Retro Cocktail Hour

This is a re really good online radio show with usually two hours of big band, lounge and exotica music, mostly old but some really good new stuff thrown in during the second hour. The Retro Cocktail Hour has been going for years and years and Darrell Brogdon keeps the quality level nailed on a high level – he’s deep into this, obviously.

Quote from his homepage:

the likable, eager-to-please instrumental pop of the 1950s and ’60s is back! Sparked by CD reissues from such major labels as RCA and Capitol Records, the lounge music craze encompasses a diverse array of music – the Polynesian sway of Les Baxter and Martin Denny, the eccentric pop confections of Juan Garcia Esquivel, the mambo madness of Perez Prado, “private eye jazz” from TV’s 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn and the cartoon-like caperings of Raymond Scott, among others.

Kansas Public Radio’s Retro Cocktail Hour (Saturdays at 7:00 pm) is our weekly nod to the Space Age Pop revival. Here you’ll find vintage recordings from the dawn of the Hi-Fi Era – imaginative, light-hearted (and sometimes light-headed) pop stylings designed to underscore everything from the backyard barbecue to the high-tech bachelor pad. Darrell Brogdon serves up two hours of incredibly strange music on Kansas Public Radio, so grab a cocktail shaker and join us for The Retro Cocktail Hour.

Beatnik Beach Film Night

This I found today at Dumb Angel Gazette:
quote from site

Thursday, December 7, 2007. 7:00-11:00 p.m.
Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th Street at Valencia, Mission District, San Francisco, California

Authors Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester (Beatsville, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece, Dumb Angel #4: All Summer Long) will present a unique one-hour slide show documenting the Beat Generation’s long stretch over the Greater Los Angeles area between 1956 and 1966, via visuals of coffeehouses and Jazz joints from the Sunset Strip to Malibu, Venice and Newport Beach.

Legendary locations only heard about in books or in liner notes, from the Gas House and nearby Venice West, to the Unicorn and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, the Lighthouse and Insomniac Cafe in Hermosa Beach, then all the way down to Cafe Frankenstein (owned, operated and painted by Burt Shonberg) in Laguna Beach.

Artists from John Altoon to Eric ‘Big Daddy’ Nord gave these places a colourful splash, as did the wide variety of Folk singers and poets who performed on their stages. Accompanying the slideshow will be a rare screening of Dirty Feet (1965), shot primarily at the Prison of Socrates coffeehouse in Balboa. Special guest speakers TBA, there will be another short Beat film or two (including a color one shot inside Venice West), plus a few new routines by San Francisco’s own Devil-Ettes to jazz the room.

Legendary Surfers

Now I discovered this project (book and website) a couple of years back and just realized they changed the website to a blog, which is reason enough to try and make you aware of Legendary Surfers.

Very thorough reading, from various knowledgable people. Just reading the free articles will keep busy and well informed about the history of surfing. I guess a complete historical overview is obtained through buying the book or the PDF-files.