GAD! Zine

    Earlier this year, Guntersville, AL band The Devil's Got A Hold On Me played a show at the Glass Onion in Gadsden. I'd seen them play several times and was excited to see them tear up my local vinyl fix. Though the crowd was minimal (welcome to Gadsden!), the trio gave us their all. At least the cool people showed up. Per usual, Keith's guitar was loud and nasty and dirty and effortless. Brad killed on drums, pounding the beat with a sufficient prowess and an excess of violence. I've never heard anyone ask, "Where's the bass guitar?". The duo was, as always, tight and unhinged at the same time. And then there was Nathan...       Nate yelled into the microphone. He was always angry, hurt, determined. He mostly sang looking down. Or maybe inward. I never once saw the man sing to an audience. Never. He refused to face us beyond a passing glimpse. We were a corner into which he had backed. In reality, he was a nice guy who loved his family and frien...

Caught wind of this band based on a recommendation by another Huntsville-area musician, Judson Charles Law. What was once a wind has blossomed into a full-blown Alabama mobile-home chompin’ tornado. If memory serves, he used the words “Replacements” and “Springsteen” as reference anchors for the band. At that point, my eyes glazed over, and everything took on the appearance of the backdrop of the Twilight Zone movie freakouts. And to the benefit of Mr. Law, full credence is due to his ascertainment. I have gone very few days in the last two months not spinning this record. I have listened to it on days when I was telling myself “not Nato Coles again. Find something else. Anything.” And like any female protagonist in almost every romantic comedy produced in the last thirty years, I kept returning, powerless to its charms, to my renegade, maverick romantic interest, Nato Coles (& The Blue Diamond Band, where noted). In a nutshell, Nato Coles is the early sector of Bruce Spri...

Proper review coming soon in GAD! X   Here's a little inside baseball for ya. The process of reviewing music (and everything else for that matter) is not an exact science. Every reviewer approaches their subject differently. Some folks just run through an album once and they're done and they have an opinion and they type/write/scrawl their opinion and they are on to the next one. Others take weeks deconstructing every waking second of said release, analyzing the most minute details, of not only the audio, but even the artwork and liner notes. Some writers are clinical. Some are comical. Some are all about the music. Some give their life story in an attempt to find that music's proper context within it. None of those styles are correct or incorrect. And no critic's voice is appreciated by everyone.             My music review writing style kinda fluctuates. There's usually some humor or rhetoric. I can be clinical, but I tend opt for fast ...

   What is GAD! ? GAD! is a an old school, black & white, photocopied, poorly stapled together, zine. What's a zine? Go look it up. Then make one. Anyway, the GAD! zine is a free publication put together by volunteers to promote independent music, film, art, zines, poetry, etc. Mostly of the punk rock variety, but we are hardly limited to that one genre. Independence and creativity are our thing. Because most of us live in Alabama, a lot of our coverage is of the Southeastern US, but we talk to and about artists from all over the world.    We're currently putting together our 10th issue. It'll be out before the end of the year. That sounds kinda vague, doesn't it? Well, that's because even after we have our content ready, we still have to do layout (either on a computer or with scissors and glue), print the pages (while doing battle with our stubborn photocopier), put issues together, and staple them. Because the zine is free, we depend entirely on funds fr...