Customer Reviews

Surfin Round World

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If you've read other reviews, or know something about west coast pop music history, you know that Bruce Johnston will go down in history as the sixth Beach Boy, replacing Brian Wilson on the road and adding his vocal and composition talents to the band from 1965 on. What many don't know is that he and partner Terry Melcher were on the cutting edge of developing a "teen music" department for the otherwise prolific Columbia Records empire. As songwriter/producer/performers, they racked up a bunch of regional hits on the coattails of the so. cal.surf/car sound led by Jan & Dean and, later, the Beach Boys. This album is the best of all other solo albums so far released by Beach man Bruce. It lacks the regional hit "Do The Surfer Stomp", but contains lots of cool material. I recommend it for BB/BJ completists, and all of you hodads and gremmies looking for an early 60s retro party CD to play while you all try to duplicate the dances and attitudes of those old surf films and sand-kicking parties immortalised by the Annette & Frankie movies. You'll hear an obvious homage to Uncle Ray in "Biarrtz", an instrumental based on "What I Say"; you'll hear Bruce's fun voice on the title cut, "Surfin's Here To Stay", and my favourite "The Hamptons" (now that I've been to Long Island...); the album contains three bonus tracks, two of which are backing tracks from the album, and the other an alternate take of the title cut. Top notch musicianship, pop-craft early 60s production by Terry, and hook-filled songs by Bruce. This 1963 release is reissued on CD in stereo, with original front cover art and a brief interview with Bruce inside. Buy it. Now.

This 1963 outing by the Beach-Boy-in-waiting will be of interest only to pop historians and Beach Boy completists. While it does have a slight period charm and above-average production values for the time, the material is pedestrian teen exploitation. Makes Jan and Dean look like visionaries.

Boy, talk about a blast from the past! Bruce Johnston's CBS album passed like gas when it was deep-sixed into the 1962 bargain bins and when we'd next hear of the guy, he was a Beach Boy.

This CD reissue has some alternate tracks that are pretty neat, but overall, it stills sounds like some of the vocals or mix are missing; the instrumentals are knockoff riffs of better artists: as lame as an episode of a 60's sitcom and a bunch of the crapola that you'd hear in the background of a really bad b-movie. Forty years later, it remarkably sounds the same, if not worse. Funny thing: if somebody created this thing in 2008, it'd be neo surf and probably an indie trendsetter. But a near-beer clone of a signature Ray Charles number and other lifts make this fit for only background tunes at retro clothing shops, if that.

There's that formula Jan and Dean sound: part carnival and part marshmallow Fluff. For CBS records, pretty much a waste of vinyl; for us in the 21st Century, a curiosity at best and a contender for "Superficial Garbage volume 250." We can only wonder how many of the Gidget-like cutie-pie backup girls were later part of Charley Manson's dunebuggy army out hunting for Terry Melcher.