What We Do Is Secret

Build Me a Bomb

Surf video music is the worst. I can't really take the stripped down noodley jazz, the vapid, but trying to be soulful singer songwriters, the quirky neo-Devo worship clones or crusty jammers copying obscure pop songs from the sixties that can accompany the modern surf video of the longboard variety. That being said, I love to watch the actual surfing in these videos. In my quest to not have good waves spoiled by bad music, I often will create my own playlists to drowned out the acoustic guitars and keyboards. Case in point, the video below works so much better if you leave it on mute until Tanner's headed to the water about 40 secs or so in and then hit play on the second video. Trust me.

Rise & Fall

There are many good things about fall: hurricane swell, emptier breaks, pumpkin coffee, playoff baseball and of course, Halloween. Here are a few more reasons to love fall:

No Authority

Planned on a dawn patrol to snag some waves and pics this morning and ended up sleeping in and hoping the winds would cooperate after school for a little afternoon slide. My laziness came back to bite me as I sat in traffic on the 9th street bridge and cruised around only to find garbage at the spots I checked. Worked my way south and decided to art out and snag some pics. You might know where this one was taken.

Goodbye Igor. Thanks for the memories.

Keep Quiet

Other than reminding me of the Jane Doe cover, this is an album that David Pajo of Slint did. If the cover doesn't give it away, its him doing a bunch of Misfits tracks acoustically. It's tough to swallow anything that has an acoustic tag to it these days thanks large in part to the army of young, white, male dipshits with hair like Ryan Cabrera that think if they can butcher a Dashboard song in their bedroom they will start pulling chicks, but being that its Misfits songs and done by a dude who was in the band that made Spiderland...I'd say this is different.

To say these tracks are stripped down would be an understatment. It's got the quiet moments of Slint, but with a more, Nick-Drake-mixed-with-Pedro-the-Lion-recording-on-a-boombox feel to it. With Halloween right around the corner, it's worth checking out. You've never heard "Angelfuck" sung so tenderly.

ACOUSTIC MISFITS

Prying Eyes

Cadaver caretaker, swell-bringer. See you today motherfucker.

No Exceptions

Two Floorpunch must haves in the digital age for download below If you're a fan, they are required listening....you guessed it...no expections. First up, Floorpunch's Fast Times at the Jersey Shore rehearsal demo. There was talk of this being made into an LP, but I am pretty sure the originals are lost making it impossible to press the record and it won't be happening. It's a shame because I love the sound of this demo, despite the shitty recording.

FLOORPUNCH: FAST TIMES DEMO DL

Next up, the Floorpunch live set from Obsessions in Randolph NJ in 1996. This recording is probably my favorite recorded live set of theirs. No offense to Euros, but the crowds just don't shut the fuck up saying stupid shit in some of the older live FP sets from Europe that are floating around. The only one that should be talking is Porter. I like this set because there is minimal crowd comments and Porter's stage banter is at its best. On top of a good short live set, it includes two of the greatest lines of all time: "Let's go you fucking homos!" during the Intro into Changes and "I wanna hear homeboys go crazy for this one...IT'S A FUCKING COVER!!!" into Last Warning. The placement of those quotes right before both songs triple your stoke. Trust me. The only blemish would be the weird echo in the vocals, but the songs and banter more than make up for it.

FLOORPUNCH: LIVE @ OBSESSIONS '96

If there are any other live sets floating around besides the usual suspects (Euro sets, CBs, Fieldsboro), hit me up. I would love to get MP3s of the SFU Showcase or any other of the more recent shows Floorpunch has played.

Sounds Like Sunday

Go G-men.

How Quickly We Forget (Again)

A horrible day. Don't lose sight of the people, families and friends that were devastated by this bullshit as the years slip by.

While you're at it, remember this character, too.

Hangin' Around

"vegan straight edge sounds like a combination of the following: a vivisector being curb-stomped, Karl Crisis firing a machine gun for no particular reason, Confront, Negative FX, James Ismean touching himself in front of a full body mirror while looking into the blackness of his soul, the platonic idea of justice manifested in the material world via sound waves, the United States of America, Youth of Today, the internal suffering of Calvin Coolidge, the part in the expendables where Terry Crews picks up a warhead and throws it into a helicopter, and XchorusX."

The Noose demo rules. Period. If you haven't downloaded it yet,don't tell anyone and get it here. Step two: Add their blog to your google reader. Now go order a demo and patiently wait by your mailbox for it to arrive.

Weed It Out

Zero Hour

Arrivederci dickheads. See you next summer and enjoy the traffic.

Labor Day Weekend always kinda sucks. If you got to go to this, chances are you had a pretty good Labor Day Weekend.







PS- To the crowd at that show: a big fuck you. Only a handful of people going off, with most people looking around, worrying that their aviators will get broken or their vintage tee messed up. Lame.

Progression Through Unlearning

Depending on your age, you might not have ever known a time where Victory Records put out good music. To be honest, when I was in high school, I considered the catalog pretty hit or miss. For every good album that came out (OLC Crime Ridden Society anyone?) it felt like two Doughnuts albums were released. Anyway, to me, the big four were always as follows: Earth Crisis, Snapcase, Strife and Integrity. Everybody has an opinion regarding these four, but usually every hardcore kid can get behind one or two of the big four. Now imagine a band taking the best things those bands had to offer and mixing them into one project along with some good elements of 90s hardcore. What you'll have my friends is Unlearn.

Listening the demo, you can hear so many elements that take you back to the days of oversized t-shirts and choker necklaces, but it's mixed so well that it really gives it a sound of it's own. The vocals will clearly remind you of an ill-behaved gentlemen from Cleaveland and the riffs feel like a marriage between Strife and Earth Crisis with some technical guitarwork thrown in that is reminiscent of "Steps" era Snapcase or some of Don Devore's work with Ink & Dagger. In other words: It fucking destroys. Probably up there with xNoosex, Bad American and Stick Together as my favorite four demos of 2010. You can bet your ass that I will be headed to the Lehigh Valley to catch their live set at some point. Here is a sampling of their live set, which looks just as good as the demo sounds recorded:




Do yourself a favor and download the demo.

DEMO DOWNLOAD

UNLEARN FACEBOOK

Waterfall

Earl rolls through and cleans everything up tonight, sending dudes with boards to the water like dope fiends finding out new testers are out. Watched the cameras for a while and 1st street went from a mess to some pretty impressive waves be had before dark. Screenshot is from 7th street. Not as many people out, but not as many waves being ridden either. Looks kind of inviting until you locate the people in the water. Looks like someone is going to have a helluva drop in or a helluva beatdown coming his way on that one.

Ball of Destruction

My Name is Earl...