Directed & produced by Bill Perrine. 2014. 77 minutes. Available on DVD, digital and streaming platforms.
“It’s Gonna Blow!!! – San Diego’s Music Underground 1986-1996″ chronicles San Diego’s progression from DIY to ‘next Seattle’ industry hype. A motley community of musicians with a do-it-yourself ethos and an aversion to mainstream culture develop their idiosyncratic sounds in the isolation of San Diego, but soon find themselves at the center of bidding wars and expense account lunches. What happens when the outcasts become the next big thing?
Featuring interviews and performances from Drive Like Jehu, Fishwife, Tanner, Rocket from the Crypt, Trumans Water, the Locust, Heavy Vegetable, Physics, Crash Worship, No Knife, Pitchfork, Heroin, Antioch Arrow, Creedle, Swing Kids, Sub Society, Neighborhood Watch, Inch, Funeral March, Tit Wrench and many others.
Screenings
We did a crazy multi-national tour of this film. Check out the past screenings here.
Press
Aquarius Records – review
We might be a little biased, seeing as several aQ-ers (including the one writing this review) are from San Diego, and the fact pretty much all of us LOVE rock docs, but even if you’re not…
KPBS – interview
[San Diego] … the next Seattle … it never happened. It was an event that never happened that everybody remembers. – Ely Moyal of Trumans Water. I am all for the leave-no–stone-unturned trend in music documentaries and Bill Perrine’s It’s Gonna Blow: San Diego’s Music Underground, 1986 – 1996 upends a lot of stones…
Razorcake – review
An exceptionally entertaining and insightful look back on the San Diego music scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s…
91X – video feature
Director Bill Perrine brings us It’s Gonna Blow, a documentary about San Diego’s underground music…
Critical Angst – review
It’s Gonna Blow! San Diego Film Explores Underground Music Scene. San Diego filmmaker Bill Perrine explores the history and evolution of the sound of San Diego in his latest film…
Tone Madison – review
“Do you wanna be my friend?” The explosive weirdness of a San Diego music scene. There’s a famous story about Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein watching Clerks for the first time at Sundance. Other Miramax folks who had seen the film during its extremely brief pre-festival theatrical run in…
Secrets of the City – article
SOUND UNSEEN: IT’S GONNA BLOW!!!!—SAN DIEGO’S MUSIC UNDERGROUND 1986-1996. There was a time in the mid ’90s when music fans and bands and labels were looking for the next Seattle—that midsized…
The Local 94.9 – radio
Maximum Rocknroll – feature
Night Flight – feature
Boing Boing – feature
Noah Swartz writes, “Last night I got a chance to see a screening of It’s Gonna Blow, a documentary about the underground scene in San Diego directed and produced by Bill Perrine.” It follows the move away from…
Music Film Web – feature
It’s Gonna Blow!!!: What Happened When San Diego Didn’t ‘Happen’. “We were supposed to be the next Seattle,” Tim Blankenship of San Diego bands Creedle and Rust says early…
Orlando Weekly – feature
It’s Gonna Blow!!! gathers punk legends and scarring, awesome footage to impressively depict San Diego’s music underground
Jersey Beat – interview
An Interview with Bill Perrine. In the 1980s, Washington, DC was the big thing in the punk and indie music scene, with Dischord Records putting out influential…
Jersey Beat – review
The title has a double meaning. The first refers to the music critics and major labels who were saying, in the early 90s, that the San Diego music scene was going to blow up big time and be the next Seattle. The other meaning, as embodied in the lyrics from the Trumans Water’s song “Aroma of Gina Arnold,” refers to…
KPBS – feature
Inaugural Point Music Film Festival Debuts Saturday: This Saturday marks the debut of the Point Music Film Festival, which prides itself as being San Diego’s “first music only” film festival…
Cinepunx – podcast
We hope you brought your Vulcan haircuts and white belts for this special San Diego focused episode of the illustrious and jovial CINEPUNX!!!…
Monofesto – review
It’s Gonna Blow! San Diego Music Culture Examined 1986-1996: It’s been brewing for months. Local San Diego filmmaker Bill Perrine…
Creative Loafing – review
From 1986 through 1996, San Diego was a musical fertile crescent. Remaining isolated from the West Coast’s other musical hubs — Los Angeles and San Francisco — proved to be a boon of sorts…
The Royal Basement – review
In the magical pre-internet days of 1992, discovering new music wasn’t as ridiculously easy as it is in 2015. For a kid growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City, my musical expansions were generally found in pilgrimages to record stores, stocking up on fanzines…
Voice of San Diego – review
Despite what our local radio stations may lead you to believe, San Diego isn’t all chill vibes laid on thick by Sublime, Jack Johnson and 311. We have a vibrant underground music history that’s not as sunny as…
San Diego Reader – review
Once upon a time, San Diego was poised to conquer its supposed inferiority complex (thanks, L.A.) via an explosive music scene that had onlookers proclaiming America’s Finest City as “the next Seattle.” Nothing ever really came of that…
San Diego Citybeat – feature
San Diego’s music scene was once called “The next Seattle” by Entertainment Weekly back in the 1990s, after the explosion of grunge in the Emerald City. Yet, despite the hype, mainstream exposure and success never materialized in the way it did for bands like Nirvana…
Through the Cracks – interview
Underground vs. Mainstream in a post-Nirvana world
Obey Giant – review
San Diego had a rich music underground in the late 80’s and early 90’s. It’s Gonna Blow!!! is the first documentary to chronicle these unique DIY happenings.
Gerry Fialka – interview
Film-maker Bill Perrine is interviewed by Gerry Fialka.
O.V.O.S.S. – article
A Tale Of Two Documentary Premieres: It’s Gonna Blow From San Diego To Tijuana
Justin O’Connell – article
Encinitas Blows: On Losing Terrin Durfey & Denver Lucas