Posted on Oct 26 2018 11:09 AM
Confession: due to personal life nonsense, I haven't seriously listened to surf music in about 1.5 years.
I'm ready to get back into it.
Everyone here knows the Madeira are amazing. After a while you take them for granted. Oh yeah, those guys are great. But you forget how great. At least I did, momentarily, until I spun this disc.
I've probably seen The Madeira live something like on the order of 2 dozen times. I'm very lucky. I was even at the 2017 SG101 convention where this was recorded.
But to hear this performance again, and all the crowd noises (I'm sure I'm yelling in there too), is quite an experience.
The Madeira write amazing songs. And it sounds so fucking loud, raw and brutal here. Just like it does live. I don't think they've sounded so mean and huge before. The performance here is just stellar with just the right amount of live gusto and looseness.
I'm convinced that in the future surf music fans will will speak in awe about the time John Blair and Jonpaul Balak joined the Madeira on stage. "I was there" they will say with a far off look on their faces and a smile spreading across their lips. It was truly an amazing, exciting, and historical moment.
(As an aside, I was also deeply moved the next day when John Blair joined The Madeira on stage at Surf Dog's to play some of the songs from their Blair-Pongracic set. WOW.)
So anyway, if you have any interest in surf music and what's going on today, you must own this. It combines the fire and "showmanship" of Eddie & The Showmen with the huge crushing sound Dick Dale conjures from the Beast and his Showman amps. It's just remarkable music played by people who really fucking love it, in front of a crowd that totally gets it.
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