Things I've Been Listening To Lately

This is not necessarily a week by week list of what I've been listening to. I just decided to create a new post and decided that it was time to share what I've been listening to again. My hope is that if you like the kind of old school punk that we release on Artifix Records, you may be inclined to check out some of the other genres or artists that we also enjoy besides what we release. Anyway, here goes...

The Best of Bollywood CD on Hip-O Records
The Drags "45x3" CD on Empty Records
The Drags "Dragsploitation...Now!" on Estrus Records
The Real Kids "Grown Up Wrong" on Norton Records
Ramones -any/all
Swans "Swans Are Dead" 2xCD on Release Records
One Way System "Waiting For Zero" CD on GMM Records
The Brat "Act of Faith" CD-EP on Time Bomb! Records
Horror Hits (Halloween compilation -best one I've ever found!) by Paper Magic Group
Vice Squad -"Live and Loud" on Cleopatra Records
First Born (Guyanese Reggae that Kim brought home on her trip to Guyana) 3xdemo CDs on Vizion Records
The Rotters "Pull It and Yell" CD on Dionysus Records
Born Bad (compilations of 50s-60s rock that Cramps borrowed tunes/ideas from) several volumes CDs

Not much else lately...have not had much of a chance to listen to music lately, but I have been watching a lot of great Japanese movies lately. I've been watching a lot of "Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman" movies, the complete "Hanzo the Razor" series, three of the "Sleepy Eyes of Death" series, and a great Japanese comedy called "Tampopo" which I would encourage everyone to watch! Great film! Labeled as the first "Noodle Western". Check it out!

More later -Greg @ Artifix

RAMONES benefit!

Well...thanks to Dawn Wirth (again!), we found out about a special benefit for cancer and lymphoma that the RAMONES (Marky Ramone and other Ramone family members) were supporting in conjunction with 103.1 fm in L.A. last Friday. We were lucky to make it on time to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery and watch "Rock'n'Roll High School" and hang out with some of the stars from the film. It was really nice to take our two daughters to the event. Our youngest, a 12 year-old, is blossoming into a real RAMONES fan. She even bought her first RAMONES shirt at the event! It was amazing to see how many people turned out for the event. The grass hillside was covered with both old and new punks alike.

Some of the guests for the event included: P.J. Soles (who starred as Riff Randell in the movie), Alan Arkush the director, Marky Ramone, Linda Ramone, Lars Fredrickson (from RANCID), and some others. The audience was also a 'who's who' of L.A. punkdom. Alice Bag and Jenny Lens were there...many others who we hard a hard time seeing because of the dark. It was a lot of fun and it had a weird feeling for me as I felt like the punk torch was being passed to a younger generation as I saw my daughters getting so excited about the event.

I have not been the biggest fan of indie 103.1 fm for my own reasons, but I do appreciate that they are a big enough force to put on these kind of events and have the communication ability to bring so many together. I truly wish them the best of luck and hope that they continue with these kind of pursuits and can manage to keep the commercialism to a minimum as they have done so far.

Maybe I'll embarrass my daughters and post some of their pictures on here with P.J. Soles and Lars. Thanks again for keeping us informed Dawn! -Greg @ Artifix

Things I've Been Listening To This Week

June 25th through July2nd
This is a list of some of the things that I've been listening to this last week:

THE BELLRAYS -1st LP on Vital Gesture
STEPHAN GRAPPELLI -Live at Carnegie Hall
THE DOGS -Suburban Nightmare LP on Dionysus
D.I.Y. PUNK: The Modern World (U.K. Punk part II) great CD features most of the best of British punk: Rezillos, Jam, Sham 69, 999, etc. -Rhino
DICKS -(Greatest Hits comp.) on Alternative Tentacles
SHADOW MINSTRELS LP
RED WEDDING EP
THE GOOD BOYS -Newest demo
RAMONES -Anthology on Rhino
RONNIE HAYDOCK -99 Chicks LP on Norton
GRAVEDIGGER 5 -All Black and Hairy LP on Voxx
THE LOONS -CD on Ugly Things Records
THE SATELLITERS -Hashish LP on Dionysus
THE ABSENTEES -Illegal Listening Device CD on Artifix (I know, shameless...but it's true! I put out stuff that I like to listen to too!)
THE FREEZE -Land of the Lost/Rabid Reaction CD on Dr. Strange
BUZZCOCKS -Entertaining Friends CD on IRS
KING BENNIE NAWAHI -Classic Hawaiian Lap Steel Guitar CD on Yazoo
CONTROLLERS -unreleased demos
BIG JAY MCNEELY -various cuts on CD
a few more that I can't think of...this list might give you an idea of the kinds of stuff that we listen to here at Artifix. We mix things up quite a bit between '77 style punk, hardcore, rockabilly, garage, big band, hot jazz, ragtime, etc. New list next week!