12 January 30 - February 5, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | News | letters | coNteNts | 30 Years and Counting The Spam Allstars continue to champion a multilingual party vibe. BY DAVID ROLLAND A s they’ve played more than 2,000 shows over three de- cades, you’d think the mem- bers of Latin fusion funkmasters the Spam Allstars wouldn’t sweat over their 30th-anniversary show on January 31 at ZeyZey. “Are you kidding? I’ll be so nervous,” An- drew Yeomanson (AKA DJ Le Spam), the band’s founder, tells New Times. “In fact, I’m already nervous.” The Spam Allstars began in 1995 as a side project for Yeomanson. “I was in another band that fell apart. I had a rehearsal space by the airport, and I invited other musicians to come and play,” he remembers. Magic happened un- derneath the flight path of arriving and depart- ing planes. The unlikely name came from a song Yeomanson created based on samples of an old commercial for the canned meat prod- uct and as a tribute to musical collectives like George Clinton’s P-Funk All Stars. Audiences across South Florida quickly fell for the band’s multinational, multilingual party vibes. “I remember our first article in Miami New Times was back in ‘96,” Yeoman- son says. “John Floyd was the new music writer. He mentioned a show we played in a great punk rock club called Cheers. We only got $50, but we got to see our names in black and white for the first time.” From those humble beginnings, the local love soon followed. “We started the vibration in the ‘90s, but things really resonated in the early 2000s. The fact that it happened during the CD era allowed us to stay independent,” Yeomanson explains. “We’d sell CDs for $10. We weren’t even good with the merch, but we sold enough CDs that it gave us the resources to tour nationally. But we found the mainstream American music scene was a challenge since our songs are either instrumentals or mostly in Spanish.” Despite the challenges the band faced from mainstream audiences, the Spam All- stars were a hit in Miami. For 15 years, Yeo- manson and company hosted Fuácata, the band’s Thursday night residency at Hoy Como Ayer in Little Havana. “We got booked so much in town. We were playing three shows a week. Wednesdays were at Jazid, Thursdays were Fuácata, then we’d do pri- vate shows and weddings. I’d take any fuck- ing gig. It wore me out at the end,” he adds. For a long time, Fuácata drew big crowds, including celebrities. “Mick Jagger was there one night. He didn’t come until our set break. My then-girlfriend told me he was out there, so we hurried back on stage to play. Another night, Prince came, and that was even more stressful. I was so nervous I couldn’t even look at him, but I felt a purple glow coming from his direction. He left after we played two songs. I like to think it’s because fans were impinging on his area and not ‘cause of our music,” he says jokingly. In 2017, the band called it quits on the Thursday night party. “We weren’t feeling the energy. We had some nights when there were not many tables filled. On other nights, the owner would call to say he was not opening. It got depressing,” Yeomanson says. During the COVID-19 shutdown, things slowed down even more for the Spam All- stars. Yeomanson also found a new calling in preserving musical history. “I got into tape ar- chiving. I work for a label, JN Records, and their archive starts in the mid-’60s to now. They have so much Latin jazz, salsa, and me- rengue recordings that are so important to maintain.” After closing in 2019, Hoy Como Ayer re- opened last year, attracting a new generation of Latin music lovers. It was only fitting that the Spam Allstars made their triumphant re- turn to the Little Havana venue in December. Moving forward, Yeomanson and the band’s core members — percussionist Tomas Diaz, saxophonist AJ Hill, trombonist Chad Bernstein, guitarist Jose Elias, flautist Magela Herrera, and keyboardist Smurphio — are ex- cited to celebrate 30 years at the end of Janu- ary, which will hopefully serve as a springboard for them to play more frequently. “We’ll go out there and do the best we can to connect with the audience,” Yeomanson adds. “Ideally, we can start doing a show once a month. I think that will be a good rhythm for everyone’s lifestyle.” There’s also the potential for new music, but DJ Le Spam isn’t making any promises. The band hasn’t released an album since 2017’s Trans-Oceanic, though 2022 did see the release of a new video in “No Fascists on the Dance Floor.” “We have the basis for new music that just needs to get cleaned up,” Yeomanson says. “Right when things ground to a halt for us, I was making lots of beats with new arrange- ments. Maybe those songs can create excite- ment. It’ll be nice if it can happen.” Spam Allstars. 8 p.m. Friday, January 31, at ZeyZey, 353 NE 61st St., Miami; zeyzeymiami. com. Tickets cost $20 to $55 via shotgun.live. ▼ Music Spam Allstars will celebrate 30 years of making music at ZeyZey on January 31. Photo by Jill Kahn Dark and Synthy Belarus band Molchat Doma comes to Revolution Live. BY DAVID ROLLAND I t would be easy for an ignorant American writer to assume the almost mystical, synth- heavy sound of Molchat Doma could be ex- plained by the band’s emergence from Minsk, Belarus. Perhaps the former Soviet state cranks out all kinds of industrial, danceable tracks with deep-voiced lyrics sung in the Russian language. However, when New Times reaches out to the band over email, the trio quickly clears up any misconception. “We never belonged to the Minsk music scene because no one played the music that we played,” the band tells New Times. “Maybe there were such people, but we didn’t come across them. Basically, it was garage rock and indie rock bands. There were interesting projects such as Super Besse and Weed & Dolphins, but we were never interested in the local scene because there was nothing interesting for us there.” Formed in 2017 in college friends Egor Sh- kutko (vocals), Pavel Kozlov (bass/synth), and Raman Kamahortsau (songwriter and producer), Molchat Doma slowly found an audience drawn to its postpunk sound reminiscent of Depeche Mode and Joy Division. Unlike those British bands, though, Molchat Doma lacks English- sung lyrics that American audiences can sing along to. Still, the band’s output was compelling enough to American listeners that the band re- cently relocated to Los Angeles. “LA is the center of the music industry. There are many interesting musicians and performers here; moving here was logical from the point of view of the group’s development,” the band ex- plains. “The main difference from Minsk is that here they underestimate music and its perform- ers. In our hometown, there is generally no such thing as a music industry, and most likely, when you say in Minsk that you are engaged in music, they will simply laugh at you.” The band’s latest album, 2024’s Belaya Polosa, continues Molchat Doma’s tradition of featuring brutalist architecture on the cover and dark, moody beats throughout. The band cites obvious influences like the aforementioned Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, the Cure, and Gary Numan, along with some more surprising touchstones. “Trip hop also takes place like Massive At- tack, Portishead, and Morcheeba. Also, such legends of electronic music as Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, and Jean- Michele Jarr deserve to be mentioned,” the band adds. Although they’ve been together for eight years and have now re- leased four full-length albums, Molchat Doma doesn’t have a cut-and-dry method for how they create a song. “A lot of the songs on this album grew out of studio jams. Sometimes, we would just hang out and discuss what we wanted our next song to be, and we would come up with some ideas, write them down in a notebook on our phone, and then go back to the studio and flesh them out together. Sometimes a preset or patch on a synth would in- spire a whole song, sometimes a random combi- nation of words could be turned into a song.” South Florida audiences will have an oppor- tunity to take in Molchat Doma’s live perfor- mance when the band stops at Revolution Live on Thursday, January 30. It’ll be the band’s sec- ond-ever show in the area following a 2023 de- but at a packed Culture Room. The trio promises a setlist that takes from all four of the band’s al- bums. If the stars align, you might even hear some new music. “We have a couple of sketches for new mate- rial that we want to turn into songs,” the band says. “It will be something new for us, as usual, but it should be interesting.” Molchat Doma. With Sextile. 7 p.m. Thursday, January 30, at Revolution Live, 100 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale; jointherevolution.net. Tick- ets cost $34.50 via ticketmaster.com. [email protected] | CROSSFADE | “WE NEVER BELONGED TO THE MINSK MUSIC SCENE BECAUSE NO ONE PLAYED THE MUSIC THAT WE PLAYED.”
