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SurfGuitar101.com is celebrating the 6th year we have spent as an interactive community website! To help celebrate, each Saturday in February we'll be giving away stuff! All you have to do is be a member of our site and enter our contest by clicking a button on the contest page. The contest ends at midnight, so check back the following Sunday for the winner!

For the first contest, we have up for grabs brand new, still-in-the-shrinkwrap copies of The Deadbeats Day of the Deadbeats, and the brand new Double Crown Records compilation CD Brave New Surf.

Head over to the contest page to enter!

The Space Agency will soon be releasing "Galactic Guitars", a best of compilation CD featuring a selection of tracks from our 3 albums + a few tracks that were only available as downloads, 22 tracks in total. E.T.A mid February.

Our music publisher gal, who we've been working with for about 7 years, has FINALLY been able to place a tune of ours on TV!!

This Sun Feb 5th, our song "77 Gaza Strip" will be featured at some point on the Showtime channel show 'Californication'. I don't even know what scene, and hopefully it's not something obscenely embarrassing!! (I've never seen the show) but, hey, WE'RE ON TV !!!

Announcing the Inaugural Session May 25 - 28, 2012

Sierra Surf Music Camp is being created with the idea of spending a weekend with friends,family, and community in the study and appreciation of California’s indigenous folk music – Surf! We wish to bridge the gap between professional and amateur musicians bringing the founders of the genre together with folks just beginning to discover it in a fun and friendly setting.

Classes Offered: Individual and Group Lessons (Guitar, Bass and Drums) Seminars on Songwriting, Recording, Production, Performance, Technique, Gear Maintenance, Sound Modification, Surf Music History and much more!

Instructors include: Paul Johnson, John Blair, Dusty Watson, Ron Eglit, Paul Beatie, Ferenc Dobronyi, Bob Bitchin', Brett Cole, Tim Stephenson and more to be announced!

Daily Activities: Early morning Exercise and Stretching designed for musicians, Acoustic Breakfast Campsite, Hiking, Gold Mine Tours, Surf Art with Jim Lee, Softball, Volleyball, Horseshoes, Fishing, and Nightly Campfire Stories!

Command Performances: The Surf Beat Allstars (featuring John Blair, Dusty Watson, Ron Eglit), The Pyronauts, Paul Johnson and friends.

Tom Duncun from Spectral Media will be premiering a clip from the anticipated surf music film, Sound of the Surf.

The Sierra Surf Music Camp is located in the lush hills of Northern California’s Gold Country. Price includes lodging and meals. Campsites also available.

Sierra Surf Music Camp
Memorial Day Weekend 2012
Donner Mine Camp – Nevada City, CA
Friday through Monday (May 25th-28th)
Cost: $250 per student, $400 per couple, 15% discount if registered before April 15th, 2012
Contact: sierrasurfcamp@gmail.com
www.sierrasurfcamp.org

Radio Free Bakersfield announces the "Surf Guitar 101 Pick of the Week!"! That's right surf geetar fans! Every week you will be treated to a special surf track chosen by Brian Neal, Head Honcho @ SG101! Brian will pick out his personal faves from seminal acts as well as hot new tracks from modern bands! Just tune into Radio Free Bakersfield every week! And don't forget to check out surfguitar101.com for information on tunes, gear, history, shows & more! It's one of the few message boards on the net not populated by jerks! Oh yeah, some of your fave surf artists have been known to pop in from time to time!

Prior to 1961, Southern California kids didn’t hang out at the beach all that much; you’d be more likely to see them cruising in their cars, hanging out at the ice cream / root beer drive-ins, or dancing to 45 rpm records at sock hops. Live music was a rarity, and there was no such thing as “surf music.” In short: prior to 1961, there was no “California surf culture” as we know it today.

But the new trend was on the rise that year: with the advent of lightweight foam boards, surfing caught on big with the beach-area kids; by summer this had grown into a major cultural explosion — a mass youth-movement complete with it’s own styles, mannerisms and slang.

Going into that memorable summer of ‘61, I was 15 and a fledgling guitarist with a fledgling band (the Belairs) that emulated the sounds of the rock-instrumental heroes of the late ‘50s (Duane Eddy, Link Wray, The Fireballs, Johnny and the Hurricanes, the Ventures, etc.). When we heard that a lot of these new young “surfers” were driving thirty miles south to Balboa on the weekends to hear somebody named Dick Dale play similar stuff, we decided to throw our own dances locally. The result was like jumping onto a speeding train!

We had never given the slightest thought to calling ourselves a “surf” band. But at our first dance that summer, which drew about 200 beach-area kids, a prominent local surfer came up to me and said: “Wow, man — your music sounds just like it feels out on a wave! You oughta call it ‘surf music’!!” By summer’s end we were filling halls with 1500 fully “stoked” surfers who were doing just that: over the summer they had embraced our music (along with Dale’s) as their own, and now they were calling it “surf music!”

Announcing the So. Cal. Winter Surf Fest 2012!

Sun. Jan. 22nd, 11 am to 7pm, at The Starting Gate, 5052 Katella Ave. Los Alamitos, Ca. 
$20, raffle tix for CDs and T-shirts $2 ea. or 3 tix for $5

Line up and schedule for the Winter Surf Fest

• 11am to noon - TikiTena and Sean DJ, (and between sets)
• noon to 1:15 - High Tide (with special guests)
• 1:45 to 2:45 - The Breakaways
• 3:00 to 3:50 - The Tequila Worms
• 4:00 to 4:50 - Secret Samurai
• 5:10 to 6:00 - The Eliminators
• 6:15 to 7:00 - Slacktone

Facebook page for the event

Need more reasons to come? The Winter Surf Fest is the day after Deke Dickerson's Guitar Geek Festival, and is on the big NAMM weekend. Also the same weekend is the Vintage Guitar and amp swap meet at OC fairgrounds.

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The Tormentos have a new LP! Yes, they have done it again! It has been released by Spanish Label "Buen Ritmo" in beautiful white 12" vinyl. It is a compilation of their first 10 years & 3 records to introduce them in the European Market.

Get yours while its still available!

We are pleased to present a recent interview with Bob Berryhill of The Surfaris.

Bob was very generous with his time and spoke about so many interesting topics covering the history of this great surf band.

Show #23 features a full hour of our interivew with Bob plus all the great Surfaris hits we've all come to love over the years.

· Listen to how Wipe Out came to be written in only 10 minutes!

· Their first recording experience at a very young age of 14

· Working with their first NY Producer for Decca Records

· Bob talks about his favorite guitars, amps and effects

Stop by today to our site http://theshrunkenheadlounge.com/ to download the Show

Thanks,
Noodles

DJ & Curator of The Shrunken Head Lounge
http://theshrunkenheadlounge.com

Started in 2000 by The Volanics Benny Hammond and The Lively Ones Las Vegas fill-in guy Skater j, the Vista IV started as a trad instro cover band but went on to develop a fringe regional southwest spin on surf they tagged "smooth surf, progressives surf, and traditional surf music" before breaking up in 2010. Beach Blanket Productions has released the bands final bunch of songs as "The Final Wave" available in cd and as downloads. This along with the early twin guitars of Benny Hammond and Skater j rendering of classic surf tunes in 2000's "Surf Music Undertow" have been re-released as free downloads from the official band site thevistaiv.com.