Newquay Surfing in the Early 1960s

Great to see this kind of historic footage come up. Makes me wonder what other pioneering locals captured on super 8.

Along with Biarritz in France, Newquay in Cornwall was one of surfing’s first footholds in Europe. Believe it or not, but lifeguards on the northsea island of Sylt surfed by that time as well. Getting boards from France and one guy making a surf trip to Cornwall, about the time this video was shot.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRgjIe-qc20

My Custom Guitar

…if I could have it my way.

jm

I created this picture in the dressing room at offset-guitars.com.

Structure
I would have a Jazzmaster body made from mahagony with maple-top.
A Mosrite/Gretsch scale, set neck, maple with ebony fretboard (Mosrite radius).
The neck-profile copied from my e-sitar.
Neck-binding, zero-fret and the smallest frets available (Framus NOS?)
I probably would have a Bigsby instead of the jm-vibrato, but the jm-bridge.
These appointments are based mostly on one of my all-time favorite guitars, the 1975 Gretsch Country Rok, which I sold long ago.

Electronics
For pick-ups I would have three Novak Fender XII replicas.
Jaguar style three on/off switches (rather than the Stratocaster switch in the pic)
The rhythm circuit to give additional pu-combinations, since the 3 pups have two coils each. Maybe like this: upper-bout switch turns on north of bridge, south of neck, but not breaking the main selector circuit. The outside coils should be humcancelling and hollow like a Jazzmaster.
I just love the sound of the Fender XII, which I used on Wild Action (Modern Sounds of The Looney Tunes Band). The pick-ups are not as thin as DeArmond single coils, and not as fat as Supertrons. More like Jaguar ones, but hum-cancelling.

Cosmetics
Color: ocean turquoise with matching headstock and gold hardware, Kluson-style tuners. Pickguard either gold-aluminium or vintage white. I wanted a gold guard guitar ever since I got The Wildest Guitar by Mickey Baker.
I never had a blue-ish guitar before. It looks so green because I chose the aged look in the dressing room. The finish is bluer when new.
It looks fancy, I see that. But it’s supposed to be a custom, they have to look fancy!

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

1930s Waikiki Beach Boys

from Legendary Surfers

Beach Boys of Waikiki, circa 1930s

… ‘Anyway,’ wrote Karen Cotter, ‘from amongst my aunt’s books I acquired two old poetry books by Don Blanding, published in 1923 and 1925 respectively, and in the back of one, written in pencil, is a list of ‘Beach Boys of

Waikiki’ in my aunt’s hand which I thought you might find of interest…’

The listing – by no means complete, but still the largest list of 1930s Waikiki Beach Boys I have seen anywhere – is as
follows, in the order it was written: …

read the names here: 1930s Waikiki Beach Boys