Just when you think summer’s over, a heat wave comes to L.A. and Waved Out 2 comes to the Echoplex, to hose us down with the reverb-soaked sounds of teenage noise pop, chill wave, surf punk and psych-folk. I didn’t know what to expect. The only bands listed on the bill whose names I recognized were the trippy headliners, the Entrance Band and Dungen, who were playing the first show of their US tour.  Sponsored in conjunction by the Aquarium Drunkard music blog, KXLU and L.A. RECORD, the all-day event featured an eclectic assortment of West Coast bands on two stages, a vegan tamale stand, DIY silkscreening station, and tarot card readings.

Kicking off the event, the Zig Zags played the loft at Origami Vinyl. Hailing from Oakland, California, the two piece won my heart with their lo-fi surf punk jams, reminiscent of the Wipers but with Beach Boys harmonies. The highlight of the Zig Zags set was what I think was a Big Star cover (“I was outta my mind…”) and an original tune they ended the set with “It’s What I’m Looking For,” a sludgy garage punk singalong. Zig Zags don’t seem to have any releases yet, but I hope they record some demos with their friend Greg Ashley soon, because I’m hooked!

Next up were Young Prisms at the Echoplex. The aptly-named San Francisco quintent plays loud, wall-of-sound shoegaze bathed in prisms of light. Stef’s haunting vocals blend perfectly with Matt and Jason’s layers of fuzzy, droned out guitar. Although I had them pegged them for 17, they are indeed very young (21-24) and sure enough, they met in high school. Now, why weren’t there any My Bloody Valentine fans at my highschool?

Summer Darling at The Echoplex; this taut, angular 4-piece plays angsty, post hardcore indie rock ala Hot Snakes, Clinic and Spoon. Not what I was in the mood for, but an energetic performance nonetheless.

In between beers, I hung out with Oliver, (the Young Prism’s bearded schnauzer), photographer extraordinaire Sarah Morrison snapped pics of the local kids we met, and I got an unbelievably spot-on tarot card reading by the lovely and talented Marcella. While the tarot cards clearly spelled out my destiny (romance and creative pursuits on track, whew!), she failed to tell me I was missing a great band. I ran up the stairs and back to the sweaty loft at Origami Vinyl just in time to catch the end of a short and sweet set by So Many Wizards!  Hailing from Long Beach and L.A., this 3-piece plays jangle pop heavy on the reverb. I definitely see more of So Many Wizards’ magic powers in your future!

Now Shannon & The Clams was the 1st performance of the evening that blew my mind.  Imagine the Ventures meets King Kahn & BBQ Show and you’re half way there. Fronted by a statuesque blonde who looks like she stepped out of a John Waters movie, the voluptuous female vocalist/bass player Shannon is the Anita Eckberg of cowpunk, commanding the stage with all the star presence of Dusty Springfield or Peggy Lee, but with the pipes of Wanda Jackson. Man can that girl sing! Sharp dressing and impish guitar player/male vocalist Cody is like a post modern Link Wray or John Doe, all elbows and knees, playing tawngy 60s seaside guitar riffs. Their set highlights include wild covers of Del Shannon’s “My Little Runaway” and Dion’s “The Wanderer” and catchy original garage punk numbers like “Hunk Hunt” that got the whole crowd rollicking.

I caught Hanni El Khatib, a two-piece consisting of guitar and drums of spirited post rockabilly garage in the tradition of Alan Vega and the Gun Club. Then, the very handsome John Carpenter took to the Origami stage, starting his set playing a solo set of folk ballads with hushed vocals reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, lulling his rapt audience with dreamy story songs. Carpenter dispensed with the acoustic vibe as his set went on, wailing on an electric guitar and screaming like The Yardbirds.

Hailing from Brooklyn by way of New Jersey, doe-eyed singer-songwriter Sharon Von Etten played pretty heartfelt songs with a breezy sincerity. Sharon has a beautiful, bird-like velvety voice and an easy rapport with her audience, consisting primarily of girls, many of whom sang along to her standout songs like “Sick of Trying,” an ode to her family, Sharon explained, “and dealing with my Pisces-ness. Is that a word?”  Uh oh, Lillith Fair, watch out! We have a contender!

Kicking off their tour with Dungen, The Entrance Band was in top form at the Echo, playing new material including “Masquerade” and “Spider.” Between Guy’s wild gesturing and Paz’s free-spirited hopping and barefoot strutting, The Entrance Band are one of the most highly original psych bands to come from L.A., evoking a whirling dervish take on 1960s rock, informed in equal measure by Eastern influences and Nuggets flashbacks.  Through heavy touring, The Entrance Band has definitely evolved and become a more sophisticated and tight unit. Paz has to be one of the most exciting bass players today—her body is her instrument—all legs, swaying brown hair, and hypnotic rhythms. Their set highlights included an inspired cover of Arthur Lee & Love’s  “A House is not a Motel” and “Temptation” on which Guy channeled Jason Pierce of Spaceman 3.

The Entrance Band Sarah Morrison

by Gather fanboys now for Dungen! Starting off their set with an oldie but a goodie, their breakout U.S. single “Festival”, the Swedish psych-folk/acid jazz pioneers whipped their bespectled fans into a frenzy.  Some of us even tried to sing along. Good luck! In broken English, frontman Gustav announced: “We will now play some new stuff—in Swedish!” You gotta love them Swedes! One can’t help but remark how perfect it would have been for Dungen to score a remake of The Wickerman. Dungen continues to release epic, sprawling records that deserve subtle contemplation, but I’m not sure if American audiences are ready yet to stand watching a 15 minute set of extended flute playing in a rock club. Unless you are really, really stoned. That said, Gustav’s virtuosity is remarkable, and his vocals in Swedish are unreal. Switching from flute to piano, with unusual song structures closest to free jazz, Dungen is the kind of band that would make Ornette Coleman proud.  Me on the other hand, I was all waved out.

—Zoë Bower

Download: The Sonics “Strychnine”

(from Here Are The Sonics! available now on Norton)

The Sonics weren’t pioneers so much as cavemen—the first humans to discover tools, fire and the absolute rudiments of chemistry. Their original ‘60s songs still sound wild and feral today, and their debut Here Are The Sonics! devours most of the million punk rock records that timidly followed it. This will be their first Los Angeles-area show ever. This interview by Dan Collins.

When was the last time you guys played the Los Angeles area?
Larry Parypa (guitar/vocals): I don’t think we ever did. We recorded down there a bunch. We went to the Whisky a Go Go and the Turtles and the Doors were there, before they got really popular.
Gerry Roslie (vocals/organ): We saw Ike and Tina Turner! It was extremely happening down there. We were like wide-eyed country boys.
A lot of L.A. bands really emulated the Beatles. But you guys didn’t seem to be Anglophiles.
LP: We loved the Beatles, and we even played some of their songs, but in no way did we try to emulate the Beatles. We were a very minor, dark sounding group for those days.
GR: We’d try to do a pretty song, and it’d just end up getting ‘nice and rough!’
Rob Lind (sax/harmonica/vocals): We loved the Kinks. We actually traveled with them and opened a number of shows for them.
LP: We played the way that we played, which was without a whole lot of technique, and real hard. A live performance—I mean, the room would almost breathe because it was so powerful. Knowing that we weren’t masterful musicians or anything, knowing that we weren’t a vocal group, we were there to pound it out. It was our style. Nobody was doing 1-3-4 progressions, real minor progressions. And they weren’t singing about the topics we sang about. And nobody was screaming!
You both had brothers in the band. Did Larry and Andy ever fight like Ray and Dave Davies did?
GR: When didn’t they? They had some real sessions. We were heading down around the Portland area, and Larry had a brand new Buick, and had his radio on real loud, and me and Andy were in the back seat. Andy was like, ‘Turn that volume down back here at least!’ And finally Andy had enough getting Larry to do it, and he was drinking a bottle of grape pop, and he poured it down Larry’s speakers while the car was going down the freeway, and the speakers go ‘bloooblublublublublublublu!’ And he pulled over, and I think they were just about ready to go to blows right there on the side of the freeway. Andy was always on Larry’s case for playing too loud.
Why did you decide to scream about things like drinking strychnine? It seems like that would kill you.
GR: Well, I’m kind of crazy by nature. I do crazy things and think of crazy things. But I’m not dangerous—heh heh. Honest, judge!
RL: The PA systems were normally pretty bad. Sometimes we just had metal horns. And so Gerry started screaming so he could hear himself.
GR: It’s a wonder I’ve got a voice left! I screamed myself silly. I was inspired by the voices of Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis of course. I liked their energy, but I don’t remember anybody doing witchy stuff. It’s just a crazy, psychotic thing. After we got going, there did start to be crazy, witchy things, like Ozzy. Everything was kind of like, ‘love and marriage, la la la la la,’ and I went ‘Nah! That’s not dirty enough! That’s not the way I feel!’
A lot of your songs seem to be about revenge—particularly upon some girl! Was there a particular relationship in your life where you’re like ‘I’m going to get even with her and write a song about it?’
GR: Do you have a couple hours, my friend? Who hasn’t been screwed over—guys or girls?
Do you secretly hope to yourself that some day, that girl is going to walk into a record store and see a Sonics poster and think to herself, ‘I blew it!’?
GR: Oh, yeah, I do hope that happens! That would be sweet!
You guys are often cited as the original punk band. Did you feel a kinship with bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols?
RL: The Clash, I thought they were hard-rocking gods. The Sex Pistols, I didn’t like a whole lot of the stuff they did, but I liked their attitude, and every once in a while I’d hear one of their songs and go ‘Whoa, that’s good. Way to go, guys!’
LP: After the late ‘60s, I didn’t listen to music much. If I did, it was probably more country.
RL: Yeah, more the Seattle guys—that’s really where garage rock started with us, and it was like Nirvana, and Pearl Jam, and Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees, and Alice and Chains—it was kind of like those guys were our sons! We were real proud of them.
Let’s talk about the earlier Northwest scene. It seems like the first breakout bands were instrumental combos like the Ventures and the Frantics.
RL: The Frantics and the Ventures and Paul Revere kind of predated us. I think one of the first rock songs I ever heard was ‘Walk, Don’t Run,’ and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
LP: God, the Frantics were just a fantastic group! Even today, they really stand up. The first interest I ever had in guitar was Duane Eddy—actually it was ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray, but then Duane Eddy had a song out that was all instrumental, and just really got me stimulated to want to play guitar. Not long after that, the Ventures came out with their stuff, and I tried to learn every song on the Ventures album. Another band that was more regional was the Wailers. They came out with instrumentals that had much harder rhythms than what the Ventures were doing, but then they got Rockin’ Roberts, and Gail Harris, and they would do vocals.
I used to have their album Live at the Castle. Did you ever play at the Castle in Tacoma?
LP: Yeah! In fact, we turned down Jimi Hendrix there, before he was the Jimi Hendix. He came and wanted to sit in, and we told him to get lost! It was a big club—a big dance spot for the Seattle area. You’d maybe get a thousand kids in there. There was a place called the Crescent Ballroom in Tacoma, where the Wailers played a lot. It’s like the first time I ever played there—I was 14 or 15, and probably didn’t have a clue about what I was doing. Lesley Gore came through town and for some reason, my brother [Andy] and I were part of the backup group for her. We did that with the Shangri-Las also, and we just ruined them! We knew we were going to back them up, but we didn’t learn their songs! Their songs had a lot of breaks in them, and we’d play right through them.
RL: The lead singer of the Shangri-Las said something snarky about us. So next time we played with them, we made fun of them. They were doing ‘Leader of the Pack,’ and Gerry was riding his piano like a motorcycle, and I was down on my knees, being like, ‘No, Danny, please please don’t go!’ We just humiliated them. You don’t come to Seattle and trash the Sonics! So they said they’d never play with us again.
We interviewed Mary Weiss last year. Do you want to tell her publicly that you’re sorry?
LP: We’re sorry! We played in Barcelona last year, and she was also on the bill. And she remembered! Oh, yeah!
RL: We smoothed things over. She’s playing with the guy from the Smithereens, Dennis, and we drank a lot of Scotch in the hotel in Barcelona, and we sat and chatted with Mary and her husband. Things are fine now.
How about Paul Revere and the Raiders? Any bad grudges there you want to settle? Like, who played ‘Louie Louie’ better?
RL: Oh, I think we did! I don’t think there’s any question!
Did you get just a little pissed off when the Raiders got to be on TV and in Teen Beat and you guys didn’t?
RL: Not at the time. I used to know Paul Revere, and Paul is the epitome of a businessman. The problem with Northwest rock ‘n’ roll bands—with the exception of the Ventures who broke out and became worldwide—was that us and the Wailers got trapped in the Northwest.
LP: We didn’t even think too much about what we were doing musically or where we were going. We’d hardly ever practice or anything. We would throw our instruments in the van maybe Sunday night after doing some weekend stuff, and wouldn’t pull them out again until we’d play again. We were more interested in whether we could get girls into the motel rooms that night.
It was kind of the cusp of the Summer of Love! Did you guys get to have drug orgies?
LP: We’d have the bathtub full of beer and stuff—to try to ply them with liquor. That really was a key objective. The music was just a vehicle to get us in some parties! You’d hit the road in summers, just playing one-night-stands all over the place. That was an exciting way to spend your teenage life!
The Meters recorded a live album on the Queen Mary—are you guys planning on recording one there too?
RL: No, we’re not doing that. We’re actually planning on going back into the studio in July. All new material. We need to get new stuff out.
LP: We don’t know what’s going to happen because we don’t practice. We go months and don’t touch our instruments. For this show we’re going to get together for an hour and a half at my house before going to L.A. and run through the songs again just so we can make sure we remember them. And sometimes we don’t!
I’ve heard a couple cuts from your previous 1972 reunion, which Norton added as a bonus on the Sonics Boom album. It sounds even more hard than your sixties recordings. How did you guys resist the urge to get all bluesy like Foghat?
RL: We never sat there and scratched our heads and said ‘What could our gimmick be?’ We always played real hard. Larry played guitar as hard as he could. Bob Bennett played drums as hard as he could. Jerry screamed and banged on the piano. I tried to play sax the way Larry played guitar. I tried to play as hard-dirty-nasty as I could. We used to play dances in armories or big roller rinks, where we’d have three-four-five thousand people. And we didn’t want people standing around with their arms folded staring at us. We wanted people to start dancing immediately. What a lot of bands would do is blow two or three songs and get the level right and then get into it. We wanted to get into it as soon as we hit the stage, so we came out blasting from the get-go! And that’s exactly what we do now. We are going to come out blastin’ and attempt to blow the place up.
GR: We don’t tone it down! We don’t try to blow people’s heads off, but… well, yeah, we might try to blow people’s heads off. What the heck?
Ar the end of your career, suddenly a basketball team starts up in your own town and calls itself the ‘Supersonics.’ Did you feel your name had been usurped?
LP: We thought it would be good publicity to sue them, even though we’d lose—just to say, ‘Hey, the Sonics are suing the Sonics!’
GR: It was kind of a shock! But we were out of the business. But now they’re gone, and we’re back!

THE SONICS WITH THE FUZZTONES, THE WOGGLES, THE VOODUO, GIZELLE, THE NEW FIDELITY AND MANY MORE ON SAT., JUNE 6, AT THE INK-N-IRON FESTIVAL AT THE QUEEN MARY, 1126 QUEENS HWY., LONG BEACH. DOORS AT 11 AM / BANDS AT NOON / SONICS AT 10 PM / $35-$70 / 7+. COMPLETE FESTIVAL LINE-UP AND MORE INFO AT INK-N-IRON.COM. THE SONICS’ RECORDS ARE AVAILABLE NOW ON NORTON. VISIT THE SONICS AT MYSPACE.COM/THESONICSBOOM.

How many band members have you had in the band, and how did you get Russell to join the band, seeing as how he was already in eight bands?
Maz Kattuah (guitar): We bribed him. We gave him a bunch of rare European beat records.
Mike Lucas (bass): One of the other original guitarists besides Mel left, and we decided to torture Maz by taking him off the drums that he loved so much and making him play rhythm guitar. Russell was the nearest drummer around, so we just grabbed him. Plus, he always adds a certain amount of entertaining.
You guys have been together in some form for over twenty years, right? That’s like five times the length of the original surf music craze.
Maz: What craze? I don’t know what you’re talking about! Even if you take the original surf music craze, add on the early eighties revival that never really went anywhere, and then add on the surf revival of the nineties, we’re still twice as long as that. We’re Methuselah, no doubt about it. We’re still playing over two times a year.
Have you ever had sex with a groupie younger than the actual band?
Mel Bergman (guitar): The collective age of the band is 178 years, so the answer is probably yes. But that is Russell’s department. He is the only rock star in the band. The rest of us serve at his pleasure.
Maz: If Russell was around, he’d say ‘Gabba Gabba Goo Boop!’
What’s the worst band of the nineties surf revival?
Mel: The Phantom Surfers.
Mike: We had the market cornered on being terrible. It’s very important to remember that since about 1990, we stopped caring about surf music.
But isn’t your anti-enthusiastic temperament about it kind of affected, like an existential cop-out? It’s like, ‘We’re not really responsible for choosing to make surf music for over twenty years, because we don’t really care?’
Mike: I’d go with earlier philosophical notions. I’d say a certain fatalism and stoicism. Whatever happens, all the really more musical, technical surf bands, they would say, ‘Oh, the Phantom Surfers aren’t really a surf band, because they’re too garage-y.’ But let’s face it. A lot of people who like rock don’t like rock ‘n’ roll. We’re a rock ‘n’ roll band. We play surf music as a sub-set of that.
In the same issue you’re going to be in, we’re also going to be interviewing Hal Blaine. Is there any relationship between you guys and his song, ‘The Phantom Driver?’
Mike: No, but that’s a good song! We’re named after a Tornadoes song, and there’s also another instrumental ‘Phantom Surfer’ song, not to mention several comic books have had Phantom Surfer characters. But one thing Hal Blaine definitely doesn’t have in common with us is that he’s an excellent musician. Not to mention that he’s made a living at it.
But he never made it under his own band name! Isn’t it weird that you guys may have sold more surf and car records than he did under his own moniker?
Mel: The only thing weirder than that is we have not sold as many records as Elvis Presley. Or even El Vez, for that matter.
I just interviewed the Trashwomen a couple months ago. Didn’t you guys start them off?
Mike: I’ll have to take the blame for that. I knew a couple of gal musicians, and then I figured, well, with my legendary bass skills, I could certainly teach one of their friends how to play bass. Basically, we wanted to get something special for a New Year’s show, so we got together a Trashmen tribute band, but their stuff was then about half Trashmen stuff, half-related, some originals, and it just became this Frankenstein monster that flew out of the nest, to mix metaphors. But God bless ‘em, they did the mostest with the fastest, or whatever that Confederate general said.
You guys did a single years ago where the B-side was a phone prank on Dick Dale. Did he ever find out it was you guys?
Mike: Yes and no. We got a call from someone claiming to be his lawyer who was asking about that and about the fake Crown album, The Phantom Surfers and Dick Dale. But he was so confused about both the items that nothing ever came of it. Dick Dale was under the impression that he had recorded with us on that Dick Dale Crown album, but they were public domain tracks that have been used and reused time and again.
Mel: I actually have a video of him signing that LP with me, and he didn’t notice!
Did you ever play with him on the same stage after that?
Mel: I played with Dick in Anaheim with Nokie Edwards of the Ventures in 2003. It was the first time they had met, and it was pretty great. Funny and great. He brought one of his tiger cubs, and you should have seen the audience’s reaction. When he played the intro to Survivor’s ‘Eye of The Tiger,’ the place went wild!
Now I think I’m the one being phone pranked!
Mike: About the funny phone call, we said ‘Oh, you have to contact Planet Pimp Records.’ I told the lawyer it was an actor we hired to portray Dick Dale. I’m certain that being Dick Dale’s lawyer, he was already sufficiently confused that it wasn’t too hard for him to just say, ‘Fuck it.’ It’s an abject lesson in the nature of reality. Who knows what is real?
Do you think putting this in print now is going to get you guys in legal tangles all over again?
Mike: Absolutely. We’re looking forward to it.
Mayuzzz: Just be sure you spell our names right!
Miiiiicke: We actually got a book coming out called Rock Stardom for Dumb Shits. It’s a humor book, but it’s also about everything anyone need to know about the rock industry. And we have a wonderful appendix in it about our legal struggles with Lookout! Records.
Do you find yourselves being oddly chummy with bands that kind of suck? Like, you ever see the Queers around, and you’re like, ‘Man, we both got jerked around by Lookout!’
Mike: Absolutely. In fact, for years before that came about, we wanted to see the statements, because what they said was on the statements didn’t make sense. But every time we’d mention it to Lookout!, they’d say, ‘You know, you’re the only band that has this trouble. Everybody else is satisfied with their statements.’ Every time we’d be at shows with other Lookout! bands, we’d be told that not only were they having the same problems, but they were also told that they were the only band that had that problem. The first time I found that out was talking with B-Face of the Queers, and he was like ‘That’s what they always tell us!’
Divide and conquer, I guess.
Mike: It just goes to show the world of homemade labels is no less disgusting and unethical than major labels.
Mel: Billie Joe of Green Day called and asked for advice on how to get out from under the jackboot that was Lookout! We gave him some pointers, and that was that for those crooks. I wish we would have thought harder about what their name meant when we ‘signed’ with them.
I was going to ask you about Planet Pimp Records. Back in college, I got a discount by sending Sven-Erik Geddes, the label head, a photo of a topless girl holding the Fuck You, Spaceman! EP. Is that label still in operation?
Mike: No. He got tired of having records all over his place, so he took them to his work and threw him in the dumpster.
Maz: I worked at the same place he did, and I parked my car in the parking lot next to the dumpster one day. The whole dumpster was full of, like Los Kogars LPs and wacky stuff like that. He dumped it all.
Do you think there’s some place in Skid Row in San Francisco where there’s like a homeless guy whose house is made out of records?
Maz: I’d like to think so! ‘This is the house that Sven-Erik Geddes built!’
You guys haven’t put out a record since 2000. Do you have any inclination to put out another one before you’re dead?
Mike: Well, we had the notion of writing this book. It’s been our number one priority, and not doing more recording until the book is finished. Unfortunately, it’s very difficult doing a collaboration of four people. I guess that’s why there aren’t more books that are written by bands. Not to mention most rock bands are illiterate.
Maz: We had started working on the next album already. The Phantom Surfers Remember the Golden Sounds of the Eighties’ Revival of Sixties’ Surf Music.
Maz: That’s why we keep coming up with more comp stuff. Like slot car music—it breathes new life into things. People don’t realize that it’s just the same garbage.
On the last album you put out, which was already nine years ago, you covered X-rated comedians such as Rudy Ray Moore and Blowfly. How did you get Blowfly to help you?
Mel: Charm, persistence, and cold hard cash.
Mike: We got to play in Vegas with Rudy Ray Moore at the first Las Vegas Shakedown, and in San Francisco. He was kind of high maintenance the way a lot of grandparents are. He had a wheelchair that he didn’t seem to really need, but he liked to be pushed around in it. I’d take him to his hotel, and he was waving his cane around even though there was nobody in the way, going ‘Wheelchair! Wheelchair coming through!’ He was unfailingly polite, but he’d be like, ‘Young man, my toast is cold. Can you pleeeeease bring me some warm toast?’
Maz: You can’t talk about Rudy Ray Moore in San Francisco without telling the story about pushing him in his wheelchair and running into the Ventures.
Mike: We got to the elevator, and I can’t remember what the Ventures were doing in town that night, I don’t think they were playing, but two of the Ventures were in the elevator! I forgot that it really happened. I thought it was in a dream. Rudy Ray Moore in a wheelchair with me and two of the Ventures in an elevator.
Of the superstars of the original surf/instrumental era, who have you played on the same stage with?
Mike: Link Wray. We did a three-show tour in Spain with him, and the first night his wife was somehow convinced that their son had some of our records, which I can’t believe. So the second night, Link called for Mel to get up on stage. Deke Dickerson was also on that tour, so Deke got on stage as well, so it became sort of a monster jam. So then we determined that the last night was going to be the monster jam to end all monster jams, and we just got everybody from the other band the Church Keys, and we had somebody out there pouring a bottle of rum down backstage people’s throats. I had a Spanish devil mask on and was kind of capering around the stage. Somebody had a tambourine, a harmonica, we had about fifteen people on stage. And Link, bless his heart, Link has gotta be one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met. He’d keep yelling out songs, but with instrumental songs, nobody can remember the titles, and even he couldn’t keep the songs straight. He’d yell out ‘Ace of Spades’ and play ‘Jack the Ripper.’
Do you think if the Beatles hadn’t happened, do you think surf music might have grown into its own thing?
Mike: No. It’s fairly limited what you can do with it while it’s still surf music. That’s one of the things we’ve constantly been playing with. I think one of the things that often gets overlooked is that there is a lot of surf influence after everybody was aping the Beatles. All those people who had bands in the ‘60s started off playing instrumental music if they were the right age. Do you know Randy Holden? He’s best known as one of the later guitarists for Blue Cheer, but he was in a band called the Fender Four that did some classic singles, like ‘Margaya.’ He was in a band called the Sons of Adam that were on the L.A. scene, and you can hear the roots of what became psychedelic. He was on the short list of people that the Yardbirds were considering after Jeff Beck quit at the end of their U.S. tour, since they were in L.A. The Yardbirds opened the door to a lot of stuff. I think they were a lot more innovative and a lot more tasteful than the Beatles. But even though there’s a lot of surf influence that’s gone unnoticed, I don’t know if surf music in its most basic form could have really gone must longer. Surf music had a good run back then, and we do what we can with it as a ‘folk art,’ as it were. As good as instrumental music is, people have a limited capacity to take it in. You reach a point of saturation with people. It’s like, ‘Oh, I’ll put this on while I clean the house.’ The rock historians gave a short shrift to it, but it served its purpose. In the immortal words of Babe, ‘That’ll do, pig.’

THE PHANTOM SURFERS WITH MARK AND THE ESCORTS, THE AMBERTONES, THE ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ADVENTURE KIDS, TUFF TITTIES AND MORE ON SAT., FEB. 21, AT THE REAL BOSS HOSS BLOW OUT AT THE ELKS LODGE, 14440 FRIAR ST., VAN NUYS. 3:30 PM / $15 / 18+. REALBOSSHOSS.BLOGSPOT.COM. PRE-PARTY WITH THE JINXES AND THE TEUTONICS ON FRI., FEB. 20, AT MR. T’S BOWL, 5621 N. FIGUEROA, HIGHLAND PARK. 9 PM / CONTACT VENUE FOR COST / 21+. VISIT THE PHANTOM SURFERS AT PHANTOMSURFERS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/PHANTOMSURFERS.