Border Radio was a great, low-budget indie film directed by Kurt Voss, Dean Lent, and Allison Anders over a period of four years in Southern California. It stars a who’s who of Cali punk luminaries including Dave Alvin, Chris D. and John Doe in a standout role as a grungy bass player in exile from the local music scene.

The film’s soundtrack is a combination of meditative guitar strumming and more energetic sounds from Alvin, Green On Red, DJ Bonebrake (John Doe’s bandmate in X), Lazy Cowgirls, and many more. The film–a potboiler about a club theft and the local heavies chasing down the most likely suspects)–holds up well and is still fascinating to watch for a variety of reasons. Partially shot in documentary style, the first half hour (after some intro scenes) feels a bit like Penelope Spheeris’s Decline of Western Civilization, but Border Radio is definitely working in its own idiom.

The soundtrack is awesome, and this edition comes with a strip of 16mm film from the movie. We’ve got one solitary copy of this for sale, and we strongly recommend it. The movie was originally released in 1987 and finally got a Criterion Collection release in 2006, which we also recommend…

Border Radio is a sealed, unopened vinyl LP released on Enigma (not a reissue). Buy it now from Turntabling for $23 plus shipping. Overseas shipping is extra.