Wallpapers in my Flickr

Rare 60s Standel guitars

Mosrite guitars promotional print

Rare vintage Gretsch guitars

Coral (vintage Danelectro) guitars

Let me add that they are so dark for a reason: they will drop way into the background, you still see enough details. It’s like wearing shades, dig? The size is 1280×1024 pixels.

Flickr: Photos & Video from Mr. Miff

You can also get my surf music related (partly) desktop icons here.

Martin Denny’s Birthday on LuxuriaMusic

This is going to be fun!

Monday night, April 14th, 7 – 10 pm PST:
Come celebrate Martin Denny’s 98th birthday on Strike’s Kitsch Niche! Strike will celebrate the Earl of Exotica with a 3-hour exotica special! Tune in to hear his attempt to play a track off of every Martin Denny record, do an extended Quiet Village cover set, play some rare Tiki Room stuff, and play one of the rarest exotica records in existence…a vocal version of Quiet Village sung by Darla Hood of Our Gang fame!! Don’t miss this alluring and enticing night of beautiful and strange music this Monday from 7 – 10 pm PST, only on LuxuriaMusic!

From the LuxuriaMusic newsletter.

Arthur Lyman Re-Releases

I knew about this big back-catalogue re-issue being planned before, but I somehow never could view the web-page until now.

Arthur Lyman died a couple of years ago, and it was a great loss to the people into Exotica and Tiki as he was still performing. He used to play with Martin Denny before he ventured out with his own group. Both artists released similar styled albums, but Lyman kept more Hawai’i in his music as the sixties went on, being hawaiian might be a reason. He had some of the deepest, most atmospheric and soulful Exotica recordings, combining authentic ethnic instrumentation with modern jazz. Another interesting point of note are humorous tunes he often selected to appear towards the end of his LPs. He may not have had a Sandy Warner on the covers, but many are very beautiful, classic Exotica designs. Taboo 2 had an authentic shrunken head on the front, until it was repackaged with a shot from the Pele roll of film.

Kevin Crossman writes on the Exotica list:

Collectors has released 18 Lyman albums in their entirety as 9 two-fer CDs.

Don’t be fooled by lame, generic cover art. each release has the cover of both LPs printed in full color. All you have to do is take the front booklet out and fold it backwards to show the cool orig Lp cover art! The CD also contains a reprint of one of the Lp back covers

Look for the double titles separated by a slash. Steer clear of the Greatest Hits package – it is not bad but I’m sure you would rather have the full experience of a Lyman lp in its original format

go to Collectors’ Choice Music

Surfwise
Paskowitz Family Documentary

Every once in a while a man takes his life into his own hands. I can’t wait to see this! I guess Paskowitz should be a household name to a guy with a 9ft Malibu in the corner of his home office, but I’m afraid you have to look elsewhere for further info on this obviously very special family. Wait, the movie should make me that much wiser.

Surfwise – A film by Doug Pray

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

Laser Beam Music Performance System

Via Spreeblick I found this. It looks to me like a modern day theremin. By attaching it to a computer you can control virtual instruments – so the sound has no boundaries.

Beamz

geekalerts.com writes:

The Beamz is a laser-based invention that is connected to a computer via USB. This allows you to play hundreds of musical instruments in a true Jean Michel Jarre style by breaking the laser beams with your hands.

The beamz system has a ‘W’ shape, with six laser beams spanning the two sections; connect via USB to your PC or laptop, and hook up some speakers. The simple, intuitive computer interface makes it easy to choose any of 30 included songs in 19 musical genres for laying down a complementary rhythm track. The beamz library includes original works in jazz, bluegrass, classical, hip-hop, reggae, heavy metal and more

read more at GeekAlerts

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.

Hot Buttered Soul DVD

Hot Buttered Soul was a revolutionary four track LP released by Isaac Hayes and the Bar-Kays in 1969. A few months later, 20-year-old Terry Fitzgerald, fresh from a Hawaiian winter season and a big fan of funk and soul rhythms decided to identify the name for his new surfboard company with this multi-layered music genre. But all three words didn’t quite fit on the rainbow sash logo. Thus Hot Buttered Surfboards were born – and with it one of surfing’s true originals. But the third word never went missing. Instead it’s lived in the handmade, hand-painted HB surfboards and the styles that arose from riding them, over three decades, in the best surf on the planet. Hot Buttered Soul: The Movie draws on a deep well of surf cinema heritage to present the surfing of the HB extended family. Choice selections from HB’s “Sultans of Speed” series, along with surf flick classics Morning of the Earth, A Winter’s Tale, Fantasea, Storm Riders and more, are expertly intercut by editor Mick Waters, with interviews and commentary from Andrew Kidman and Derek Hynd. Wherever they went, “Sultans” trips always had the knack of scoring amazing waves. …

… The unique soundtrack, featuring ex Tamam Shud guitarist Tim Gaze in front of a six piece band, was written, practiced, and finally recorded as a single 59-minute free-flowing piece, in sync with the movie’s final cut. It’s an inspired enhancement to inspired footage. The unique packaging will feature two photos which can either remain in their original frame or be removed as individual collector’s items. The first 3 different series of artworks will be limited to 600, 600 and 800. A limited numbered edition of 42 units, of each design, will come with hand signed photos by the Sultan of Speed himself.

Action Sports Video | Hot Buttered Soul DVD