Surf Music USA
Book on The Surf Music Craze

Stephen McPharland Surf Music USA

I read the Spectro Pop site is recommending this highly. And the author, Stephen J. McParland, has been a prolific historian of the subject of Surf-, hotrod-, Skateboard-, Motorbike and related early to mid 60s musical styles since 1979, when he started his California Music magazine, from Australia.
read more about this book here.

Check out CMusic books while we’re at it!

Pacificlongboarder Announcing Article on Surfmusic

Whether it’s about Aussie Atlantics type, Jack Johnson mode, California instro, Beach Boys style or all of them was not specified yet.

Volume 7 Number 4
80 pages plus cover

Face Moves: Twelve Longboard Apostles
The Kingdom of Tonga
Surf Music Lives
Once Were Groms
Profiles: Beau Young & Manly Malibu Club

Pacificlongboarder.com

Book on Miki Dora

Legendary Surfers highly recommends this. So I’m sure this is a good read. If you don’t know who Miki Dora was you haven’t seen many sixties surf films. He was one of the original Malibu locals until he was so pissed off by the crowds that he left to tour the world. He worked as a stuntman in the Beach Party movies. He was not known for riding big surf, but he would do it, like in Ride The Wild Surf. If I remember correctly, there are rides from that season in Endless Summer. Of course he’s also featured at Malibu in that film, were he displays his perfect command of that classic California right hand pointbreak. When I mixed the first Surf me Up, Scotty! album, they sent me a short audio clip of Miki Dora talking on the beach, to mix it under the music. Where they found it I have no idea.

Here’s the author’s (David Rensin) page.

Here’s a Miki Dora interview on YouTube.

The Demise of The Ditch

Over at Cleanestline.com Gerry Lopez writes about his experience with a standing wave. It’s a nice and long text, that I will give a second look on the sofa, apparently coming from his book Surf is Where You Find It. That is a title after my taste. This should be every surfer’s motto, how else could the crowds be dispensed?

… Since it’s gone, I guess there’s no reason to keep the secret any longer. What we had was a pretty neat surf spot almost 200 miles from the ocean. For the last three years, it’s been double top secret. Even so, like everything else in the surfing world, the word got out. That’s why it got taken away. Too many people knew and were having too much fun.

We got talking and discovered that he never had ridden a wave in the ocean. He had surfed a few other standing waves in the area, but had just heard about this one. His board was Oregon-made in a shop out in Lincoln City. He found it in a second hand store here in our desert town and it worked well for him.

The Cleanest Line: The Demise of the Ditch

Birth of the Cool

I checked this book out a while back and I confirm it’s a must have. Here’s a quote from the New York Times.

birth of the cool

The cool was born in New York. It was in Manhattan that Miles Davis and the nine-piece group he convened in the late 1940s forged a tightly understated alternative to the hot expressionism of bebop and recorded the hugely influential tracks later collected in the album “Birth of the Cool.” But it was in California in the 1950s that cool jazz and cool art in general took root and flourished.

The story is well told in “Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury,” an exhibition here at the Addison Gallery of American Art. Organized by Elizabeth Armstrong, chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, Calif., where it originated, the show examines cool style of the ’50s in several disciplines, including painting, furniture design, architecture, film and photography.

The multidisciplinary approach could be confusing, but it all hangs together in ways both entertaining and thought provoking. What emerges is not just a style but a spirit and an ethos that are in many ways diametrically opposite those of East Coast Abstract Expressionism. Angst-free, not monumental, anti-grandiose:
California cool is laid back yet cleanly articulated, impersonal yet intimate, strict yet hedonistic, and seriously playful. …

Birth of the Cool – California – Art – Review – New York Times

Thanks to Lou Smith.

Walk-Don’t Run – The Story of The Ventures by Del Halterman

Quote from Lulu:

The Ventures The Story of The Ventures
by Del Halterman

Description:
The definitive historic account of The Ventures, the world’s number one instrumental group that had a worldwide smash hit in 1960 with “Walk-Don’t Run.” Their second biggest hit came nine years later with “Hawaii Five-0” but they didn’t quit there, continuing non-stop on a fifty-year career of touring and making wonderful instrumental recordings. …

Walk-Don’t Run – The Story of The Ventures by Del Halterman (Book) in Biographies & Memoirs

Danny Lyon’s 1960s Biker Photography

Thanks to Boing Boing for informing us about this great looking book on hodad photography. Finally a book to hear Davie Allan & The Arrows by.

Danny Lyon’s 1960s biker photography – Boing Boing

book at amazon.com
Wikipedia about the photographer Danny Lyon

also from Smithonian.com
Two for the Rogues By Stephen Franklin

Cowboy and Sparky,
two pals on bikes. They’ve just been to a motorcycle race in Schererville, Indiana, and their girlfriends will soon get off work from the Dairy Queen. It is November 1965, and CowBoy—Irvin P. Dunsdon, who uses the capital B to this day—is 23 years old. He feels he’s on top of the world.

Spiegel über Wellenreiten, 1963

Der Spiegel 52/1963 vom 25.12.1963, Seite 60

Oahu
Besser als Sex
Wellenreiten
Schweine und Weiber waren einst die Siegerpreise eines seit Jahrhunderten auf Hawaii heimischen Nationalsports, über den der britische Entdecker James Cook berichtete, die Eingeborenen vollbrächten auf schmalen Brettern mitten in der Brandung “höchst erstaunliche Dinge”.Cook hatte das Wellenreiten entdeckt, jene alte hawaiische Mutprobe, die – mit neuzeitlicher Raffinesse aufbereitet – in den letzten Jahren zu einem neuen Massensport des 20. Jahrhunderts geworden ist. …

Hier weiter suchen: SPIEGEL Wissen :: Artikel

The Cruise of The Snark at LibriVox

The first book I ever read featuring the topic of surfing is going to be available as a free audiobook at LibriVox. It’s The Cruise of The Snark by no other than the great Jack London. I am listening to the surfing chapter A Royal Sport right now.
I must say, since English is not my first language, while I can understand all the spoken words, it’s still hard to follow. He’s reading a little fast, and doesn’t get you  into the mood too much. I hope these free offers don’t discourage professional efforts. I would think surfing literature would make great audiobooks.

A Royal Sport
audio (Jack London)

The Cruise of the Snark at Amazon