Tampa Calling

by Denis Baldwin

This year’s Homemade Music Symposium played out over the weekend at the Ybor HCC campus, bringing together musicians, singer-songwriters, music industry professionals, entertainers, writers, photographers and most every other aspect of the music industry to discuss the state of music, the nature of creating and marketing musicians and give a taste of things to come.

Overall, the symposium was a great success. Saturday opened with “Poets of Popular Song, The Lyrics and Lyric Writers of the Great American Songbook,” featuring the piano work of Paul Wilborn and the 107-year-old Rosa Rio. After their performance, many of the attendees broke for the lunch while the rest of us sat at our tables and handed out free swag and met with people.

More pics after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

The concert at the Hall with Obie Trice never happened. Mr. Trice canceled on the morning of the show because supposedly his house was raided by law enforcement and he was being detained for questioning. If that smells like Motown manure to you too then congratulations! You’re not gullible either.

He didn’t get arrested. I’d love to ask him face to face the real reason why Mr. Real Name No Gimmicks decided to pull this last minute missed appearance act, but my wish to maintain a clean criminal record will probably keep me from pursuing that.

I was initially informed of the cancellation around 11am the day of the show via Myspace. I called The Mind Syndicate to find out if this was true. They assured me the show was still going on as they had heard nothing about a cancellation, but said they’d call me back after making sure. That return call came around 2PM while I was in the mall with F.a.T and Milo. That’s when I got the original excuse Obie gave them of getting arrested… Read the rest of this entry »