One of the greatest album covers of all time! Man I miss Don's . . . great location and vintage establishment from 1960 when they re-tooled Sam's Seafood to tiki-fy it.
Was it the original version with the Beach Boys Holland-era songs (including "Sail on Sailor") intact, or the version with the revised soundtrack? Lee
It had the Beach Boys songs so I'm guessing the original version. The video quality isn't very good, it seems like a copy of a VHS tape complete with a few framing glitches in spots.
I'm way into modern surf music. My tastes run to atmospheric and well recorded, as opposed to trashy. Some of my faves are: Aqua Velvets Blue Hawaiians Los Straitjackets The Mermen Pollo Del Mar
Hi-Tide Recordings is you one stop shop for modern surf music. Some of which have already been mentioned in the thread. Hi-Tide Recordings
Recommend modern day surf album: Aqua Velvets - Nomad And here’s a track of my own in the genre… Surfin’ & Flirtin’ / Intrigue (45 Vers.)
And you can never go wrong getting anything from Estrus or Dionysus. The garage band stuff slots very nicely with their surf releases.
The problem with the 'surf' label is: 1) The Shadows and The Tornados in England were recording instrumental rock and pop with the string-bending guitar sound and reverb in 1959-60 2) The Ventures in Tacoma in 1960, ditto 3) The Spotnicks in Sweden in 1961-62, ditto, all without any references to surfing or Dick Dale. Are we supposed to say that this was retroactively 'surf' music as well as it's influence on Shadowy Men and Man Or Astro Man whose names derive from the spacey Shads and Tornados pre-'surf' era? 4) vocal music about surfing is often not called 'surf' music while songs of a hot rod, space or even Mexican theme often or sometimes are. I do know (usually) what people are meaning when they say 'surf music' or 'surf rock', but not always 100%... Dick Dale, The Lively Ones, The Challengers... Dick was a friend of Ritche Valens and Ritchie and the Fender stuff and sounds he got with it were as important as surfing. Dick Dale is ground zero if we're going to talk 'surf' as far as I'm concerned, but he like Ritchie did older folk material rocked up and electric, so even Dick would be underrepresented by saying everything he did was about surfing with a sound inspired by riding waves, and he had almost as many vocal numbers early on as more instrumental ones. 5) a lot of the late '50s early '60s surf scene if it had a majority music that was associated with it, it was jazz. This was played and performed in the clubs they hung out at and even the Rendevous Balboa Ballroom had Stan Kenton. Bud Shank's music was used in many early surfing movies and his albums were sometimes packaged toward the surfing crowd. Surfin' With the Astronauts is one of my all-time favorite LPs, love that liquid reverb! Just two slight caveats: they were from from Colorado and hadn't even seen the pacific ocean when they started recording, and Astronauts... again the 'space' theme or fad which hit no.1 in the U.S. with Telstar by England's (and Joe Meek's) Tornados just over a year before The Beatles would hit no. 1. Space sounds are an earlier influence for many instrumental groups than surf and waves, or Hawaiian. Santo & Johnny of Sleepwalk fame were from Brooklyn and recorded a lot of string-bendy steel instrumentals with guitars, even did a Hawaii theme LP, and a beautiful track titled Sea Shell, yet nobody classes them as 'surf', nor the Hi-Fi records group of the same time period The Surfers who had electric guitar (nor label mate Arthur Lyman with many Hawaiian themed LPs and singles, usually just filed as jazz or 'exotica'). 6) U.S. groups like The Champs, Johnny & the Hurricanes, and The Wailers have many excellent sides that get overlooked from instrumental rock viewed through a 'surf' prism even if the space and hot rods inspired stuff doesn't. People lose out on some great and influential stuff. The Shadows and The Tornados still being less heard by Americans might be almost almost criminal. The 'surf' music craze peaked in 1963, followed by hot rod themes as the next craze, but it was part of a larger continuum of instrumental rock with jazz, folk and Hawaiian slack key influences.
Interesting read and points well argued. However at the end of the day, my response would be, "Yeah -- but that's what it's called." Certainly surf music isn't necessarily performed by, listened to, thematically about, or inspired by surfers, but for whatever reason that's what the genre has come to be known as. And more to the point, when you hear the term, this type of music is immediately what comes to mind for most people -- it's what you expect to hear. The genre's title may not be entirely accurate, but it is the genre. So I think it's best not to get too caught up in the semantics of genre names because most have little -- if anything -- to do with the type of music they describe.
FWIW, more than half of the music listed in this thread is not what serious collectors of the genre would call "Surf Music."
Stretching the budget. Same location (Waikiki) . Same cast. Photographed on opposite sides of same canoe. Different bands. Different record labels.
I have both of those and don't think I ever notices this! At least they are 2 different bands. How many releases are some session players, un-credited or with Bruce Johnston, Gary Usher?
I second Kevin Howard's cite of Laika and the Cosmonauts. They are a Finnish band oddly enough but very good musicians who wrote quite a few original surf sounding tunes. They were active between the late 80s and about 2005. A couple of their albums were issued on vinyl. I have one LP by them The Amazing Colossal Band. Also the one and only Dick Dale had a 90s concert released on vinyl and CD Live On The Pier a few years ago,
What about this hidden gem? Ronny & The Daytonas - Sandy (1966) Probably one of the most hauntingly beautiful melodies I've ever heard. Don't know if it qualifies as 'surf' music, but it definitely invokes images of a sunny beach day to me.
When I first heard this album, it really intrigued me. Their first album came out in 64 and is very good and right in the surf sound sweet spot. Then they put this out in '65. A complete change in sound. Much more introspective and less surf instrumental oriented. It came out before Pet Sounds but sort of presages the turn Brian Wilson was taking at this time. It's like they took the second half of Beach Boys Today! and anticipated what was coming. But just were not as skilled as Brian. As far as I know it was a big flop. While not necessarily valuable, copies are not thick on the ground.
Have loved Southern Culture On The Skids for decades now! To answer your question- Los Straitjackets!!!
I'm glad I got to see Dick Dale one time, even it was in his later years when he was sort of forced to tour in order to pay for his health care bills. I caught him at the Brookdale Lodge, a funky spot in the Santa Cruz Mountains. He was still in pretty good form and played loud as sh**. A geat storyteller too--I remember he talked about Quentin Tarantino...according to Dale, Tarantino wrote the entire script for Pulp Fiction while listening to Miserlou on repeat.
Good for Dale that Pulp Fiction brought him some dough. Shame that tons of people think Tarantino invented Surf music....
I've been thinking the same thing, and I'm a serious collector. And when I started seeing The Ventures listed by some, my first thought was "here we go again". The Ventures were NOT a surf instrumental group. Even Don Wilson said the same thing. They of course were the premier rock and roll instrumental group, but really none of their sixties recordings have reverb laden guitars. Even their "Surfing" album really isn't surf music, but some really fantastic instrumentals. And "Surf Rider" on the LP was originally called "Spudnik" on the Mashed Potato album from the year before.
