various artists - San Diego Is Burning

The timing of this posting is apt, because for 10 years of my life, I would spend this specific week in San Diego, working Nerd Prom. They may call it San Diego ComicCon, the official name might be ComicCon International, but, for a decade, I would fly in from the East Coast to meet with vendors and licensors, talk toys, and dream of sneaking out to the Casbah for a few hours while the rest of the city focused on superheroes. They were heady days, full of far too much drinking, far too little sleep, occasional brushes with A-listers and D-listers, and very mild weather. I always thought it would be a nice place to live if I weren't already embedded in Baltimore, then Atlanta, then Seattle.

I snagged this one as part of a larger Discogs order last year, a dollar CD featuring the Black Heart Procession, the Dropscience, and Kill Me Tomorrow. Like so many other scene surveys, the results can be hit or miss. I'm always going to give No Knife a spin, and the Champagne Kiss track was a very pleasant surprise upon first listen. This mostly reminds me of my years of an upperclassman in college, booking shows in between student films and term papers. I see a name like Goodbye Blue Monday and it immediately triggers a memory of an email from a booking agent, looking for a mid-week opening on a bill. The memory, like this comp, is not unpleasant.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Swami Sound System Vol. 1: 2003 Sales Conference

There are certain labels that I can always count on to deliver the goods. Dischord, 625 Thrashcore, 12XU; if their logo is on the record, it's probably going to be a good one. Swami also makes that list for me. This 2003 sampler isn't a sampler so much as a gathering of unreleased (at that time) tracks from a range of the San Diego label's groups. You get three servings of John Reis, with songs from RFTC, Hot Snakes, and the Sultans. Dan Sartain, who I've written about before here, makes his Swami debut. The Loincloth track is a big ol' ball-swingin' metal instrumental that'll scare your mama. And Sonny Vincent, whether with Testors or by himself, was a revelation in 2003, and a must-listen in 2026. Discogs sez there's a vinyl version of this, but I don't recall ever seeing it stocked. I've been tooling around with the windows down, blasting this one, and even the kids with the wrapped Geo Metros agree; this is a good'un.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Audioflashcard

Note: fixed the link to include the entire comp. Thanks to Friend for leaving the comment.

GSL made it a decade and a half, starting out in Boulder in 1993 and wrapping things up in Los Angeles in 2007, with a stop-over in San Diego. During that time, they released no less than a half dozen records that I still find irreplaceable. Early releases from the Locust, the V.S.S., and Get Hustle built a track record that would soon include the Mars Volta, !!!, and the Rapture. This was the sound of late 90s hardcore growing up. And I'm not talking about the youth crew...these were the weirdos from your town who were booking Born Against and Heroin and Huggy Bear in their basements, then going off to college towns where they'd get into Christian Death or Albert Ayler or Karen Dalton. They'd meld it all together, making sounds that'd turn off every macho shithead and turn on their friends and younger siblings.

This sampler came at the midway point of Gold Standard Laboratories' lifespan. GSL would put out the first !!! full length, a Mohinder discography, a collaborative 7" between xBxRx, Miss Pussycat, and Quintron, the Locust's remix 12", and the first post-At The Drive-In release from Cedric and Omar as De Facto in 2001. The last of those would lead to the Mars Volta, who ultimately reached the sort of popularity that honestly blew everyone's I knew's minds. These were deeply different, viewed with some level of distrust, and thus were deeply, honestly, punker than anything else running at the same time. 25 years on, this still feels pretty transgressive, and makes me wonder why the hell we thought anyone was selling out.

Discogs

Click here to download.

various artists - Slightest Indication Of Change

Rabbit rabbit, as the kids have said from time to time. It's the first of the month, so get your check and get up.

"Slightest Indication Of Change" is the seventh release from Slowdance Records, a perfectly cromulent label from San Diego whose six year output covered a pretty wide swath of what was going on in the world of independent rock back at the turn of the millenium. Their first release was a Boilermaker/Three Mile Pilot split 7" that still gets the occasional spin on the turntable at Ape Central; they also did a tour split with my buddy Ben and Braid vocalist Bob Nanna that I've never managed to lay my hands on.

So it was that I snagged a copy of this shortly after its release in 2000, mainly b/c it had a Kind Of Like Spitting cut on it I didn't own, plus anything from Piebald and Small Brown Bike at that time was going to pique my interest and get my money. I'd heard Jejune and No Knife before, via splits with other bands I'd liked, and even the likes of the Casket Lottery and the Six Parts Seven weren't completely unknown to me back then. This was, and remains, a great snapshot of the more tuneful part of the touring scene pre-9/11, where the boundaries of genre remained blurred and everyone still played basements and dive bars and hadn't gotten publicists yet.

Discogs

Click here to download.