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When Jimi Hendrix joked that “you’ll never hear surf music again,” in his song “Third Stone from the Sun,” he was only four years removed from the heyday of the surf music craze. However in 1967, with psychedelic music flourishing in the midst of the hippie movement, surf music seemed incredibly square and white, like ancient history.

Surf music started out as reverb-drenched instrumental garage music by the likes of Dick Dale and The Bel-Aires and was centered in Southern California. In 1961, The Beach Boys recorded the song “Surfin’,” and a genre was born. By 1964, car themes were also included.

Living in California, there’s still an abundance of surf related vinyl to be found in your favorite record haunts. At Amoeba, there’s also many vinyl reissues of classic albums, such as the Sundazed Dick Dale series. And we recently enjoyed having Brian Wilson sign his Smile reissue at the S.F. and Hollywood stores.

Here’s some live clips of the original hits:

Pipeline - The Chantays


Surf City - Jan & Dean


Surfer Girl – Beach Boys

Here’s some of the early bands and tunes before it was even called “surf” music.
Mr. Moto - Bel-Aires

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On this day exactly 41 years ago (September 18th, 1970) American rock guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was found dead in London, England. He was only 27 years of age (note that the above ABC news report wrongly cited his age as 28) but in his short life span the highly influential, pioneering guitarist left behind quite a legacy including the just released by SONY (4 CD / 8 LP) box set Jimi Hendrix Experience Winterland.  Note there is also a single CD release that highlights the best of this series simply titled Winterland.

To coincide with the release of this historic 1968 San Francisco live recording - culled from the six shows Hendrix did at the long gone Winterland Ballroom, that was located on Post and Steiner streets in San Francisco, in October 1968 when Henrix was only 25 years old - the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco named September 13, 2011 (last Tuesday) to be Jimi Hendrix Winterland Day. And, as you probably already know, this important event was officially celebrated on stage at Amoeba Music San Francisco earlier this week as reported in detail (with lots of pics)_here on the Amoeblog

In the latter half of the 1960s, thanks to the then-new technology of powerful amplifiers, rock and roll witnessed the emergence of the power rock trio. Its blues based "hard rock" music would pave the way for heavy metal, progressive (prog) rock, and other later strains of heavier rock. Sans keyboards, rhythm guitar or other instrumentation, and simply utilizing the basic guitar, bass, and drums (plus feedback), the power rock trio formula was born. Cream (comprised of Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, & Ginger Baker) and The Jimi Hendrix Experience were among the early pioneers & ambassadors of this highly influential form of rock, and their combined influence was far reaching. Below are these two trios and several other late 60's into early 70's power rock trios spanning the formative half-decade from 1968 to 1973.

Included are video clips of Cream doing their classic "Sunshine Of Your Love" from 1968 and The Jimi Hendrix Experience (with Noel Redding on bass & Mitch Mitchell on drums) doing "VooDoo Child (Slight Return)" live on the Lulu Show on BBC TV in 1969. From 1968 is renowned San Francisco band Blue Cheer with their classic interpretation of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" from a decade earlier. The band, who typically were on the more psychedelic hard rock end but are more hard blues rock leaning here, featured vocalist and bassist Dickie Peterson, guitarist Leigh Stephens and drummer Paul Whaley. "Summertime Blues" was recorded for their 1968 debut album Vincebus Eruptum.