RESPECTABLE STREET: Revocation, Judiciary, Inferi, Vomit REVOLUTION LIVE: Leon Thomas, Ambre CHURCHILLS PUB: Soulmanjan Soul Sessions w DJ Rat
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Mike Lee Band
11/14
RESPECTABLE STREET: Mentallo and the Fixer, Miss FD, Deep Red
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Los Toreros Muertos ZEY ZEY: Jigitz
WAR MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM: All Time Low, Mayday Parade, Four Year Strong, The Paradox REVOLUTION LIVE: From Ashes to New, Magnolia Park, Until I Wake, Not Enough Space
ARTS GARAGE: Ann Hampton Callaway
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: TAZ
SISTRUNK MARKETPLACE: Jeremy Sousa
11/14-30
LW PLAYHOUSE: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town
11/15
ARTS WAREHOUSE: Warehouse Market
MY MAMA’S: Death by Holiday, Queefs RESPECTABLE STREET: The Dollyrots, Don’t Panic
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Greensky Bluegrass ZEY ZEY: The Shapeshifters, Sandy Rivera, Club 1BD GUANABANAS: Americanabanas ft Brett Staska, Ricky Valido, Howdy, Tall Walker, Conchy Tonker, Bryant Thomas WAR MEMORIAL AUDITORIUM: Seether & Daughtry, P.O.D., Kami Kehoe
CHURCHILLS PUB: Tereso + Prule
TBAG RECORDS: Medley
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Brothers After All ARTS GARAGE: Ann Hampton Callaway
ARMORY ART CENTER: Opening Reception: Past the Eyes, Kandy G. Lopez, Full Circle
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Mr.Sipp
PROPAGANDA: Give it up, Blabscam, Mangruve
11/20-3/1
BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART: Timeless Mucha, The Magic of Line. Tracing the influence of Art Nouveau Pioneer Alphonse Mucha
11/21
ZEY ZEY: Simon Grossmann, Cheo Pardo
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Soul Of Motown
PROPAGANDA: Gunnar Gill Fest ft Demo Myers, xKAIX, Dirty Crumbums, Madkelly, Elleinad
REVOLUTION LIVE: Badfish, Joe Samba
GRAMPS GETAWAY: Medley
ARTS GARAGE: Mec Lir
11/22
ZEY ZEY: Monster Rally
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Bayfront Jazz Festival: Nik West,Lakecia Benjamin, Eva Blanche
CULTURE ROOM: Black Flag, The Queers
RTS GARAGE: Greggie & The Jets
OFF THE CLOCK: Medley & Meaux
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Boys Don’t Cry PROPAGANDA: Electro Sonic Showcase
11/23
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Berlin to Broadway w Kurt Weill FILLMORE MB: Men I Trust
ARTS GARAGE: Steve Leslie Sings James Taylor CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Gary Hoey VINTAGE ON HARRISON: Songwriters in the Round
11/24
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Wonho CHURCHILLS PUB: Miami Jazz Jam, Raven Open Mic
11/25
MIAMI BEACH BANDSHELL: Earl Sweatshirt
ZEY ZEY: Cut Copy
11/26
RESPECTABLE STREET: Randy’s Cheeseburger Picnic
ZEY ZEY: Spam Allstars
CHURCHILLS PUB: Soulmanjan Soul Sessions w DJ Rat
CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Andrew Klein - Billy Joel Trib
11/28
REVOLUTION LIVE: Ariel Pink
DELRAY BALLROOM DISCO: Medley
ARTS GARAGE: Matt Stone As Elvis CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Unlimited Devotion
11/29
PROPAGANDA: Death by Holiday, Humbert, Queefs, The Zappe Cats, Orange Blackheart, Killed by Florida, Mala Onda
SKATEBIRD SKATE PARK: Punk Rock Picnic ft No Fraud, C.T.E., Goat Rope, 1983, Shakers, Mass Panic, Salem Slot Machine, Killed by Florida, F, Wolf Wench and Her Sexy Plague Doctors
REVOLUTION LIVE: Marina Satti
ARTS GARAGE: Beautiful Loser – Bob Seger Trib
CULTURE ROOM: Queensryche, Accept CRAZY UNCLE MIKE’S: Six After Midnight
9TH ST SOUTH BEACH: Beach Towel Art Show, bring a creative homemade beach towel, 2-5pm, Participation is open to all.
MONSTER RALLY
by olivia feldman
Musician, collagist, merch designer — one might say Ted Feighan is a modern Renaissance man. In his case, the Renaissance is tropical. As Monster Rally, he’s taking his record-store vibes and jungle beats into new territory on tour this fall, joined on stage by his best friend, fellow artist-musician John Hastings of the groovy Denver-based RUMTUM
Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, with its long, gray winters, Feighan channeled his anxieties into subtropic dreams. “I was imagining being anywhere else,” he tells PureHoney. “Creating Monster Rally was a combination of wanting to feel calm and serene and having a mental vacation.”
While he’s been making music since age 13, it wasn’t until college when his “obsession” with producer Madlib led him to buy a vintage Boss SP-303 sampler, the same model Madlib used on 2004’s Madvillainy. He’s since upgraded, but the aesthetic lives on. Songs such as “Torchlit Cenote” and “Grassy Crystals” beckon the listener into an imaginary basement lounge in Rio, fashioning tropicalia and hip-hop into lush, hazy grooves. On “Your Old House,” his latest single, the soothing vocal presence of indie jazz J-pop artist Mei Semones fits the ukulele strumming and chill beats to conjure a perfect beach day.
Monster Rally’s audio palette corresponds to, and with, his vibrant artwork — rainforested collages that often become his album covers. Scouring library sales for vintage LPs and magazines, he’ll incorporate alligators, flamingos and all the surrounding flora into his visual and sonic creations. Feighan also shares his creative process on Substack at The Flowering Jungle Besides putting finishing touches on a new album due in the spring, he’s been reworking songs to play live with Hastings, adding a drum kit, congas and some fun Mellotron synthesizer jams. “It’s something I’ve thought about doing for a long time, and I’m glad it’s actually coming together,” he says.
And what better place to end his tour than sunny Miami? “I still picture Monster Rally as a place,” he says. “Mentally I’m going there and that’s what I’m seeing, that’s what I’m hearing. I’m hoping people get that kind of experience, too.”
Chicago-based French Police landed on many a cool kid’s playlist with their breakout 2021 single, “Vampiro,” satisfying the urge for gloom as capably as fellow brooders Molchat Doma and indie-pop melancholics Two Door Cinema Club
Singer-guitarist Brian Flores, bassist Rolando Donjuan and guitarist Manny Herrera (plus synths and electronic drums) have come a long way as a DIY bilingual band founded in 2018. They’ll play Coachella next April, the capstone of an international tour this year and next that follows a flurry of recent releases.
The full-length LP Bully arrived January of 2024, moody and propulsive, full of solid bass lines and melodies floating in a pit of danceable despair. Songs such as “Her” emanate an effortless cool, while “Stress Test” conjures a chilly night air perfect for a season of rain and malaise.
The four tracks of the EP Espera, released early this year, blur the line between high energy and comfort with a nonchalance akin to The Garden and an instrumental style that recalls Twin Tribes. A pair of summer singles followed: the dreamy “Sugar Killer” feels like a Cocteau Twins callback; and “Libra” takes a step toward Billy Idol-esque New Wave without relinquishing a claim on instant indie-classic status.
It won’t be a shock to learn that post-punk heroes Interpol started Flores, French Police’s primary songwriter, on his musical journey — which got going in earnest in the early 2010s with another Chicago indie-pop band, Karma Wears White Ties. But each member of French Police has come to this project from a different angle. In a band profile published last year by the goth L.A. clothier The Pretty Cult, Donjuan credited the heavy bands Slipknot and The Mars Volta with his awakening, while Herrera cited skateboarding video game soundtracks, grunge and alternative.
So we can thank Paul Banks, Corey Taylor and Tony Hawk for helping set things in motion while we queue up some French Police alongside Physical by Pretty Sick, Decay by Sexual Purity, and anything by Lebanon Hanover
and openers
Miami. frenchpoliceband.com
EARL SWEATSHIRT
by tim moffatt
The tendency among some entertainers to embellish or conceal their personal histories isn’t unique to rap. The Rolling Stones’ youthful reputation as societal terrors belied their middle class art school pedigree. Taylor Swift’s line about being “raised on a farm” omitted her white collar roots. So it’s no offense against art or truth that Chicago-to-Los Angeles rapper Earl Sweatshirt didn’t kick off his career by emphasizing his legal scholar mom and South African poet dad, or the Buddhist faith of his childhood. The teenager who first rapped as Sly Tendencies was arguably testing boundaries, inside and outside the house, with his early embrace of hardcore rap style.
Earl spent some time in Tyler, The Creator’s Odd Future contingent of artists, on par with WuTang Clan for exotic flows and engaging personalities. And one result of his provocative output, coupled with worsening teen-aged drug abuse, was getting sent by his mom to a reform school in Samoa. That episode touched off a “Free Earl” movement among his fans, drawing media attention to his circumstances and his talent — a deep lyrical virtuosity that prompted The New Yorker in 2011 to declare him “the most exciting rapper to emerge in years.”
And while former patron Tyler is sounding ever more abstract and esoteric, Los Angelesbased Earl is stripping down to basics, in a return of sorts to his professional beginnings: Earl was discovered on MySpace, a quintessential Internet artist proving his mettle with his rhyming more than his production budget. (His current website’s landing page is essentially a MySpace design tribute.)
One difference today is that home life is now lyrical grist. Earl Sweatshirt, 31, is rapping about being a father, husband, born-again Buddhist and recovering addict. “Heavy Metal aka ejecto seato!,” from 2025’s Live Laugh Love LP, gets as close to happily ever after as you’ll hear in hip-hop with this quartet: “2016, I had a dream of my son crawling ‘round on the ceiling/ And I had never seen him/ Finally found the meaning/ Condo for me, him, and his mama keep the sweet digs.”
Earl Sweatshirt performs 7:30pm, November 25 at the Miami Beach Bandshell.
MENTALLO & THE FIXER
by david rolland
Synthesizers weren’t a novelty when brothers Gary and Dwayne Dassing embraced them in the mid-1980s. But plugging synths into a Commodore C64 home computer to make music? That was pretty out-there for the time. “You were coined a nerd for just having one in your possession in those days,” Gary Dassing says of the old 8-bit device.
The siblings leaned into the nerdiness even harder, naming their budding electro-industrial project after two obscure Marvel Comics supervillains: Mentallo & The Fixer. And unlike most partners in evildoing, the Dassings figured out how to co-exist. “My brother and I come from opposite ends of the spectrum in many ways when it comes to composing music,” Gary (aka Mentallo) tells PureHoney. “In fact we can be polar opposites and I believe that helped define our sound.”
The other challenge was existential, man versus machine, once the Dassings had decided against additional carbon-based bandmates and went all in on electronics. “I don’t want the technology to totally take over and make it feel cold,” Gary says, “because I feel that the defining part of our sound that gives it this unique characteristic is that it is emotionally driven, and that is conveyed through the melodies and rhythms.”
That formula yielded epic thrashers and ambient deep dives alike until the brothers semiretired in 1999. A quarter-century later, Mentallo & The Fixer have found a welcoming niche audience on their Resurrection Tour 2025, not unlike the gamer raves for the newly revived C64. Old fans and new are getting the songs they’ve asked for on tour, and it has to feel gratifying even if one power these supervillains lack is the ability to stop time.
“I watched a video online from a performance of one of our shows in Florida back in ’97,” Gary says. “I started to chuckle a bit because we were literally going crazy onstage, jumping around, and I was thinking to myself there is no way I could maintain that energy level today. I would be sore the next day and my back would be killing me.”
Mentallo and The Fixer, Deep Red, and Miss FD perform 7pm Friday, November 14 at Respectable Street in West Palm Beach. @mentalloandthefixerofficial
BRIAN BUTLER
by kelli bodle
Art is not a lonely pursuit for Miami-based Brian Butler. From his ongoing Everybody Draw Everybody portrait swaps to his Beach Towel Art Show during Miami Art Week, Butler can be found creating and showing work while encouraging others to join the party. “The art of play has been a central theme to my work,” says the PureHoney artist of the month and founder of The Upper Hand Art, his studio in Miami. “I’ve always been attracted to gatherings of creative people. I love Mardi Gras and seeing the homemade costumes. I want to build that appetite for the weird and creative. The weirder things get, the more fun.”
At last year’s Beach Towel Art Show in Miami Beach, 67 artists showed off more than 80 towel creations. The beach towel shindig returns to the shore on December 6, and anyone at any skill level can participate. “I encourage homemade stuff; that’s always the most fun,” Butler says. “One of my favorites from last year was Vida Sofia’s. She crafted a booty and made it the pillow at the top of the towel.”
Butler’s open-call credo is “choose your own adventure,” and people have responded. Some beachy creatives quilt their towel art from scratch. Others assemble what Butler affectionately calls “Frankenstein” creations in mixed media. Some go the design-and-print route. “There’s print-on-demand websites online but those are becoming less affordable with poorer turnaround times,” Butler observes. “On the one hand, that’s a shame. On the other hand, it poses an opportunity to do more homemade stuff.”
The beach towel exhibition won’t be the only draw on December 6. “The first beach art show was a conglomeration of all the different Miami creatives, nodes working in unison,” Butler says. “Dale Zine Shop made frisbees for people to play with on the beach. Raw Figs brought a roll of backdrop paper, and people were jumping in the water and then rolling around or doing footprint art.”
LoHi Magazine brought a message, “Miami Heals Everything,” to draw on people’s bare skin. “They were supposed to be sunburned stencils but we realized it takes too long,” Butler says with a laugh. Subtropic Film Fest and Throwbacks provided analog film and 8mm cameras. “We had a handful of people documenting stuff,” Butler says.
Documentation is the work is something that Butler has been doing his entire career. “I’m charmed by the past,” he says. “When I was still in art school, I played every miniature golf course in Massachusetts. It was in response to noticing that all these miniature golf courses were closing and I wanted to archive them. At the end I turned a gallery into playable miniature golf.”
This drive to meet others, create, and memorialize the process defines his practice. Akin to the lighthearted fun one has while playing miniature golf — because even pros need to work on their short game — Butler strives to create moments like these wherever he is. Consider his ongoing series of Everybody Draw Everybody swap meets. “I’ve done a little shy of 40 of those,” Butler says. “If I’m painting a mural somewhere, I’ll try to stay an extra day or two and do one of these events and meet people in the community.
“It’s posted on Eventbrite and open to all skill levels. I’d say 20 percent of attendees are people searching for stuff to do. It’s social rock-and-roll,” he says. Visitors might know the venue but “don’t particularly fancy themselves to be artists; they come as adventurous people,” Butler adds.
What happens next is catalytic. “Cliques start cross-pollinating at the event,” Butler says. “Because I’m a foreign actor and I’m not attached to the local politics of the scene, it attracts a lot of different flavors of people and they do this very vulnerable thing of drawing each other in three minutes.”
“It’s silly,” Butler says approvingly. “The products are wild because there’s not enough time, even if you’re professional, to do one. We all share the drawings at the end. People forge new friendships and it’s been really rad to help forge these new connections across places I’m not even a part of.”
Beach Towel Art Show 2 takes place 2-5pm Saturday, December 6 at the 9th Street Beach in Miami Beach. Visit Brian Butler: theupperhandart.com @upperhandart @showdrawn @beachtowelartshow
GABRIEL DUQUE
DEATH BY HOLIDAY
by tim moffatt
If you’ve been around the South Florida scene long enough, you might swear you’ve seen Death by Holiday before and you’d be partly correct. PureHoney sat down with drummer Nacho to talk about the punk trio of himself, Scam and Dice emerging brand new from a school of Hialeah and Miami bands going back decades — The Brand, Haochi Waves, Humbert and more. As Death By Holiday play out to celebrate their caustic but very humane self-titled debut album, we hope this helps clear things up!
Death By Holiday is a decisive turn away from the music of The Brand. Please explain. We were never actually “in” The Brand. Those guys were doppelgängers. We were pulling the strings, though, blasting Dead Milkmen and driving them to shows. You can say it’s a turn towards who we’ve always been. Also, when Dice joined our outfit, we had to dumb it down a little.
“Nanogators, “ “Employee of the Month” — I detect a through line of disillusionment in these new songs. Where does that come from? When you grow up listening to the likes of Woody Guthrie, The Clash, and The Dead Milkmen, you really don’t have much of a choice but to stand up and say “things are fucked” when things are fucked.
Give us some tips for people visiting your home base of Hialeah. “Check out the Leah Arts District to get your art on — Oye Hialeah for vegan Cuban pastries. If you need to record anything, head to Ferny at The Shack North for great sound and some Hialeah musical history. Or, go into any mom-and-pop cafeteria, and you won’t be disappointed.
What’s next for Death By Holiday? Intergalactic stardom of course. But maybe we’ll be deported first, I don’t know. I know we’re due for some colonoscopies or mammograms or something like that. If we’re not dying, then we’ll likely make some more records. Maybe we tour, but I don’t know, Scam doesn’t like leaving his house.
Death by Holiday release show Nov 1 at Churchills’s Pub in Miami, Nov 15 at My Mamas in Dania, Nov 29 at Propaganda in Lake Worth Beach. deathbyholiday.bandcamp.com
PUNK PICNIC
by abel folgar
Long before Miami punks took over skateparks, they dragged generators out to the edge of the Everglades and blasted guitars into the swamp. The raw spirit of those early “punk picnics,” convened by scene stalwarts Chuck Loose and Erica Dawn Lyle (a.k.a. Iggy Scam), lives on today with the South Florida Punk Rock Picnic and Flea Market
It’s no less punk for being located a little closer to civilization (just off Biscayne Blvd. at SkateBird Miami). Skaters, bands, and vendors will collide in a raucous celebration of noise and community, and a new chapter in South Florida’s DIY history.
Loose tells PureHoney that the first edition of the revived Picnic, held last year, was thanks to Roach of Roach and Roll Productions taking stock of Florida’s punk landscape. “He figured that every other area in the state was doing a Punk Rock Flea Market, and we needed one!” Loose says. “The rest of us glommed on to help make it a reality.”
The organizing corps of Loose, Roach, and Kristin from Pop$wap is joined this year by Gordo of Antifaces fame. “They needed a transfusion of newer blood, even though I’m considered an old head now,” Gordo says, laughing. His presence underscores the Picnic’s goal of bridging generations of punks, from swamp-show veterans to kids finding their first 45s.
If the ’24 Picnic felt like a mad dash — 40 vendors and 10 bands thrown together in under a month — this year has been a steadier climb. “Given all of our experiences with organizing DIY venues, punk shows, independent art events, and craft markets, something like the Picnic comes second nature to us,” Loose says. “The main factor is most definitely time.” With months instead of weeks to prepare, the team is ready to scale up without losing the grit. Expect vendors, raffles, live tattooing, and Miami’s punk crème de la crème hammering away all day. Free and all ages, the new Picnic embodies the original’s reason to be: A refusal to wait for permission when the scene can build its own future.
The South Florida Punk Rock Picnic & Flea Market ft No Fraud, C.T.E., Goat Rope, 1983, Shakers, Mass Panic, Salem Slot Machine, Killed by Florida, F, Wolf Wench and Her Sexy Plague Doctors starts 12pm Saturday, Nov. 29 at SkateBird Miami. @soflapunkrockpicnicfleamarket
