Storm Surge of Reverb
is hosted by Hunter King. The show was born while I was in college and DJing at WESU in Middletown, CT in 2006(?). The idea was hatched a while before, but it took at least a year to get enough material to feel like I could reguarly host a weekly show for one hour.
Why surf? I wanted to pick one thing and mine the hell out of it. A friend had once left a Dick Dale CD in my car and it stayed in for months. I loved the simplicity of it and the raw agression.
The name was a terrible attempt to stick a Katrina reference into a surfy name. Too late to change it now.
When I graduated and moved back to New Orleans, I thought I'd never even listen to surf again. But I found that it kept creeping into my radio shows, little by little until I wanted to revive Storm Surge of Reverb and bring it to New Orleans. Bring something to New Orleans radio that was really alien to it (on the flipside, Connecticut had a pretty active hot rod and nostalgia scene that SSOR fit nicely into).
My suggestions to do it as a full show were thought to be jokes. I went ahead and started devoting half my show to surf, even at 2AM. Then in 2009 (I think?) I became program director and gave myself a promotion to Sunday afternoons, and eventually the Monday slot it sits at today.
SSOR is now one of WTUL's most popular shows, which I think says just as much about an open-minded New Orleans audience as it does the show itself. In 2013 we packed Banks Street Bar to the gills with a WTUL benefit show featuring The Unnaturals, the Bills and Kill, Baby... Kill! We've also had live sets from the Unnaturals, The Bills, Guantanamo Baywatch and a phone interview with Dick Dale himself.
SSOR specialty shows have been especially ridiculous including an acoustic surf show, Olympic show featuring bands from every competing country, "Swedish or Not Swedish", spanish speaking surf bands, surf songs with (some) words, Bo Diddley inspired songs, and more.
