update on open slots for upcomimg SURF-ROCK SHINDIGs

JANUARY 3 2009 BIRTHDAY SHINDIG line-up is now up to 6 bands!! need just 2 more

committed so far,

HANG DADDY
THE OCTOMEN
THE TARANTINOS NYC
SURF + TURF
STRANGE BUT SURF
9TH WAVE

for SEPTEMBER 20 END-OF-SUMMER SHINDIG, need one more band, for the 1 am slot

for NOVEMBER 1 SHINDIG, have 3 openings

for DECEMBER 6 SHINDIG, have 1, possibly 2, openings

thx everybody!

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

update on SHINDIG openings

SEPT 20 (special END-OF-SUMMER SHINDIG),
need a band for 1 am

OCT 4,
need a band for 1 am

NOV 1
need a band for 10 pm, 1 am

DEC 6
need a band for 1 am

JAN 3 2009 (my BIRTHDAY SHINDIG),
need a band for 1 am

schizofredric@yahoo.com

THX, HOPE TO HEAR FROM SOME OF YOU

Unsteady Freddie

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

I have filled the OCT 4 and DEC 6 "SURF-ROCK SHINDIGS"

will announce full line-ups later tonight

all that remains open, for now:

SEPTEMBER 20th END-OF-SUMMER SHINDIG:
1 am

JANUARY 3 2009 BIRTHDAY SHINDIG:
1 am

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

thx to everyone for jumped in......

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

DECEMBER 6 2008 SURF-ROCK SHINDIG IS A GO!

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

OTTO's SHRUNKEN HEAD has reached out to me to put together a SPECIAL EDITION of the SURF-ROCK SHINDIG series

date: SATURDAY AUGUST 23 2008

show will commence at 8 pm SHARP

I will need therefore 6 bands, one per hour, last set is 1 am

WRITE ME ASAP if you are interested
schizofredric@yahoo.com

<u>this is an OPEN CALL FOR ALL BANDS</u>

if you are performing at the AUGUST 2 SHINDIG, or the AUGUST 31 'BEACH BALL', or the SEPTEMBER 6 SHINDIG, or the SEPTEMBER 20 END-OF-SUMMER SHINDIG....NO MATTER!! YOU ARE STILL INVITED TO PARTICIPATE on August 23rd

less than a month away, so I am anxious to fill all 6 slots by the end of this coming weekend

FIRST COME FIRST SERVED

thx to everyone in the instro surf community for all your support

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

what's goin' on over here 2/nite, anyway?

I ask that b/c I just had yet another link sent to me by a local NYC surf fan,

this one is from a 2007 blog, one I never saw before a few seconds ago

gotta re-post it here b/c it's kinda, well, unsteady!

here goes:

_Weekend before last, caught Los Straightjackets at Southpaw in Brooklyn. I'm going to go out on a limb here and declare the group America's finest lucha mask wearing surf rock combo. If there's a better lucha mask wearing surf rock group out there, I haven't heard them.

The show was excellent. The masked musicians took the stage with Big Sandy, a charismatic showman who belts out Spanish-language versions of classic rock-pop tunes.

Perhaps more notably, I got to meet the delightful Unsteady Freddie.

Robot Al pointed him out to me. "See that guy with the curly mullet," Al said. "That's Unsteady Freddie."  
Unsteady Freddie was standing front and center, right next to the stage. In the break between the opening act and the headliners, he leaned with his back against the stage, holding court to a select group of surf rock fans. He was a little taller than I am, was wearing a green Hawaiian print button up. To be fair, Unsteady Freddie's unique hair style is not really of the mullet family. It is longer in the back than it is in the front, but the almost 'Fro-like curl of his black hair really puts it into a style category entirely its own.  
Unsteady Freddie, Robot Al informed me, is the central figure, the indispensable man, of New York City's energetic, if microscopic, surf rock scene.   
Surf music is a weird sub-genre of rock and roll. It is to rock what epic poems are to literature: a genre that can now only be produced in a sort of self-aware, postmodern way. There are still metal bands, somewhere in America right now there's a hardcore punk band that is thrashing away like it is still 1978, Southern rock has its modern practitioners, and nobody will look askance at a band that wishes to wallow in the worst excesses of prog-rock. But there's something about surf revivalists that suggests an awareness of their own novelty. Perhaps this is why modern surf rockers also seem so heavily into curious gimmicks. Aside from the lucha masks of Los Straitjackets; you've also got the mortuary get-ups of the Ghastly Ones (with their go-go dancing companion, the lovely Necrobella): the "secret identities" of Mexico's Surfucks: and numerous bands that provide their twangy tunes with a schmeer of Space Race Era sci-fi kitsch: including, but not limited to, Laika and the Cosmonauts, Man or Astro-Man?, and Shadowy Men from a Shadowy Planet.  
Even without the revivalist impulse to variably ironic meta-ness, there's always been something strangely distanced about surf music. Most notably, I guess, in its dubious relationship to the recreation it is named after. Certainly Southern Cali was ground zero for the genre, but two of the genre's most famous groups – the Trashmen and the Astronauts – were from landlocked, Midwestern states. The Honeys (surf's women's auxiliary), though formed in Southern California, got their marching orders from the Brill Building in NYC. The dress rehearsal of the Beatles-led British Invasion featured the Shadows, a Brit surf-esque instrumental act with a thing for imagery from Hollywood Westerns. There were even surf acts from Eastern Bloc nations – like the East German Die Sputniks – that, one assumes, had little opportunity to enjoy surfing, hot rods, or any of the other trappings of the SoCal youth culture so associated with the music.  
Which brings up back to Unsteady Freddie. What makes a denizen of the Lower East Side (he's a fixture at Otto's Shrunken Head, on 14th near the northern boundary of Alphabet City, where he promotes his Surf Shindigs on the first Saturday of every month) become an apostle of this curious rock and roll backwater? Unsteady Freddie maintains something like 8 or 9 Web sites and nearly as many blogs, all spreading the crisp, sharp guitar driven 4/4 gospel of surf music, partaking in a fun in the sun ethos that is about as New York as La Brea tar pits. It is, I feel, a bit quixotic.

It's hard not to dig on Unsteady Freddie. There's something wonderfully out of place about him – like he's the ambassador of some weird country where everybody is young, they've all got sweet rides, and school is perpetually out for summer break. In this faraway land, this California of the mind, boys have "best girls," people drag race to resolve points of honor, and everybody is absurdly good natured about everything._

this is the link:

http://www.hulver.com/scoop/story/2007/9/4/153450/9778

don't know what to say, really....some pretty nice things said in that passage; feel very flattered by it; but I gotta work on the hair, huh??!!

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

I am stoked as Hell to announce:

THE NEBULAS will be performing for the special SURF-ROCK SHINDIG I have coming together for AUGUST 23rd!!!!!!

also on the bill, as already announced,

The Tarantinos/NYC, and The Outpatients

need 3 more bands to be part of the excitement

schizofredric@yahoo.com

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

I can announce now a complete line-up for the special edition of the SURF-ROCK SHINDIG series on AUGUST 23 2008

Thx to everyone!!

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

reminder---this coming Saturday:

http://www.nesmasurf.org/images/posters/ottos%20aug%2008.jpg

Unsteady Freddie's SURF-ROCK SHINDIG
Otto's Shrunken Head,
538 E 14 St, NYC, 212-228-2240
www.ottosshrunkenhead.com

10 pm
Mr. Action & The Boss Guitars
http://www.misteraction.com/

11 pm
The Tarantinos/NYC
www.myspace.com/tarantinosnyc
http://www.tarantinosnyc.com/

Midnight
The Clams
www.myspace.com/theclamswedontsing
http://www.geocities.com/wedontsing/

1 am
Deathbed Bride
www.myspace.com/deathbedbride

c'mon and safari with me!

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie

STRANGE BUT SURF will be performing at 10 pm
AUG 2 2008
UNSTEADY FREDDIE's SURF-ROCK SHINDIG

apparently they were booked all along; somewhere along the way I made an error? not sure....attribute it to my age, too much time on the internet, minor distractions, and, well, stupidity

apologies to STRANGE BUT SURF for the oversite;

but I see stuff half-full -- a giant headache has been averted

UNSTEADY FREDDIE

http://www.facebook.com/unsteady.freddie