10 songs from 10 bands defining Monterey's music scene right now.

Lillie Lemon and Eric Wobbles represent some of the area's brightest young musical talents.

A few years ago, Mozzo Kush guitarist Brent Smith and Moses Nose guitarist Vincent Randazzo riffed on the hardships the young budding musical talent in Monterey face.

“There aren’t a lot of chances for the younger musicians to work up to the bigger venues like the Golden State,” Randazzo explained. “A lot of the good places, that have a built-in audience, are 21-plus so you have to be able to show the bookers that you can make it worth their while. There’s a lot of undiscovered talent and a lot of places to play but it’s hard to get on the roster at these places – and it’s even harder for the bands to get a start when the [venues/promoters] don’t know about them.”

Smith added, “A lot of bands don’t know how to get their foot in the door. They don’t know who to contact so they tend to be stagnant and not really reach out on their own.”

Instead of letting themselves become stagnant, Mozzo Kush, Moses Nose and several additional groups decided to be proactive.

It's three years later.

And there's something exciting happening in Monterey County's music scene.

The 10 bands behind the 10 songs below are making it happen, even when there's no place for them to perform.

(1) comment

Riverguysproductions

Hello! Great article! River Guys Productions are huge fans of the local Monterey music scene, and as a matter of fact, we have created a music web series called RGP's Almost LIVE, which can be found on YouTube, and in each episode we feature a local indie band from Monterey and the surrounding areas. So far, from this list, we have already featured Moses Nose, Valley Soul, Slack, we are about to feature Lillie Lemon, and have been in talks with Mozzo Kush.

We are big supporters of local music, which is why we created this show; to give recognition to these extremely talented groups who are virtually unknown outside of this area. For anyone reading this article, please take the time to look us up on YouTube or Facebook and see the work that we've been doing for these bands. And we would love to go 10 for 10 and feature all of these groups! Who knows, maybe an article needs to be written about our series ;).

https://youtu.be/zvpxOEdhfxc

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