OFF!

Few bands are flying the hardcore flag these days as successfully as OFF! It’s a mix of things that makes this band stand out. Sure, it’s fronted by Keith Morris of Black Flag and the Circle Jerks, who is still at the top of his game both vocally and lyrically. But, the appeal OFF! has for me are the hardcore riffs provided by Dimitri Coates. They are both musically innovative and undeniably hard and catchy. This band has already released...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into the Free LSD LP by OFF! To say that the last few years have been marked by difficulty and upheaval for OFF! would be an understatement. After Wasted Years was released in 2014, OFF! kept excitement levels up with the announcement that they were working on a feature film project (to be entitled Watermelon) as well as an accompanying soundtrack but, when their Kickstarter campaign proved to come up short, trouble seemed...

Michael Jackson Off The Wall CD/Blu-Rae (Epic/Legacy) It’s unlikely that anyone would ever attempt to downplay Michael Jackson’s importantce in pop music and pop culture history. In the era when pop and rock did battle for supremacy on radio and television airwaves, Michael Jackson – the youngest member of the Jackson 5 – elected to ignore the popular trends which dominated both and simply chart his own course using elements of both but sounding like niether. It worked beautifully too;...

A deeper look at the grooves pressed into Circle Jerks’ debut album, Group Sex. At this point, six years after the band that Keith Morris, Steven McDonald, Dimitri Coats and Mario Rubalcaba started took off (ahem – no pun intended) and brought hardcore punk into a much brighter and broader spotlight before a much larger audience, the history of where OFF! came from and the circumstances which got them started have been well-documented. It is already a matter of public...