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The Mythical 5th Cowabunga Disc

Greetings surf fans, the eagerly awaited next SG101 podcast has finally arrived. This episode we answer the question "If Rhino released a 5th disc to their Cowabunga Surf Box Set what would the song list be?" Here's our attempt to answer this. Also included is part 2 of our interview with Ted Pilgrim from Satan's Pilgrims!

Head on over to our podcast page to download it now. The podcast is in .m4a format. PC users can use the piece-of-junk Quicktime player, or the super awesome VLC media player, to listen. An .mp3 version is also available now. Enjoy!

A big thank you to Lady Reverb, Danny Snyder, Warren Binder, and Ted Pilgrim!

Track listing:

I am pleased to announce the SurfGuitar101 2009 MP3 Compilation! Our 5^th one! Just like before, this is a way for all members to share music, recording tips, and to just have fun. The main emphasis is fun, so please send in an entry no matter what your skill level is. Here are the rules:

1. You must be a member of this website to submit an mp3.
2. You may submit only 1 mp3.
3. The mp3 you submit must not have appeared on any "official" release before. Likewise, please don't submit anything that is destined for an official release in the future.
4. The mp3 must be 8 MB in size or less.
5. There is a good chance the comp will end up on Archive.org. Therefore, you must agree to their Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives) License for your mp3.
6. The deadline for submitting an mp3 is Friday, December 18th, 2009.

I have created an Official 2009 MP3 Compilation Forum Thread. Please use that thread to discuss the compilation and to get information on how to submit an mp3. Please use that thread if you'd like to find a fellow member to work with on the project. With the magic of digital recording and the internet, remote collaborations are possible. Make your own virtual surf band! Let the comp begin!

Please check out our prior compilations if you haven't seen them already: 2005 2006 2007 2008.

We recently lost Brian Rogers, aka Spanky Twangler, of the Penetrators. This is especially tragic because Brian was the brother and bandmate of Scott Rogers, aka Rip Thrillby, who passed in an auto accident several years ago. Brian had a battle with cancer that he detailed on his myspace and facebook pages. Brian showed an amazing amount of courage, humanity, and faith in his battle, and we will miss him terribly.

Both Brian and Scott were larger than life figures in the surf community, both off and on-line. The Shallow End forum, our off-topic place for friendly chit-chat, was dedicated to Rip shortly after this site went live. It now seems only fitting to re-dedicate The Shallow End to both Rip and Spanky. I never met these fine gentlemen in person, but their loss was felt very deeply by myself and many other surf music fans. Thank you guys for your time with us; the humor, creativity, and musicianship you displayed is a true inspiration for us all.

This just in from Danny Snyder:

Just in the nick of time, here's our latest podcast featuring the bands that will be performing at this year's SurfGuitar101 convention in Los Alamitos. We're also featuring the first half of an interview Warren Binder (Captain Springfield) conducted with Ted Pilgrim where they discuss the new Satan's Pilgrims' record. There's lots more songs and another surf classic highlight so get your reverb on.

Lady Reverb and I want to extend special thanks to Warren, Ted, Ivan, Ryan, Jeff and Brian for all their help. And our apologies to The Reventlos whose song accidentally was omitted from this podcast. It's doubly unfortunate as they are so generously donating the equipment for the convention - so hats off to The Reventlos.

Head on over to our podcast page to download it now. The podcast is in .m4a format. PC users can use the piece-of-junk Quicktime player, or the super awesome VLC media player, to listen. An .mp3 version may soon follow, check back later. Enjoy!

We have a brand new batch of t-shirts, designed by members Duff (surfbeatnik) and Doug (stormtiger)! These shirts are being sold through fellow member Carol (mom_surfing's) online store for her surf shop. Check out this forum thread for more information. Here is the link to the SG101 t-shirt store page. Read more to see the 2 designs and colors...

The domain name surfguitar101.com has been transferred to the new server, and if you can read this then you have found us again. It may take a few more hours for the change to propagate throughout the internet. Please let me know if you see any problems with the site.

Thanks everyone for your donations and making this server upgrade possible!

Thanks to your generous donations we are doing some upgrading around here. SG101 is moving to a new server. I'll start the move early Monday, May 25th. It may take several hours for the domain name to server address change to propagate around the internet. To prevent forum posts from getting lost, I'll just shut down the current site early Monday. After a few hours you should see us running again.

I've done these domain name transfers before. Sometimes they go fairly quickly and I've also seen them take 24 hours. It also depends on where you live. Hopefully it will be quick. And you Americans should be out celebrating Memorial Day in any event. :) If you want to check the status, I'll post updates to my twitter feed.

The new server will provide us more growing room and will be a good platform to launch a long overdue upgrade to the site software. Thanks everyone for your support and patience during this transition!

Ok, I've been going around and around on this and have changed my mind several times. Here's the deal: SG101 needs a new operating system to keep us going in the long term. This will also facilitate rolling out a test version of the next version of this website: SG101 v2.0. I was going to bring the whole server down for a few hours (or more) and perform the work and bring it back up. However I'm not really certain I can do the job in "just a few hours", and I'd hate to cause a major goof and have us go down for several days. So, here is the new plan: I'm going to upgrade the server by renting a new one, and gradually transition all of our stuff over to it over the course of (hopefully) one month or so. A brand new server will have a much faster processor and double the memory we have now. This will be a good long term investment. However, it does mean that I'm going to be renting two servers simultaneously for a short time.

So I'm rattling the donation cup so I don't have to eat all the costs myself. SG101 is completely member supported, so if you enjoy arguing about small circles of foam, small tear-drop pieces of plastic, long skinny metal strings, coils of wire wrapped around magnets, glass tubes with hot wires in them, with the occasional infrequent discussion of SURF MUSIC and LIVE SHOWS (I keed, I keed), then I'm asking you to consider pitching in a few bucks to help with the costs of this endeavor. If everyone just gives a few bucks each that should cover me during this transition period. Your generosity and support is, as always, GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Here is the link to the donations module, which eventually leads to Paypal. Remember you don't have to have a Paypal account to donate, they will accept major credit cards.

If you have any questions, comments, or want to help in other ways, please feel free to contact me.

THANK YOU!
-BN

Space Surf - The final frontier. These are the musical voyages of the Starship  SG-101.  Its 5-year mission to explore strange new sounds, to seek out new songs and not-so-new Fender guitars. To boldly go where no reverb tank has gone before!

John Blairs' Rocking Classical New Years Eve Extravaganza

In this podcast, Lady Reverb digs deep to uncover the rich vein of classical melodies played in the surf and euro-instro style. Our own CaptainSpringfield (AKA Warren Binder) takes the mic to surf maven John Blair for an in-depth interview. We also present brand new music from The Barbwires and Los Twang Marvels.

You can get it on our podcast page or it should be available in iTunes shortly.

Thanks Lady Reverb, Danny, Warren, and John Blair!