It was an unforgettable day of music on April 1, 1995 for musician John Blair and Grammy-winning producer Mark Linett.
They were at a packed show at the iconic Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach, a venue mostly used for jazz shows. But on that day music fans where there listening to some of surf rock’s pioneering bands like The Chantays, along with members of The Surfaris, who are responsible for “Wipe Out,” one of the most recognizable surf tunes of all time, and Davie Allan & The Arrows, as well as 1990s revival bands like Blair’s group Jon & The Nightriders.
It was a raucous show where the packed crowd of surf rock fans partied for four hours at the small venue by the ocean at 30 Pier Ave., celebrating the music they loved. Unbeknownst to the musicians and fans, Linett, who produced albums for Beach Boys and is a three-time Grammy winner, brought his new digital 8-track recording device and decided on a whim to tape the entire show.
Now, 30 years later, after rediscovering those old recordings a couple of years ago, Linett and Blair are taking people back in time to that night with the release of those recordings at the Lighthouse in a new album dubbed “Legends of Surf Guitar.”
“It was a very special night. The crowd was so enthusiastic, a lot of people wanted to dance but there wasn’t enough room so they were throwing their arms in the air and everyone performed so well. And no we did not know it was being recorded at the time,” said Blair, who along with Linett, co-produced the live album that will be released Friday, July 4.
The record is made up of 25 tracks from 1960s pioneering bands like The Chantays, whose set list that night included hits like “Pipeline,” as well as Jim Pash of the Surfaris, who of course played the seminal surf rock tune “Wipe Out,” and Paul Johnson & The Packards, one of the headlining bands who performed classic hits like “Mr. Moto.”
“This is a live recording of a historical event 30 years ago and it makes it very special for me,” Blair said. “You had a very crowded Lighthouse club that day and all these players came up and did tunes that the crowd loved,” he added.
The show was organized by producer and radio host Les Perry and surf guitar legend Paul Johnson as a reunion show to bring together original players from the 1960s era and the 1980s revival scene. Linett happened to hear about the show and took his friend Elliot Easton of The Cars, who attended and contributed to the recordings.
“I used to like to go out and record live shows basically for fun and this certainly was along those lines. I had no intention to make a record out of it,” Linett said.
Linett put the recordings away and forgot about them for years. It wasn’t until a couple of years ago when he was going through some archives that he rediscovered the tapes and decided to contact Blair, who had no idea at the time that the recording even existed.
“Over the years I had done a couple of projects with Mark unrelated to this and he called me one day and said he had just rediscovered these tapes of the ’90s Lighthouse show and I listened to them and I said ‘You know, this is really well recorded and it was a historical event for sure,’” Blair said.
It was then that they decided to make them available to the public in the new album, which they consider to be a document of a genre that continues to inspire musicians and fans as a vibrant reminder of the power and spirit of surf guitar music.
“We just wanted to put this out there and have it be a historical record of a historical concert that happened in ’95. Not many people were aware that this concert happened,” Blair said.
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