The Beginning
This Is.....

THE REVIEW

Because I don't want to talk about the records I buy.

Nowadays, my friends even download Internal Medicine textbooks to pass exams, and I can't be any less. But sometimes I can't resist: I'm there in the record store, catch an interesting vinyl, nice cover, listened to three tracks on Myspace, and the guys sound promising; in the end, I buy it, go home, put it on, and 5 out of 5 tracks make me shake my ass while sipping green tea. I'm satisfied.

"Who says rock is dead, is gay!" always says a friend of mine, but we know he often locks himself in the bathroom and doesn't drink enough beer to further argue his itchy thesis.

"Ah, but rock after '73 has just recycled itself to exhaustion!" says someone who has turned to die-hard electronica and doesn't leave the house anymore.

"No damn! What about '77 then??! When the Clash came and wiped their asses with your damn dinosaurs!" says the Punkalive (I adore him! He’s our stubborn punk-vegan, narrowly escaping death from prolonged consumption of beans and/or chickpeas! Always with jaundiced-yellow skin, and if you touch the Black Flag, he’ll kill your dog or mother, depending on the severity of the insult).

Mat Bethancourt (leader of Josiah, Kings of Frog Island, and responsible for the trip launched by these The Beginning) probably doesn't give a damn. He gets Led Zeppelin II for his first communion and is hooked for the next half-decade. He takes a step back to revive late '60s and early '70s psychedelia. Spends a considerable amount on Quicksilver Messenger Service's discography, then Grateful Dead and, of course, Jimi Hendrix. Tattoos some random stuff, does drugs, hooks up with a blonde dreadlocked girl who models in his figurative art and painting class and is crazy about lasagna. Long hair, Gibson, after-work platform shoes, and a revolutionary spirit in his jeans.

Mat Bethancourt doesn’t want to talk about the music he plays.

And his friends are assholes.