It's hard to beat surf music in Southern California. Surfguitar101 was ostensibly a meetup for online forum members with a nice lineup of 10 bands, Today it stands as the premiere surf event of the US and possibly the world, with a globe-spanning lineup of over twenty bands, and I believe Saturday night was the biggest I'd ever seen it. Organizer Jeff "BigTikiDude" Hanson, modest pool cleaner by day, has been slowly tweaking the event and his support team to grow the event organically into something uncompromisingly accessible and genuine.

We're getting near the final picks of the top records of the decade as voted upon by surf fans around the world, and this partincular chunk has a lot of the heavyweights of today's modern surf scene. I was also pleasantly surprised to see how many newcomers on the scene found their way in! You can see the rest here. 

Part of what sold me on Surfer Joe was the symposiums. I like having a moment to talk and learn about topics inside or around surf music, and I watched a few of the ones that were posted online in years past. So I registered at VIP level (an extra $30 or whatever wasn’t much in the grand scheme of airfare and lodging) and headed over around noon.

This EP is Dirty Fuse's first with their new guitarist after their previous guitarist went Back to Brazil. I'd still say this sounds like the Dirty Fuse we're familiar with, but I can only say that because they're an adventurous group and change is expected. There's still prominent saxophone, there's a great sense of depth to the sound - partially nice recording, but the bass definitely rounds it out as well. "Evolution" starts it out as a pretty aggressive number, but you get a lot more chilled-out with "Back to Brazil" and "Wonderland" which are nice-n-easy sunny day tracks. 

Dirty Fuse's previous album Surfbetika was definitely worth a listen: it seamlessly gave a surf twang to Greek rebetika songs. They're back to business hittin the surf with Last Wave, though they're still clearly up for a challenge. In this quick listen as I'm posting this I'm hearing LOTS of interesting saxophone, a mix of fuzz, glassy euro-styled guitar, some good ol' deep twangin'.. and that's just a start.