Posted on Apr 21 2011 01:07 PM
Wow, thanks so much for all the super-nice comments, all! Tom indeed did an amazing job with this video, and we feel very priveleged and grateful that there's such a great looking and sounding video of our band.
I had to ask my bandmates, cause I honestly couldn't remember, but we think there were about seven songs recorded that day in SoCal. Crescent Moon has been on YouTube for quite a while now, and one of the other ones may have had some kinda fault with the sound track, so it may not be releasable. That still leaves something like four others, and we do hope they eventually see the light of day, one way or another (if not in the documentary, maybe just on YouTube).
I don't want to speak for Tom who I'm sure will pipe up here himself in due time, but he's definitely got a huge task for himself - he must have dozens, if not hundreds, of hours of live music footage of many, many surf bands, and sorting through all that, picking the best performances, editing the videos and mixing the sound is all very time-intensive. Sandstorm took a while due to some changes of sound engineers, and also some problems with the sound of the lead guitar. I wasn't very happy with my guitar sound, mostly due to using borrowed gear which I was not familiar with. John Blair brought all of his amps and reverb units to the studio - what a guy!! - and let us pick what we wanted to use. I saw a brownface Showman (recovered in blackface style) among a pile of Showmans and Bassmans, and decided to use that, despite John not really having used that amp for a long time and not being sure how well it would work. I think it probably could have used some servicing before I used it, but what can you do, too late now! And it's one of those things you don't really notice until afterwards. Oops... To Tom's credit, he really worked with me to get the guitar sound to the point where I was satisfied with it, and i'm very grateful to him for being so patient and being willing to take such a long time to get it as good as it possibly could be. (I think I've definitely earned the right to be referred to as a diva after that episode!)
The DVD idea is an intriguing one, and thanks for the vote of confidence. We'll think about it a bit and see if it would be doable. It would be pretty awesome if we could pull it off.
Again, our deep thanks for Tom and all of his team for doing such a great job! Despite the long wait, I greatly appreciate Tom's dedication to making Sound of the Surf as perfect as possible, given that it will probably be the definitive document of the history and the present of surf music. He is not taking that lightly, and if anyone is going to do it justice, HE will! So, we just gotta be patient, cause great things rarely happen overnight....
PS Watching these videos I clearly remember the feeling of being under the microscope or in a fishbowl (or insert your favorite similar analogy here)! What made me even more self-conscious was having Misters Bertrand, Johnson, and Ruiz in the shadows around the studio. Talk about pressure! I still can tell my fingers being a bit trembly in these videos...
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Ivan
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