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Pop Surf Culture cover

Pop Surf Culture

Music, Design, Film, and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom

Book

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Released on November 15, 2008

Written by Brian Chidester and Domenic Priore

Editions

  • Pop Surf Culture: Music, Design, Film, and Fashion from the Bohemian Surf Boom

    • November 15, 2008
    • Santa Monica Press
    • Santa Monica, CA
    • Hardcover
    • 272 pages
    • ISBN: 1595800352
    The Beach Boys appear on the following chapters:
    Chapter 16 - Stock Surf: The Beach Boys' Surfin' U.S.A. and Surfer Girl
    Chapter 25 - Brian Wilson, 1966
    
    From original beachcomber personalities like the Waikiki Beachboys to the rise of Venice Beach as a creative center for music, art, and film, Pop Surf Culture traces the roots of the surf boom and explores its connection to the Beat Generation and 1960s pop culture. Through accounts of key figures both obscure and popular, the book illustrates why surf culture is a vital art movement of the 20th century.
    Pop Surf Culture includes essays about the popular “beach” movies of the 1950s and ’60s, which featured such stars as Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon and the music of Dick Dale & His Del-Tones, Brian Wilson, the Pyramids, Gary Usher, James Brown, and Little Stevie Wonder.
    Sixties art figures Michael Dormer and Rick Griffin—as well as the surf magazines which promoted their art—are featured alongside the progenitors of “surf music,” from the little known (the Centurians) to the wildly popular (the Beach Boys). Duke Kahanamoku, the Gas House, Gidget, surfing on television, the bohemian surf aesthetic, surf music hot spots, Mickey “Da Cat” Dora . . . the entire spectrum of pop surf culture is covered within these colorfully illustrated pages.