How The Wrecking Crew Changed the Way We Grooved Open any page of Kent Hartman’s hit-soaked history The Wrecking Crew [wreckingcrewbook.com] (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s $25.99) and you’ll find some kinda sound nugget: The Byrds’ David Crosby introducing The Beatles’ George Harrison to the sitar (which he then used on Rubber Soul’s “Norwegian Wood”) despite just [...]
And George V. Higgins Wrote ‘em Harder Than Anyone “This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.” So says an astute gun-runner in George V. Higgins’ kickass classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle, unequivocally one of the best crime stories of the 20th century. Close readers of Bound may recall me plugging [sunpost story] [...]
Hailing the Miami Beach Women’s Conference The world’s seen the rise of some powerful women. There’s German Chancellor Angela Merkel, IMF president Christine Lagarde, and India President Pratibha Patil, all of whom have altered our course in various and vivifying ways. Closer to home we’ve got Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, State Senator Gwen Margolis, Miami Commissioner [...]
Basking in the Aftermath of Basel To even simply list the events associated with Art Basel would require a horde of scribes and a good many worked-through nights, not to mention multiple gigabytes of bandwidth. But of course Baselites have better things to do with their days and their nights than making lists, let alone [...]
Miami’s Mean Streets are Now the Most Muralled in the World Whether the paint appeared on the warehouses before the warehouses showed painters is by now besides the point. The fact is Wynwood’s warehouses now feature — inside and out — more renowned artists than perhaps any one place on earth. And even if the [...]
Stunning New Slabs of Gaga, Weiwei and Rauch If ever there was a more photographed (or photographical) figure than Lady Gaga, you sure couldn’t prove it by me (or her). Neither Mae West (to whom the Lady owes plenty) or Jayne Mansfield (who had Hearst at her disposal) or Madonna (whose triumphs pretty much ended [...]
Two Monumental Looks at Our Storied Past Miami Book Fair may be over, but books of course will endure, as will history, whether or not we’re doomed to repeat it. To ensure we swing with those who know (and know better) though, here’s the lowdown on two (relatively) recent historical offerings, each of which will [...]
Putting Down the Most Wanted Man in the World As even those living under rocks now know, on May Day 2011, U.S. forces snuck into Pakistan and took out Osama Bin Laden, questionably the most wanted man in the world. It was an exemplary moment for America’s armed forces, as well as for America’s President, [...]
On Halloween They Even Bring Their Freaky Friends Miami has long been known as the kinda place freaks are not only welcome to fly their flag, they’re encouraged to let it run up the tallest pole imaginable. In fact, in this Magic City a freak of nature isn’t very freaky at all — it’s simply [...]
Maus Gets Meta The universe “is not an ethical place,” said Art Spiegleman to the LA Times’ David L. Ulin. But does that mean we must be ethical creatures? That’s some “conundrum,” and one he’s not willing to let be “the take-away” from his mighty Maus. The whole “God has a plan even if I [...]
James C. Clark Recounts the 1950 Pummelling of Claude Pepper From 1963 until he died in 1989, Claude Pepper represented Florida’s 18th Congressional District, which included Key Biscayne, Bal Harbour and Coral Gables, as well as all of Miami Beach. For the last decade of those 26 years, Pepper was so popular with his constituents [...]
Bound Deborah Reed Knows What Makes a Heart Grow Fonder Life’s funny. Not funny ha-ha, of course — but funny peculiar. What’s especially funny are the things that normally make up a life. Take love, for instance, which only a Mencken would consider to be laugh-out-loud. Love is something that pretty much everybody has spent [...]
