Every now and then, you just gotta unleash some major Brutality from your Life, and it's always a bit cathartic, a bit over the top, but always, completely necessary. The Fremont Street Experience are that personified. Brutality in it's purest form, needing to be released. Guttural, throat shredding vocals, major freaky weird time changes, complete with machine gun drum beats, quirky guitar lines galore, and bass and bottom end sounds that sound like rock slides. The musicianship on here would make Frank Zappa nod his head in approval, it's that bizarre, and I mean that in a good way! LOL After seeing these guys play @ East Side Joe's, I immediately went up to them and bought a demo CD. It had no song titles on it, no information on the band, nothing. When you have the stuff of musical nightmares encoded onto plastic, who needs words, ya know? LOL The music speaks for itself, and this demo from The Fremont Street Experience is some heady, amazing stuff. Seek and Consume immediately. Available from the band by clicking here.

Opening with the haunting 5 Years from David Bowie, off of the seminal Ziggy Stardust album, the soundtrack to the Germs movie What We Do Is Secret does a damn good job at capturing all the Emotions and Elements the movie tries to bring out in it's telling of the story of this Legendary L.A. Punk Band. The dizzying highs (Germs - We Must Bleed), the suicide inducing lows (David Bowie - Rock And Roll Suicide), it's all here in musical form. The new interpretations of classic Germs songs by all the original members (with Shane West of E.R. TV fame filling in for the late, great Darby Crash) are hit and miss, with some of the songs sounding better than, (Forming), almost as good as (We Must Bleed, My Tunnel), and not even coming close to, the original songs (Lexicon Devil, Manimal). There's a few classic Punk tunes on here in a kind of capture-the-moment kind of thing (We Are The One by the Avengers, Survive by the Bags, Nausea by X, and Life Of Crime by the Weirdos), and a kick ass Alice Cooper song (You Drive Me Nervous) which I don't even remember being in the movie! LOL The Screamers version of Sexboy (the B-side of the Forming single) is on here too, kind of. It's Paul Roessler with some band called The Mae-Shi, and it's... ehhhh. Like most covers played, the original band always plays it better, and maybe that's the point. Long neglected in the over all view of "Punk History", the Germs legacy grew to worldwide proportions, kind of attaining a cult-like status, and it's good to see the band getting their long over due rewards for blazing and paving a road that many of us have traveled down with relative repose. The Germs made it easy for all the rest of us, and if a soundtrack is supposed to get you thinking about the movie and the subject matter contained within, then the What We Do Is Secret soundtrack is successful in that endeavor.

Orale! I saw this band Los Rudos at Our House a while back, and they made a major impression on me with their Los Crudos meets Incubus kind of vibe they were putting out there. Mixing up equal parts fast and furious Punk Rock, Ska, Hardcore, Surf and Metal with almost Reggae, Dub like breaks in their songs made them stick out above everyone else that played there that night. Los Rudos gots some crazy musical talent! Listening to this demo from them, it's easy to see why they came off so well that night. This is not the best sounding demo, but everything the band is striving for is captured on here to perfect illustrate what Los Rudos are all about. Dual male / female vocals, guitarists that can play their asses off, a drummer well versed in all aspects of musical styles, and a bass player that can go from atmospheric to heavy, sometimes all in the same song, make this an excellent release from this Riverside, CA. band. Great stage presence too. I can only hope that they come back to Vegas a bit more often and that we get some properly record stuff from them released sometime soon. I would love to see these guys again. Los Rudos. Great band. Excellent demo.

Remember when the Cure was good? That's OK. Neither do they. ;-) Do you remember a band called the Replacements? Or maybe Dinosaur Jr.? I know you've heard of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, right? Well, if you're a fan of any of those bands, then you will definitely dig the fuck out of the Gunsmiths. 4 songs of Dreamy, Ethereal, Catchy Shoegazer Indie Rock which will have you tapping your toes and squirming in your chairs, which is made all the more ironic by the fact that all the members of this new Local band come from some of the most obnoxious, Hell raising, Legendary Punk bands that Las Vegas has to offer! LOL With more than a nod to early Sonic Youth, the Gunsmiths play some hypnotic, memorable music that will instantly elate you to levels of happiness never before seen, and some days that's a much needed thing. I have no idea what the song titles are, but it hardly even matters. This stuff is sickly sweet. This stuff will bore it's way into your cerebellum and set up camp for a good long visit. This stuff is really fucking good. I'm glad I made the effort to pick it up out of a pool of piss on the floor at Wasted Space one night... hee hee hee Check it out. The Gunsmiths. You won't regret it.

I remember when this was one particular show (T.S.O.L. @ Chapman College) was broadcast on Flipside's cable TV show back in the late 80's! hahahahaha Yeah, I suck. This DVD has 2 gigs live from T.S.O.L., both from 1983, in support of their Beneath The Shadows LP. Anyways, a really lackluster performance from T.S.O.L. in the first gig, playing to a crowd of bored looking college kids at lunch time. Al Flipside filmed it, so the sound varies as he's moving around, and it's OK if you skip right past that and watch the real gem on this DVD - the Target video. Long bootlegged, this performance (Thoughts Of Yesterday - Word Is) is mind blowing, and a bit of a jip. There's only 2 songs on here from that gig. Why not the entire show? The listing on the DVD cover isn't even what's played (The Other Side - She'll Be Saying - Code Blue) so obviously it exists... FAWK! This footage is soooo great to see. Drunken Punks twirl and swirl and thrash about while the band supplies an amazing soundtrack to it all. Pro shot, and definitely cleaned up from the copy I had of this years ago. Same with the first gig. It never sounded or looked that good before, so someone definitely put some much needed TLC into this in order to get this stuff as good as it is. Bonus materials include a 2007 clip of Code Blue being played live in Long Beach, where Jack lectures some little kid mid-song about the proper etiquette of stage diving which is funny to see, and a lackadaisical interview with Jack and Ron by Al Flipside and Pat Brown (yeah, that Pat Brown of Vandals song fame) about Communism, the legendary S.I.R. riot (oh what a night that was!), gigging around town, Touring, Recording, beating up Posh Boy @ the Galaxy and drunken shenanigans behind the Orange curtain. There's also some reading from Jack Grisham's upcoming book about being chased by Cops and almost killing himself over some chick, spoken in a very Jim Morrison-esque manner. Bien spooooooky! heh heh heh This is a good little DVD from T.S.O.L. Definitely a must have if you're a fan like me. Available from MDV Visuals.