January Birthdays 
Ready Men Get Ready! (Norton Records)
The Ready Men were an amazing Surf Music and Beer Stompers band from Minnesota, kings of the dancefloor on their own time and were named after their lead guitar player Kirk Ready.
During their existence theyd released only one 45rpm record by Bangar with probably the wildest version ever of the traditional Shortnin Bread (clearly the version that inspired the Cramps to re-recorded it for their album Stay Sick) with the Astronauts influenced song Surfers Blues on the flipside.
Due to their Geographical location and to the fact that the vocal themes were sung by their drummer John Briggs, is easy to assume that they were influenced the Trashmen. However, as you can read on the Cd booklet, they claim they were more influenced by the Astronauts.
From all the collection of songs presented here, only the already referred Shortnin Bread and Surfers Blues together with Disintegration and Wine, Wine, Wine! were recorded on a professional studio (in my opinion, the latter two were probably intended to be their 2nd single). All the other songs come from home recordings, with exception for the tracks 9 and 19 which are radio presentations recorded at Daytons Department Store, Southerdale, Minnesota by the local radio. The home recordings suffer from the lack of sound quality, and even though they can be considered very interesting, they arent exactly the ultimate version of those songs (list of the songs included here: Baja, Wipe Out, My Woodie, Miserlou, Pipeline, Lucille, Jack the Ripper, Kuk, Moon Dawg, Walk Dont Run, What Id Surf, Baby What Do You Want Me to Do, Disintegration).
Overall, I consider the Cd worth for the first 4 tracks, which are absolutely brilliant, and its always interesting to hear their home recordings. I would almost risk saying that Disintegration must have been influenced by the Surfaris Wipe Out, but this would need a chronological check.
The split 45rpm The Ready Men vs. the Yetti Men is also available from Norton Records with the vocal Shortnin Bread and the instro Disintegration plus the vocal My Baby Left Me and the instro Break Time by the Yetti Men which are absolutely different.
Highly recommended both the Cd and the vinyl.
