#NewMusicMonday • October, 2021

Every ripple on the ocean

Every leaf on every tree

Every sand dune in the desert

Every power we never see

There is a deeper wave than this

Swelling in the world

There is a deeper wave than this

Listen to me girl

–Sting

Writing about new music releases every month is my most difficult task at Monday Monday Music™. It's like wading out into rough surf with my 1970's Boogie board. I'll call the "rough surf"– the waves of new pop music constantly coming in through my social media apps like a wind blown day at Mission Beach. I do make the attempt to listen, but it's often like strapping my Boogie board to my ankle, putting on my fins and swimming under a series of choppy waves before I get out to calmer waters to waves with a little more form. As Sting said, "Love is the seventh wave."

In thinking about the Boogie board metaphor, I thought about the idea of taking a picture of my 1975 (baby blue) Morey Boogie board along with my brand new Morey Boogie Board that I recently purchased at Costco. That thought quickly faded as I'm currently in Seattle during this post and not at home in San Diego to snap that picture. 

Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board, is
 photographed on Capistrano Beach holding
a newer model (left) and (right) his original
 1971 Boogie Board.(Photo source- NPR/
Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times
via Getty Images

So I started searching for Boogie board pictures on the Internet when I saw the NPR news headline, Tom Morey, inventor of the Boogie Board, dies at 86.

Tom Morey (August 15, 1935 – October 14, 2021), was a very creative person. He started out a professional jazz drummer, then moved to California and got a math degree at USC. He then became an engineer at Douglas Aircraft specializing in composite materials. In 1964 he quit Douglas Aircraft, moved to Ventura, CA and started several surfing related companies. Using his knowledge of composite materials and love of surfing, he developed several technological innovations that have heavily influenced modern surfing equipment design (Wikipedia).

But it wasn't until Morey left Southern California that he created the first Boogie board [with the name inspired for his love of jazz]. In 1971, Morey was living in Hawaii when he cut a large piece of polyethylene foam in half. He then worked to shape the foam with an iron after putting pages of the Honolulu Advertiser on top. By the time he was done Morey had a short board with a mostly rectangular body and a rounded nose. It weighed around three pounds — a fraction of what traditional surfboards weighed at the time. (NPR)

In the late 60's I started body surfing on the central coast of California. I then graduated to bodyboarding around 1971 as my friend Steve Spencer who surfed started shaping and making a few surfboards for fun. He gave me a small fiberglass board that was paddle board size he had made from some left over surfboard foam. I then took my dad's black and yellow Churchill Swim Fins from the garage, and they became mine. (I had no idea at the time that Churchill Fins would be the preferred standard for bodyboarders for many years.)  I loved bodyboarding! It was like being a dolphin with the sensation of my body being right in the wave. For no particular reason, I was never interested in standing and surfing. Maybe I wasn't into the surfer scene, but I did like the 1960's style VW bus.

In 1975, I moved to San Diego to go to school at
SDSU, and after hearing about this new type of soft bodyboard called the Morey Boogie® board,  I purchased a new Morey 132 B.E. for $50 at a surf shop in Pacific Beach. (When you don't have any money, you remember the price.) Needless to say, I had endless summers and wetsuit winters of fun Boogie boarding over the years, and I still have my original baby blue board and leash used by my kids when they were children at the beach and snow, and now my grandchildren at the pool and beach. Thank you Tom Morey!

Now back to my metaphor...

So I can still ride the waves with my folk and rock 'n' roll, but the ocean of music has changed. Change is a good thing and I'm not here to put down any current pop stars or genre of music, yelling like some 'locals only' surfer to, "get off my wave!" 

The cool thing about new music being released today is that folk and rock 'n' roll are still very much alive, although you do have to search a little deeper from the radio dial and bygone days of the record store. And that's why I'm here– finding you new and old tunes out in a crowded digital sea. It's that now I've moved my boogie down about 50 yards and years from the bump beat crowd to the the smaller jingle-jangle waves of my youth.

Hope you enjoy the new tunes, covers, and live performances I have ridden this month. In #NewMusicMonday and Fifty Years of Music, I include songs remastered from artists such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor who have done a fantastic job to preserve their legacy through their new vault releases of archived audio and video.

I've also included three songs from Mark Hunter, my old college roommate, once Boogie boarder, and longtime surfer. Back in the day we spent a lot of time in the waves together. Long may you surf the break by La Jolla, and create music with your acoustic six-string Mr. Hunter!

And to Tom Morey, may you boogie in eternal peace with your music and love of play in the ocean.