Summer Music List: Surf's Up! Hang Ten With KDJ's Greatest Songs for Your Summer Surf Alohapalooza

FACT-O-RAMA! Surf music is as uniquely American as country music.

This list will not include The Beach Boys or Jan and Dean as I consider those bands to be beach music. Nor will you see Combustible Edison as they are, to me, lounge/tiki music.

GROOVES-O-RAMA! There is an ambiguous musical genre referred to as "Bachelor Pad" or "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" which encompasses many genres, such as surf, lounge, psychobilly, and tiki, as well as crooners like Julie London and Frank Sinatra. The best jukebox for this kind of music is at my favorite bar in the world, Frankie's Tiki Room in fabulous Las Vegas. I have spent more time and money in that lounge than any other out-of-state bar, and a lot of that I deposited into their jukebox. Next time you're there, order a Three Rum Scum and hand me your jukebox money because "You don't understand the music the way I do," as a drunken KDJ once advised fellow tiki travelers who came to Frankies.

Any list of groovy surf tunes would be a wipeout without honoring the man who created the genre — while playing left-handed with the strings upside down: Dick Dale. I got to see Mr. Dale perform seven months before he passed away at 81, and he was magnificent.

AGT-O-RAMA! I performed on the 2013 season of America's Got Talent, and the song I chose for my intro was Misirlou. I survived three rounds on the show and was then summarily beaten by kids and dogs.

Dick Dale, "Misirlou"

Chicks can hang ten too. 

The Surfragettes are cool and saucy, and know how to crest with the best of them. I love their surf version of "She Loves You" by the Beatles but chose their cover of Toxic by Britney Spears because it's awesome.

Check out their clothes, hair, and instruments. This band knows who and what they are. 

Also, this room looks like my apartment, which I call The Atomic Bunker.

The Surfragettes are on tour NOW, and my lovely fiancee and I will see them on June 2 in New Jersey!

The Surfragettes, "Toxic"

One of my fave things about surf music is that there is always something I haven't yet heard. So much of it was released on singles only and is impossible to find unless you want to jump into a bin of 45s at Salvation Army and chow dust as you search for the next three hours.

Fortunately, compilation LPs gather up as many of these rare gems as possible, which leads us to this song.

P.J. & Artie, "Squad Car"

No band did more for surf music than The Ventures. Not only did they pipeline over 100 LPs, but five of those were instructional, how-to records to teach their fans how to play their hits.

I could do an article on music just by The Ventures, but that is for another day. For now, I want you to listen to this song if for no other reason than for the dogs, which I JUST REALIZED are chasing the "fugitive."

The Ventures, "Fugitive"

The aforementioned 1990s surf revival brought out a ton of great bands like The Mermen, The Boss Martians, The Neptunas, Satan's Pilgrims, and Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, best known for recording the theme song to the hit show The Kids in the Hall, a tune called "Having an Average Weekend."

There are too many songs from which to choose by Man or Astroman?, but I chose to kick out this jam because of the B-movie-sounding quotes that you'll hear in various songs, but this one is my fave.

Man or Astroman?, "Spferic Waves"

I'd never heard of this band, but one day I was knee-deep in the record bins at a Goodwill, inhaling volumes of black mold, when I found this treasure.

It's one of my favorite albums, but this song is, I believe, the best.

Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited, "The Bossa Nova Squad"

For a lot of the 1990s revival bands, the cover art was a gas.

The Bomboras have great album covers and the music to back them up.

This is one of the three songs on this list that I use as bumper music on my radio show.

The Bomboras, "Mystery Planet"

Another one of my faves. I also use this song as bumper music on my radio show.

My favorite album of theirs is "A Haunting We Will Go-Go." They combine surf music with an old though similar genre I call "monster surf," which is mostly guitars, women screaming, and men making "scary" sounds.

You can hear the whole album HERE. But for this article, I picked:

The Ghastly Ones, "Ghastly Stomp"

This is another band I discovered at Frankie's Tiki Room. No slop on this album; it's pure 1990s surfy-guitar goodness.

The Tiki Tones, "Spectre Detector"

I'm going to close this out with my favorite surf song ever.

This song somehow combines surf, outer space, and an eerie energy that makes me think of being in a 1960s sci-fi B-movie, running away from a wild-looking space creature. I also use this song to close out my radio show.

This comes from an LP called "The Ventures in Space." Every song is great, and you can listen to them here.

The Ventures, "The Bat"

Hidden Tracks

Who doesn't like a few bonus tunes? And besides, I can't sleep.

Another band I discover at Frankie's.

The Surfites, "Launch Pad"

Let's close this out with a good-night song that isn't surf rock but has a fascinating story.

I was searching eBay for some groovy lounge music and came across this work of wonder.

Some of you may remember ads in the back of magazines asking "Are you a poet? Turn your poem into a song NOW and be a BIG STAR!"

It was called the "song-poem" industry, but it was more of a scam. You'd send in your poem to them and, no matter how atrocious it was, a company would create a melody, put your words to music, and bang out a handful of 45s, charging you more and more at every stage. That is how this song came to be.

This video has nothing to do with the song, and I suggest you not watch it the first time you listen to the song. It is hauntingly beautiful, space-age crap, and, call me a kook, but I love it.

Cara Stewart, "Our Spaceship"

EASTER EGG-O-RAMA! I used seven surf-related slang terms in this wave-ilicious article. Did you find them? I will leave them in the comments.