can measure and observe. Beyond that, it becomes a grey area, like noise or the quintessence, such as dark matter and energy,” Diaz says. “Once we reach that grey area, we are guessing. At that point, philosophy and metaphysics take over because they are all we have left. The grey areas in all aspects of life science, philosophy, and metaphysics are where I feel most comfortable.”
Diaz is an autodidact and never studied art in school. “I pursued it out of curiosity,” he says. “I never aspired to be an artist and still don’t consider myself one. I see myself more as a reverse-engineering observer of art; interpreting metaphorical concepts and diagramming them more like an architect and engineer.”
“Given my limited knowledge and skill,” he adds, “my work represents my own perspective, attempting to shed light on certain facets of existence. We find ourselves in a world where knowledge, language, morality, values, and ideas are built upon a fragile foundation. I don’t focus on the messages people might derive from my work because I don’t want to bear that responsibility. The weight of such a burden would be too paralyzing. Instead, I believe it is the responsibility of each individual to craft their own mythology, giving meaning and purpose to their life and existence.”
Diaz consumes mostly non-fiction audiobooks and spends hours listening to history and biographies, especially the history of science, philosophy, and metaphysics. He augments his education with dense lectures from universities worldwide on consciousness, quantum physics and theoretical cosmology. He says he’ll give most “anything that is interesting and holds a semblance of truth” a go.
It follows that Diaz would be influenced by the surrealists: The one that made biggest impression on his artistic psyche was proto-surrealist Giorgio de Chirico (an influence in common with June 2024 cover artist Toni DeMuro). “I grew up Catholic and had limited exposure to art, mostly through church,” Diaz says. Of his first contact with de Chirico, he recalls, “It wasn’t his technique or colors that resonated with me, but his otherworldly, dystopian exploration of metaphysics. Through his paintings, I was introduced to metaphysics in a visual way for the first time. Seeing his work felt like coming home to a place I always knew existed but had never been able to express.” Find the artist at danielmartindiaz.com and @danielmartindiaz on Instagram. Check out his music at @treesspeak, Track one on this month’s CURIOUS EARS!
