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Hi All,
Indeed "Go Baby Go" is a fantastic CD, as Brain discribes.
The Hypnotic IV recently did a Euro tour and guess what, I went to their
show THREE times!
I will give a short discription of one of their gigs, which were among
the best surf shows I ever saw.
Sat 3/8 at Gierle Belgium. This was the Hypnotic IV' 2nd gig in Belgium,
the played together with Belgian Pride "Reef Rider" which is a Mariachi
influnced instro Surf band with guys who know where the waves are
comming from.
Before the show started the Hypnotic IV played a match of table-football
against Reefrider, which they lost...(Table-football is a very popular
sport at Belgian Youth clubs, so the natives are hard to beat).
But a bit later the show started of. Reefrider opened with their high
Mariachi influenced surf, played a bunch of covers like High Tide,
Penetration, Pipeline and other classic surf tunes together with some
very nice tunes of their own. The band was tight and precise, the gear
used was also of High standard, A blonde Showman with 18" inch cabinet
and build in Reverb tank coupeled on a olympic white Jazzmaster for
lead, a nice drumkit, vintage (owned by the tour promotor "Surfing
Airlines") a Silverface bassman with nice Jazzbass and a Twin reverb
also silverface coupled on a Brown reissue reverb tank with a strat,
another strat and in the end a vintage Jazzmaster pre '68. (a lot of
strings broke, but once the Jazzmaster was played it stopped....) In all
a very energetic performance of high quality....
Next up were the Hypnotic IV, who recently got Mosrite Guitars from
Mosrite Japan, Andy the lead guitarist was "VERY" proud with this.
The Bass player and rythem guitarist als had their mosrite, damn fine
guitars (I'm not very familiar but Andy's mosrite looked like a Ventures
model, but a bit different)the both used Fender Twin reverbs, one with
eminence and one with JBL speakers, a Silverface Bassman combo and the
Same drumkit as "Reef Rider" (all their material aside from the Mosrites
was owned by their tour promotor)
O.K. on to the music, a very tight high octane set....marvelous playing,
a lot of tunes from "Go Baby Go" high energy "Miserilou, Penetration,
Mr. Moto, Peace pipe, and the show ended with a nice "Prefidia" cover,
after palying over one hour...whoeha...superb....
I went back the next day at "St-Gilles" 3/9 and a week later at
St-Niklaas 3/19 were "Reefrider was present as audience. (they played a
few song afterwards on the Mosrites, but is was very different from what
I heard about a week before. So I have to conclude, that every band has
it's typical sound and use of instruments. Fender Vs. Mosrites is very
different)
But the Hypnotic IV shows and playing was marvelous again. The last show
a saw was a bit shorter due to the high energy of the whole tour.
In all great guys, nice to talk to and a great surf band. The hope to be
back next year, and I'm looking forward to that!!
Well I hope the Nebulas will be next as I really want to see these guys
"Surf" Belgium as well.
Kind regards,
Jerry S. from Belgium
