60 Years of Music • The Beach Boys, Surfin' USA • Released March 25, 1963

Avila Beach Pier and town. Notice the red rectangle?

 
Music is all about association. In March of 1963, I turned 8 years old. This post is about my childhood in the 1960's and the associations I have with California beach culture growing up on the central coast. For me, Avila Beach and the Beach Boys are joined as sand is to the surf.

Left of the pier, sunning by the wall.

I picked the panoramic photo above because it best helps tell this little story. I want you to picture this scene if you drove into Avila Beach with your family in the 1960's, parked the station wagon, and walked to the beach. As you approach, the right side beach at the pier was the family side, and the left side was more of the teenager's side. If you look how I've blocked off the rising road and embankment wall in the red rectangle, that particular section was where all the high school and possibly Cal Poly college students laid out their beach towels and sunned themselves in all their beach blanket bikini glory. As a child and adolescent, I walked that section many times, not only on the beach, but walking up on the sidewalk and looking down the embankment, if you get my drift. Oh my wannabe self, to be one of the guys with my Gordon and Smith surfboard resting against the embankment wall while I was talking with the girls... Hello cowgirl in the sand.

Now to the right of the pier (the family side), that's where my parents would set up. When you were really little you played in the sand, on the slide or took a spin on the merry-go-round. It was so cool, that they had all that right there in the sand for the kids to play.

A vintage "Surf Mat"

When we got a little older, we would rent the inflatable canvas blue and yellow rafts for 50 cents a hour under the pier and ride the waves in the pre-Boogieboard days (see the photo on the left I found on the Internet called, "surf mats"). Typically Avila waves are not a left or right break at all. On bigger days (3-5 ft.) the swell would develop and just slam straight down. A great ride was being in the wave and when it slammed, the industrial strength rental raft just bounced and you held on for dear life and rode that buckin' bronco in a wave of white foam. A bad ride was usually catching it a little too early on top and going over the cliff of the wave to be body slammed. Now as an 8-9 year old, if you did that in the shallower water, you'd get slammed into the sand. By 10 years old, you were a pro, and if you were going to get slammed, it would be on bigger waves in deeper water, or what everybody called, "the washing machine."

It was so fun. You would spend about a hour in the water, and the water was not like Southern California that warmed up in the summer. The water in Northern and Central Coast beaches are cold. You would see kids come out of the water shivering and their skin would be blush red. I remember, running from the surf with my raft to my beach towel cooking on the sand. I would dive into that big beach towel as my shivering would turn to roasting, and then running back into the surf to repeat the whole cycle. I was stoked.

Now back in those days, you could be 10 years old, and your mom gives you money for a burger or treat and you go to the beach strip of shops, all by yourself! I remember this like it's yesterday. The smell of burgers cooking on the grill, teens drinking cokes, kids eating cotton candy all covered in sand, and The Beach Boys playing through a shop's rusted outdoor cone speaker system. I can't say that Surfin' USA was playing in that most vivid moment of my memory, but let's just say it was.

The Wilson brothers (Brian, Carl and Dennis), cousin Mike, and neighbor David Marks had tapped into the early sixties beach culture and surfer music. Sixty years later, why would anyone ever want to leave that scene, you gremmies. 

Enjoy my friends.

 

Here are some common surfing terms from the 1960s:

1. Beach Bum: Someone who spends most of their time at the beach, usually a surfer.
2. Cowabunga: The surfer's cry "Cowabunga" as they climb a 12 foot wall of water and "take the drop."
3. Ditching: Skipping school to go surfing.
4. Gremmie: A beginner surfer.
5. Gun: A long surfboard used for riding big waves.
6. Hang Ten: A term used to describe a surfer's ability to ride a wave with both feet at the front of the board, toes over the edge.
7. Hotdogging: Showing off one's surfing skills, often involving radical maneuvers and tricks.
8. Kook: A surfer who is inexperienced or lacks skill.
9. Nose Riding: Riding the front of the board while balancing on the nose.
10. Soul Surfer: A surfer who embodies the spirit and culture of surfing.
11. Stoked: A feeling of excitement or happiness.
12. Tubed: To successfully ride inside a wave's hollow barrel.
13. Wipeout: Falling off the board while surfing.

Avila Beach today, minus the oil storage tanks on the bluffs, and that's another story.

60 Years of Music • Please Please Me • The Beatles • March 22, 1963

 

By Paul Hobbs

Editor's note - 

If you are a regular reader of the Monday Monday Music™ blog, you will be familiar with Paul Hobbs being a guest contributor and writer. I asked Paul if he would be interested in writing a little piece about The Beatles first album as he is the biggest Beatle fan I know. Any musician who grew up with The Beatles in the sixties knows their impact on the millions of lives they touched so deeply. Paul was 9 years old when Please Please Me was released. Check out Paul's music at Paul Hobbs Music on YouTube.

As I read about the 60th anniversary of The Beatles release of Please Please Me in March of 1963, I get a little wistful, like I wasn’t invited to the party. The Beatles released their first album in 1963? How could I have missed it? I’ve been a diehard Beatle fan for most of my life, for crying out loud! But, I guess it only proves what great strides we’ve made in media and communications. Or, could it be that we didn’t really have an overwhelming interest in England until The Beatles pulled the curtain back and revealed just how cool it was over there?

All I know is that when Capitol Records released Meet The Beatles in the U.S. in January of 1964, and then they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for three consecutive weeks, all hell broke loose. Beatlemania was here! But first it was there. Word has it that Ed had run into a mob scene when he’d flown out of Heathrow Airport in London. The Beatles were returning from some dates in France and Spain, and the sight of their throngs of screaming fans prompted him to book them on his show.

At any rate, this is a commemoration of a Beatles release that illustrates the separate worlds we Beatle fans once lived in. We got our Beatle albums, up to Sergeant Pepper, from America’s Capitol Records, who borrowed tracks from one album and added them to another to create bastardized versions of what The Beatles released in England. We didn’t realize the Please Please Me album existed, let alone that it was The Beatles maiden release from almost a year before we knew anything about them.

Oh well. I’ve gone back and filled in the blanks from The Beatles beginnings and I’m a better man for it. I don’t love them any less for being left out of their initial, remarkable achievement. And it’s a great album. I still love the excitement and energy that comes across when the needle hits the vinyl. In fact, I think I’ll put it on and dance around the living room, as long as nobody’s watching.

Fifty Years of Music • March, 1973

 Monster month. It's my 18th birthday and I'm counting the days before graduation. It's the spring semester and I still have an English class requirement for graduation and decide to take a literature class with Miss Dunn. A pretty and spunky little redhead is sitting right behind me everyday now in class. Her name is Mary Kit and I love that name as she'll quickly correct anyone that calls her, "Mary."

We are starting to strike up a daily conversation. She quickly works out a routine of leaning forward and talking to me as I don't turn around to attract attention to Miss Dunn, she's reading passages from To Kill a Mockingbird. In fact, I'm hatching a plan that we sit together in the Ethel Pope Auditorium to watch the 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck, as Miss Dunn has planned this as a culminating event to the Harper Lee classic.

Mary Kit's a Junior but I find out soon enough that she's graduating a year early and my fascination is increasing by the day as I can't wait for the few moments before and after English class to have a little face to face conversation with my new friend. Sitting directly behind Mary Kit is her best friend, Valerie and when Miss Dunn breaks us off into small discussion groups, we quickly form our little triangle.

At some point, I find out she's Judge Smith's daughter and I'm thinking, am I way out of my league to ask her out?

Many of the tunes in the playlist this month are all over the radio and the association of meeting Mary Kit and hearing these songs in that spring and summer of 1973 are seared into my brain forever. Pink Floyd's, The Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin's, Houses of the Holy, and the Doobie Brother's, The Captain and Me, playing on KUHL FM. So I'm driving to the southside of town to get gas for .25 cents a gallon, listening to the car radio in my 1957 MGA convertible, and I'm thinking about that girl. 

Amazingly enough, I don't have a picture of that car, but here's a 1961 I found on the Internet that had the same deep green color. I bought mine for $600 my Junior year in high school, and all I wanted in life at the time, was to have a girl in the passenger seat.

From a music standpoint, listening to all the Rock, Folk and R&B from fifty years ago always has it's wonderful surprises. In 1973, I never listened to Tom Waits debut album, Closing Time. I don't have to tell you it's a classic like the car above, as I couldn't get enough of listening to the entire album this past week. It's ironic that I am now listening to digital streaming music made from 50 to 60 year old vinyl records. The early 70's had such fantastic singer-songwriters like Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson who had that early 20th century upright piano playing and singing style that goes with a cold beer sitting in a bar. Raise a glass to Tom Waits and Closing Time!

Lots of little gems here, but I found myself also listening to the Faces, Ooh La La. This would be the Faces last album as Rod Stewart broke up one of the truly great rock 'n' roll bands seeking his own fame and fortune. 

I also gave some extra listening time to Fleetwood Mac's Penguin, as one of my favorite's, Danny Kirwan was fired from the band while on their Bare Trees album tour for his out of control behavior. Bob Welch would suddenly take on a more important central role on Penguin and in a band that had a knack for losing great musicians only to replace them with newer great musicians.

Enjoy my friends, and thanks to Monday Monday's spunky little editor for proofreading this publication every week. It's been 50 years in the making. And, Happy 68th birthday to the Ol' 55 who writes this rag.

#BestSongIHeardToday • Volume 20 - I Hear Dead People

I was thinking about Brian Jones the other day when The Rolling Stones song, Around and Around came on. He drowned in his swimming pool in 1969 and it was described in the coroner's report as, "death by misadventure." Brian Jones was 27 years old and kicked off the whole modern era of the 27 Club of deaths by misadventure.

Now you might think that's an interesting blog post to write about, but I just wasn't in the mood to write about a drug related death this week, or next. But, Brian did get me thinking about musical artists who have recently died and basically made it well into their 70's and beyond.

Burt Bacharach's recent death at 94 hit me this past week. It was a bit of a delayed reaction on my part, but I started playing songs by famous people like Dionne Warwick and Jackie DeShannon who were made famous by the sheer splendor of Burt Bacharach and Hal David songs. So I thought what a great blog that would make, and then, didn't have the writer's drive to do it, probably some day.

I then thought about David Crosby, but then, nah. Although through it all, he still had the sweetest singing voice ever, right up to the end. How was he not in the 27 Club? Second only to Keith Richards to dodge that distinction.

Then, I thought about Christine McVie and how she was always my favorite Fleetwood Mac member of the second iteration of the band starting in 1975. Then I thought about Peter Green and Danny Kirwan in the first iteration of Fleetwood Mac and how I loved those guys too!

Oh, and I can't forget Jeff Beck and what a wonderful playlist that would make, or Jimmy Seals from Seals and Crofts, or the wonderful wonderful Tom Petty, I'm still not over that one.

Then, I started listening to my almost finished #BestSongIHeardToday Vol. 20 and thought, "hell that will do" as half the people I listen to in my 30,000+ Amazon Music app are already dead. All I have to do is switch out about 10 songs and put some more dead musicians in, and I'm good to go!

and this just in, and now a regular event for us rockin' rollers

David Perry Lindey (March 21, 1944 - March 3, 2023) 

Bonus this week, all songs are videos! Enjoy the playlist my friends.

Thinking about Gary Hill thinking about Duane Allman.