Bandcamp Friday means Bandcamp doesn't take a cut of what they sell, so ALMOST all of your purchase will go to the band (almost because Paypal exists). Which is to say it's a great day to stock up on music. It's also become a time for me to go back and write something about some recent releases to help guide you.

This category is for surf groups that don't feel like they need to closely imitate the sounds of yesteryear, who carve out their own sound and identity. I don't know if I've ever crammed this category with so many records as this year -- and this is after several difficult cuts. Maybe I need to be more ruthless, or maybe there was just so much to love. I like to think it's the latter. Here are what I consider to be the cream of the crop for 2020.

The final chunk of the Top 100 Surf Records of the 2010s is here, with plenty of longstanding surf heavyweights but also some great new upstarts. Thank you to everybody that voted on this list and I hope you're satisfied with the results!

Another Bandcamp Friday where 100% of your purchase benefits the band. Admittedly this one snuck up on me, so forgive me if the reviews are a little hasty, but there's a good chunk of them! Here's some releases that I think warrant your attention. In no particular order.

Let's Fly to Mars is a high-profile, long-term, cross-continental collaboration between Jeremy DeHart known primarily from The Aqualads, El Firetone from El Ray, Dr. Boris  from Messer Chups, and Dane Carter from The Madeira. Jeremy lays out the story in detail in this post at SurfGuitar101 that I would highly recommend reading.

Y’all, I do my best to stay on top of this stuff, so I felt like a chump when I walked up to the merch table at our local Messer Chups show to find an album I’d never seen before. Their new one no less! To be fair, Mondo Harp has been strangely under the radar, with barely any mention on facebook and not yet having made its way to bandcamp or even Amazon. The opening track “Humanica” has a video available but it’s promoting the tour, not the album.

Despite New Orleans' historic charm and notoriety, we're simply often not a geographically ideal spot for a tour and our small size (New Orleans Metro Area sits just below 1 million) makes it a risky opportunity. That said, there's an unwritten law that says that if you name your album after a swamp, you have to tour at the swamp, so I'm glad Messer Chups complied with the law.

Here's the latest from everybody's favorite Russian instro group. While their general sound isn't much different from their recent albums, it's not all draculas and coffins: you've got some pleasant steel guitar thrown into "Hula Drag-u-La", and you've even got a batman theme on "Chupacabra vs Batman". For whatever reason, we get another version of Popcorn with "Children of the Popcorn" (Zombie Shopping had "Popcorno"). I've listened to it a few times but all I really have to say is that it's Messer Chups -- you know what to do.

Man, what a time to be alive. The Messer Chups (or in this case a side project of the Messer Chups) can release an album and you immediately have a chance to listen to it. You used to have to dig around for the one site that seemed to be holding them at the time. That said, if you're looking for a physical copy, that still may be the case as Trash Wax records doesn't have it listed yet.

After years of "maybe next years", I finally got my ass in gear and bought myself a plane ticket to Los Angeles for the Surfguitar101 Convention, organized chiefly by Jeff "Bigtikidude" Hanson as a big ol' meetup for members of surfguitar101.com and, you know, surf nuts in general.

Let's just skip to the end real quick: it was an absolutely incredible time. It was a kinda special thing to me getting to see a scene that I've only been a part of from afar, and the music started good and managed to top itself with each act.