By Hunter Stephenson
Life & Art Editor

______________ RAP IS BACK WITH BABY BLAK ___________________

So, we’re downing Negra Modelo Darks and Kirin Ichibans in some girl’s borrowed Lex and it ‘its me that Baby Blak’s Once You Go Blak is quite simply the most ideal rap record I’ve heard in quite the minute – far surpassing Jay Dee and Madlib’s Jaylib collabo – and that’s been in my CD player for quite the minute. And then we meet up with Lil Wayne at the Royal Palm and rock music is put totally on hold…at least until the CMJ Music Marathon in NYC, which is in, what, two weeks? After we see the Rapture with the Mars Volta and go see the Panthers and Mondo Diao and Midwest Product and…wait. Yeah, rap is back like crack. Go cop that disc. Who needs Nas when you got Baby Blak? Free Beanie Sigel though -“Mac man ya’ll niggas know my name.” BBEMusic.com.

______________ GLEAMING THE EURO BOOBS _____________________

Anybody who went to the beach this wke knows that America is quite the thug nation – more throwback jerseys than David Stern could give to the Salvation Army…if he wanted to…ever. Anyhow, as we’re walking down the strip, staring in awe at all of the half-ass rappers who seemingly make a living half-assed rapping – Wrap Kings, anyone? T-Mack’s Out tha Frame, anyone? – we dip into M.I.A. Skateshop, 229 9th Street. Choice gear, prody and decks on the beach – who would’ve thunk it…Xisle anyone? Big up to M.I.A., which comes here by way of Tampa and is looking to build up the beach’s counterculture scene. Shit’s got pop! MIASkateshop.com. Show ’em love.

__________ “GREEK GOZZIP” – TADOW! 10,000 READERS ___________

On TheHurricaneOnline.com, we listed a headline for album reviews as “Greek Gozzip, Hot Girls, Beer” and it instantly bammed up more hits than almost any other story for any other section – even more than Sven’s J-Zone interview – huh? So, from now on we’re doing this every time to see exactly how Maxim-esque our readers truly are. Spread the word, this has to stop! Stop means no – okay?

____________ MUSTACHIO BASHIO, NOVEMBER 1, 2003 ____________

‘Nuff said. Guys start growing. As Lil Wayne says, “Namean, it’s all gravy.” Mark yr calendars with a big ol’ Nate Johnson ‘stache, buy a classy pipe and a classier monocle. WorldBeard Championships.com – imitate it, live it and prepare to join Colonel Mustard and Aaron Burr (guys in costumes) and a lottie lot of hot ladies for the partay to surpass all UM partays. For more info, see Nate Johnson around campus – hint he has a huge ‘fro and a huge-r ‘stache.

There are few directors left in Hollywood who can make high quality films within the stifling parameters of the “mainstream.”

Back in the ’70s, guys like Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola were making pictures that were not only amazing from a critical standpoint, but were well received and popular across the board.

And while it’s not uncommon to look back upon a certain golden age in media with overly romanticized awe, especially if you didn’t live to experience it, the glory days of visionary mainstream cinema have passed us and been replaced by bottom-line commodity.

Today’s is a more segregated system, where a significant number of films with cultural significance and artistic progression go unseen by the vast majority. Those who have made the terrible mistake of not residing in Manhattan or Los Angeles are often left on the weekend watching earth-shattering melodramas about talking dogs and former wrestlers.

Enter Clint Eastwood, one of the last American filmmakers who possesses the old school sensibility, whose movies still open in thousands of multiplexes and garner talk show banter. His newest effort, the bold mystery/thriller Mystic River, embodies everything ideal that’s still capable of the billion-dollar Hollywood studios.

With Mystic River, Eastwood has created a film for adults, a film that needs to be – brace yourself – discussed intelligently, maybe even without mentioning car chases or the benefits of gratuitous nudity. This is a smart film, and thus it’s meant for a mature – but not boring – audience, one less interested in resting in the dark for two hours than it is in untangling a topnotch nail biting drama.

The plot has enough material for ten films, a dark medley that boils down to a mixture of character study and intense murder mystery. The opening scene is a flashback to what appears to be a ’70s suburb in Boston. Three 12-year-old boys are playing hockey in the street, when a man who pretends to be an intimidating police officer abducts one of them right in front of their eyes. A shot of the kidnapped child, Dave, helplessly peering out the back window of a car as it cruises down the empty street is easily one of the most memorable and haunting cinematic images in recent memory.

About thirty years later, the three boys are adults still living in the suburbs, but their lives have changed drastically. Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a straight-laced local detective caught up in a bizarre marriage. Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-con who served two years in prison before cleaning up, and now manages a small convenience store to support his family. The young victim of the kidnapping, Dave (Tim Robbins), who soon after escaped, remains scarred emotionally, his adult years reduced to a jittery, mumbling mess. Alongside his weary wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and son, Dave suffers from a mountain of tormenting nightmares.

Youth is destroyed again when Jimmy’s 19-year-old daughter is murdered. Obviously distraught by the loss, Jimmy refuses to (Laura Linney) put faith in the local cops, instead choosing to contact former partners-in-crime to bully people in search of answers.

Being the small town that it is, Sean and his partner (Laurence Fishburne) are heading the investigation, but Dave’s abduction has long ended the trio’s close friendship. When we see Sean, Dave and Jimmy as adults, the story immediately becomes captivating – and yet there’s so much more on the horizon

One of many suspects, Dave returned home on the night of the murder drenched in blood and babbling a weak cover story to the point of scaring his wife and causing her to leave the house – but did he do it?

A huge hit at Cannes this summer, Mystic River will surely find strong critical attention upon its wide release. The edgy, sharp script by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) was adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane, and is brought to the screen by Eastwood with an unmatched fervor never before seen in his career as a filmmaker.

Nothing is held back, and Eastwood’s gutsy confidence in sticking to his guns are complimented by several performances that are arguably classic, namely Penn as the gangster turned family man and Robbins, who dives deep into this signature study of quiet brilliance.

Unfortunately, the ending, while technically sound and emotionally powerful, lacks the morals and redemptive heart needed to reach the un-crowded echelon of dramatic perfection. Other minor flaws included dips into over acting and a handful of loosely constructed, long-winded segments, but the film’s too much of a success to be passed up.

Mystic River is startling and complex in all the right ways, and every member of the all-star cast keeps the film moving briskly forward (yes, even Bacon). At the very least, it’s going to leave a lasting impression on audiences, and it will certainly make people think. Hopefully, there’s still a mainstream audience up to the challenge.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com.

and Joanna Davila

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Baby Blak
Once You Go Blak
****1/2 (at least)

Rewind: fuck it’s 1995 and hip hop is actually progressing. ‘Cot damn, I ran into Baby Blak at Gino’s Philly Cheese Steaks and hopped in the Delorean to 2003 with his CD; the world’s a melting pastel rainbow of gayness occupied by rappers that may as well tuck their weens a la Buffalo Bill (Silence of the Lambs), who are kidnapping more than just suburban teens.

Rap’s as natural as the flavor up in lil’ jugs, blue raspberries making the world think that it grows on trees or belongs in fine bushes. Luda’s taking the world to hell fast and furiously, pop out the Chicken and Beer, nah fuck that; Baby Blak owns the block.

BBE (Barely Breaking Even) is now ruling all independent rap record labels; Definitve Jux got the five-millionth-visitor-to-www.supertitties.com-virus and their whole system crashed, bleep bloop, woomp woop. By this point, Once You Go Blak, the most veteran sounding rookie record since Illmatic should be in every deck, coast to coast, just like the guest spots on “No Coast Allstars.”

Producers afflicted with that beautiful bane of actually digging and scratching for that hepatitis-styled infectious shit shut down all systems, fill their syringes with that Beanie Sigel-aggro Nas-smooth flow vocal blend, Blak’s got it. P-Smoova just received the Nobel Pete Rock Prize for resurrecting the reason, that’s it: resurrecting the reason, “The Youth” and “Daddy Dearest” are pure powder.

Nowadays cats that became something are nothing, Common gone Lenny Kravitz, Prodigy gone crackhead, others just gone; hip hop is on its last legs but we got a new femur, Baby Blak. Sounding like your favorite Fiddy grunt, but on his own, no white man’s hand up his ass moving lips and chips like slavery ships. On Blak’s epitaph, well into the latter half of the 21st century: Keeping the Dead Alive. Buy, copy, steal this shit! Once You Go Blak… well y’all know the resta that.

Honestly, don’t rest ’til you understand what I’m talking about.

– Svengali

___________________________________________________________

Rachael Yamagata
EP
*1/2

Fuse the sounds of Norah Jones and Fiona Apple, add the bedroom looks of Vanessa Carlton, dust on some freckles and you have Chicago based singer/songwriter Rachael Yamagata. This EP, her major label debut, leaves you wondering if Yamagata, all artsy hot as she is, will even make an LP.

From the starting notes of the piano on the initial track, “Collide,” Yamagata’s slow and raspy voice utters the lyrics, “I’ll fascinate you…for a while,” which is literally all she does, burning out quick fast before she finishes the disc’s hidden track – and this is an EP.

Yamagata’s press release boasts of “immeasurable appeal” and an “expanse of talent,” yet it feels as though this drowsy folk style lyricism has been done again and again. The third track, “Worn Down,” might sound familiar, but that means you’ve watched “Charmed” – the WB show about three witches (it’s even on the soundtrack), which doesn’t bode well for your musical taste (again, the press release).

As for the rest of the tracks, you’ll wish they were more consistent with the dreamy, purplish-afternoon depicted on the cover, which evokes emotions of romantic longing, sadness and hip nostalgia. Even if you’re in a dreary mood, for now, verdict says Yamagata should reinvent herself and try to be less “Worn Down.” But, don’t count her out just yet – the cover art is just that good.

– Joanna Davila

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Wedged in Doral’s industrial strip – one of the most unexpected places for art – MaX Gallery’s Blue Balls exhibit brings together the work of five talented art-school friends in digital photography, video and paintings, dealing with the recollection of their past, all the while trying to alleviate sexual tension with the perception of memories.

On the left wall are Pablo-Gonzalez-Trejo’s works – quirky and imposing depictions in charcoal, such as his “Untitled Diptych,” a gigantic mouth with a tongue licking the upper lip and an equally giant scrotum intricately detailed, down to folds, hairs and wrinkles. “Untitled Triptych” is comprised of a hummingbird, a flower, and a toy soldier seen from the back, each a symbol of moments in Gonzalez-Trejo’s childhood.

Standing alone, these figures are seemingly innocent icons of youth. However, given the theme of the exhibit, the pieces together are suddenly charged with heated sexual energy, especially with the suggestive bill of the hummingbird coupled with the delicacy of the flower (hint, hint). The toy soldier adds aggression to the otherwise sweet moment.

Working with charcoal allows the artist to capture how a memory is often distorted, which fits well with the next work, a collaboration between Perez and Christian Duran entitled “Peekaboo.” As the name suggests, it’s a voyeuristic compilation of 25 hazy stills taken from various porn flicks. It creatively mixes juvenescence with eroticism as it represents the memories of boys discovering dad’s porn stash. The adulterated images, much like a memory, do not take away the impression one gets when seeing graphically contorted women atop surgically-enhanced penises.

Frank Garaitonandia’s art revolves around his fascination with the skin’s capability to attract and repel at the same time. This obsession with the flesh drove him to spend four years in a Florida farm slaughtering, skinning, preserving and observing the effects of decay on pigskins. The result is “4 Skins,” a series of digital photography close-ups of his observations. Also, his metal-and-clay sculpture “Abajo de la Cama” (“Under the Bed”) is linked to the other pieces with its sense of eroticism and innocence, juxtaposing a beckoning bed with miniature praying nuns.

Yamel Molerio’s collection of Cuban and American adages with pictures reflect the literal meaning rather than the figurative. For instance, the phrase esta entera literally means “she’s complete,” which Molerio portrays by labeling parts on a woman’s body. What it means to Cubans is simply that the girl in question is quite hot.

Overall, the show leaves you with the intended feelings of anxiety and sexual frustration, hence the name, but the pieces flow well from one to the next and attempt to make a blunt statement through subtlety – so go see this for a soothing massage below the waist.

Blue Balls is on view at MaX Gallery, 7846 NW 57th St., Miami, through November 22. Call 305-994-7909 for more info.

Ambar Hernandez can be reached at weetchie@hotmail.com

Back to the basics. The sounds of Elefant will have you reaching for that bong you made in 9th grade and reminisce on the girl or boy who stole your heart…then stomped on it with 5-inch heels (he was into weird stuff like that, what can I say?). But wait, before you throw an emo label at them along with all the stereotypes that go with such crappy music, just think about this: Weezeresque garage music infused with the glitzy styles of the British Invasion. Add hard-core drumbeats and sic-heavy bass lines and shake…or just lean up against a jukebox and dance by yourself like Madonna in an ’80s movie.

Signed to indie imprint Kemado, the NYC four-man group recently released their first full-length, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, and hit up Ice Palace in downtown Miami last Saturday along with The Occasion and main-event Interpol to provide a hot-as-hell performance that had enough smoke to rival Dennis Leary and his “No Cure for Cancer” act. Notably, Kevin McAdams, the band’s drummer, shook the stage with his animated style and timeless John Bonham hairdo, while Mod’s distortion-soaked guitar solos flooded in and simply set the line between Elefant and White Stripes bandwagon bands.

In a melancholy style that fits the saccharine nature of their lyrics, Elefant’s lead singer, Argentinean-born Diego Garcia sat around on lush couches to chat with Life & Art about pot, music and pot while the sounds of Interpol doing their sound-check wailed in the background.

Q: So, why does the sunlight make you paranoid?
Elefant: Umm, yeah [laughs] …it’s really just like, you’ve had a crazy night and the sun starts creeping in the window…someone always says something like…”the sun’s making me paranoid”…you could be high or on a drug or just be partying with your friends. That’s where that came from but then the song kinda developed into this statement on the environment that New York City is in since 9/11. There’s a lot of stress on the streets. So lyrically, it touches on that. It’s a little escape from all that shit.

Q: A lot of your lyrics are about girls breaking your heart, girls you don’t like and so on…Does this change when you get famous? Are the girls easier?
E: We wouldn’t know because we’re not famous. But girls have never been a problem for me…I didn’t get into rock to get girls, though. I kinda just started it to travel…

Q:In “Misfit,” a rather melancholy track, you said that you wrote that song while you were sober. In what state do you usually write your lyrics?
E: Maybe I just watched a good movie, you know, or I’m high and I just heard a good song…there’s a lot of reasons why you just grab the guitar and start writing. Writing sober and when you’re really aloof, that helps. Sometimes when you’re really fucked up, you can write something good, too. You can’t really write a song for the sake of writing a song – it just has to be a very natural experience.

Q: Do you plan on being sober after the show tonight?
E: Tonight, we have a hotel room right on the corner, so, no…we’re going to get fucked up.

Q: A music critic said that your show is better live because you could charm the pants off of chicks in the audience and that would be cool to see. Does it ever happen?
E: It’s funny, we just did a show in Atlanta and this woman came up to me and she was like, “I’m a lesbian, but I couldn’t take my eyes off you.” So, I think that’s pretty funny. But, if you sing about girls, you’re going to get girls in the audience. If you sing about dookie…or like nookie…whatever Limp Bizkit sings, you get nookie in the audience. But, no, we sing about girls and we sing about nice stuff, so we’re going to get nice people…nice girls.

Q: Is the crowd tougher in New York than here?
E: Yeah, I mean, that’s why we can survive everywhere we go. NY bands are tough, you’ve got to play to people who are gonna hate you. It’s not easy and then you get to come to Orlando and kids are just going crazy, but then eventually NY catches up and now our shows are just incredible.

Q: What kind of bands do you want to see open for you?
E: Umm…I would like just cool kids. I mean, I just couldn’t imagine having animals playing before us that smelled bad and didn’t have any manners and stuff. That would just drive me crazy. So a good mannered band, a polite band – that’s what I want opening for us…and, of course, they have to suck.

For more info, check www.kemado.com.

Linda Hoffman can be reached at lindanhoffman@hotmail.com.

As the photo shoot with the Raveonettes gets going in the outside patio of the Culture Room in Ft. Lauderdale before their gig last Saturday night, both Sharin Foo, the band’s effulgent blonde bassist – a womanly Thor figure – and Sune Rose Wagner, the effeminately graceful male vocalist/guitarist, seem a bit disconcerted, the flash blazing their eyes. We’re moving slowly here. Perhaps the endearing duo should kiss or get on some bawdy S&M action to adopt the image projected by their new album, Chain Gang of Love, and by a retro cover featuring them in taut leather suits and on motorcycles, but Wagner dryly responds, “We don’t really do that. That’s more of a couples thing.”

Fine. Too bad, because it would have coincided well with their darkly erotic songs about sex, love gangs and debauchery. Originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, the Raveonettes landed a record deal with major label Columbia (chairman Don Ienner exclaiming, “I want this fucking band!”) and generated some buzz with 2002’s Whip It On, although they didn’t get much airplay. Recording Chain Gang in B-flat major and setting rules for the songs (e.g., less than 3 minutes long and a minimum of chords), the group crafted a sublime garage rock/ post-punk sound intermingled with the pop sensibility of the Beatles and a fuzz-drenched version of the Beach Boys’ surf rock.

Interestingly, the Raveonettes are enthralled by post-WWII American culture, but deride the sexual censorship this country has developed throughout its history: “Here, they think [sex] is done by greasy old men in dark chambers, but it’s a very natural thing…yes, we all know what tits look like and what ‘fuck’ means.” And so it goes, the band members expose their liberation of sex and love:

Q: Has the male/female duality influenced your music?
Wagner: Well, we like the boy/girl harmony; it’s a cool sound.

Do you think it creates any sexual undertones?
W: Not for us, but maybe for some people [laughs].

In the U.S., it could make for some gimmicky marketability.
Wagner: That might be a good thing, you know, it might help sell some records [laughs]. We never thought of that.

So you guys aren’t a couple?
Both: No.

Well, how do you perceive relationships? Do you believe in single or multiple partners; lust or love?
W: I believe in a single partner, but you need lust if you want true love. I don’t know, but that’s how it works.

What is lust then, in accordance with love?
W: [melodramatically] Oh my god, I just broke up, man…Sharin, say something.
Foo: [laughs] I mean, if you listen to the music, it has that duality in there – like a very romantic, sentimental kind of love and then there’s a very sleazy underground and decadent world. That’s a thing that fascinates everybody and I think that’s a dilemma in life, to get those two worlds to find a balance.

Maybe you’ve found that balance in your music.
F: Well, don’t take it too literally. Music has a lot to do with escapism and fantasy at the same time as it is about [real] things going on.
W: I mean it’s personal on some levels, but fifty percent of it is merely stories I heard or even fiction.

How about you, Sharin, do you believe in mutiple partners?
F: No, I believe in a single partner, oh yeah…
W: We’re not Mormons [laughs].

A lot rock bands of these days, including the Raveonettes, seem to be looking in the past for inspiration? Why is that?
W: I think you need to look back. For me, the best music was made in the fifties, but what bands sometimes tend to do wrong these days is go back and only look for one certain thing and then it all becomes too retroish, which isn’t good. What we did was to try to mix different eras together, like we’ll have a Suicide beat and then have these sweet Everly Brothers vocals on top, and that’s gives more perspective to the whole thing and makes it really ours.
F: I think that people look into all kinds of art from back in the days because that’s what’s timeless, and people wanna become familiar with the legacy of whatever you’re dealing with.

Could you explain the concept behind Chain Gang of Love’s cover art?
W: Well, with the first record, we took up the concept of the old film poster. To me, it’s very timeless, very classic, the fifties, forties, a bit of film noir. [For the new album], we wanted some sort of icon and with all the chains and gangs, we thought the biker image fit pretty well since we didn’t want to use an image of Marlon Brando from The Wild One or something.

You refer to chains, lust, love prisoners, so what exactly is the chain gang of love?
W: It could be a lot of things, you know. I always liked the prisoner songs that Johnny Cash and Sam Cooke did and you can use prisons as a metaphor for a lot of things, especially in the way we twisted it, like someone’s who’s not in love with someone is in the chain gang of love. It’s like you’re being punished for not loving someone.

What are you trying to say in “Dirty Eyes (Sex Don’t Sell)”?
W: It’s a rambling kind of song, pretty much in the way William Burroughs would use the “cut-up” technique or whatever [in his books]. It’s just saying things that people think are strange because everyone knows that sex sells, so why the hell is Jimmy [the character in the song] saying that it doesn’t? And later on, the transvestite Troy comes in and so there are these weird characters in a screwed-up sexual universe and maybe that type of sex does not sell.

What type of sex is that precisely?
W: Well, I think it’s sado-masochistic transvestite sex.

So, like androgynous sex, no male or female?
W: Yeah, exactly.
F: Yeah and I like the way the vocals are kind of detached because there are some weird statements, but it’s also like, oh well…

Did you come to the States (the ultimate producer of rock stars) to find stardom here instead of staying in Europe?
W: Well, it depends. There are different types of rock stars. In the ’80s, I think rock stars were biggest with all the hard rock bands and that really was the whole sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll attitude. It’s still a lot like that, but it’s different. I mean, who’s a big rock star these days?
F: I have a very incidental relationship with this whole rock ‘n’ roll thing because it’s very fascinating and we totally like to indulge ourselves, but it’s also like being a voyeur sometimes, stepping aside and looking at how it’s all clich