RECORD REVIEWS

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I "like" this post.

But seriously, I'm really into this. Honestly, since the pandemic and Termbo going offline, I've checked out from current music for the most part, besides sticking with some favorite bands who are still releasing stuff. Since this forum started, I've been way more interested in new music than I have in years and have found some stuff I really dig. Definitely interested in a space to discuss and review things a little more in-depth.

Won't be a writer but will be a reader! Great Idea!

Your suggestions are all good and conventional standards regarding music journalism -- although I think Lisa and Richard Robinson would blur the lines.

My suggestion would be to take it further. A quarterly or biannually collection in print (newsprint or zine-style layout). Something to sell online or at Goner. What you had mentioned about the superficiality of social media regarding actual reader engagement is a good one. While Rich was doing God's work at Termbo, a lot of that online material is now lost. I saved all of the interviews I did for the site, but I've also had zines cease publication and left me with interviews. For better or worse, print is permanent and that's why I'm still releasing records. You need a physical document. A collection of relatively current independent releases, free from PR influence, and a couple of long-format interviews.

If this is something you're interested in doing via Total Punk, awesome. I'll help. If this is more than you can handle -- and I'm not going to make a suggestion and not be able to walk the walk, we can lay it out and publish it. If someone else, specifically someone who's got some background in zines wants to do it, go for it. This will be a money-losing venture.

I've been doing this for 20 years too and I've seen the situation worsen. I'm tired of it. That's just my two cents.

i despise instagram posts as you're mentioning so i'm definitely in favor of the sentiment. MRR does review stuff somewhat regularly still (i only write on the year end lists) and remains a good model for the format as well. I'd certainly welcome reading more edited/intentional posts about new music as it does really help me click that play button!

kai I like MRR. The only interview I did for them (Drew from Sick Thoughts) landed the cover, so I thought I'd stop while I was ahead. Mitch Cardwell was/is reliable, knowledgeable and consistent. And they effectively review all submissions.

Correct if I'm wrong, don't they have a proviso that record reviewers live in the Bay Area?

Ryan Leach

The Bay Area limitation fell away after the print edition ended. I do reviews for MRR & live in Portland; we've got current reviewers all over the US, in South America, Europe, the UK, etc.

Got it.

Layla Gibbon and Mitch were the people hitting it out of the park when I got the print mag. Not to slight anyone else -- there were/are talented people there -- but they were Forced Exposure-level contributors.

Also, not directed to any comments here specifically, but MRR is always open to bringing in new reviewers & we've put out multiple calls for fresh voices over the last few years, so if anyone is unsatisfied with the current state of MRR reviews & actually wants to contribute, feel free to email reviews@maximumrocknroll.com to get info on coming on as a reviewer. MRR is what people make of it; keeping a completely free, volunteer-run resource for punk reviews with zero PR sway pulling the strings takes a lot more behind-the-scenes work than I think a lot of people truly understand.

I think most of us know how hard and costly it is -- I could've bought a new Honda Civic after 14 years of losses in the "record biz" and I was on staff at Razorcake and then Termbo for most of my adult life. Packing mags, editing, transcribing for others, going for 501(c) status, etc. I actually know about the Bay Area stipulation cuz I used to exchange emails with Mitch. When the other zine I contributed to started changing direction and Roctober went out, I hit him up -- could've been someone else -- about reviewing for MRR to keep abreast of what was coming in. That's good they've changed policy. I agree with you -- most people outside of this forum have no idea what goes into keeping MRR and other zines afloat. It's a thankless grind.

I would like to see a print zine again. Even if it's an early '76-style zine of a few pages.

Would contribute. I like music and enjoy oppressing readers.

Randall Just sent you a message.

I'm not much of a writer, but I'd gladly contribute illustration and graphic design work!

When MRR’s monthly print life ended, I thought / hoped an annual “Year In Punk” edition would inevitably appear.

Seems fitting to start with a recent Total Punk review (I write these to get 'em in the general playbox at the college radio station):

The Circulators - Insufficient Fun

In the liner notes of a reissue of The Real Kids’ debut LP, the author reflects that “life then was–still is–a kinda aimless search for a thrill, and that thrill was, goofy as it sounds, rock n’ roll.” Indeed: boredom, apathy, tedium and ennui are universal problems, and rock ‘n’ roll offers a universal solution, alchemizing listlessness into restlessness into cheap guitars on Facebook Marketplace into raucous bursts of blood-pumping ruckus that, for a couple minutes at a time, allow us to lose ourselves in our own animal exuberance and forget that we’ve ever felt dead inside. In this sense, the title of San Francisco-based The Circulators’ debut LP poses the fundamental problem–“Insufficient Fun”--and the tracks themselves present the fuck-it-let’s-just-roll-a-ball-of-flames-down-a-hill solution. “Come on baby, let’s go on the loose,” the first track commands, and the wide-open, way-out rumpus doesn’t stop until the album suddenly ends 30-ish minutes later. “I wanna see you every day, I’m hung on every word you say!” the vocalist cries to his paramour on “Wired Over You”; it’s not entirely clear whether this is the same lover who ends up in jail for stealing catalytic converters on the second track (“Catalytic Converter”), but I like to think that it is. If boredom is a dreary descent down the slope towards the x/death-axis, and thrills are the opposite of boredom, then according to my calculations, the most life-affirming cris de coeur are the ones that maximize recklessness, mixing excitement and danger and fun in a bottle and shaking it up to spark a chemical reaction that intensifies the effects of all three ingredients. I mean, yeah, sure, you might end up in jail. And jail definitely sucks and is boring. But that’s OK, because when you finally get released, we’ve got a solution for that.

Might as well post this, too:

Sex Mex - Goes to Hell! EP

Within minutes of my first listen to the maniacal lo-fi bubblegum punk frenzy of Sex Mex’s last full-length album, “Sex Mex ‘23,” I was already thinking, “Holy hell, this rips, I can’t wait until 'Sex Mex '24’ comes out!” Sadly, I’m still waiting for that, but Clark Gray–for whom Sex Mex is essentially a solo project with a touring band–still bristles with creative restlessness, having unleashed a scattershot smorgasbord of budget punk scorchers. And the agitation has only amplified: On this EP, the guitars are not merely “fuzzy”; they’re overdriven and mammothed-up into a blistering hairiness that bounces and bops with the same rabid pop hookery that has become Sex Mex’s signature treat, but with more spleen and snarl than ever before. “If you wanna rake in the dough / just gentrify some rock and roll,” he trash-talks on “Pretty Boy,” lambasting what he sees as lucre-seeking charlatans who water down the genre, diluting the danger right out of it. I have no idea how much money Sex Mex makes themselves, although I’d imagine that, at best (worst?), they’ve achieved that storied income bracket where you’re too “wealthy” to qualify for a SNAP card, but too poor to pay the electricity bill this month because your van blew a tire, and you ended up having to pay for a whole new set because the remaining three were as smooth and bald as a dolphin’s skin. But I say: let the pretty boys have their soulless McMansions. We're all gonna die anyway, and those losers don’t even know they're only halfway alive.

Randall The pleasure is all mine! It helps me maintain the writing habit in general, and besides, it's all small price to pay to get to radio-blast KBD/garage punk across a city that hasn't had all that much exposure to that particular sound.

My wife writes reviews, too. She has recent ones for Ghoulies and 1-800-Mikey. She'll post them once she creates an account--which she will do after however long it takes for her to overanalyze her choice for a clever username.

Vague Fugue - "ST EP CS"

Would you like to join me in attaining acute glue-sniffing psychosis while listening to Hawkwind’s “Space Ritual” in an abandoned slaughterhouse full of bent cigarette butts, dried-up phosphorescent alien snot, and malfunctioning synthetic human parts and accessories? If your answer is “no,” then I’m afraid we can’t be friends anymore, but if the answer is “yes,” then by all means, let’s spend some quality time together with the howling cyborg punk phantasmagoria that is Vague Fugue’s first release “ST EP CS.” If this doesn’t sound like a good time to you, well, let me assure you: it is. From the first moments of “Enya Gotti DeVito,” when you’re brain-slapped with a shattering guitar twang and an echo chamber shout with a sinisterly grooving bassline slithering beneath it all, you know you’re in for some top-tier weirdo punk party spazzery. “Weird punk.” Is that the genre? There are no discernible synths to be heard here–just shredding eruptions of warped-out effect pedal necromancy–but it does remind me of a music education presentation I once did for a college radio station titled, “Chromosome Damage: Towards a Chronology of Weird Punk (A Deranged Intersectional Tendency).” In it, I posited that, dystopian themes notwithstanding, those bands that have blended (blendered?) robots with rock ‘n’ roll have found exuberance, even ecstatic exuberance, in spite of–or maybe because of–the grimy sci-fi hallucination that is their preferred habitat. “ST EP CS” supports my thesis: the hooks are as catchy as the psych-mare is bleak. The fever dreams of an angry ghost trapped in a magnetic hard drive have never been so fun.