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Surf

Israel, Fast Music, 2003

The Astroglides

The Astroglides came out of Israel in the late 1990s and built their records mostly on surf instrumentals, with a hardcore punk streak running through them. Their own line was that they were drawn to the darker side of surf and kept away from the usual wipeout clichés. They also put some of the gloom down to life in Israel, from the politics to low wages and a small local scene. Fondling With... was their second album. Channel Surfing With... came out on CD in 2003 on Fast Music, produced by Ran Mosessco and The Baron J, with Lee-Or Tsiviling on theremin, Idan Izmirly on drums and Eliav Bezalel on guitar. A 20-track set, Sewer Surfing With..., went up on Bandcamp in 2010.

Redlands, California

The Tornadoes

The Tornadoes came from Redlands, California. Around 1959 or 1960 Roly Sanders and his cousin Jesse started playing together, and Roly's brother Gerald joined as a singer before he took up the bass. Leonard Delaney played drums and George White saxophone, and they called themselves the Vaqueros at first. Their sound leaned on a $300 Echoplex tape delay. They cut singles for the small Aertaun label at Pal Recording Studios in Cucamonga, with Frank Zappa engineering, and an LP came out on Josie in 1963. For a while they were billed as the Hollywood Tornadoes, since a British group called the Tornados was in the charts. Later they played the Zappanale festival in Germany. Delaney died in 2014 and Jesse in 2020.

France, Productions Impossible

Hawaii Samurai

Hawaii Samurai are a French surf punk band, with Dick Den's on guitar, Nasty Samy on bass and Buanax on drums. Their records come out on Productions Impossible, a non-profit label from the Montbéliard area that sticks to ska, surf, punk and heavy rock and presses a lot of vinyl. The first album was recorded in December 2002 at Kaiser Studio with Lucas Trouble producing, and it came out on CD early in 2003. Trouble also played organ on it and Pierrax added saxophone. The label later put it on vinyl in 2012 and again in 2025, the second time for its own twentieth anniversary. A second album followed on CD in 2005 and got a numbered LP pressing of 500 in 2009. Discogs counts five albums.

Tsuchiura, 1939

Takeshi Terauchi

Takeshi Terauchi was born in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki, in January 1939. Early on he played rhythm guitar on American military bases, partly with a country band, Jimmie Tokita and His Mountain Playboys. He formed the Blue Jeans in 1962, and when the eleki boom hit Japan he was out in front of it, picking fast and working the tremolo and the vibrato arm hard. The Ventures gave him a Mosrite. He still said his music came from Japan and that they had not influenced him. Worn out, he left the Blue Jeans in 1966 and missed opening for the Beatles. In December he started the Bunnys, then brought the Blue Jeans back in 1969. In 1974 he went back to the traditional folk songs he had long played in eleki style. He died in June 2021, aged 82.

The Collection