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Pop: hot ticket
By GINA VIVINETTO, Times Pop Music Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 6, 2003
50 cent's .50 caliber rap
50 Cent must feel like a million bucks these days. The 27-year-old gangsta rapper from Queens is all the rage in hip-hop. His Get Rich Or Die Trying is selling like hot cakes. (872,000 copies in its first four days.) He's got friends in all the right places: A protege of the late Jam Master Jay of Run-D.M.C., 50 Cent was signed with a seven-figure deal to the hip-hop label Eminem runs for Universal.
His tunes chronicle a tough urban world of guns, violence and drugs, and 50 Cent has the street cred to back his thuggish boasts. Before his raps got him famous, 50 cent sold crack on the streets of New York.
The rapper, whose signature look is a bullet-proof vest, pistol and a crucifix -- nice touch -- lives a life that makes headlines. He was stabbed at a club in 1999, shot at in a car in 2000 and arrested last year on weapons charges.
The Wildsplash 2003 featuring 50 Cent, Damian Marley, Wayne Wonder, Krazy, Tampa Tony and more kicks off at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Coachman Park, Clearwater. $22. (813) 287-8844 or (727) 898-2100.
Southern as all get-out
Drive-By Truckers are pretty high falutin' for a roots rock band. The gutsy group's magnum opus is Southern Rock Opera, a two-act, two-CD work based loosely on the history of Lynyrd Skynyrd. And, hey, since Skynyrd's show this week has been postponed, why not check out the band's proteges?
Southern Rock Opera, released in 2001, was the brainchild, in part, of Trucker Patterson Hood, a former punk rocker with Southern music in his blood; his pa was Muscle Shoals session bassist David Hood, who played that slinky bass line on the Staples Singers' I'll Take You There.
The album explores the South in the 1970s in all its glory: racism; George Wallace; long-haired rednecks; preachers' wild daughters; scorn for Yankees and, of course, mythical Southern rock. (If you know your Skynyrd lore, some tracks -- Shut Up And Get On The Plane -- are real spooky.)
Team Pop caught the Truckers performing a live, in-store set once at the fabled South By Southwest music conference. Sweaty, gritty and filled with Southern charm, you'd better believe the Truckers deliver.
Drive-By Truckers perform 8 p.m. Friday at Twilight, 1507 E Seventh Ave., Ybor City. $12 advance, $15 at door. (813) 247-4225.
Swedish punk
Sweden's Sahara Hotnights enjoys the distinction of being an all-chick punk band that rocks with wit and bravado. And these girls, all in their early 20s, do indeed rock.
Check out last year's tantalizing Jennie Bomb, which sounds like a gorgeous slice of the late 1970s, early 1980s CBGBs punk. The disc brims with the kind of sing-along anthems against authority like Fall Into Line that would make Richard Hell and the Voidoid sneer in solidarity. Sahara Hotnights offers huge hooks, catchy choruses and plenty of the vampish, detached sexiness that made Blondie so much fun.
(Interesting tidbit: Sahara singer-guitarist Maria Andersson is sweetie pie to The Hives' charismatic front guy Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, also from Sweden. If she has one quarter of his wild stage presence, we're in for a heck of a time.)
Tampa's own The Washdown opens the show. The band's self-titled debut, a staggering collection of angular, herky-jerky post-punk tunes, was one of the best albums heard by Team Pop in 2002.
Sahara Hotnights with The Washdown and Ikara Colt perform at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Orpheum, 1902 Avenida Republica de Cuba, Ybor City. $10. (813) 248-9500.
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