Blond Fuzz

It's been a busy year for Boca Raton garage rock act Blond Fuzz. They lost their old name, Stonefox, to a european pop act, had their singer take a two month sojourn to Brooklyn and finally reformed sans bassist. Now resettled and reborn hard, the three terrrors of Palm Beach County are busy trying to turn their knack for tuneful skronk into a 21st century music career.

A new album is being made and a west coast tour of dive bars is being planned to support what will hopefully be their first record put out by a proper label. In order to prepare for their long van ride the boys from rat mouth are playing a string of local gigs, including tonight's rare Miami show at the Vagabond. If you miss tonight's orgy of blues-flavored garage rock, next Thursday finds them back in the 305 at Kill Your Idols on Miami Beach - but if you miss that, it'll take a road trip to see Blond Fuzz for the rest of the year.

If you are down for a little desert debauchery, I suggest Blond Fuzz's November 18th show at the Double Down in Las Vegas. That joint makes a mean bacon martini.


Read more: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/miami-music/2010/08/boca-raton-garage-rock-act-blond-fuzz-ditches-their-old-name-and-rocks-the-vagabond-tonight.html#ixzz0yscM1ZdW - The Miami Herald

Most live bands hold a listener’s interest for a limited period of time between their conversation, reflection and a drink order or two. Boca Raton band Blond Fuzz (myspace.com/blondfuzz), on the other hand, is a rock trio that simply won’t allow itself to be ignored.

Part of it is the volume. Don’t get too close to singing lead guitarist Dave Barnard’s amplifiers, or you might get a quick shave. But mostly it’s the sound, the look and an aura that combines the bluesy bombast of Led Zeppelin with retro rock elements of the White Stripes and the chameleonic attitude of David Bowie.

Lead singer/rhythm guitarist Jordan Asher plays through an octave pedal, plus separate guitar and bass amplifiers, to eliminate the need for a bassist, and drummer Jeff Rose adds a thundering foundation and a third vocal. After two CD releases under the name Stonefox, the latest as a quartet with bassist Ross Fuentes, the three 23-year-old friends decided it was time for a new moniker.

"Within the last five years, a bunch of Stonefoxes have popped up," says Asher, "including one in Europe that’s more like the Spice Girls. They have money behind them, and legal rights to the name. We wanted to start over with a new name for the original trio, and lots of bands have started out with an EP before recording a full-length album. So we’re finishing an EP of five to seven songs, which we’ll release as Blond Fuzz. And we think they’re the best songs we’ve ever written."

One tune, “Too Strung Out”, certainly qualifies on the band’s MySpace site. With its stops and starts, infectious fury and alternate tuning, it’s the kind of song that can get you a speeding ticket in your car and keep your undivided attention live. Blond Fuzz brings the blues-based rock with retro glam elements, but no pop filler. Stay tuned.

See Blond Fuzz (with Everymen, the Clementines and the reunited Pretty Faces) at 8 p.m. Friday, July 16, at Propaganda, 6 S. J St., Lake Worth (561-547-7273), and at 8 p.m. on July 31 as part of the 23rd anniversary party at Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach (561-832-9999) . - Palm Beach Post

Well that was quick. Although we didn't realize it at the time, New Times Broward-Palm Beach officially ran the last major piece on Stonefox because the band is no more. During Saturday's performance at Propaganda in Lake Worth, Stonefox lead singer Jordan Asher Cruz announced that he, guitarist Dave Barnard, and drummer Jeff Rose would operate under a different name to avoid the eventual legal scrapes that their moniker might cause.

The trio's new name: Blond Fuzz.
StoneFoxFacebookBlondFuzz.jpg
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The change has been reflected on the band's MySpace and Facebook pages. Be sure to spell it correctly, though, with no "e." Google searches for "blonde fuzz" direct to pictures of Kanye West's girlfriend and f*ckyeahilikeboys.tumblr.com -- which admittedly could be a boon for upping the band's following within a couple demographics.

As the first offering from Blond Fuzz, check out an MP3 of the band covering the Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat" in raucous fashion. Download the track here.

County Grind readers, what do you think of the new name? - Broward/Palm Beach New Times

If you've skimmed this blog in the past several months, you know the already-epic story of Blond Fuzz, the artists formerly known as Stonefox: We thought they were long gone, but now (thank goodness) they're back, sans a fourth member, with a new track, a new tour, and a new moniker.

This is an unexpected but fitting change for a band so close to locals' hearts. That said, the name "Blond Fuzz" brings to mind a few images that could easily be turned into telling metaphors totally representational of this shift:

- Peach fuzz, the facial kind. New growth. Hmmm.
- Peach fuzz, the fruit kind. Fresh, plump, just picked.
- Puppies. No longer a quartet of foxes, but a trio of...?

Either way, since they've been back, they've been killing it, and it will be worth it to see them with this whole new burst of fuzzy energy.
- Broward/Palm Beach New Times

Boca band Blond Fuzz's performance really shone at the Miami Music Festival last weekend. But that only underscored the amateurish quality of much of the rest of the event. Planned as a three-day set of simultaneous showcases à la SXSW, the inaugural edition of MMF was poorly planned and mostly poorly attended. As a whole, the lineup didn't provide an accurate picture of the South Florida scene, nor did it bring in any real out-of-town buzz bands to entice the general public.
Blond Fuzz wowed the Tobacco Road crowd.

First, though, the good: I spent most of my MMF Saturday night at the 93 Rock Showcase at Tobacco Road, which drew a healthy crowd. The promotional pull of the station seemed to help. So did the attendance of the bar's regulars. The sound at the outdoor stage was good, and Blond Fuzz's rousing, professional performance earned some courting from a big-label A&R type. (Yes, there were a few of them at MMF, so it delivered in that respect.) - Miami New Times

To get to the crade of some of South Florida's best rock 'n' roll, head west on Yamato Road in Boca. Drive past a few strip malls, turn past the most massive one, and keep driving until the big-box stores finally fall away, replaced by the winding, sweeping vistas of impeccably watered lawns. The road patterns here are impenetrable to outsiders, and everything seems impossibly green. Turn down a side street and you'll be the only creature moving — the air is still, everything so quiet it qualifies almost as an absence of noise. But park on a sloping driveway, follow the walkway to the door of an airy, gabled bungalow, and stick your ear to the paneled door.

And through the wood, you will hear some of the nastiest, dirtiest, swampiest riffage you've never heard around these parts. This is the lair of Blond Fuzz, the region's most improbable musical product — a trio (sometimes quartet) of 22-year-olds shouting down the devil with a bluesy squall pushed through Vox amps. Pushed inside by the oppressive weather and ennui of the local circuit, the band has retreated into its fortress, spending weeks at a time in the tangled wires spread across drummer Jeff Rose's carpeted, sunken living-room floor. And they wouldn't have it any other way — at least for now. "It's helped us write the way we want to write," says Dave Barnard, the band's dexterous second guitarist. "We're isolated from every band that's similar; they're all in, maybe, Boston or L.A. or New York, and here we are almost in the cracks of society, total suburbia. There's that, plus the heat and humidity — it makes you want to write some Delta blues shit."

The latest product of all this isolation is our gain: Back on the Wire, Blond Fuzz's second album, due out on July 30 and heralded by a pair of CD-release parties (that night in Propaganda at Lake Worth and the next night, August 1, at the Poor House in Fort Lauderdale). The 12 tracks were recorded in Rose's living room, or five minutes down the road in Barnard's, although you'd never know it.

Building from a slow, low-down bluesy groove, the album manages to traverse '30s Mississippi, '60s California and New York, and early '70s Detroit before landing, surreally, in '00s South Florida with just enough polish for the braver indie-rock kids. For the quieter parts, think, maybe, Marc Bolan in his Tyrannosaurus Rex years but less purposefully weird and with more balls. For the louder parts, think, perhaps, a clothed Iggy or a Wayne Kramer but backed by players whose nimble fingers and precise mastery of scales belie musical families and years of formal training.

And although the Blond Fuzz guys generally scoff at the bloated notion of "classic rock" per se, they've clearly digested the classics. Frontman/guitarist Jordan Asher name-checks bluesman Robert Johnson, usual suspects Robert Plant and Jimi Hendrix, and, specifically, "Bob Dylan going electric — we're talking like '64 to '66," Asher says. "It was really brash, with him putting really ugly blues over a full band and the band just playing on the spot with him. We actually have something like that on the album, built on a long improvisation."

The band's origins were pretty mundane, though. Longtime school friends Barnard and Rose, as teenagers, played in the clunkily named Stolen Bikes Ride Faster, an outfit they abashedly describe as "talent-core — just trying to play as many notes as possible in a measure," Barnard says. Later, they added Asher as well as Asher's older brother and became the more traditional rock, but still pretentiously named, band Legère. ("We thought it was French for light, like actual light, but later we found out it was more like lightweight," Rose says.) Eventually, Asher chafed under the band's Oasis-like vibe — in the realms of both music and intrabrother squabbles. He quit, and soon after, Legère broke up altogether, but Asher and Barnard soon met up again to start writing.

"We started writing on acoustic, so it was a lot of bluesier stuff, and with Jordan's voice, it really clicked. So we started recording at my house on a really shitty program with, like, a USB mic," Barnard recalls. "We edited it and put it in the car and were like, 'What the fuck did we just create?' "

With Rose back on board, their original, pared-down lineup was complete, dictating Blond Fuzz's loud but relatively pared-down sound — Barnard ran his guitar through a bass amp, and that was that. The first scrappy set of recordings became an album, Dead Under the Sun, and Blond Fuzz set out on a foolhardy but largely triumphant 2008 winter tour of the East Coast and Midwest. Sure, their van finally died in Tennessee — they abandoned it for a rental — and they circled several times past the venue they were slated to play in Chicago, mistaking it for a burned-out, abandoned building. But they were treated like visiting royalty in Cleveland and in Atlanta scored a bassist, Ross Fuentes, when they played a bill with his old punk rock - Miami New Times -- Arielle Castillo

Stonefox: "Back On The Wire"- album review 8.0/10

When one says "music" and "South Florida", garage-infused blues rock is not exactly the first thing that springs to mind. Well that's what you get, and plenty of, with Back On The Wire, the sophomore album from indie quartet Blond Fuzz.

Kicking off with the acoustic blues of "Shaky Fortune" it doesn't take the band long to establish their credentials. The bluesy garage rock clatter of songs like "Smoke & Mirrors" and "Stun Like a Gun" are enough to set any Black Keys fan's heart aflutter.

There's a psychedelic trippiness that permeates the album as well. The title track features acid-drop keyboards that approach Doors-worthy status. Add in a dash of swampy, dirty southern licks on a track like the feedback-drenched "Fuzzy Ray" and you've got yourself a great basis.

On a couple of occasions, notably "Dig Your Holes" and "Go Back To California", Stonefox drop into a fuzzy reverb shoegazer blues. Those standout tracks would not sound out of place on Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's Howl.

The band show off a more methodical side as well. "Decade Girl" is a toned down blues number, as is the incredibly well-plotted "Prophecy Blues". They even show off a pop sensibility on "Still As a Stone", which seems to take vocal cues from The Beatles catalogue.

With a little luck, you should be hearing Stonefox all over your local college radio station any time now.

Best tracks: "Back On the Wire", "Dig Your Holes"

Track listing for Back On The Wire:

Shaky Fortune
Smoke & Mirrors
Back On the Wire
Dig Your Holes
Still As a Stone
Go Back To California
Prophecy Blues
Stun Like a Gun
Man Behind the Curtain
Decade Girl
Fuzzy Ray
Don't Shoot the Messenger

- Snob's Music

Artist: Blond Fuzz
Title: Back on the Wire
Website: http://www.myspace.com/blondfuzz
Style: Rock/ Indie/ Blues
Rating: 8.9 out of 10
By Senior Writer C.W. Ross

Band Lineup: Jordan Asher (vocals), Dave Barnard (guitar), Jeff Rose (drums), Ross Fuentes (bass).

This band from South Florida is fairly new having only formed in 2007. Their debut LP, Dead in the Sun, featured 12-tracks and now their ready to release their sophomore effort, Back on the Wire, which also features 12-tracks. The album will be released officially on July 30th.

Blond Fuzz is self sufficient having written, recorded, and mixed all of the songs found on both of their LP’s at a house in Florida. The band’s music is down & dirty, gritty rock n’ roll. This is a beer-and-a-shot workingman’s band.
The band uses a combination of a classic rock sound via bands like, Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, along with a touch of guitar psychedelic ala Jimi Hendricks, all mixed together with a swamp style of blues music.

Things get going with a short, 34 seconds blues number titled, “Shaky Fortune.” The song then melds into track-2, “Smoke & Mirrors,” an up tempo blues-rock song.
Some of the highlight tracks for me included, “Still as a Stone,” that starts out with organ/keys and then moves towards an acoustic guitar ballad.
Other more melodic tracks include, “Prophecy Blues,” and “Decade Girl.”
One of the things that this band has down pat is their use of reverb and distortion in their songs that take it right to the edge of the musical cliff before pulling back. “Fuzzy Ray,” is a real good example of this with its collection of overdriven distorted sounds and squeals.

With respect to actor Robert Duvall, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, in the 1979 Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now’s famous line, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” I would like to add my own musical twist to it and say that after listening to “Fuzzy Ray” that, “I love the sound of distorted music in the morning.”

If the first track’s running time of just 34 seconds is the yin, then the releases last track, “Don’t Shoot the Messenger,” is the yang with a running time of 7:14 minutes that ties a nice big nasty bow on this great sounding gritty rock-blues release. - C.W's Place

Formed in 2007, South Florida’s Blond Fuzz is a four-piece bluesy-rock outfit and a true force to be reckoned with. Their unmistakable blend of garage/rock/blues is a breath of fresh air and new album, 'Back on the Wire' delivers a generous helping of sex, drugs and rock n roll just in time for the summer. Singer/guitarist, Jordan Asher talks to soundfreak about the new album.

Q: How did you all meet and how long have you been together as a band?
A: Well, Dave (lead guitarist), Jeff (drummer) and I have been playing together for about 4 years. We just met in High School have always been on the same page musically. Blond Fuzz didn’t form until two years ago, though. And a year ago we met Ross (bass) when we toured up to Atlanta. We all had an instant bonding and it was like we had known him just as long as each other. So ever since then we’ve been touring and playing as much around the U.S. as we could.

Q: Your impressive new album, ‘Back on the Wire’ is due for release on 30th July – can you give those who have still to hear it an idea of what to expect?
A: We wanted this album to be just as loud, and have the same “fuck it” attitude that we have when we play live. So, the best reaction we’ve gotten so far from this album is that we have been able to capture our live sound on record, which is an incredibly tough thing to do. Anyone can expect loud, unforgiving gritty rock and roll, psychedelic blues, and quiet, folkier songs. I think that there’s something on there that any music-lover can appreciate.

Q: Your debut, ‘Dead in the Sun’ was self-produced. Did you produce the new one yourselves too?
A: Yes, absolutely. After we recorded that one, we realized there was just no other way to record. Professional recording studios are good for one thing: Making sure your album doesn’t sound like shit. So, we realized before we started recording this one that we wanted it to sound better then the first album. But considering we only had one shitty microphone to record the entire first album I think we should get a star for effort. During the beginning sessions of recording this album, we became fortunate extremely fortunate and were given some really great studio gear. It just opens up a lot of creativity, and a lot of freedom to be able to record WHENEVER you want. When you’re constantly on somebody’s clock, and you’re on a deadline, more often than not you’ll be unhappy with something that was recorded because everything becomes “good enough”. But you can’t change it because you’ve already paid for the drum-day, or the guitars day. And most of the time you just have to put it out without it being perfect. Sometimes, we have the ability to get all Brian Wilson on it and that’s a double-edged sword. You become saturated with your own work, and have to seek outside ears to help to weed through the shit. Because instead of looking at the pick of better songs, now you’re listening for which song is better recorded, or which song has a better drum fill or guitar solo. The best thing we’ve been able to realize from self producing, is that better recorded does not always mean better song.

Q: What’s the story behind the title?
A: Well, to make a long explanation short, it’s my term for the solution to anyone’s negative vice. Something you’re ashamed of, or that you don’t want people to know about. Whether it’s a person you can’t get enough of, or a drug you’re stuck on.
Or maybe it doesn’t mean a thing. The thing I like to pride myself on is my words. Most of the time, my hand is on a notebook and I’m writing something that’s just free-form coming out with me. It’s stream of consciousness, and sometimes I don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about. So it’s really amazing to be able to get any interpretation of a song that you connect with. That’s my interpretation of “Back On the Wire”, and it could be completely different for you, or somebody else. Maybe that’s what the song is about.

Q: What’s your favourite track on the album and why?
A: Personally, it’s probably “Don’t Shoot The Messenger”, the last track on the album. Mainly because the song literally came out of thin air. A lot of the time, instead of practicing, we’ll be jamming or coming up with on the spot songs that are fucking incredible, but will get lost forever because we don’t record them. We had plans to record one day, and I had left all of the microphones up from the day before. So when I came by, Jeff and Dave had already been jamming and had used the mics that were up to record a live jam that was 15 minutes long. Well, the first 7:15 turned out to be “Don’t Shoot The Messenger”. I think that it rounds the album out perfectly, and showcases exactly what we do as a band. That’s what I appreciate the most about the spirit of that song. Everything is and can be spontaneous and there are no boundaries for us. Whether I’m taking whiskey shots, and smoking 5 cigarettes in a row so my vocals sound raspy, or we’re turning the volume up - Soundfreak in Scotland

Sweet Bronco and I were impressed with Blond Fuzz's straight-up pounding rock sound and we were salivating over their tour schedule — 9 dates in towns like Asheville, NYC, Detroit and Chicago. After hearing a few Blond Fuzz songs, we agreed that we definitely like to drink beer and push each other around the dance floor to this band, and we’d like to see them and do it some time in the near future. The boys in the band are very cool too - young, sarcastic and sweet, but each with a personality all his own. Jordan has the gravity to pull off the front man role. Ross, the blond bass player, is a hilarious kid. Jeff and Dave are softer spoken, so can’t put my finger on ‘em yet, but collectively, I quite like the whole energy of the group - as a band and personality wise. Not sure who claims this, but the band posted a passionate call to arms in support of local music on their myspace blog. - Mood Vane

Blond Fuzz is a garage band in the purest sense of the word -- except, perhaps, for the fact that they did most of their recording in living rooms. But they did accomplish the entire recording for their first full-length LP, Dead in the Sun on "barely professional" equipment. Following what they dubbed a "discouraging recording experience," vocalist Jordan Asher, lead guitarist David Barnard, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Jeff Rosenthal, and bassist Ross shunned studios and red tape for the boundless expanses of their own collective creativity. Pardon the smell of patchouli surrounding that last bit. It's just part of the vibe you get from listening to Blond Fuzz. Raw and emotional, funky, bluesy and a bit psychedelic, their sound is dripping with more Sixties flavor than a magic brownie. - Christopher Lopez of The Broward New Times

Blond Fuzz's new album is far fancier than the bluesy rock band's debut, which didn't even get a proper release. Last summer, the band's members quickly recorded "Dead in the Sun" in their living room and printed the CDs themselves so they would have something to take on a tour.

Reflecting on that recording process, singer-guitarist Jordan Asher splatters his comments with phrases such as half-assed mixing, half-assed mastering, caveman-type gear, one crappy mike and everything sounded like shit.

"It was a by-the-seat-of-our-pants kinda thing," Asher admits.

But practice apparently pays off, and Back on the Wire has benefited from the band's experience and better equipment. Like the first album, it was recorded in the musicians' living rooms, though this time using Pro Tools. "Before recording the first album, we recorded with this guy in Pompano who gypped us out of our money and, long story short, he ended up feeling really bad about it," Asher explains. "Last year, when we started recording the new album, he was like, 'Hey I know you guys have been doing self-recording, so maybe this will help.' And he gave me all this studio gear to make up for the money we lost."

The band put it to good use, recording 23 songs for "Back on the Wire," though only half actually made their way onto the album. "We went up to Atlanta with what we thought was the finished product," Asher recalls. "We'd been recording for so long, and I was like, 'Hey, we finally got the track list.' A friend up there listened to it and he goes, 'I don't want you guys to take this the wrong way, but I think you guys have kind of gone soft.'"

The comment ate away at Asher. "I was like, 'Aw, man, I don't want people to think we've gotten soft on our second album,' so I just went back and wanted to write the nastiest kind of fast rock 'n' roll song that we didn't have on the album." That song is "Man Behind the Curtain."

Not that it's all fast and gritty. "Still as a Stone" floats along beautifully, like a dream that cannot be rushed. Ditto for "Decade Girl," with its lazy lyrics about staying in bed all day and "catchin' flies." Not surprisingly, lyrics frequently come to Asher when he's on the verge of arriving in dreamland. "Nine times out of 10," he reveals, "I'll be literally half asleep and half awake and I hear in my head the vocal line or the song or lyric and I get annoyed because I have to get up and write it down."

The result is a blend of the late-night frenetic energy that keeps people awake until the wee hours and the refreshingly slowed-down and focused aftermath where the subconscious comes to life. "I think that there's something on the CD everyone is going to enjoy," Asher maintains. "I think there are just different types of rock 'n' roll music on there, whether someone likes the softer Pink Floyd/Beatles-type stuff or really loud, raw, aggressive rock 'n' roll."

Asher says "Back on the Wire," the first song written and recorded for the new album, set the tone. "It's got a lot of psychedelic sections to it," he says, "and it's got a lot of the dirty grittiness of the rock 'n' roll sound and a lot of really spacey, open, softer stuff."

"The wire," he says, is a metaphor for that place one needs to return to when battling an addiction or when stuck on someone. He considers it his MacGuffin, a film term used to describe an often-mysterious plot device, such as the briefcase in "Pulp Fiction." "They open the briefcase and you never see what's inside," Asher says. "But you know that it's something important."

"That's what 'the wire' is to me," he says. "It's whatever you want 'the wire' to be."

While the first album was never formally celebrated, "Back on the Wire" will be feted with two release parties. Blond Fuzz's permanent bassist, Ross Fuentes, who currently lives in Atlanta and rarely plays with the band in South Florida, will be on hand for these shows at Propaganda in Lake Worth and the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale. (Fuentes is planning to relocate to South Florida.)

Not wasting any time, the band has already been recording songs for its next album. The music is already getting attention … from Boca Raton cops.

"We record till all hours of the night, and burn the candle at both ends," Asher explains. "The cops came by three times or something like that. The first time there were two of them and one was really strict and stern and the other guy was like, 'Hey I hate to tell you guys this because you guys sound great. You gotta just turn it down a little bit or practice earlier, but you guys sound cool.' Even the cop wanted to hang out with us." - Citylink/Metromix

Stonefox vocalist Jordan Asher Cruz and bassist Ross Fuentes headed to New York in February, and with them, the blues-infused racket that was their trademark left town too. A whole lot of sweat-soaked and beer-coated warehouse floors went dry, and even more lusty South Florida hearts became famished. In late May, Cruz, guitarist Dave Barnard, and drummer Jeff Rose officially announced they had re-formed sans Fuentes — albeit as Blond Fuzz for legal reasons. With a cover of the Velvet Underground classic "White Light/White Heat" as the new outfit's first official output, none of the intensity was lost. While hacks like Jet keep crashing this Led Zep-inspired garage-rock style into the ocean, Blond Fuzz always gets the balance between retro and modern just right. It could have been a lifetime before another sound so cool and calculated echoed and buzzed from the belly of South Florida. - Broward/Palm Beach New Times

Last night at Propaganda marked the official album release by Boca rock and rollers Blond Fuzz, and a triumphant event it was. The band has clearly won some rabid friends and fans with its out-of-nowhere blues-garage stomp, and those friends and fans have told their friends and fans. The small but super-cool new venue was packed with a shaggy crowd that worked itself into a sweaty mess by hooting, hollering, and shaking hips.

Yes, this was a real rock and roll rave-up on a moslty deserted Palm Beach County block on a random Thursday night. Yes, it's okay to think, How the hell did this happen? The important question, though, is, How do we get it to happen more often, and perhaps further south?

As a brief aside, this was my first time at Propaganda. I live in central Miami and it's a trek to get there from here, but I surely wish it wasn't. The place somehow manages to meet a comfortable middle ground -- it's a hip place that thankfully doesn't also try to be a dance club, a mostly-bar venue whose carefully curated lineup features good, original rock instead of bro-ski cover bands.
The P.A. is excellent so the bands sound crisp, the parking outside is free, and a well cocktail is just $4! For god's sake, they have a psych/garage/post-punk DJ night on Mondays! I really, really wish Propaganda would release a pollen spore and reproduce in Miami-Dade, or at least somewhere in Broward.

Alright, as for the bands that played last night. First on the bill was the apple-cheeked, youthful quartet Surfer Blood, from West Palm Beach. They used to be TV Club, but I only saw that band about once, a year ago; perhaps they were slightly punkier then, but I can't really compare.

One of my colleagues here has compared the band a little bit to Joy Division, but that's the wrong side of post-punk for these kids. While they delve a little bit into effects-heavy guitar drone, their sound overall is pretty sunny, driven by pleasantly bouncy basslines. In fact, in their janglier, breezier moments, they sound a little bit of the '80s Scottish group Orange Juice, or, perhaps, the more recent Northern English brat-popsters the Cribs. Well, maybe I'm just projecting on that last bit, but this is a local band to watch whose songwriting chops are gelling at an impressive clip.

The next band, though, was the real surprise of the night. Blond Fuzz pals from Atlanta down just for the weekend, Dead Rabbits is a two-piece, with one hirsute fellow on guitars, another on drums, and both on throaty, soulful vocal duties. And if the drummer's particular wail sounded an awful lot like the guitarist's, well, it was only a few minutes before the latter explained -- his name was Joshua, and that was his brother Lucas on drums. Cute.

And at that point, I began to solemnly mourn my morning deadline, because deeply sodden seems the way to best experience this duo's damp Southern swamp rock. With only one guitar, Dead Rabbits still manage to sound epically heavy, and there are enough stop-and-start, off-kilter patterns in the riffage to keep everyone paying attention. Dead Rabbits could exorcise demons and make them dance.

Then, finally, Blond Fuzz. They were the stars of the evening, and they were clearly relishing the attention and adoration. Their swagger was at 100 percent from the get-go, with guitarists Dave and Jordan donning crazily unseasonable leather jackets, the latter in sunglasses to boot. Well, the best rock and roll entertainers are a little cocky, and the Blond Fuzz guys seem to have struck showmen's balance between shrugging self-assuredness and appreciation for the audience.

The opening number "Smoke and Mirrors" instantly became a call-and-response exercise with the crowd, many of whom seemed to already know most of the words to every song. Things just got louder from here and more ecstatic. The band's Atlanta-based bassist, Ross Fuentes, was there to perform, and as a four-piece, the band's wall of fuzz is even more flattening. (You also have to give Fuentes skill points for his ability to play bass, drink canned beer, and smoke cigarettes at the same time.) The dance number "Stun Like a Gun" well, made people dance, and the chant-like "Go Back to California" seemed, live, even more like the soundtrack to an old Western movie's duel.

Sure, I came to this show already a Blond Fuzz convert, but I left even more convinced this band has the potential to break out, big-time. Their new album, Back on the Wire, is now available on iTunes and CDBaby, so take a listen for yourself.


Critic's Notebook

Personal Bias: It's no secret I really like Blond Fuzz.

Random Detail: Broward and Palm Beach County rockers support their own -- in the audience I spotted Timb Krueller, and members of Zombies! Organize!!, the Pretty Faces, the Freakin Hott, and probably someone else I'm forgetting.

By the Way: It would be really, really worth it to hit the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday -- Blond Fuzz is playin - Broward/Palm Beach New Times