Customer Reviews

The Original Soundtrack From Five Summer Stories

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I first heard this album as a 13 year old in 1972. It was playing over the speakers in a record store and I pretended to look at record covers on the racks so I could hear the whole thing. It was captivating music. Before the last track finished I had bought the album and then played it over and over at home. When I visited my cousins on the north coast they told me about the movie (which to this day I have never seen). This album still sounds as fresh and vibrant today as it did back in the 1970s. It may be a movie soundtrack but it stands alone as a master work with or without the movie. Picking out the best track is difficult but High In the Middle probably wins by a nose. Some of the best steel guitar playing ever committed to record can be heard on Bears Country, a stunning instrumental track which evokes lazy summer days at the beach. The Blue Of Your Backdrop, Don't Let Your Goodbye Stand, Pipeline Sequence the list goes on. It is truly an aural treat and a fine example of the west coast sound in its earliest and purest form. Do yourself a favor and buy this album. It is one of rock music's last undiscovered gems.

I grew up in Hawaii in the '70s, and first saw "Five Summer Stories" in the old Haleiwa surf theatre on the North Shore of Oahu. I bought this CD a few years ago, and I was astonished and delighted to re-discover how good Honk actually was. Too bad Honk will remain unheard by most people. They were an excellent band, exquisitely capturing the essence of laid-back, California-Hawaii surf culture of the '70s. It's one of those mysterires how such an excellent, original band could remain so obscure to this day. Their arrangements and harmonies, as well as musicianship, on cuts like "Blue of Your Backdrop" and "Don't Let Your Goodbye Stand" are timeless. The instrumentals "Lopez" and "Pipeline Sequence" are masterful-- as good as anything else produced in that era. "Pipeline Sequence" received a lot of airplay in Hawaii in those days, and is still THE surf instrumental for us Hawaii surfers who came of age back then. Honk's music is light-years better than the frenetic, punked-out surf video music of today. So get this CD, relax, and remember (or imagine) what it was like to paddle out to Sunset Beach on a huge west swell, with no leash and a single fin, and Barry Kanaiaupuni, Jeff Hakman, and Gerry Lopez calling the shots out there!

For those of you who haven't had the privelage of toting around this Honk record album (you know, vinyl?) for the past 25 years, you are very lucky to have the opportunity to purchase it in CD. I grew up on Maui and was a "surfer gal", playing my Honk album after long days at the beach, re-visualizing the beauty of the waves, sun and sand while listening to the articulate instrumentals and vocals on this album. In this day of the regeneration of historical american folk tunes, I truly believe Honk-Five Summer Stories deserves a place in our musical history for the melodic songs, and calming instumentals which represent a brief, yet heartfelt era. Anyone who enjoys music as a "getaway", this one will take you where you want to go....

The vocals, the lyrics, the music, the mood...Honk is the best of the best. My wish is that the other Honk lp's would be released on CD. I never get tired of listening or seeing Honk...and I have been doing it since the 70's...

As the other reviews stated, this is truly one of the great surf sounds. But you can get the movie on video: Toes on the Nose in Laguna Beach carries it in stock. My husband and I made this our standard sound when we drove up the coast 25 1/2 years ago

Quintessential surf music. You can feel the thunder of the break and smell the water. This album captures the essence of the movie that bares it's name. You can't listen and not be propelled into the beach lifestyle. It listens easily, and it is a collector must if your life includes any elements of beach life.

Many of the tracks from this film soundtrack have become classics. Instrumentals such as "Pipeline Sequence", "Brad and David's Theme", and "Lopez" truly defined the "70's surf" music. In a genre spilling over with the frantic stylings of the early 1960's (and again in this decade), Honk's gentle-yet-intense trademark really took listeners into the barrel. Vocal tracks like "Don't Let Your Goodbye Stand" were not reminding anyone of Brian Wilson. The "Pipeline Sequence" still rests in the Pantheon of surf music, as this soundtrack (despite its occasional dips into country twang) has outdistanced even the immortal FSS films that it was created to back up.

The music is unique and could be described as a cross between country rock (that is the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt etc) sound and jazz. The Pipeline Sequence is a piece that I first heard 25 years ago and loved. Now my children and their friends think similarly (Based on the number of times that I hear them play it). My only regret is that other albums recorded by Honk are not avaliable.

This CD is a great reminder of all that was great about Southern California in the 1970s. Casual, laid-back living, the surf scene, people helping people and genuinely caring about them--the kinds of things that still exist in Southern California but mostly outside of its major cities. Listen to this CD while driving along the coast. Listen to it on a Sunday afternoon. Listen to it any time you just want to relax and put a smile on your face. I do.

I remember when Honk used to play the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach back in the good old days. And they were good days, dude. We used to surf the south side of the pier all night, life was laid back and sweet, SoCal (Orange County in particular) wasn't yet a swarming freakshow, and there really were surf bands -- and surf movies. "Endless Summer" is considered by many to be the granddaddy of them all -- and that may be true -- but for me, "Five Summer Stories" captures that wonderful, beautiful shimmering moment in Southern California history that has sadly been lost forever. Lost? Make that paved, choked, and crowded out. The best we can do now is let the music take us back, and Honk does this. Get this CD and feel young again -- if you were there the first time. You gremmies have no choice but to just listen and dream of what you missed by being born too late.