Surfer Joe Summer Festival 2013 - Surfer Joe's Diner Livorno Italy

Friday June 21st

If it’s the end of June it must be time for the Surfer Joe Summer Festival in Livorno. And so the HangNine party finds itself at Gatwick airport for the flight to Pisa and the short train journey from there to Livorno.

On arrival, we’re delighted  to find that the Tuscan weather is considerably better than that we left behind in decidedly unsunny Brighton and I’m very pleased to report that it stays this way until we awake on Monday morning to find it blowing a gale, which is whipping up quite a storm in the Mediterranean.

After a quick drink in a nice bar to break the trek from the station to our hotel (where we are met with a truly friendly welcome), we arrive at the Surfer Joe Diner, where we find Lorenzo “Surfer Joe” Valdambrini, brother Luca and the rest of the Boss Combo, Tommi and Tonio, preparing for the opening night of the festival. We grab the opportunity for a quick chat, down another drink or two, , pausing only to catch up with Da-Ron and Adam from the Waterboarders, then head off for pizza, before returning to the Diner later in the evening.

As has been the case for the last six years, the Festival is hosted jointly by organiser Lorenzo and Unsteady Freddie, from New York, thankfully restored to health after his foot problems. This year, duties are shared with Dave Arnson of the Insect Surfers, who spends most of the weekend firmly ensconced beneath a hug wide-brimmed hat.

Entertainment for the night comes from Swiss band Tony Dynamite and the Shooting Beavers, who are hugely entertaining on the Tiki Garden stage, while Thaly from Thaly’s Tiki Art is setting about a huge chunk of tree trunk with a chainsaw as he prepares himself for the live Tiki carving event scheduled for Saturday afternoon. As Tony Dynamite are playing, we catch site of Larry “Moon Dawg” White, an old friend who we’ve not met up with close on fifteen years. This is one of the great things about Surfer Joe, there are always people to catch up with, while the music provides the best possible backdrop for the socialising. Larry is wearing a Dead Man’s Curve t-shirt, too, which is a greatly appreciated touch and certainly makes me smile.

This year there are three stages at the festival: The Main Stage, overlooking the sea; the Tiki Garden Stage and a further stage inside the Diner, which is used long into the night once the other stages have finished (and for a very special show on the Monday night, which we are sorry to miss). This all makes for a very smoothly run event, with one band finishing on one stage and another starting almost immediately on another for most of the weekend.

Friday night ends with Speedball Jr from Belgium on the main stage, who tale the brave (and possibly slightly strange) decision of playing covers of tunes by both The Atlantics and The Apemen, who will appear on this same stage tomorrow. They play a pretty fine set, though, despite maybe not filling the large stage quite as well as a few other bands do on subsequent nights.

Festivities carry on long into the night, but we’re pretty knackered, so head back to the hotel for some sleep. 

Saturday June 22^nd

 

Festivities are underway somewhat earlier on Saturday, so after lunch at the Diner (do check out the Jack Farro salad, it’s simple and delicious, although burgers are the real speciality of this joint), some posing for photographs with Dave Arnson and a quick siesta, we’re back in good time to catch Los Lagoonas, Surfoniani, The Psycho Surfers and Spain’s fabulously-named Five Fingers With Parasol, in the Tiki Garden, while Thaly makes incredible headway with the Tiki carving. All four bands are excellent and keep the crowd basking in the heat of a fine summer’s day thoroughly entertained. At around this point, Les Agamemnonz arrive from France, fully attired in their skimpy Ancient Greek-style stage costumes, which is a nice touch, since they aren’t playing for several hours yet.

Our good friends from Brighton, Keith and Claire also turn up during the afternoon and it’s nice to be able to introduce them to the delights of Surfer Joe. I expect that Keith will be giving the festival a mention on his Rock’n’Roll show over on Seahaven FM at some point.

It’s time to eat again and we retire, with Moon Dawg, to our favourite restaurant. However, it appears that this may have been a mistake, since we return to find everyone raving about how great The Mullet Monster Mafia have just been. The Brazilians do play another show late on Sunday night inside the Diner, but tiredness dictates that we miss this one too, but I suppose you can’t have everything.

The Spaceguards are playing some slightly more avant-garde instrumental over on the main stage and we can’t help but notice that they conform to our stereotype of Dutch surf musicians: they seem to be very tall! Now, this is just an observation you understand; I’m not usually one for indulging in cheap national characteristics based humour.

Les Agamemnonz have been in full stage costume for several hours now, but it proves to be worth it. They are excellent; melodic, a little laid-back and highly accomplished. I think it also during their set that we are introduced, via Luka from the Ungawa Tiki Bar, to the delights of Corona beer with a few drops of added Tabasco sauce. The trick is to add the Tabasco, tip the bottle upside down to shake it all up a bit, then spray a shot of spicy beer into your mouth. This works admirably as a way of enlivening what is usually a rather bland beer, but you do have to be careful not to squirt any up your nose. I’m not careful!

Next up over on the main stage are the splendid Apemen. They are particularly splendid whilst attired in their Ape masks, although a little of the mystique is broken when they remove them, revealing themselves to be four pleasing tall Dutch guys. They’re very enjoyable, though, it must be said, although I’m not so sure the owner will have enjoyed the organist throwing the vintage Vox Continental to the floor at one point.

I’m getting pretty excited about seeing The Atlantics by now, but we have to wait just a little longer while Diabolico Coupé keep us entertained back in the Tiki Garden with yet another fine set.

It’s been a great day so far, but The Atlantics are about to put every other band somewhat in the shade. Quite simply, they are IMMENSE. Guitarist Jim Skiathitis is the only member from the early 60’s line-up of Australia’s finest instrumental band present tonight (drummer Peter Hood is unable to make this European trip), but dual guitarist Martin Cilia has been an Atlantic since they reformed full-time in 1999 and has apparently been something of a force in the band, for which we should all be grateful to him, because they might not be playing in Livorno tonight otherwise. Both guitarists are in tremendous form and, ably supported by a driving rhythm section, they treat the large crowd to one of the best performances I have ever seen at a Surfer Joe Festival. Everyone wants to hear the first big hit, Bombora, of course and we’re not disappointed, but everything else is fabulous too: The Crusher, Giant, Flight of the Surf Guitar and a cracking Come On are just some of the highlights, while they end the encore with my personal favourite, War of the Worlds, which is storming.

Les Agamemnonz are about to play inside the Diner, but The Atlantics have left us drained and we head back to the hotel again. What lightweights we are becoming! 

Sunday June 23^rd

We start the day with all the best of intentions. We will take a walk, enjoy the sun, maybe have a quick drink at the Diner, then be sensible and grab a siesta. Then eat, then return to the Diner for the evening’s music. And everything starts well: we take a walk, enjoy the sun, call into the diner and have a quick drink. Unfortunately we enjoy the drink a little too much, so decide on another. We spend the rest of the afternoon in the Tiki Garden having maybe one or two too many drinks as we lounge in the sun and listen to The Insect Surfers rehearsing with Lorenzo, who is the stand in drummer for their European dates. In the past, some of my best memories at festivals in summery Mediterranean settings have not been of the music, but of the company, the setting, the lounging around; this is one of those times. At one point I am almost convinced that I have died and gone to heaven, as the sound of the Beach Boy’s You Still Believe In Me drifts across the sun drenched Tiki Garden. Those harmonies, surely, are what angels sound like.

We decide to miss the Ukulelics (although we enjoy their soundcheck) and are joined by Keith and Claire for a fine meal, before we head back to catch the end of the Tonomats’ set. Except that we’ve got our timing slightly awry and we miss them and have to ask Da-Ron and Adam how they were. “Very tall,” replies Da-Ron. The Tonomats are Dutch.

Alwaro Negro's garage-y set we do catch and very fine it is too, warming us up nicely for Surfer Joe and his Boss Combo over on the main stage. Lorenzo guitar playing is well up to his usual (very) high standard, while Luca, Tommi and Tonio put in a fine supporting shift, to produce another highlight of the weekend.

The Boss Combo are followed by Dave and the Pussies from Austria on the Tiki Garden stage, but by this point I am almost starting to want to see a band who aren’t instrumental. I know it’s an instrumental festival and I play and love instrumental music myself, but this must be a sure sign that I am nearly ready to head back to Brighton. Not that Dave and the Pussies are in any way bad, mind you. In fact they’re pretty good and they do a Bambi Molesters tune (Mindbender) really rather well. I figure I’m just in need of a something a bit different.

Over on the main stage we get… something a bit different: The Insect Surfers. Dave Arnson formed this band in 1979 and they sound as fresh and exciting tonight at they must have done back then. Dave is joined by JonPaul Balak (another lovely guy who I have the pleasure of meeting over the weekend) on bass. Lorenzo on drums and special guest Bernard Yin (something of a luminary in the California music scene) on guitar, not to mention El Firetone from the fabulous El Ray, who guests on one number. Of course, we’ve heard the set, which draws heavily on new album Infra Green (rapidly becoming a new favourite at HangNine towers) twice during the course of the afternoon, but what seemed seductive and gently laid-back in the afternoon sun, seems strange and spacious and twisted into all kinds of wonderful shapes. The guitars weave around one another, the bass throbs and Lorenzo manages to hold it all together, despite the fact that he must be shattered and he’s only been rehearsing these tunes for a couple of days. Great stuff, made all the more enjoyable by Dave’s hyperactive-insect stage presence. Fantastic.

 

It’s 1:30 in the morning and, despite The Mullet Monster Mafia making a second appearance of the festival inside the Diner, we drag our weary minds and bodies back to bed. 

 

Monday June 24^th

We’re surprised to find Livorno strangely chilly when we get up in the morning and there’s a gale which would have ruined the previous night’s shows, had it blown in much sooner. After breakfast we head down to the Diner for one last time, while the wind blows the cobwebs away. I grab some video footage of an angry looking sea and the completed Tiki carving. We sit in the garden for a while, but the Diner’s closed and it’s really not very warm. Time to leave we agree and head off to Pisa and our flight home.

 

Vital Organs

In my early teens, in the mid-1970’s and before the shockwave of punk hove into view and changed everything about the way I saw the world, I was briefly obsessed by the music of The Doors. Like many others, I suppose I was drawn by the air of dark mystery which attached itself to Jim Morrison, only amplified by the tragic circumstances of his death and the rumours that it had been faked by the singer himself.  Over time I tired of all of this hokum and I rarely seek out the band’s music these days, although I’m always rather surprised to realise how much it can still stir within me when I do come across it.

The element of The Doors sound which has stayed most in my consciousness, though, is Ray Mazarek’s organ playing and I was greatly saddened to hear of his recent death, at the all-too-young age of 74.

Manzarek’s passing set me musing on the sound of the electric organ and particularly its use in instrumental surf music. Now, it’s far from an uncommon  to hear an organ on surf recordings (including by my own former band, Dead Man’s Curve, with Johnny Deadman on Vox Continental), but it was nevertheless good to receive the eponymous debut CD from Alabama’s High Fidelics in the post last week. Robert Hoffman (who previously added organ to the sound of the fabulous Penetrators) is the keyboard wrangler with these guys, taking a prominent role on refreshingly varied tunes such as New Killer Ray, Spy Smasher, Black Dahlia, the ever-so-slightly bizarre collision between The Shadows and The Nice, that is Aquestriana and the Starsky and Hutch soundtrackery of Theme From Kismet. The album dates from 2012, but apparently a new one is due later this year, and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing it. One word of warning, though. The album only plays on one of my CD players, which is in the bathroom. Makes a great accompaniment to a refreshing shower, though!

While we’re on the subject of organs, I would like to point you towards this guide to combo organs, introduced by the ever excellent Blodwyn P Teabag, a woman who once slept on the living room floor at HangNine Towers, when her former band, The Thurston Lava Tube visited Brighton.

 

Now you might think that Blodwyn is slightly over-egging the pudding with her bold assertion that, “…it is possible to record a piece of music without an organ on it, but it won’t be as good,” and one band who might agree with you are the West Samoa Surfer League, a three-piece from Ulm in Germany, featuring two former members of The Space Rangers.  Their new CD, the Moments of Truth EP, dropped through the letter box within a day or so of The High Fidelics’ release.  No organs whatsoever on these six tracks (two of which are Point Zero), but plenty of full-on in-yer-face high-energy surf music, with covers of Dave Myers’ Moment of Truth, The Pharos’ Pintor and Bobby Fuller’s Stringer joined by the splendidly named What Would Takeshi Kovacs Do? It’s great stuff from the latest in a line of German bands and it would be good indeed to see them playing in the UK at some point in the future. Brighton beckons perhaps!

Coming soon: the new album from Man or Astroman? and the Surfer Joe Summer Festival.

Back In The Saddle

After a period of inactivity, I’m back. OK, it wasn’t all inactivity, Jules Deadman and I did manage to take in a brief trip to Livorno, with Clive Lung and The Professor to visit the super cool Surfer Joe’s Diner and to see the fabulous Los Straitjackets. This being February and England in the icy grip of winter, Livorno made for a very pleasant spring-like change, just so long as you kept out of the shadows.

Normal wintry service was resumed later that week, when we had the immense pleasure of returning to Zagreb to see my favourite band on the planet, The Bambi Molesters, at the very nice indeed thank you very much Vintage Industrial Bar. This is a little out of central Zagreb, but we managed to find a hotel a mere 500 metres from the club, so not too far to stagger after the gig (and nowhere near as bad as we were led to believe by Trip Advisor!). It being far too cold to spend too much time outdoors, we had to pass some of the afternoon in the nearby Bikers Beer Factory, which we can also highly recommend, before heading off to the soundcheck. Very decent Mexican food followed and then back to the club for a superb show from The Bambi Molesters and a few more Ozujskos. The next day we sat at Zagreb airport watching the snowploughs clear the runway, which was pretty impressive. We hope to be back in Croatia again soon.

I made a return appearance to Keith Baxter’s estimable Rock ‘n’ Roll show on Seahaven FM earlier this week. We spent a very peasant hour chewing the fat, whilst spinning some of our favourite tunes. Keith played Rebel Rouser in honour of it being Duane Eddy’s birthday, How Come It, from George “Thumper” Jones’ short-lived rockabilly period, as a tribute to the sadly departed country icon and Remember Walking in the Sand by The Shangri Las, to mark the passing of producer Shadow Morton.

I chose two tracks from the instrumental release of 2013 so far, Adios Sancho, from Madrid’s excellent purveyors of “Surf Music  Spanish-style”, Los Coronas. We had the title track and the quite brilliant La Leyenda del Solitario. This album is extremely hard to track down on CD in the UK (my copy was delivered from Australia), although it is available to download in all the usual places and I really can’t recommend it highly enough: great stonking spaghetti western melodies, handclaps, thrilling guitars and TRUMPETS, lots of trumpets (we like trumpets at HangNine towers!). Fabulous.

There was also an opportunity to slip in Headless Hipster from last year’s Galactic Guitars best of CD by The Space Agency, which was a thrill for all listeners, I’m sure. Keith certainly seemed to like it, as he did the two tracks we played from the recent Surf Age Nuggets box set; the scare-tastic House on Haunted Hill by Kenny & the Fiends and Earthquake! from Marlow Stewart and the Illusions (admittedly Keith played the latter by mistake, but we loved it anyway).

I also introduced Keith to the “New School Surf & Flamenco” sounds of Copenhagen’s The Good The Bad and we played 039 from the latest album “From 034 to 050”, which follows on from previous releases “From 001 to 017” and, you guessed it, “From 018 to 034”. Wayne Kramer is a fan of this band and it’s easy to see why. They’re neither surf nor flamenco, to my ears, but they’re thrilling, make great videos and have a fantastic concept. If you’ve not done so already, I urge you to investigate them further.

The hour passed all too quickly and both Keith and I agreed that we would need two hours next time, which is good, because the new album from Man Or Astro-Man?, Defcon 5... 4... 3... 2... 1, will be out by then. Actually, you can download it now, but the CD is released in June and I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it.

I will also be bumping into Keith when we return to Livorno for the 2013 edition of the Surfer Joe Summer Festival from June 21^st-23^rd, where I’m particularly eager to see The Insect Surfers and Australian legends The Atlantics. I’m also pretty keen to resample the Diner’s excellent Farro salad!

And as if that wasn’t enough, September 14^th will see us at The Melkweg in Amsterdam for the North Sea Surf Festival. Wow! What a line-up there is for this show: from Mexico it’s Lost Acapulco, the original men in the masks with the drummer the size of a mountain, who we loved when we saw them some years back in Calella; from Croatia it’s The Bambi Molesters; from Spain it’s Los Coronas; from the Netherlands it’s The Phantom Four; and from Denmark it’s the aforementioned The Good The Bad. I can hardly contain my excitement. Now, how do we get into the after-show party? 

Of course, once people know that you write a bit about surf music and suchlike, you do tend to get sent CDs (and, increasingly, links to dowloads and the like) for review purposes. Since changing the format of HangNine, I'm not so eager to write reviews as such, but it's always nice to recieve some new instrumental music in the post, so please do keep sending. One band who contacted me a while ago were Stockholm's Blazing Surfboards, whose Lone Star EP makes for a very pleasant summery listen indeed. Very apt for the suddenly improved English weather. As mentioned, I've been somewhat inactive for a while, so I can only apologise to Blazing Surfboards for spending so long getting around to mentioning their release. Do look them up.

Surfer Joe Summer Festival 2013

So, we now know the line-up for the Surfer Joe Summer Festival 2013, which runs from Friday June 21^st to Sunday June 23^rd.

This is probably the world’s foremost festival of instrumental surf music and organiser Lorenzo Valdambrini once again deserves credit for putting together a stellar bill for the event, with fifteen bands over the three nights, including a rare European opportunity to see legendary Australian surf band The Atlantics, with The Apemen, The Bradipos IV, Surfer Joe & his Boss Combo and Dave Arnson's second-wave veterans, the Insect Surfers, also looking especially appealing.

The venue is once again the Terraaza Mascagni, beside Surfer Joe’s Diner in Livorno, Italy and this year there will be three stages, a main stage on the Tearrazza, a second stage in the garden of the Diner and a third stage inside the Diner itself, with Lorenzo promising non-stop live music.

Full line-up as follows:

Friday – from 8:00pm with live music from 10:00pm

• Tony Dynamite & the Shootin’ Beavers
• Speedball Jr. 

Saturday – from 5:00pm with live music from 7:45pm

• The Mullet Monster Mafia
• The Spaceguards
• Les Agamemnonz
• The Apemen
• Diabolico Coupe
• The Atlantics
• The Bradipos IV
• Les Agamemnonz – night set

Sunday – from 5:00pm with live music from7:30pm

• Ukulelics
• Tonomats
• Alwaro Negro
• Surfer Joe & his Boss Combo
• Dave & the Pussies
• Insect Surfers 

There will be all the usual stalls and exhibits, plus food and drink provided by the Diner. 

Visit the festival website for further details, including on how to find the venue and on where to stay in Livorno. 

Get booking those flights now!

 

Women in Surf and Instrumental Music

I received an email from guitarist Zoe McCullough recently, urging me to check out her band, The Crickettes, which I did. I would urge you to do the same.

The Crickettes are quite unusual in the world of surf and instrumental music, in having an all female line up; the only other such bands I can think of are The Neptunas, who operated around California in the 1990’s and The 5, 6, 7, 8’s from Japan, who are still going strong, but who only play some instrumentals (although they play them in a splendidly ferocious manner). Do let me know if you can think of any others.

What also marks Zoe out is that she’s a lead guitarist, which puts her in fairly rarefied company these days, alongside Susan L. Yasinski, formerly of Susan and the Surftones and now performing as Susan Surftone, while Marisol Yolanda was a fine rhythm player in Los Twang Marvels.

It’s a bit easier to find women playing bass in surf bands: Lada Furlan Zaborac of The Bambi Molesters, Tine Camilla Lind of El Ray, Dolly Sunmakers of The Sunmakers, Catherine Gray of the late lamented Space Cossacks, Hula Girl of Hungarian band Cowabunga Go Go and Hiromi Jones of The Space Agency are all notable. Actually, special mention should be made of Hiromi, since she now also appears to be playing lead guitar in The Get Smashed (who are essentially The Space Agency, but playing one another’s instruments!).

No trawl through women in surf should be complete, of course, without mention of Kathy Marshall, The Queen of the Surf Guitar, a teenage sensation who shared the stage on many occasions with Eddie and the Showman in the 1960’s and reputedly once also blew Dick Dale off stage. The shame is that only those who were there have ever had the chance to hear Kathy Marshall play, since the only recordings made of her have never seen the light of day. However, she does feature in the documentary The Sound of the Surf, which was previewed at the 2011 Surfer Joe Summer Festival in Livorno and which I can’t wait to see in full.

Gerry Anderson

To those of us of a certain age, the TV programmes produced by Gerry Anderson during the 1960's will always remain firmly fixed in our minds and I was very saddened to hear of his death on Boxing Day.

Compared to some of the computer aided trickery available today, of course, Anderson's "supermarionation" looks a little clunky, but it cetainly transported me to a completely different world, a million miles removed from the grey Sunday afternoons of my childhood, where the Mysterons genuinely frightened the life out of me, with their creepy floating circles of light and spooky voices.



Everyone will have their own favourite show, whether it be Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet or Joe 90, while some may also be taken by his later live action work, although this never held the same charm for me.

In later life I would thrill to the sound of The Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis covering the theme from Firbeball XL5 at God's Little Joke in Clapham and later still I would come to know a man so obsessed with Anderson's work that he named his two children after chracters from his shows.



All of this has very little to do with surf and instrumental music, of course, athough The Shadows (and Cliff Richard) did put in an appearance in the Thunderbirds movie, Thunderbirds Are Go and many of the theme tunes do lend themselves to surf-ish treatments. A surf bands of the world cover Gerry Anderson themes album anyone? Oh yes, we think so.



Just loving the Burns guitars, by the way!

RIP Gerry and thanks, from my eight year old heart.

The Waterboarders - Surfbeats'n'Deadbeats

One of the things about playing instrumental music is that you get to meet and hang out with other people who play instrumental music and people who like listening to it. And here's the thing; they are genuinely nicer folk than people who like and play other kinds of music. It's a fact!

Since forming Deads Man's Curve in 1995 I've had the huge good fortune to meet, perform alongside and talk to poeple form Spain, Italy, The USA, Gemany, Denmark, Croatia, Canada and... Devon, quite a few of whom have stayed at my house.

One such is Darren Miles of the Waterboarders, a fine and lively surf instrumental trio from Plymouth (that's Plymouth, Devon, UK, not Plymouth Massachusets, USA, by the way), whose debut, Surbeats'n'Deadbeats is now available from Amazon. It features some splendid originals (we particularly like Moon Over Milford and Bermuda Triangle Shorts) and versions of Secret Agent Man and Squad Car. It's nice to see a British surfing wave, The Cribbar, get a namecheck too as the title of the second track.

We really must get these guys to come and play in Brighton some day.