Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Southern Surf Stomp! presents Phatlynx (NC), Gemini XIII, and Air Wolves

North Carolina's Phatlynx are the ultimate southern fried homage to Link Wray...and the other white meat.  In reality they are so much more, cooking up styles from surf, rockabilly, and R&B.  Crispy Bess, the group's leader, is a rock legend of epic proportions having played with Southern Culture on the Skids, Uncle Tupelo, and Tiny Tim...yes, THAT Tiny Tim.  Bess is also the organizer and promoter for the world's largest instrumental music festival, the Instro Summit.

Gemini XIII are relative newcomers to the Atlanta surf scene although member Lester Dragstedt has played a big role in the punk world since the 80's with his band The Nightporters.  The group started primarily as a cover band but has since focused on some very strong originals.  I am a big fan and supporter of this group and see some great things in their future.

Air Wolves feature former members of the Love Drunks and Can Can, and play gritty garage punk a la the Stooges.  The Wolves recently released their debut CD recorded by our friend John Breedlove from Hip To Death.




Monday, June 16, 2014

Photos from Southern Surf Stomp! on June 7, 2014

 El Fossil
Kill, Baby...Kill!
 The chaos that is Daikaiju
 Secret-Man
 Rock-Man stepping outside for a breath of fresh air
 Drum surfing with Blast-Man
Secret-Man raises the bar

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Monsters of Surf compilation


This compilation, spearheaded by the mighty Daikaiju, features the four groups from June's Stomp; the aforementioned Daikaiju, Kill, Baby...Kill!, The Mystery Men?, and El Fossil, as well as May's headliners The Mutations.

Here's part of an excellent review by my friend Noel from Surf Guitar 101:
"In a genre filled with great compilation albums of historic importance, and the best of current artists, this record stands firmly side-by-side with the very best. Monsters of Surf is an amazing, jaw-dropping record of music pushing at the contemporary edges of what it means to be surf music. This isn’t your father’s surf music, and I say that as someone who genuinely loves every note of music played and recorded by the founders of surf music, the artists who kept it alive and revived it, and the proponents of it today. This is that music on steroids, surfing hurricane-generated monster waves. This is powerful, extreme surf, head-banging, boundary-pushing, raucous, dangerous surf. I would never operate a motor vehicle listening to Monsters of Surf unless cruise control was firmly controlling the speed."