As a former Malibu local, Trancas local, and fifty year local of Malibu (now escaped to New Zealand) please believe me when I say The Surf Punks, Dennis, Drew, and everyone who play a dscordinate note were sincere, fun-loving music makers. They made their music and it rang out the feelings of that wild era. I lived it. They were true to the times. Bless them. We all had fun and hurt no one.

Where are you Drew? Peter D.

“Shark Attack” (music video)

“Gas” (music video)

Drew Steele playing and participating in Jepsen’s “surf fashion show” in 1989

Denny Dragon’s interview segment as “Dick Damage” (steel wheel pioneer) for one of Hal’s film projects.

I knew Drew better than Dennis. I used to see them on Zuma Beach. They hated the Valleys. Simple as that. But a love hate. What a great intro to life it must be, being raised on Zuma Beach, watchin the glassy dawn waves kisss the shore every day. It is great. So, when 50,000 people each weekend drive over to the beach, on one of the few roads over the mountains to the huge huge valley behind, it swamps the weekly peace and beauty that is what we are all here talking about, anyway. My Beach. Great great song.

On it there is a girl’s voice, often laughing, in the background, and doing female dialogue, I knew that girl. She was also a surfer. The inclusion of the beach girls in their real lives, brought into their songs let for a reer playing of what life on the beach was really like. When it is good it is unbeatable. Long May You Run. On My Wave, and on quite a few, you can hear her laughing and stuff. It was about having fun and enjoying the beach. They did it all. Go Surfpunks. From Bill The Explorer, Sahara Records, Liverpool & Malibu and, for now, back in Africa. Still playing live 12 string acoustic 7 nites a week on the net. It’s cool. I left Malibu 28 years ago but the net is now.….it’s just because.… it’s still the music.

Only two things:

1) Uh, dude, when someone’s from New Zealand I’m not sure how they’d be able to vote for you blokes’ head of state.

2) No sarcasm intended: Benile is a great word. It seems so wastelessly compound, sort of an elegant gem along the same lines as “fugly”. I highly encourage you to make an Urban Dictionary entry to preserve it for posterity (or “posteriority” …or is that taking a good thing too far?).

3) Who’s disrespecting Dennis? From the little I’ve heard or read about him he seems like the type of provocateur who’d happily have disrespected someone exactly like himself. What good are sacred cows after all if not to be smashed?

Peace.

Five dollar reward!

Backwards thongs forever!!

From the one album I listened to on Rhapsody I do think Surf Punks had something interesting and I can certainly see how they probably contributed to the various genres they were associated with. But their sound just isn’t the sort of thing I can play in the background while concentrating on other stuff, it’s slightly jarring at points and the clever little jabs embedded in it demand too much attention.

I guess I’d have to agree with his tastes though: Big Top is pretty catchy.

I was there, and in my opinion it was all about making fun of what everyone else was taking too seriously. You had the beach kids that thought they owned the beach and would do anything to defend it and then you had the punk scene that was all about being loaded and playing music and giving the finger to establishment. Dennis and Drew merged the 2 and made a parody of the whole thing. The cool part was that if you didn’t know them, then you didn’t really know that it was a joke. That’s why they could piss off a whole crowd at Ventura, but the joke was that the crowd took themselves so seriously that they became part of the whole performance of the parody. It was genius really and overlooked. But that was ok too because it was more of a personal joke. Dennis didn’t really care if anybody got it or not. It was more for his own enjoyment. At least that’s what it looked like to me.

T