Today, Friday, January 31st, 2025, marks the release of the 2024 physical edition of The Gits’ Frenching the Bully on CD and vinyl worldwide from Sub Pop. The reissue of the ferocious Seattle punk band’s debut features new album cover art and packaging by Sub Pop’s VP of Creative Jeff Kleinsmith and has been remastered by legendary producer Jack Endino.
 
Also today, King County Supervisor Dow Constantine proclaimed that Saturday, February 1st, 2025 shall be known for now and eternity as The Gits Day in King County, Washington!
 
Band members Matt Dresdner, Andy Kessler, and Steve Moriarity had this to say of the acknowledgment:
“We’re beyond honored (and a little freaked out) by King County’s proclamation that January 31st is The Gits Day! And we’re delighted that all County employees are getting a much-deserved day off to acknowledge the rerelease of our debut album, Frenching the Bully.”

In further celebration of Frenching the Bully’s release on Saturday, February 1st, there will be two free album release events – Seattle’s The Vera Project (All Ages; 4-6 pm, Doors 3:30) and at KEXP Gathering Space (21+; 8-10 pm, Doors 7pm) at the Seattle Center.
 
Both The Vera Project and KEXP Gathering Space will screen the world premiere of the new short film documentary, “The Gits Live at RKCNDY,” featuring unreleased footage of The Gits’ February 1993 performance originally filmed for the movie HYPE! - a documentary film by Doug Pray. There will also be a merch signing with The Gits bands members at both the early and late events.
 
The Vera Project will also have a special exhibition of paintings by Mia Zapata. Attendees are also encouraged to bring their items for a special Bring It! Screen It! Gits Edition! Featuring three new designs. At the 21+ and over event at the KEXP Gathering Space there will also be an unveiling of SubPop’s Gits Art Exhibition!
 
Full information for both events, including RSVP links, is below.
 

Preservation Hall Jazz Band to Appear At SNL50: The Homecoming Concert Streaming Live From Radio City Music Hall on Peacock February 14th

Preservation Hall Presents Preservation Brass For Fat Man, an album dedicated to the memory of longtime Preservation Hall Percussionist Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter. The album is available today, Friday January 31st worldwide from Sub Pop on all DSPs and on vinyl through megamart.subpop.com in North America, MM2 in UK and EU, Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and at your local record store. 

Kevin Louis Cornet of Preservation Hall offers this lovely tribute, “Fat Man was a beautiful, peaceful soul. If I wanted to know what was going on in the streets, where the second line was, or who was playing, I’m calling Fat. With him checking out the way he did and when he did, it’s only right we dedicate this album to him. I mean, his funeral literally had the whole brass band community there – every single brass band in New Orleans was represented! Fat Man forever!”

On Valentine’s Day, Friday, February 14th (at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT), Preservation Hall Jazz Band will perform at SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT. Hosted by Jimmy Fallon and featuring a lineup of chart-topping musical guests from across the decades, SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT will celebrate 50 years of SNL musical and comedy performances. 

Streaming live on Peacock from Radio City Music Hall, the SNL homecoming celebration will bring together legendary Saturday Night Live hall-of-famers and surprise special guests including Arcade Fire, Backstreet Boys, Bad Bunny, Bonnie Raitt, Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Chris Martin, David Byrne, DEVO, Eddie Vedder, Jack White, Jelly Roll, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Mumford & Sons, Post Malone, The B-52s, The Roots and more to be announced.  

The one-night-only event is executive produced by Emmy Award winner Lorne Michaels and Grammy and Oscar winner Mark Ronson.

SNL50: THE HOMECOMING CONCERT will stream live on Peacock on Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT. 

The special will also play at fan screening events in select IMAX theaters at Regal Cinemas across California (Regal Edwards Ontario Palace), Pennsylvania (Regal UA King of Prussia), Texas (Regal Lone Star), New York (Regal Deer Park), and Florida (Regal South Beach). Free tickets for fan screenings will be made available exclusively for current Fandango FanClub, Regal Crown Club members, and IMAX subscribers at a later date.

More on Preservation Brass For Fat Man:

BOOM.

It’s the first thing you hear, the first thing you notice. A bass drum strike so hard and heavy, its sound carries for blocks. In fact, you probably feel it before you actually hear it. 

BOOM BOOM.

A bottom-end so deep, it lets everyone know: the band is on its way.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

And before you can even see ‘em, you can hear ‘em, clearing the way: angel trumpets, devil trombones, rat-a-tat snares, pulsing tubas, and at the center of it all, the anchor, the rock, the gravity that keeps it all from spinning out and flying off into space, the bass drum. The steady beat that lays the foundation for every feat the brass band can accomplish. The beat that sets the slow and reverential pace for a walk of remembrance towards the cemetery. The beat that dictates the rhythm of the joyous dance on the corner. The beat that puts butts in motion. That bass drum beat is the heartbeat of New Orleans, the organ that pushes the blood through the arteries and veins of our city streets, and the biggest and strongest heart was Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter. When the bass drum was strapped over his shoulders and the mallets were in his hands, he let ‘em know–loud, proud and undeniable was his style, and it’s that style that’s at the heart of For Fat Man, the new recording by the Preservation Hall Brass.

The album was guided from inception to completion by Preservation Hall cornet player Kevin Louis, He wanted to capture what was going on at the Hall on Monday nights, and from the beginning, Fat Man was key to the recording. “Fat Man and Jap [Julius McKee] came to me and said, ‘We need to lay this down, nobody’s doing this,’” Louis explains. “I called on Mark to be my extra ear. It took a while to assemble the A team, ‘cause everyone’s in demand but when everybody had the time, I called Marigny Studios, brought the cats in and we laid down four or five songs, listened to that and said, ‘Yeah, we got something.’ And once we made it happen, it happened like a mf!”

The album kicks off with the sort of atmospheric percussion you might hear from a distance on a Mardi Gras or St. Joseph’s Day, or emanating from a neighborhood bar during the legendary practice sessions held by New Orleans’ Masking Indian tribes. It’s one of the unique sounds of our city. “Fat Man and my podna Gerald French came in and we made those interludes,” says Louis. Those sound pieces are interwoven with the songs on the album, and together, they create a stunning document of a group bound by tradition, anchored in the now, and looking towards what’s to come. This is the sound of the past, present and future getting down all at once.

“We had just grown as a band so much, we had established such a great repertoire and camaraderie,” says trumpet player Mark Braud, describing the bond between the band that can be heard between the lines and the notes throughout For Fat Man. “Playing together every week for years and years, you develop a certain thing as a band. It’s not just a gig anymore.”

But that’s the bittersweet thing about life. The bonds of friendship and love we form lift us up, but those bonds will inevitably be broken, sometimes tragically. We all know how it’s going to end, and in New Orleans we choose to live with that knowledge and make it a part of our day to day. We figure, why not acknowledge the reality of the wheel of life and make its inherent sadness and inevitable happiness a part of how we face every day? There’s pain for the loss and that pain is no joke, but we can’t forget that there’s a life to be remembered, a journey to be celebrated with our tears of memory and our joyful noises, each in their time, and often at the same time. That’s just the way it is here, and we’re lucky to have our music to help us mark these milestones.

“Fat Man was the heartbeat of all of this,” says Ben Jaffe, the Creative Director of Preservation Hall. “He brought a sense of freedom whenever he played. He understood the ability and power of music to make people feel joy, happiness and be therapeutic. It was important to him. This record’s an incredible tribute to him and who he was. He was entirely a singular, unique human being. There’s not many that embodied second line culture in New Orleans like him. It’s a way of life, and such a beautiful thing to be a part of.”

Equal parts remembrance, document, and party, For Fat Man wasn’t meant to bear that title. Kerry’s untimely passing during Mardi Gras is sadly but irrevocably now a part of the story of this record, which began as a celebration of where the brass band tradition at Preservation Hall was at and where it’s going. And thank goodness, the story doesn’t end. Life, like any good brass band, keeps moving. This record is a joyous link in the chain that is the story of New Orleans and its music. It’s for the ancestors, for the culture, for the people in the street, for those that mourn and those that celebrate and everybody somewhere in between. This record is the sound of that chain, that heartbeat, that rhythm. That sweet and thunderous BOOM.

And it hits so hard that the Fatman can probably hear it up in Heaven.

Kevin Louis - long cornet

Mark Braud - trumpet

Wendell Brunious - trumpet

Ronell Johnson - trombone

Richard Anderson - trombone

Roderick Paulin - tenor saxophone

Bruce Brackman - clarinet

Julius McKee - sousaphone

Glen Finister Andrews - snare drum

Kerry “Fat Man” Hunter - bass drum

Gerald French - percussion

Preservation Hall Presents Preservation Brass

For Fat Man

Tracklisting

1. Indian Percussion Intro

2. Bagatelle

3. Lucky Dog

4. Hot Sausage Rag

5. That Dada Strain

6. Big Chief Coming (Interlude)

7. Slide Frog Slide

8. Climax Rag

9. Bill Bailey Won’t You Please

Come Home

10. Careless Love

11. Medley

12. Fiyaya

Sub Pop Records is extremely proud to announce the return (for our 19th year!) of the Sub Pop Loser Scholarship. Further details on the scholarship are below, and even further below is some clarification on what we mean with all this “Loser” business.

Sub Pop Records is offering a grand total of $18,000 in college scholarship money to three eligible high school seniors. There are three scholarships—each for $6,000! As longtime, proud losers ourselves, we’re exceedingly happy to be able, in some small way, to help further the education of art-enthused misfits from the NW. Individuals from all cultures and communities are encouraged to apply. Applicants must be residents of Washington or Oregon and graduating seniors on the way to full-time enrollment at an accredited university or college. We are looking for applicants who are involved and/or interested in music and/or creative media and arts in some way. However, you do not need to be pursuing an education in the arts.

To apply: you must submit an essay, one page or less, using any combination of the following questions as a guide (or write something completely your own, be inspired and creative!). Please list the school you are graduating from and the school you plan to attend in the fall at the top of your essay along with your contact information.

- What are you doing in the arts/music field in your community?

- What does being a Sub Pop ‘Loser’ mean to you?

- What are your influences and/or who inspired you to become involved in the arts?

- Describe your biggest failure and explain how it has brought you closer to your goal(s).

- Discuss a special attribute or accomplishment that sets you apart.

- How has your family or community background affected the way you see the world?

- Why should you be the Loser winner?

Applicants are strongly (!) encouraged to send digital links and/or provide hard copies of their artwork, photos of community involvement, radio show links, videos, etc., along with their essay (we have never had a winner who submitted only an essay w/no extras). However, please be aware that Sub Pop will not return any of this material, so please don’t send originals. Sub Pop will give equal opportunity to all applicants who fit the criteria outlined above.

The deadline for applications is Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.

Please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Tuesday, March 18th. We will announce the scholarship winners during the first week of April.

What we talk about when we talk about “Loser.”
Here at Sub Pop Records, we use the word “loser” a lot. You may have noticed. We’ve printed it on things we sell (hats, shirts, stickers, mugs, and more!), we call the first, colored-vinyl, limited-edition pressings of the records we release the “Loser Edition,” and every year since 2007 ish we’ve awarded tuition money to college-bound NW high school students through the “Sub Pop Loser Scholarship.” And, it’s possible we take for granted that you guys catch our drift and understand what we mean when we’re all “loser this,” and “loser that.” So! The following…

 Sub Pop’s use of the word “loser” goes back to the foundation of the label and is meant as a celebration of unabashedly being ourselves without conforming to any preconceived ideas of “normal.” To be a loser is central to the very idea of underground art and culture - all of it happening and thriving outside of the mainstream, and not necessarily looking for a way in. Bruce Pavitt’s “New Pop Manifesto” in the 1st issue of Subterranean Pop included, “The important thing to remember is this: the most intense music, the most original ideas… are coming out of scenes you don’t even know exist… Only by supporting new ideas by local artists, bands, and record labels can the U.S. expect any kind of dynamic social/cultural change…” And, since 2007 or so, with the Loser Scholarship, we’ve been adding students to that list and putting our (or our co-founder, big boss, and biggest loser ever, Jonathan Poneman’s…) money where our mouth is. Sub Pop Records strives to bring attention to music and art from the fringes that might otherwise remain marginalized. And, in that same spirit, through our annual Loser Scholarship, we’re looking for art-enthused misfits in NW high schools, losers like us, to help them pay for college. We stand proudly with and support the misfits, weirdos, and losers because we believe that when we’re able to proudly be nothing other than our true selves, we have the ability to make the world stronger, smarter, and better.

So, good luck, Losers!

Again, please send all submissions and attachments to scholarship@subpop.com by Tuesday, March 18th.

Today, February 13th, Bully (aka Alicia Bognanno) has released a reworked version of her stand-out single, “Atom Bomb - Electric Version.” Initially released a year ago in Feb. 2024, this newly retooled single was a fan favorite at her live performances throughout last year.

Bognanno shares, “I think that if a song is written well enough at its core, it should be able to translate a similar emotion regardless of its form. I wanted to test that theory with Atom Bomb. Releasing a solo piano song for the first time and playing it live 10 years into my career to a room full of strangers falling silent without request resurrects a sense of boundlessness in me that reinstates what I try to tell myself anytime I find myself fearful of stepping outside of the box people expect to remain in, and that is - if I really want to grow I should stop fearing what I don’t know. I still have nights where my mind goes blank from performance anxiety, and I have to pause mid-song to regain my composure, but even when I feel like I couldn’t have fallen apart more on stage, I still can recognize that I survived and that it’s okay. I played and mixed all of this version of Atom Bomb in my room except for drums which were recorded and played by JT Daly. Coming from an analog background, it feels good to release something that I know isn’t autotuned or on a grid; it’s genuine and imperfect in a way that I feel suits the song best. Whether or not it translates well is subjective, but regardless, I was fulfilled by the process and experimentation of it all.”
 
Spending most of last year on the road touring to support her 2023 release, Lucky For You, Bully opened SOLD-OUT shows for Suki Waterhouse and Grouplove. She was also featured on the standalone Blondshell single “Docket.” She’s currently hard at work writing her new album. Bully has a headline show confirmed at Friday Cheers in Richmond, VA, on May 9th.