Zero to 180 – Three Minute Magic
The Australian All-Stars‘s 1959 album – Jazz for Beach-Niks – was originally released on Columbia Australia and picked up for US release four years later by King subsidiary label, Bethlehem (and reissued 2013 in Japan), subject of the previous history piece. One can only presume Syd Nathan was trying to capitalize
Zero to 180’s sprawling history trawl “Rare & Unreleased King” made passing reference to another surf-ploitation LP issued by King Records – 1963’s Surfin’ on Wave Nine – and even threatened to make that album the focus of a future history piece … whose time has come today. Compared to Look Who’s
In the course of sleuthing, I stumbled upon a King surf cash-in compilation from 1964 that, upon closer inspection, revealed a trio of “mystery bands” — The Surf Jumpers, The Wild Kats and The King Surfers — that are mysteriously absent from Ruppli’s otherwise fairly comprehensive 2-volume discography of King
No doubt about it: Jimmy Page, given his role as composer, arranger, and producer, dominates this B-side by a group you’ve never heard of (i.e., recording career = exactly one 45). This song, I am now discovering, is virtually unknown to American fans of Page’s work, as it has mainly
Session guitarist Mickey (“Love Is Strange“) Baker — whose work would grace dozens of releases by King Records and its subsidiaries — ended up being allotted exactly one solo album by the label as an artist in his own right: 1963’s But Wild. Recorded in Paris in June of 1962,
Who are/were The Surf Symphony — and why just the one Capitol 45? “Night of the Lions“ The Surf Symphony (1969) Wait! As it turns out, the joke’s on us: This is a “supercharged” instrumental version of the song “Night of the Lions” from Mark Eric‘s A Midsummer’s Day
King Records, as noted in last year’s piece about The Impacs, was not known for its twangin’ surf sounds. “Seat Belts Please” by The Exports, intriguingly, would straddle the same line between garage and surf as The Impacs and include a secondary riff [beginning at the 0:34 mark] that would
Once upon a time, American automobile designs were the envy of the world. Today’s piece is a tribute to the creative genius who not only designed Batman and Robin’s iconic mode of transport but also the Munster Koach, and the unbelievably spectacular Voxmobile that guitarist extraordinaire, Jimmy Bryant, once befriended.
Bless those masked marauders, Los Straitjackets, whose first two albums – 1995’s The Utterly Fantastic and Totally Unbelievable Sound and 1996’s ¡Viva Los Straitjackets! – would give the instrumental an outsized and much needed shot in the arm. Debut 45 “Gate Crasher” b/w “Lonely Apache” (1995) First two full-length
My friend — the gifted record collector, Tom Avazian — found this fairly obscure hot rod album, 1963’s Hot Rod City on the Vault label – for sale on the streets of Washington, DC: “Competition Coupe” by The Customs was one track that particularly tickled my ear: Gary Usher —
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