April Birthdays 
Well, sort of... Not that much detail, but a cool story of how Jim Messina got his first Strat with which he recorded all the surf stuff. This comes from April '98 Vintage Guitar magazine.
"VG: What kind of instruments did you start with?
JM: My father made me an electric guitar, and I had a Kay, and I also played on something for years that didn't even have a name (chuckles). The first opportunity I had to buy an electric guitar happened when I was about 13. My father took me to downtown LA to Musician's Exchange. There was a Stratocaster there that I wanted bad, because Dick Dale played one. It was probably about $250, but my father said we couldn't afford it; he told me to buy something for about $125, so I ended up buying a cherry finish one-pickup Gretsch solidbody that looked sort of like a double-cutaway Les Paul. I didn't like it, so one day I went to a music store in Riverside, and they had a beat up Stratocaster there. They wanted $125 for it, so I tried for an even trade, but they said no. I ended up giving them my guitar and 50 bucks. The Strat looked so bad that I took it to Earl Scheib (a chain of automotive painting businesses) and asked them to paint it for me (laughs). I took it apart and they painted it with white lacquer. I hadn't told my parents what I'd done and when my mom wanted to know about the new guitar, I told her that I'd traded , and that the guitar would have run $250 in LA. She said I'd probably never be satisfied with anything (chuckles). But that was the first guitar I really loved, and I played on it all through high school.
VG: is that Strat you were seen holding when you were in the Jesters, an instrumental band?
JM Yep. I moved to Hollywood in '65, and soon afterwards my house was broken into; they stole my Showman amp, my Stratocaster and some other things."
—Ivan
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