I don't really care when people say stuff like "Dick Dale was the godfather of Heavy Metal". Surf music, as far I can tell, is when rock & roll musicians really started to embrace loudness and aggression. It's not a stepping stone to other loud forms of music, it's the dawn, and whatever came afterwards simply came later. And part of why I say this is because just as metal, etc can take influence from surf, surf can grab back too. This is the category for bands that focus on that aggressive sound.

It's hard to beat surf music in Southern California. Surfguitar101 was ostensibly a meetup for online forum members with a nice lineup of 10 bands, Today it stands as the premiere surf event of the US and possibly the world, with a globe-spanning lineup of over twenty bands, and I believe Saturday night was the biggest I'd ever seen it. Organizer Jeff "BigTikiDude" Hanson, modest pool cleaner by day, has been slowly tweaking the event and his support team to grow the event organically into something uncompromisingly accessible and genuine.

It's May and not only have I not finished the Gremmy awards, but I've barely written anything about the slew of remarkable surf releases. So since it's Bandcamp Friday, which is when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut of sales, let me tear through them and give each of these fewer words than they deserve.

Apparently there won't be another Bandcamp Friday until September! So I guess I better get back to just reviewing stuff normally. I've wanted to do that anyway.