December 30th, DUMB ANGEL #4 Party -- Beatnik Surf Show!

BEATNIK SURF AESTHETIC:
THE SAN FRANCISCO LAUNCH PARTY FOR DUMB ANGEL #4: ALL SUMMER LONG

Friday, December 30, 2005
7:00-11:00 p.m.

Mollusk Surf Shop
4500 Irving Street @ 46th Ave.
San Francisco, California

Featuring the art of John Severson and Rick Griffin (SURFER magazine, 1960-1965), Michael Dormer (Hot Curl, MUSCLE BEACH PARTY, SHRIMPENSTEIN), Frank Holmes (the Beach Boys unreleased SMILE album cover and booklet, 1966), Thomas Campbell (SPROUT) and John McCambridge, Mollusk’s own board-shaper/photographer/painter.

Live surf instrumental music provided by L.A.'s top combo, the Boardwalkers, featuring guitar ace Dan Valentie — formerly with Paisley Underground garage rock godz the Unclaimed.

Oil-lamp light show will be complimented by juxtaposed screenings of Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman's film FREE & EASY (1967) and John Severson's PACIFIC VIBRATIONS (1969), Exploding Plastic Inevitable-style. The show opens with an audio carpetorium preview of the original 1966 SMILE album, compiled by Domenic Priore, author of "Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece" (Sanctuary Books, London, 2005, forewords by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks).

Conversation, dancing, snacks and liquid refreshments will be part of the environment.

I LOVE SHRIMPENSTEIN!
Is Micheal dormer the artist for Gene Moss's Shrimpenstein show? Will you have shrimpenstein merchandise for purchase?

Hi,

Michael Dormer himself will have to decide whether he will be presenting Shrimpenstein merchandise for sale or not. We'll be hanging a Dormer/Shrimpenstein drawing in the gallery, amongst his other Beatnik Fink art from the early '60s. And to answer your question... yes, Michael Dormer created the Shrimpenstein character that Moss puppeteered.

Dumb Angel Gazzette #4 is the coolest magazine/book I have seen in a long time. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Surf and Exotica music. Contributions by Otto Von Stroheim and Jeff Chenault too!! I can't recommend this enough. I just wish it was easier to find in the Midwest. This is an awesome piece of work and everyone, including Dominic Priore, have done a spectacular job of putting this all together.

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

Good that you mentioned that, Jeff. Good work needs to be supported, and I have to say that I concur 100%! I would call "Dumb Angel No 4" the BOT of Surf culture, just as Dominic's (and Martin's) "Beatsville" is like the BOT of Beatnik culture.

(Not to hail my own work as the all time standard, but to illustrate the immense quantity of pop ephemera and research that can be found in the aforementioned tomes.)

Thanks Sven and Jeff. I really appreciate the compliments. Though I have to say that it wasn't intended to be a bible on the pop surf culture. DAG #4 was really devised to look at how surfing, as a pop medium, went international. I wanted to devote a whole issue to the ALL SUMMER LONG album, just as volumes have been devoted to SMILE. It was ALL SUMMER LONG that sent the Beach Boys off to Europe, with Brian Wilson standing in front of the Roman Colliseum. So that was the one that hit around the world, and I thought the music, the design style and the whole package deserved to be held up and analyzed. It ended up being much more than that, as the "running start" that I originally concieved as being the background information on how we got to ALL SUMMER LONG just ended up being so great that it became a sort of journal/book-reader on Southern California vernacular teenage music... the music that came out of this geography more than any other music ever created here.

That said, I'm not sure this issue alone is the final word on SoCal's pop surf culture scene, though if you have all four volumes of DUMB ANGEL, that might do the trick. Domenic and I were thinking of re-doing #'s 1-3 in color and having a boxed set out. Not sure if that'll happen, though. You also have Jon Blair's surf music discography (1961-65), which is more of a reference book than a coffee table/literary thing. But Bob Dalley's SURFIN' GUITARS is still the ultimate tome on surf music. It's not about the clubs and the geography, like the DUMB ANGEL series is, but no one ever did more research on the bands themselves. So, if you have those two books, plus the four DUMB ANGELs, you've got the surf scene down pretty hardcore, in terms of graphic design, clubs, geography, surf cinema and surf instrumental (and vocal) music.

But again, thanks for the compliments. I hope DAG #5 is even better.