Don’t misunderstand me – I don’t mean to say this is a great musical. I have only heard one of the songs and had enough.
The reason I had to include Go-Go Beach here is that I once recorded a track called Go-Go Beach! It was on one of my homerecording tapes, that interested parties could get through reviews in Pipeline and New Gandy Dancer, around 1990. In the track I tried to get some of the spirit of the Manchester bands like the Charlatans and Stone Roses coupled with instrumental guitar work.
When The Looney Tunes Band started, I stopped this tape thing. But somehow I remembered the track after the band broke up (the drummer wanted to include electronics, but I did not want the Loonies to change in that direction). Go-Go Beach then turned into Gogo Sitar and was the first track I did with my modified ES335 copy, homemade electric sitar.

So, there’s no connection for me with that musical, other than the coincidental naming. If you didn’t care for such information, you wouldn’t have read so far, would you?

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

Elvis’s first guitar player Scooty Moore had a costum made amplifier in the 50s that had a built in echo unit, the cabinet of this very amp is now for auction at eBay.

quote from eBay page:

The original Echosonic guitar cabinet used on most all the live and studio guitar work during Elvis Presley’s career (1955-1957).

You can hear it on all the hits from the early years including: Mystery Train, That’s All Right, Heartbreak Hotel, Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Don’t Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, All Shook Up, and more.

The Echosonic was designed and hand-built by Ray Butts. While only 68 ever being built, the Echosonic found a unique place in history with a built-in tape echo (loop) unit. …

This site has a very informative primer for Indorock newbies. Indorock is the closest equivalent to Surf western Europe had at the time (early 60s). It was performed by indonesian emigrants living in the Netherlands and touring western Europe, mainly the Federal Republic of Germany.

Here are The Tielman Brothers doing an Elvis vocal during the period the above picture was taken, with Fender Jazzmasters and Bass VI.

I don’t have that many of his records – but I sure found a lot of his tracks at iTunes! He was very busy covering any style of popular guitar playing you can think of during the 60s and 70s. I guess most of you don’t know him, so for starters I made a little 42 track Buddy Merrill iMix, which you can find at Itunes.
Here’s what I wrote about it:

The versatile Buddy Merrill!
We start with a surfy/Ventures-style division before going into a nowsound/funky part. This turns over into his best bossa tracks on iTunes. After this we are exposed to a little gang of country favorites leading into Buddy’s steel guitar skills featured on his coolest hawaiian offerings. We go Exotica for the second to last bunch of tunes. This leaves us to close this collection with three tunes pulled from the classical catalogue – Where Czardas had briefly taken us during the bossa section.

Here’s his homepage www.buddymerrill.com.

Buddy on iTunes

Clayton Hula Hottie guitar picks – now those look great! Have never used or seen Clayton here in Germany.

Here’s an online article about the tune Miserlou, that has always been an Exotica favourite, and proven to be a great guitar melody over the years as well.

picture: Dick Dale