Surf and Hot Rod Music

A basic guide to Surf/Hot Rod music, its best and most popular artists, singers, and songs, and a history of how the style fits into other areas of popular music. From the Oldies music guide at About.com.

Dick was the man who invented surf music, although he's best known for perfecting it these days with the song "Misirlou," featured in the movie Pulp Fiction.

The Ventures were the most popular rock instrumental group of all time, who scored hits with "Walk Don't Run" and the theme to "Hawaii Five-O," in addition to several thousand other covers done in their surf-rock style.

The group who began as doo-wop and Chuck Berry fans, made it big singing about surfer culture, then made a legend with leader Brian Wilson, Pet Sounds, and songs like "God Only Knows" and "Good Vibrations."

Unfortunately relegated to tragedy after a near-fatal car crash, Jan and Dean were actually the Beach Boys' chief Californian rivals in the early '60s, also writing and producing their own big hits "Surf City" and "Dead Man's Curve," among others.

A playlist for your iPod, Winamp, or legally burned CD... check the songs and their descriptions, find which ones are available for download, and make your own oldies CD!

A review from your Oldies Guide at About.com: a box of sixteen individual discs featuring the first three years of Beach Boys US singles, complete with b-sides, alternate mixes, rare tracks, and more.

An excerpt from the Beach Boys biography Catch A Wave by Peter Ames Carlin, a work that Van Dyke Parks calls "The essential Beach Boys saga. Not just the most balanced account, but a gripping reveal of the Wilson family’s extended talented frailties behind the veil of the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer musical face."