WHO: Kurt M Spieler/Vinegar Syndrome WHAT: New York Ninja WHY: Look, the point of SPOTLIGHT was to focus on music, not movies, but there’s a first time for everything. Imagine a man discovering 6 hours of footage, without sound, of an abandoned martial arts movie from the 80s and taking it upon himself to re-edit it, rewrite the script (sometimes by reading lips), rerecord the dialogue and sound effects, and find a band to write a score that would fit...

To Kill a Mockingbird Let’s think of a simpler time: 2020 mid-pandemic. To pass the quarantine, my wife and I had taken up watching all the movies from the AFI 100 list. It’s really a great way to get exposed to great movies you would otherwise never see. And it really puts new cinema into perspective and just how ridiculous mainstream movies have gotten. To Kill a Mockingbird came on the queue, and honestly, didn’t make much of an...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the “Mantra” b/w “Surfers On Acid” 7” single by Trabants. It’s impressive how engaging Trabants prove they’re capable of being on their “Mantra” single, particularly given that the first which tends to hook listeners is the thing that is noticeably absent from the band’s construct: a singer. Usually, a band’s singer is the first thing that engages listeners and brings them into the music but, without that, Trabants finds a way to...

WHO: The Clash WHAT: Live at Jaap Edenhal, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1981 WHY: We’re not accustomed here at GC to recommend bootlegs, but this one is probably the mother of Clash bootlegs. Live at Jaap Edenhal is a live bootleg recorded from the console, and catches the Clash still at the height of powers still. This is finally a cohesive, high quality, complete capture of the band playing mostly their entire catalog (Combat Rock excluded). It’s interesting both as a testament...

Enter the Dragon Boy, was I ever on a Bruce Lee kick. That Criterion box set succeeded both in content and design. It was the perfect way to get into his movies and learn a lot about who he was, how he approached his film career, and his lifestyle. The thing is, though, that the more I saw and thought about it, the more it seems like he was kind of a scam artist. I mean, “Jeet-Kune-Do”? “Be like...

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YOLO. You only live once. And for a music fan that’s important. A few years ago I realized how important it is the seize the moment, get off your ass, and see a band you like, because you only live once. They only live once. I once drove 2 hours to Western Mass to see Lee Scratch Perry and then beat myself up about it a little because I just could have seen him in Boston the next time. But...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the black vinyl 30th Anniversary reissue of Alice In Chains’ Jar Of Flies EP. After seeing the multitude of “deluxe” variants of Alice In Chains’ Jar Of Flies EP that have been released in celebration of its thirtieth anniversary (on multi-colored vinyl, on vinyl with little replica houseflies pressed into it and so on), it’s refreshing to see the record reappear remastered and reissued on the most apt color vinyl possible: on...

Creation Rebel Hostile Environment I thank the Clash for many things, and one of those things is getting me into Reggae. I grew up in a tropical island where reggae was a soundtrack to your day, not something you actively sought out. Why would you? Is there anything besides Bob Marley? Yeah, that’s the mentality I had, Then I heard the Clash, and I didn’t get it. Then I dug deeper and I had a revelation. Listening to the...

I’ve been a fan of Jon Snodgrass for over 20 years and have only seen him live once. Embarrassing, I know. Especially considering how much I owe the man. Armchair Martian is such a no-brainer for anyone into pop punk, especially the Descendents/ALL/Fat Wreck variety, and I was hooked from the beginning (hey, when’s a new album coming out?), but I didn’t think country music could be cool until I heard his band Drag the River with ALL frontman Chad...