So it’s Abel’s semi-regular Friday night residency on Score at Lincoln Road and the females are wailing like cats in heat: Madonna warbling that it “feels like home,” and Rihanna screaming “Please don’t stop the music” and Diana Ross declaring, yet again, that she’s “The Boss.”

It’s a vocals smorgasbord and the coco boyz are servin’ it up. The cameras are flashing; the boyz are on vacation (permanent), frisky and fun, “rocking on the dance floor, acting naughty.” There’s JC and his posse making their entrance to “Everybody’s Talking (About Us)” and Thomas Barker posing and styling. And then it’s Madonna, again, telling us it’s “Forbidden Love” (does she mean the boy we’ve just met whose member size is exactly half his age—and he’s twenty?)

And then at one, just after he breaks into Beyoncé’s “One Night Only,” Abel cranks it up a notch—and the floor is blanketed in steam. And for a brief bit, there’s a taste of Alegria—until it’s “Don’t Ask Why.” “You know what I’m talking about”: vocalz, vocalz, vocalz. The puppies are lapping it up, even bits of Black Box and Michael Jackson that Abel pulls from his war chest. The floor is dark and sweaty—and though Zeke’s is down the block—this is Abel’s roadhouse for the night.

Score on a Friday, it’s Evolution(ary)—and next week, Friday, the 28th of September, it’s Tony Moran with a CD release party of “The Event.” Get there, get naughty. It’s South Beach’s roadhouse.


Best always,
Mark and Robert