Let’s Get Violent Now, Everybody’s Learning How, Happy Birthday to Beneath California by Retox, Released 2/10/15
Maybe it’s because I’m home in San Diego this week and the sunshine is tripping me out after a long winter on the farm but right now Retox feels like the brutal dark punk Beach Boys.
It’s a beautiful, warm day where I’m at, the sun hot on the back of my fake leather jacket, and from where I sit on the South Mission jetty, the sea is calm and the water so clear it’s like a blue-green swimming pool. Without headphones, and without Retox’s Beneath California blasting, you would hear gulls crying and you would hear the sound of the surf breaking and the water at the shoreline rolling in and out.
Released eight years ago today, Beneath California is a freight train with blades poking out of it like some weird, spiked eel racing forward. It’s scuzzy and vibrant and I’m glad to be with it.
So, a guy my age just walked by, headed back from the end of the jetty with a fishing rod in one hand and a white plastic bucket by the metal handle in the other. He wore a black tshirt reading “Your music sucks” and he sneered at me like I was the worst mayor San Diego has ever had. Fuck you too my friend.
–Adam Gnade, author of The Internet Newspaper and After Tonight, Everything Will Be Different