The Trash Gentlemen List - Vol. 4 - SummerJam

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Sure, all seasons have music that fits them best, but we don't think any season has such a specific feel to the music that defines it like summer. And even though the feel of summer is specific, the sounds of summer are varied and expansive. Often connected to core sense memories, summer music is at once highly personal and widely communal, connecting us to ourselves and other people through sonic rapprochement. There's airy sense of fun, well-being and comfort that connects all our favourite summertime essentials we've included on this list and we hope that listening to this list brings you all of those feelings and more. Hopefully something on here connects and finds its way to your own summer playlists.

Sublime – Garden Grove

As an elder millennial male on the west coast, Sublime is just a part of my DNA, for better or worse. (I maintain that Sublime would be much less easy to make fun of if it wasn’t for the existence of ‘Date Rape’ and ‘Wrong Way.’ Ehhhh, maybe ‘Caress Me Down’ too. Okay, I may need to re-evaluate this theory after I finish writing this piece. But I digress…) I’m onboard for Sublime jokes all year around. They’re an incredibly fun, and easy, band to make fun of. The great Josh Gondelman once called Sublime a “Blacklight Che Guevara poster that you listen to.” But their importance in the millennial music pantheon is real. They exposed a lot of people to music they wouldn’t have otherwise heard. For all his faults, Nowell was an incredible songwriter, able to mine his personal depths and sing his findings in his unmistakably passionate voice. All this (possibly ill-conceived) Sublime-apologism aside, that held-string opening and simple drum beat into that unmistakable bass line usually signals the start of summer to me. This is not music I listen if the sun is not out. “Garden Grove,” like the self-titled album it comes from, has been a part of my lazy summers for close to three decades now and I don’t think it’s going to stop being part of the season any year soon.

Jerry Champion - It’s Summertime

There was a video series on a channel that shall no longer be named, where they would invite artists to play music from their vinyl collective. One of these episodes featured DāM FunK, and while every selection he made ended up being Shazam’d and saved, this song was an easy choice for this playlist topic. Originally released by Jerry & The Champions in 1984, only to later be re-released by Jerry Champion in 2000, It’s Summertime has a mesmerizing groove that draws listeners in. The guitar solo that comes in from time to time is next level and it’s a perfect way to break up the track's repetitive aspects. It pains me to know we can’t go back in time, but the 80s had the summer season on lock when it came to music.

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The Trash Gentlemen List - Vol. 3 - Duos

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When we came up with the prompt for this playlist, there was no parameters apart from “duos.” That was it. So when the Trash Gentlemen sat down for our playlist build session we quickly realized that we had approached the content build completely differently with one culling tracks from one-off collaborations between artists and the other selecting from established, official duos. It doesn't really matter how or why artists get together, just that they are together. Mutual creation is one of the great joys of human existence. Honestly, so is mutual curation, hence the existence of the Trash Gentleman Playlist. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy or maybe something to remember while you're sitting back listening to this one. Or driving your car listening listening to this one. Or riding the bus listening to this one. Or battling the police in a standoff listening to this one.

Hot Plate
Boldy James & Rome Streetz – Manhunt

This song was a late addition for me, mostly because it only released on 27 February 2026. However, this album hit me so hard that one of the tracks needed to find a place on this duos list. Boldy James, Detroit’s wordsmith, joining forces with New York’s Rome Streetz, feels like something we don’t deserve but we are very happy to receive. This isn’t the first time the two have worked together, especially since the two have very strong ties to the Griselda Records universe, but a full project from the two was unheard of until now. The project is incredible and it also includes a solo song from each of them. Hot Plate, one of the first official tracks on the project, stands out. Running at just over 2 minutes, Boldy and Rome go bar for bar throughout this very Griselda influenced beat. The two are lyrical geniuses, so you already know there is absolute heat when it comes to the picture these two paint on this song. Now I’m not greedy, but after this project, I need more. The chemistry from these two is on a whole other level and hopefully a tour of some sort comes from this.

I’m Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman
The White Stripes – White Blood Cells

I can’t believe White Blood Cells turns 25 this year. I remember someone leaving this album for me in my auto-downloads on Audiogalaxy (IYKYK) and being enraptured pretty quickly. On an album that’s basically no-skips, I can’t tell you exactly why “I’m Find It Harder To Be A Gentleman” was the first song that came to mind when I sat down with the DUOS prompt. I even gave the album a full re-listen before I put my selection in stone, just to make sure. But there it was, standing tall, at the end of my first full run-through of White Blood Cells in approximately a decade. Lyrically, the song definitely hasn’t aged entirely well. It’s rotten with woe-is-me views of relationships held by many a loser. Lousy with the infantile notion of CHIVALRY. But in the end it’s a just a helluva blues rock song written by a young guy who seems to have aged pretty well in the intervening years. I actually find it easier to be a gentlemen every day as I age, so maybe this song just makes me nostalgic for a time of the unearned selfishness youth.

Also, I really hope Meg White is having a good day, wherever she is.

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The Trash Gentlemen List - Vol. 2 - Best of 2025

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After the success of The Trash Gentlemen List Vol 1, we are back with more music to share! With 2025 wrapping up, we thought it would be appropriate to share some of our top picks for the year. You’d think that this would be a straightforward process, yet mere moments into our song sharing session; we found ourselves making changes to the list. These changes were mostly in the form of additions, seeing as this playlist is 20 tracks long. Some tracks were just too good to pass up, and even then, we still had to shortlist to its current form. The whole process was more difficult than expected, but it was nothing that your trusty playlist curators couldn’t handle. We hope you maybe find a new favourite you missed this year or maybe you see some of the same things from your list and you can think “Fuck yeah, I know I have good taste because the Trash Gentlemen stamped this one.”

Father
Jim Legxacy – black british music

Since focusing on more UK-based music, Jim Legxacy has also been popping up more than once. This genre-bending artist dropped black british music and the reception has been great. “Father,” one of the singles for the album, stands out as a front runner. With an afrobeat feel in the beat, Legxacy comes through with some strong verse timing, while keeping the verse contents quite basic. When it comes to music you can groove to, the UK’s Jim Legxacy is smart addition to any playlist. It was also great to see that he sold-out his small North American tour. Hopefully we’ll see a larger tour come our way next year?

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The Trash Gentlemen List - Vol. 1

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Everyone has a line, a breaking point, that, when reached makes them rethink certain things. I continued to use Spotify for far longer than I should have, in addition to my regular support of the music I love. (I mean, really, we should all be augmenting our streaming services with buying records, concert tickets, merch, etc, whenever we can.) But a few months ago, former Spotify CEO (and current executive chair) Daniel Ek pledged €600 million of his vast, ill-gotten fortune to Helsing, a German firm specializing in AI military technology. This was my line. It was time to ditch Spotify for a different evil steaming overlord – Apple Music. I wanted to do something to “celebrate” this change. A new playlist series seemed like a good idea. Something to help me familiarize myself with a new platform, but also to combat the rise of insipid AI-created playlists. I'm (not actually) sorry, but an algorithm cannot make a mixtape with any kind of feeling or purpose. A good mix is something you sit down, think about, select carefully. I should know, I've been making tapes and playlists for my friends for almost three decades now. (Shout out Blake Shiny Tunes. IYKYK)

But just making a playlist didn't seem particularly fun or exciting, so I sat and I thought, long and hard. Who do I know that uses Apple Music that can help put something together? And it occurred to me, one of coolest dudes I know, and one of my most-trusted music allies uses Apple Music, the big homie Joshua Szirmay-Corrales. From the moment I met Josh in the middle of Rifflandia festival, discussing the great Reggie Watts, he has become one of my most trusted musical taste-havers. The man's ear is impeccable. In a world where everyone seemingly has something to recommend for my ears, Josh is one of the only people who gets their recommendations to the front of my queue. In recent years he's taken up as the main writing contributor with Rocktographers, our hometown Victoria's most-trusted source for live music coverage, and our local scene is absolutely better for it.

And now we're here, celebrating the very first Trash Gentlemen List. This recurring playlist will be a place to celebrate all the different bits of music that make us love it so much. This is a place for you, dear reader/listener, to come find something new, maybe reconnect with something old and most hopefully, to help you think about music in some of the ways you used to, before an algorithm started to take everything over. Each one of these lists is going to be built around a unifying theme or idea, not just a collection of dope songs (Though each list certainly will be that!). To get things started we're looking at some of our favourite Track 1s. We're opening the series with a series of openers. So sit back, relax and let's get into some fucking music.

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