Pop expo: A column explained

eBay Seller: doublecrownrecords

20ft Surf in California

Roth Metal Flake Skate Board Deck

Bodysurfer Dies at Wedge

November 1964

Joey Altruda: 1959 Mercury Monterey Station Wagon

Cocktailnation – Koop’s news

D. Berger sent this anouncement (on Facebook):

Crawdaddy! is presenting a benefit concert for the legendary rock journalist Paul Williams, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident, leading to early onset of dementia. 100% of the door proceeds benefit Paul and his family as they go through these tough times. To learn more about Paul Williams, visit paulwilliams.com.

6/28/09, 8:00pm: Mojo Nixon, Jello Biafra, Mark Eitzel, John Easdale, Debora Iyall, Peter Dunne, Ben Fong Torres, and more, at the Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco, CA

via Facebook

David Berger writes:

Hi every one!
Here are the latest tour updates…

SUMMER EUROPEAN DATES:

July 4, 2009
Deutsches Theater
Munich, Germany

July 5, 2009
Serenadenhof
Nuremberg, Germany

July 6, 2009
Paradiso
Amsterdam, Holland

July 8, 2009
Tempodrom
Berlin, Germany

July 9, 2009
Museumsplatz
Bonn, Germany

July 11, 2009
Guilfest
Guilford, England

July 12, 2009
The Sage Gateshead
Gateshead, England

September 4-6, 2009
Stradbally Hall
County Laois, Ireland

FALL U.S. DATES:

October 24, 2009
Pabst Theatre
Milwaukee, WI

October 26, 2009
Count Basie Theatre
Red Bank, NJ

October 27, 2009
Bergen Performing Arts Center
Englewood, NJ

October 29, 2009
Keswick Theatre
Glenside, PA

October 30, 2009
Community Theatre at Mayo Center for the Performing Arts
Morristown, NJ

Otto von Stroheim writes:

KFJC Radio presents The Fourth KFJC Battle of the Surfin’ Bands. Organized by the bands to thank KFJC for it’s continued support of obscure genres like surf music, this is also a celebration of live music and a gathering of fans to check out new talent, and old favorites. While some of the bands have been playing for longer than a decade, toured extensively and have multiple releases, a full half of the bands on this year’s bill were formed within the last two years, confirming surf music’s ongoing popularity. Each band gets a 15 minute set to show off their finest material and distinct sound, and any band that makes a memorable impact on the audience is a winner at this battle.

The Fourth KFJC Battle of the Surfin’ Bands
Sunday May 17 2009 at The Hotel Utah in San Francisco
Doors open at 1PM, Music from 2 – 5PM, All Ages
$10 donation at the door, all proceeds go to KFJC radio
Live Broadcast on KFJC 89.7FM in S.F. Bay Area
Live audio & video webcast at www.KFJC.org

the bands:
Pollo Del Mar
The Neptunes
Meshugga Beach Party
The Pyronauts
The TomorrowMen
The El Dorados
The DeadBeats
The Twang Tens
Blue Moodys
The Outer Edge
The Wander-Ins
The Reef Riders

The Hotel Utah
Fourth & Bryant in San Francisco
415-546-6300

HangAir®

Boat made of plastic bottles to make ocean voyage

Ed Wood St Monica Boulevard

Hawthorne Blvd.

Domenic Priore writes:

On Saturday @ 6, come by Stories Book Store, 1716 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California (Echo Park, just South of Alvarado) to hear surf instrumental combo The Boardwalkers live and in person.

They’ll be playing between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. at Stories for a book event based around my new one with Brian Chidester, ‘Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom.’

Pop Surf Culture

Several television monitors around the shop will be screening a wide variety of pre-1970 surfing movies as background eye candy (and for Pop effect) as The Boardwalkers play, and we meet, greet and sign books.

For more information and a ton of groovy pics, check:
dumbangelmag.blogspot.com
Comments on the blog site, very much appreciated. No one previous has presented The Rendezvous like this. Thanks, folk, and hope to see you @ Stories…

When I came across this little bit of info on a new documentary about surf culture related movies, I thought I’d pass it along to Domenic Priore. He is a renowned pop culture historian, specialized and based in Southern California. I didn’t think that much sending the link, but when I read his reply, the conflicting views became obvious to me in an instant. Having read his recent book Pop Surf Culture I had already a good idea about the strong “bohemian” element in 20th century surfing culture, quite the opposite of today’s dominant “jock” (competitive, corporate, surfer risking his neck for Pepsi) – kind of thing.

KK: Hi Domenic, do you know about this?

DP: No, Kahuna, thanks for the tip. It sounds really stupid, like, the opposite of what Pop Surf Culture has to say about the whole thing. It’s hilarious that “real surfers” have yet to outlive the beach movie stereotype they disdain, despite the years of vitriol they have aimed in William “I Love Lucy” Asher’s direction. Jocks don’t have a concept who The Pyramids are, put it that way, but will celebrate a republican like John Milius, who, in Big Wednesday, made a big deal about, well, his being pissed off that a health food restaurant replaced a hamburger stand in Malibu. God forbid they allow a different point of view to exist from their jock trip, sorry, but it pisses me off, again, because, I grew up having to read in SURFER about how “Surfers are blonde haired and blue eyed, those beach movies had ITALIANS playing surfers!” as if that was some kind of big problem. At the same time, I grew up observing “surfers” having gang fights with “cholos” who could care less, but these “surfers” were really just racist American white kids that had it in for Mexican-Americans, or the more activist Chicano movement as well. I’m not a fan of Frankie Avalon all that much (another family values creep) but he was, for the most part, a really good comedian in those movies, and surpassed his own singing career a few times singing Brian Wilson/Gary Usher/Roger Christian songs such as “Runnin’ Wild,” which is cool and actual rock ‘n’ roll… unlike Frankie’s own recording career. I get big, ironic laughs out of Avalon stuff like “These Are the Good Times” as well, though, I mean, what don’t these jocks understand about COMEDY?… especially MUSICAL COMEDY? Morey Amsterdam, Don Rickles, Buddy Hackett, Timothy Carey, Buster Keaton fer chrissakes, again, what’s the problem? We hear nothing but put-downs from “real surfers” with money to burn and a forum… never mind the evident enjoyment of less professional people who surf without NASCAR-style sponsorship. Besides, Big Wednesday is not even close to the coolness of Ride the Wild Surf in any way, shape or form. There. Can you please pass this email on to Greg MacGillivray, whose own surfing movies I pretty much love?

KK: With surfing as a topic of motion pictures I think it’s a field where the fact is always head and shoulders above the fiction. Avalon or Big Wednesday – it doesn‘t matter. And, I can only speak for Europe, here these films practically had no impact on pop culture, let alone the surfers. Yet the scene bears lot’s of similarity to America, from what I gather. Which can only mean that magazines and documentaries where the true forces in shaping the surfers’ representation through the years. People recall seeing Crystal Voyager. I saw a yellow surfboard attached to the van of a neighbor hippie son, as he came back from Morrocco in the late 70s, a little later I picked up a styrofoam bellyboard from their trash. The first german surfers on the island of Sylt had John Severson movies screen to the lifeguard car (horse carriage kind, instead of towers) on the beach in the 1960s and listened to The Astronauts and Beach Boys. My impression is that the jock thing only started here after windsurfing started to be too jock dominated and the cool guys just left it to them. Unfortunately the jocks followed faster than you can say thruster. I will attach a link to a home-movie of a trip to Mazatlan, with music that was obviously dubbed on at the actual time. Listen for the jumps in the music when the footage is re-spliced. It’s a great selection of surf tunes!

I added some links to Domenic’s pure text replys, I hope he doesn’t mind.