Junior Kimbrough

The blues hardly gets any more raw and bleak as "Most Things Haven't Worked Out."

Tommy Castro

Tommy Castro... Bay Area (San Fran) blues rock legend. He's been at it a while, so if you're a newbie, I recommend starting at the beginning.

X - The Band

Hey, we all have a special affinity for our hometown bands, now, don't we? John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom, DJ Bonebrake...  an iconic LA band.

The Clash

The Clash city rockers, ay.

Social Distortion

Growing up in Southern California, summer music meant the sounds of local punk bands like SxDx... who have now turned into a stately, old, rock 'n roll institution.

Sister Machine Gun

Sister Machine Gun was another band that I discovered, funny enough, at the same concert as Chemlab. SMG were the second opening act that night and I was really impressed with frontman Chris Randall's charisma and delivery. I was sure they were going to become the breakthrough industrial act, but that ended up being Nine Inch Nails. Wrong on that count, but SMG put out some of my favorite music through the '90s and into the new millennium. They just had a groove and swagger that set them apart in the genre.

Chemlab

Digging back through the '90s has been so fun, I can't stop. The first time I saw Chemlab, they were the first opening band, I'd never heard of them, and the singer came out wearing tin foil over his face. I bought everything I could find - which was only this album and an earlier EP - the next day. It still sounds good to my ears. It's the kind of thing that would fit right in if there were a bar scene in Blade Runner.