January Birthdays 
I'm a longtime lurker and an excited new member. This is a very long and personal post; I think I wrote it for myself to chart where I’ve come from, in order to know where I’m going.
But maybe you’ll laugh along with the guy who took the slowest, least direct route(s) to get deeper into his favorite musical style.
197? – As a child, I always found Pipeline by The Chantays to be haunting, rocking, amazing. I must have heard it on the radio and I always perked up when it would come on.
197? - Wipeout by the Surfaris is what every kid in the early Sixties tried to play on drums, or on their desks; my dad told me this.
I would not learn that there had been ANOTHER Surfaris until 2016.
198? –I vaguely remember seeing a K-Tel commercial for surf music. It all sounded good to me, but especially the songs without vocals.
1985? - Upon receiving my first guitar amp with built-in reverb (some kind of Peavey), I immediately went for the Pipeline glissando.
1989 - My friend's dad played Wipeout for me on his audiophile system. I was dumbfounded. I had never before heard the cool timbre of every instrument; modern 1989 recordings sure didn't have cymbals sounding like THAT! I realized that I’d loved this song since before I could remember.
1995 - The Pulp Fiction soundtrack came out. I was not immune.
I halfway remember buying it, for Misirlou, after one rental of the movie. Once I had the CD playing in my molten-hot Florida car, and had heard all the surf tracks, I realized I had come across the most exciting music, ever!
Suddenly, my other musical loves sounded somehow leaden and overserious, including lots of my own material - oops!!!
Tellingly, no one I played it for got the same SUPERCHARGE of excitement that everything about this song gave me.
The other handful of surf songs can't be overlooked, especially the absolutely haunting Surf Rider.
also 1995 - I decided to get all of the Beach Boys' albums, starting with the first, on CD. I fell in love with the lesser-known songs and loved how Dennis (who apparently did play on the first album) applied his surf beat to songs like Summertime Blues.
To the annoyance of my musician friends, I started slipping this drum beat into lots of non-surf styles I was playing in various original bands.
When one of these groups formed a splinter group - and I was nominated for lead guitar - and I took every opportunity to play surf melodies - it felt altogether natural, and hilarious.
also 1995 - I quickly found out from various cheap surf comps that lots of surf bands covered each other, sometimes pretty badly - and that comp producers sometimes pick oddball songs that seemingly have little to do with the down-to-earth, obviously homegrown but scrappy qualities I loved in my favorites so far.
also 1995! - Somehow I knew that the Ventures had pre-dated surf, but that they had influenced (and were later influenced by) it. I picked up a "best of" comp and thrilled to the mysteries of the original Walk, Don't Run (which I assumed was their original composition), and all of the other tunes, but notably Walk Don't Run '64 - whose rhythm guitar drip utterly fascinated me!
I can't mention this without also saying that Dick Tracy rocked me upside down with its ferocious tones, playing, arrangement and something that sounded just like Pac-Man dying, decades early.
I would later pick up The Ventures In Space and Surfing, exposing me to their remakes of tunes like Penetration.
ALSO 1995! - As I acquired more surf songs and started to refine my tastes, the comps couldn't cut it, so I'd make my own mix tapes to listen to on the way to the beach. (Not surfing - I live on Florida's WEST coast!)
With surf music having become the ultimate accompaniment to any drive, especially to the beach, I wrote my first original surf instrumental, to commemorate this... AND to make fun of my own landlocked status. The song is Bridge To Longboat Key and (despite its obvious Walk Don't Run inspiration) I still play it.
I'm not sure of the exact year, but I continued to buy the few surf CDs I'd find, like Dick Dale's Greatest Hits, 1961-1976 (apparently re-recordings, but hey... this is where I first heard The Wedge) and Rhino Instrumental Classics Vol. 5, Surf (where I fell in love with the original Pyramids version of Penetration, went Underwater with the Frogmen, and thrilled to the 'every-instrument-on-here-is-badass' classic, Mr. Rebel).
1997 - I bought More Surf Legends (And Rumors) and heard Baja (the drip had me from moment one!) and Mr. Moto (the melody haunted me all year!)
I taught myself how to play Mr. Moto and used to wow my metal friends at small parties. I wondered if anyone, anywhere, knew this song anymore.
1997 - I made a better recording of my lone surf instrumental.
2000 - I bought a Johnson J-Station (an early guitar modeling processor that came out around the same time as the first Pod) and found I could get something nearer to a Fender-amp-with-spring-reverb sound. How little I knew - and know!
2003 - Having moved to a house, where I could record drums, I went crazy recording lots of tunes where the drum track went first – then I'd challenge myself to build songs around the drum improvisations. Roughly a third of these were first wave style surf beats, so I quickly amassed a collection of homemade instrumentals with often-quirky arrangements.
I also bought my first Telecaster at this time, and loved the rawness/realness of its tones; it brought more ragged personality to my already idiosyncratic songs.
2004-present - Still more recording... every time I got the chance... and less often after the late 2004 birth of my son. These off-the-cuff songs were often surfy in nature. I never dared try to 'update' the First Wave sound, because I thought the unachievable sounds of the real songs were better than anything my paltry 90s digital recording setup could ever produce!
2006-2007 - when I first started buying songs piecemeal from iTunes, you better believe I sought out some soaking wet first wave surf. I found some Dick Dale songs I'd never heard (notably, Hava Nagila) and somehow found a Trashmen song called Malaguena - which became a favorite.
However, the quirky side of me also thoroughly enjoyed another Trashmen song, which I love to this day: Sleeper. I would later buy their whole Surfin’ Bird album and enjoy all of it, especially the surf-stoked lyrics of King of the Surf - after I learned that the Trashmen were from Minnesota, and were just as landlocked as myself!
2010-ish - I positively remember consulting surfguitar101.com around this time (via Google search and subsequent lurking) about something surf guitar related. Probably whether 1st wave surf bands used flatwounds, or (more likely) "how exactly did they get that reverb sound???"
2011 - I wrote my most epic original song ever. Deep in meaning, monolithic in execution.
Six months later, I re-recorded it as... a surf instrumental.
2014 - I again consult surfguitar101.com about a better surf guitar sound. I think I was wondering what kinds of amps were used. The Dual Showman comes to mind as a popular result.
2016 - A random request of "play some surf!" at my solo acoustic gig ushers in a massive... wave of renewed surf interest. 'As if I could be much more interested,' I thought. I realized I'd been playing & writing surf music for twenty-one years... and talked to virtually no one with my level of mania passion.
I found a thread on surfguitar101.com that led me to some songs I'd have instantly adored, if only I'd somehow chanced to hear them decades ago!
No exaggerating here; you guys opened up a new (old) world of first wave surf that I'd never heard. Just to give you an idea of how my tastes run, these were the songs I heard for the first time thanks to this site - and which utterly BLEW ME AWAY in 2016:
"Squad Car" by Eddie And The Showmen
"Everybody Up" by the Fender IV
"Ali Baba" by Dave and the Customs
"Pintor" by The Pharos
"Bombora" by The Original Surfaris
"Harem Bells" by the Newport Nomads
I can’t say enough about these songs’ greatness. The writing, the playing, and yes – especially! - the sound quality.
I can barely hear the band behind Randy Holden in "Everybody Up" - it sounds like the recording studio could only capture some semblance of the power that must have been in the room.
Even when I buy an MP3 of Everybody Up, it sounds like it's sourced from vinyl that's been played and played. I can't tell where the distortion comes from - is it everything fighting to be heard in the mix over the lead guitar and drums, or is it surface noise from a sandy old disc?
THIS is what I love about music. THIS is where I differ from those who prefer pristine tone and immaculate execution. Far from being flawed, the sound quality of these recordings is (to me) unapproachable.
Modern recordings are so safe. THESE are the outrageous and rollicking sounds I suddenly had to inhabit, and, at a greater level of commitment that I've ever tried before. On guitar, bass and drums - but especially in the songwriting.
**Surfguitar101.com** had unknowingly set this perpetually-distracted ol' lurker upon a Mission.
I had to get closer to THOSE sounds and THAT inspiration. I had to craft some "classics" of my own, even if they're only barely in the neighborhood of the greatness that I hear in the recordings that I love.
I have to build that inimitable groove, and harness that reverb, and ride all over it... with all four instruments contributing my ideas of what make surf bands work so well.
I started recording an EP, which quickly turned into an album as I kept adding songs. I took some of them on (Everybody Up) knowing full well I couldn't currently meet that level of guitar playing, but I relished the challenge and found indubitably that surf music played badly is still waves and waves of fun.
It's an aspiration that can never go wrong, because I've enjoyed every moment of tweaking tones and replacing tracks and learning more intricacies of the songs themselves.
I really should stop now (I haven't even gotten to the part where I just purchased a Gomez G-Spring from a friendly SG101 member! The sky's the limit now!!!) but I wanted to write and say thanks, with all appreciation, from the loneliest surfer.
