Customer Reviews

Surf City

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By the time this Southern California surf quintet cranked out their third album within a year, the formula - a few singles, a few new tracks, a track list populated almost entirely of covers - was proving durable, though decreasingly exciting. On this outing the band tackles Jan & Dean ("Surf City"), the Tornados ("Telstar"), Santa & Johnny ("Sleepwalk"), Johnny Fortune ("Soul Surfer") and revisits "Misirlou" and "Surf Rider" from their previous outings. What makes each Lively Ones album interesting are the songs they repurpose from other genres, such as Freddie King's "Head's Up" and "Butterscotch." They even manage to quote the Munsters theme song on the latter tune. As on their previous albums, the band mixes the twang of guitars with the fat saxophone of Joel Willlenbring, creating a hybrid that blends `50s instrumentals with `60s surf rock. The band is sharp as ever, but the lack of original material starts to make this feel more like a Saturday night covers act than an original surf rock band. There's stereo sound throughout and the tracks are available as an album of MP3's or a two-fer (with the band's fourth album, Surfin' South of the Border) as a CD. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

This is a fun album very similar to music by the Ventures. If you do like the Ventures (and I do), you'll enjoy the Lively Ones.

This was the third album by prolific surf group the Lively Ones. It's a pretty good surf album, but they kind of cheated by including three songs that had already been on one of their previous albums (including their best known song, "Surf Rider"). But it does include a good cover version of Jan and Dean's hit "Surf City", and most of the other songs are enjoyable. Fans of instrumental surf music should enjoy it.