Los Angeles – The 50s and 60s

Maverick’s Flat 1966

Dumb Angel Blog is delivering the goods here. The next best thing to being there at the time is knowing all the good stuff.
All the themed night-clubs. The recording studios and labels. The Doo-Wop groups, the R&B and soul acts. The garage bands who covered them. The cool jazz-acts. Early Doors, artists and mindblowing interior design. Pheww… You owe it to yourself to check out this update of the Dumb Angel Blog.

Great Surf Soundtrack Comp!

chaiman of the board comp cover

Quoting from their MySpace profile:

Surf Soundtracks 1964 – 1974 Released on July 2nd on Harmless Records

Never mind the Beach Boys, Chairman Of The Board is a collection of vintage soundtracks from iconic cult surf films. Underground film makers wanted original music, a harder sound to reflect the new wilder cinematic expression now possible on the face of a wave. The soundtrack they chose to enhance this visual experimentation was the mellower stoner blues and psychedelic rock, which perfectly captured the cerebral highs of living the alternative dream. The music featured on this compilation, some of which has never been released, originates from six of these classic surf films.

I have some of the films on VHS or DVD, and some of the released soundtracks on vinyl. It’s a really great genre with a very high musical standard. And it’s something you can play to people if they ask you what music surfers listened to, in the 60s (and early 70s in this case).

Hammond Organ Spy-Jazz

Ingfried Hoffmann plays Bond

Ingfried Hoffmann – Plays Jazz for Secret Agents

Fantastic organ led spy-jazz cd. Mostly Bond titles from the early movies, but some great originals too. A nifty guitar player is involved here as well!!!


Ingfried Hoffmann - Jazz Club: Hammond Bond

iTunes link

Tiki News Website

Where would Tiki be without Otto von Stroheim’s Tiki News?

Established in 1995, Tiki News is a printed magazine containing 84 + pages packed full of historic and current Tiki information. The first magazine to solely cover Tiki!

The same folks bring you Tiki Oasis each year!

The original Tiki weekender! This August 16-19 join us in San Diego for the seventh Tiki Oasis! Experience top Exotica and Surf bands, the best DJs in the country spinning vintage vinyl, vendors selling unique Tiki trinkets and idols, relax poolside or dance the night away at the Hanelei Hotel! Come and enjoy three nights and three days of fun in the sun!

Pacific Ocean Park

The first ime I was introduced to Pacific Ocean Park was on a Surfer’s Mood surf comp in the early 90s, through two tracks from a promo 45 that were included by the Restless Surfer.
So now I found this video at YouTube about it. Thereabouts must have been the later Dogtown, where Tony Alva and fellow skaters developed their new skating styles in the seventies.

Watch the Pacific Ocean Park video here.

New Sven Kirsten Book Tiki Modern

After the groundbreaking book on Tiki Pop-Culture of the mid-20th century Tiki Modern follows up with the perfect companion, focusing even more on the interior design aspects of modern Tiki during his heyday.

Deutsch Kurzbeschreibung von der Buecher.de Seite:

Kurzbeschreibung: Dieses amüsante Buch bringt zwei der jüngsten Retro-Trends zusammen: Das Faible für die 1950er und 60er sowie den Tiki-Style. Mit einer Mischung aus Enthusiasmus und Ironie zeigt Autor Sven Kirsten, wie Naivität und Moderne Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts Hand in Hand gingen. Im wahrsten Sinn des Wortes schrecklich moderne Möbel verbanden alten Kitsch und neue Heldenverehrung zum Beispiel Kreationen aus dem Hause Witco; dem Unternehmen, das Elvis Presleys ‘Jungle Room’ und Hugh Hefners Playboy-Pool schuf. Eine wahre Hoch-Zeit des Designs!

hier geht’s zum Buecher.de Shop

Rock Hall Voting Scandal (MySpace Bulletin Repost)

This interesting Bulletin came thru this morning on MySpace:

Rock Hall Voting Scandal: Rock Group Actually Won

According to sources knowledgeable about the mysterious ways of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, British Invasion group The Dave Clark Five and not Grandmaster Flash finished fifth in the final voting of the nominating committee and should have been inducted on Monday night.

According to sources, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, who recently appointed himself chairman of the Foundation after the death of Ahmet Ertegun, ignored the final voting and chose Grandmaster Flash over the DC5 for this year’s ceremony.

“Jann went back to a previous ballot instead of taking the final vote as the last word,” my source insisted. “He used a technicality about the day votes were due in. In reality, The Dave Clark Five got six more votes than Grandmaster Flash. But he felt we couldn’t go another year without a rap act.”

R.E.M.
, Van Halen, The Ronettes and Patti Smith were the top four vote-getters, with Grandmaster Flash finishing fifth when the votes were counted on the first date ballots were due in to the Rock Hall office.

But when all the ballots were counted a few days later, the DC5 had pulled ahead. Wenner decided to ignore that and stick with the earlier tally.

“We begged Jann to allow all six acts to be inducted. But he insisted that he couldn’t because there wouldn’t be enough time,” my source said. “He wanted to have Aretha Franklin come and perform in memory of Ahmet Ertegun.”

The Ertegun tribute, while very nice, was deemed unnecessary by members of the main committee because the Atlantic Records co-founder will be memorialized in New York on April 17.

“But Jann wanted to do his own tribute. It was insane, especially since he took over Ahmet’s position on the board before Ahmet even had a memorial. Jann simply sent papers around informing everyone that he was now the chairman,” my source said.

The Dave Clark Five ballot tampering, however, stings the most. The group, part of the British Invasion of the ’60s, should have been inducted long ago for their hits like “Glad All Over,” “Bits & Pieces” and “Catch Me If You Can.” Making them wait has turned out to be a huge mistake, as their fortunes have not been great.

In December 2006, sax player Denis Payton succumbed to cancer at age 63. Lead singer Mike Smith has been paralyzed since 2003 after falling off a ladder at his home in Spain.

In August 2005, a terrific fundraising effort for Smith at B.B. King’s in New York was supposed to be the prelude to finally recognizing the group that had several memorable hits in the mid-’60s.

Wenner’s cruel axing of them from the show and the Hall of Fame should be painful to many who are intimately involved with the Hall, like Paul Shaffer, who runs the Hall of Fame band and produced and emceed the Smith tribute.

So what happened here? My sources also say that Wenner’s motivation may have sprung from a controversial speech that was delivered by new administrative head Joel Peresman to the nominating committee last winter.

“He stood up there and told us that we should vote for who we thought would be most commercial, and who be best on the TV show,” a source said. “It was outrageous. Some people tried to stop him and asked him to leave, but he wouldn’t. He said, ‘I’m not leaving.’ The director is never supposed to speak to the nominating committee.”

Peresman came to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation last year when Wenner arbitrarily ousted the long-time chief of the group, Suzan Evans Hochberg, after two decades of loyalty.

“We couldn’t believe Jann stood up there last night and said Suzan was retiring. But when the seating plan went crazy the other day, Jann called and begged her to come in and help. Peresman knows nothing about the business,” a source said.

Peresman came to the Foundation from gigs booking shows at Madison Square Garden and with Clear Channel, the radio giant that many feel has strangled the music business with intransigent radio play policies and suggestions — actually, government investigations — of payola.

In the old days, such a hire would have been considered anathema by Wenner.

None of this should come as any surprise to those who have followed the roller-coaster world of the Rock Hall. According to the group’s most recent tax filing, for example, they gave only $9,000 to indigent musicians from their $11 million in holdings.

Even worse: Wenner sent a tax-free $10,000 to something called Jazz Casuals in San Francisco. It’s really just the archives of Ralph J. Gleason, the late jazz writer who periodically wrote for Rolling Stone in its early days. It was the only donation made by the Foundation to any group last year.

“Again, outrageous,” a source said. “With all of Jann’s money, he could have just sent a check. He didn’t need to use the Foundation’s money.”

By contrast, the Foundation gave only $53,000 to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland. Attorney Allen Grubman’s law firm took another $50,000 for legal services rendered. Evans received her usual $300,000 salary. Peresman is said to be receiving even more.

And then there’s the matter of who has left on the nominating committee. I’m told that nearly half the group is gone, leaving 32 members. Many of the remaining members are former or current Wenner employees, like Rolling Stone’s Nathan Brackett, David Fricke, Jim Henke, Joe Levy, Brian Keizer and Anthony DeCurtis.

Jon Landau, Bruce Springsteen‘s manager and a former Rolling Stone writer, is the chairman of the committee and considered the last truly mediating influence on Wenner.

There are only three actual musicians: Paul Shaffer, Steven van Zandt and Robbie Robertson. Three are female. One of them is black. There are only two other black members: journalist Toure and Reginald C. Dennis

Wenner, I’m told, “weeded out everyone he didn’t like.” He even got rid of the veteran New York Post and Vanity Fair writer Lisa Robinson.

Wenner almost bumped Claudia Perry, a Newark Star Ledger sports writer and former pop music critic. After a scuffle, she managed to hang on, which was good news. As a black woman she fulfilled two minorities on the board (Edna Gundersen and Elyssa Gardner of USA Today are the other females).

“This is the opposite of what Ahmet would have wanted,” a source said. “He liked a big committee that reflected lots of different tastes.”

New Documentary about California Garage Studio PAL, which Produced Surf Music Classics

The very studio where Paul Buff and Frank Zappa recorded one of my all time favorite LPs is The Hollywood Persuaders, featuring tracks like Drums a-Go-Go and Thunderbird.

freakoutincucamonga writes over at Surf Guitar 101:

Check out our web page for our documentary, “Freak Out in Cucamonga.”

www.freakoutincucamonga.com

For anyone interested in the Cucamonga studios in the early 60’s that brought you ‘Wipeout’ and ‘Pipeline’, as well as recording sessions from Johnny Fortune, The Tornadoes, Conrad and the Hurricane Strings, Johnny Barakat, and let’s not forget, Frank Zappa.

YouTube link to Cucamonga PAL Studio documentary video trailer