SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

As I am City Link's modern-music maven, the Powers That Be have asked, nay, begged -- all right, demanded -- that I write an introduction to this, the 12th annual City Link Music Issue. I initially offered to emcee our Music Fest instead, but publisher Michael Farver turned me down on the grounds that I would be too inebriated. Arguing the point seemed a futile task. So I instead welcome you, dear reader, to this issue, filled with stories and question-and-answer sessions with some of the leading lights of this year's City Link Music Fest, as well as one story about a local DJ who won't be playing there. (I'm looking at you, Snezana.)

Of course, I ought to know what's in this issue. I did, after all, write a couple of the Q and A's as well as this brilliant intro, turned in only slightly after deadline. I'm sure you'll find all this writing, as well as that of my colleagues, to be, in the words of Dave Eggers, "a heartbreaking work of staggering genius."

But this isn't about writing. We'll save that for City Link's nonexistent upcoming Literary Issue. No, this is about the music, that thing that soothes the savage beast. Take me. As I sit and write this, the television behind my cubicle explains why Bush won the election. The sudden urge to throw my 5-pound copy of Laws of Mass Communication through the screen is very real and dangerous, the sort of unforgivable act that gets a man fired immediately, even if Farver is gone for the day and I could try to blame it on the nighttime security guard. An upwardly mobile career in journalism could be erased in a flash. Not even the most scintillating prose or astute investigative piece could save me.

And then, I toss a mix CD into my Curtis X-Bass Portable CD Player, plop my bright-pink, flowered headphones over my ears (yeah, keep laughin', punk) and am instantly transported to a world of swirling guitars, funky bass lines and soaring vocals, a world where all voters are smart, presidents are smarter, and we aren't being shipped out to die in the desert by old men for reasons that are never properly explained.
At the very least, I am taken away for a brief moment from all the ugly and the dumb to experience something far more sublime -- in this case, Jimi Hendrix. But the sort of tunes this issue covers lay down fat rhymes and rip out scorching riffs. It's booty-shakin' crunk and head-bangin' rock. It's sex, drugs and fill-in-your-good-times-tunes-here. Dig it.

Dan Sweeney
Associate editor

P.S. Make sure to hit the 11th annual City Link Music Fest, taking place from 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. Saturday in downtown Hollywood. Do all 12 hours like a pro. See schedule and a map.