Music Review: Tijuana Panthers - Max Baker

Never having any older brothers, I never had anybody really close to me to emulate or tell me about all the great music I should listen to. I was blind and unable to swim when I took my first tentative steps into the music pool. For me, it started with the oldies station, because that was the safest music to listen to.

When I was a kid, oldies meant 50's and 60's music, I guess these days it leans more toward 70's and 80's but whatever. I was introduced to rock and roll through Elvis, The Beatles, The Kinks, Buddy Holly, and so forth. One of the songs that really struck me, the same way it struck many other young men who actually grew up in that time period, was Walk, Don't Run by The Ventures. The Ventures were my first introduction to anything that could be categorized as Surf Rock.

Later, after I had grown but was still in the influential teenage years, I saw a movie called Pulp Fiction. Quentin Tarantino introduced me to real surf rock, the kind that you didn't hear on the radio, and my world was turned upside down again.

Ever since then, I've had an undying love for surf rock. At it's best, it is raw, simple, unfiltered fun. That brings me to the Tijuana Panthers. These guys rock.



These kids are just pure rock and roll. It's impossible to listen to this music and be in a bad mood. They are a stripped down three piece combo who dance back and forth between Buzzcocks style three chord punk rock, easy going riff rock, and good old southern rock jams.



Tijuana Panthers are easy to listen to, and sometimes, when you're cruising around at 2 A.M. with the windows down letting the summer wind blow though you, that's all you need to make it a perfect night.

Music Review: POND FROND

By far, my absolute favorite album of 2010 was FROND by Australian psychedelic band POND.



Starting with the opening track, Betty Davis(Will Come Down From Heaven to Save Us) you know what kind of a ride you are in for with this band. Wild howling, crashing drums, and freaked out guitars.

I got this album on a whim, based entirely on them being tagged as a "psychedelic" rock band, and I was not disappointed. But the true glory of this album is not the psychedelic rock it is rooted in, but also in the various other genres present underneath the surface. From the funky bass of Cloud City, the pop rock of Annie Orange Tree, to Berlin era Bowie style synth rock of Mussels Tonight? this band skirts across multiple layers of rock while still maintaining a free form psychedelic posture.



As I said, there's a refreshing freestyle feeling to most of the songs construction. This is a band of talented young men laying down the foundation of a song, and then just going crazy on top of it.

POND is definitely a "headphones" band, as I call them. There is so much going on in each song, so many subtle layers of noise, guitars, and synthesizers swirling around underneath the lead riffs and chorus of vocals that you need to immerse yourself in the music and just let it all wash over you.