So it's May and my attempt to finish the Gremmys earlier each year is clearly going in the opposite direction despite this being the easiet category. I barely have to do anything! I simply call upon some friends in the surf world and see what they think of this year's crop of surf music so that they may either validate my opinions or alleviate the guilt I feel from omitting certain releases. I'd like to point out that the blame for the tardiness lies on me, and that a few of these were submitted 1-3 months ago.

The worst thing about the Gremmys is how much weight it puts on my opinions. I may have listened to a lot, but my tastes are as fickle as anybody else's, and even as I write them I know I'm leaving off specific records that others really enjoyed. So why not bring in some friends to provide some different perpsectives? Here are some picks from cool people who I know listened to a lot and whose opinions I respect.

It's December, I'm very busy working on the Gremmy Awards, but I have to squeeze in a review because this was sent to me months ago before the aire was frigid. And I would guess that Chad and Cherry won't be reviewing it, so somebody has to!

This year was an especially difficult Gremmy Awards with so many great surf releases to sift through. I start to feel guilty, I'm subject to my own tastes and biases as much as anybody else, but most of those anybodies don't have a series of awards. So the Guest Gremmys help mitigate that guilt by bringing in other prominent surf ears to either agree with me or mention all the things that I felt guilty about not mentioning. Guilt aside, it's eye opening to see how albums land on other listeners. Despite all this social media, I still don't have a feel for whether my peers have similar feelings about these releases as I do, and The Guest Gremmys are a great way to lay it all on the table.

Odds and ends, things that I feel need to be recognized to sum up the year. Some categories return year-on-year, some don't.

The Gremmys put a lot of weight on my fickle tastes, so I like to spread out and get input from others who have listened to a lot of new surf music to add some balance. It's always fun seeing what releases clicked with other people, and which ones people happen to agree with me about.

I gave everybody full reign over how they wanted to format it -- after all the format of the Gremmys is pretty awkward on its own. Italics are my own little intros.

Thanks to everybody that contributed this year!

After three SurfGuitar 101 Convention appearances I figured I was overdue in participating in the surf event representing my region: the Southern Surf StompFest. StompFest is the annual big event surrounding the smaller monthly Southern Surf Stomp events in Atlanta. It’s a full day of surf & instro groups from everywhere but with a little bit of bias towards groups closer to Atlanta. It’s a free event put on by Chad Shivers of bands like The Squares, Moonbase, The KBK and most importantly The Mystery Men?