The Gremmy Awards are bloated and complicated, and the stupidest part is that they don't even work. What I want is to sum up the year as best as I remember by focusing on the highlights, but there's always things that feel missing if we're really taking stock of the year. So this category is here to attempt to pick up all the scraps. There are sub-cateories within this category that come and go. For instance, I couldn't think of a Worst Album Art winner this year, but feel free to leave a suggestion in the comments. It's free-form. It's whatever.
Label of the year
Productions Impossible
This was a hard one! It felt like everybody had one big tentpole release this year. Hi-Tide had I. Jeziak & the Surfers, MuSick had The Fathoms, Sharawaji and Otitis had a bit of a quiet year for personal reasons. Colorado Instrumental Fanzine put out two dynamite LPs. I almost handed it to Double Crown, who shared a record with Colorado Instrumental Fanzine but also put out Frankie and the Pool Boys and The Other Timelines (to say nothing of The Continental). Heck, I even considered Spinout Nuggets, a label that doesn't specialize in surf but had an outstandingly instrumental year.
And then I took another look at the "Rad" category. The Frenchness of it all. And I realized that Arno De Cea, Beach Moonsters, The Irradiates were all on the same label. And they even put out a Z & the Tiki Twisters record that I enjoyed. So we're up to four worthy instro releases. And then it's their 20th anniversary? And they reissued two excellent Hawaii Samurai records on vinyl? Well I think I've heard enough. Productions Impossible have long been a niche within a niche, dependably putting out top-tier loud and angry surf music (and sometimes other music), all of it from France, for I guess twenty years now. Perhaps being in the states, they seem to carry a lower profile than others (ironic considering their noise level), but taking note of the lesser noticed is what we're here for. Congratulations!
Best Trend
Reviews in text form on the internet!
Once upon a time, I would wake up, write reviews of surf music, go to work and possibly write on the sly while working. Now I wake up, make my kid's lunch, bring him to school, then watch my other kid. I don't expect to ever return to the output I had in the early days of this website. But I was also aware that I was kind of the one guy out there writing surf music reviews online. I mean you had zines, but you had to buy them for the most part. Chad and Cherry and Pi Records were making video reviews, but watching a couple minutes of a video is different than reading or skimming somebody's thoughts, and it's hard for an artist or label to make pull quotes from that. I felt like I had more weight on my shoulders than I could carry. In what was initially an attempt to get recognized (now more of a platform for my thoughts), I had become the new Phil Dirt, which wasn't quite my intention nor something I thought I could live up to.
Finally, some others have picked up the torch. First of all, there's Keith Hannaleck over at SurfMusicAndArt.com. His reviews are better written and longer than mine, not to mention knowledgeable and timely! I feel like he's still finding an audience, so go find him. Don't worry about me, he can never compete with my unprofessionality.
Also, while Colorado Instrumental Fanzine is a print publication first and foremost, Matthew Clark is pretty on-the-ball about publishing his content online far and wide, to the point where it feels close enough.
The whole idea is that I want surf music to feel noticed, received and discussed in a way that people can follow and participate in, ideally outside of facebook groups. And the efforts of those mentioned here help with that a lot.
Worst "Trend"
AI Surf music scammers.
Unfortunately I don't really have an update to this article. If action was taken agains the scammer, I was never updated. Despite Bandcamp's recent policies on having zero AI music on the platform, I stll find it all the time, though thankfully none of it fraudulently imitating a real artist.
Best Compilation
Surf Rally for Cali
During COVID Jim Abrahams of The Breakers (and some friends) put together Chicago Surf Rally, a 27-song compilation of mostly Chicago-area surf musicians with proceeds going to the Illinois COVID relief fund. This year they built on the knowledge gained from that experience to make a compilation double that size to help out with California Wildfires called Surf Rally for Cali (rolls off the tongue well too!). Intentions were good, but execution was too! With nearly all of these bands actively performing, it's a fantastic snapshot of the surf world right now. If you don't have the attention span to go through all these categories of Gremmys, just buy this compilation and go from there. And feel good about it!
Mentionable Mentions
As I was sort of saying at the top of this page, every year I feel like there are things that may not win a Gremmy, but feel like an oversight when they go unmentioned. So this year I've decided to mention them, even if inevitably it means less-than-glowing prose.
The Fathoms - Hard to Fathom
The return of The Fathoms was a big deal. Due to medical issues there was a time when it wasn't clear that we'd ever hear more from Frankie Blandino. But then this year we had Hard to Fathom, with the most striking album art of their discography. It was short, and I'll be honest, I skip some of those songs. But "Hard to Fathom", "Sea of Glass", and "Planet of Rain" were some of the best songs that came out this year. It was a bit of a challenging record, but nothing about it made me lose confidence in this band.
JUDODOJO - Year of the Snake, Gulf of Mexico
2025 was a continuation of a sprint from surf's White Stripes-esque guitar and drums powercouple that started arguably in 2023, ran through 2024, and perhaps finally slowed down in 2025. I thought their Year of the Snake EP this year was so much fun. Their first LP after a run of excellent EPs, Gulf of Mexico was good but surprisingly I didn't feel the same spark I'd gotten from everything prior to it. Still, I feel like this is an exciting band at this moment.
Frankie and the Poolboys - Endless Drummer
Endless Drummer won the album art Gremmy, but I ended up leaving it off of the Modern Gremmy honorable mentions. While it never quite had the same exuberant highs for me as previous Poolboys records, the concept was so much fun, it made you really pay attention to the drums, and I love that it was a record that brought together so many members of the surf community.
Guns of Utopia - Born with a Silver Tongue
I'll just be level with y'all, I just forgot about this while putting all my Gremmy stuff together. I think this is a great album. Maybe if I hadn't forgot about it, it would have made an honorable mention. I goofed. This band is consistently good.
The Eye Five - Deep Eddy EP
As the modern surf category got so bloated this yearr, I felt I basically had to cut out this simply for being a five-song EP. But as a concept album, I thought it was really great. I felt like I was going deep underwater on a dangerous adventure. Beautiful, compelling stuff from a band that I should champion more than I do.
Par Avion feat Paul Johnson and Friends - Mr. Moto/Squad Car
Par Avion put together a pretty special 7" to help out Paul Johnson (The Belairs, PJ and the Galaxies) by doing inventive covers of two of his classic songs. The "And Friends" is doing a lot there -- you've got Dusty Watson, Jon Blair, DJ Bonebrake, Ferenc Dobronyi and Sys Malakian contibuting. It's one thing to make covers that really re-think the originals, it's even cooler when you've got the original guitarist involved in that process. A reall fun record with a heartwarming sense of community wrapped around it.
Best Instro Documentary
Oh sure, I certainly did make this category up just to highlight this film, but it deserves to be highlighted!
Sound of the Surf really felt like it would never exist. Director Tom Duncan posted about it in the Surfguitar101 Forums as far back as 2008, so it was already 13 years in the making when it appeared on IndieGoGo to help bring it across the finish line. And then Tom passed away. In walks John Blair, a luminary in the field of surf to be sure, but a fish out of water in the independent documentary world, who over the next few years not only cobbled it together into a final product, but navigated licensing and found distribution (all the while trying to placate irritated crowdfunding backers).
I've seen mixed reception to Sound of the Surf. Some were a bit frustrated about its crowdfunding journey. Some expected more Ventures, Agent Orange, or maybe just more. As I see it, Sound of the Surf is not aiming to be an all-encompassing review of surf music. It focuses mainly on its Southern California origin story, then stays concsie to demonstrate its legacy -- not in extreme detail, but showing that a legacy exists. It's the best film that I know of for that, pretty much by default. If you want something comprehensive, you're in the wrong medium. But if I want to give people a primer on surf music, I think this works!
Interestingly, the whole thing is now on youtube for free (just click the link above) and I believe that version even has a higher image quality than the DVD I received. Some people might see that and feel like they wasted their money, but I'm just happy to have chipped in to bring this unlikely production into to the world, and I'm glad more people get to see it this way.
One extra note: I wouldn't say that this ran unopposed in this category! It's barely publicized at all, but there was a documentary on Link Wray that came out this year called Link Wray: The Rock Prophet. It doesn't do much extra for a rock doc, but it's good if you're a fan, which most people here are. You can watch it with ads on Tubi, and surprisingly enough I found out about it through my favorite streaming service, Night Flight Plus, which is the only free-included-with-subscription place to see it.
Notable Reissues
The Deadly Ones - Monster Surfing Time
One of the most sought-after vinyl releases in surf was reissued in 2016 only for THAT version to rocket into the >$100 range. But now Real Gone Music, who have also been recently reissuing Frankie Stein & the Ghouls albums, have pressed this classic in reasonable, obtainable quantities.
Takeshi Terauchi
In 2023 180g Records and Sound Fuji released a vinyl compilation of Takeshi Terauchi songs called Eleki Bushi 1966-1974. This year, they didn't seem to press any vinyl, but a number of his notable releases found their way onto bandcamp digitally for 9 Euro apiece. There's enough depth to his catalog that I'm not really interested in compilations, so I just snatch up albums when I can.
Los Belking's
Some of my most prized LPs are by Peru's Los Belking's, who uniquely and beautifully merged psychedelic fuzz and surf. I've long thought they deserved more attention, and it seems somebody at Discos Fantasticos agreed. They've re-released El Sonido de Los Belking's and their self-titled on vinyl. I found that their remastering added a little extra boom to the bass, but excellent records are excellent records. I hope some of their later records find their way too.
Breakout EPs
Surfuzzes
Majestic 12
Silvano Lightning
The Arousals
The Terra Surfers
