After years of "maybe next years", I finally got my ass in gear and bought myself a plane ticket to Los Angeles for the Surfguitar101 Convention, organized chiefly by Jeff "Bigtikidude" Hanson as a big ol' meetup for members of surfguitar101.com and, you know, surf nuts in general.

Let's just skip to the end real quick: it was an absolutely incredible time. It was a kinda special thing to me getting to see a scene that I've only been a part of from afar, and the music started good and managed to top itself with each act.

I did not see this coming! The Treble Spankers' long-out-of-print and hard-to-find albums Araban and Hasheeda have been collected onto a double album AND Hasheeda has been reissued on (pricey) vinyl. If you're unfamiliar, this is pre-Phantom Four Phantom Frank with similar middle eastern influence and flair.

What is "Modern Surf"? Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, and it's definitely pretty subjective, but I'm defining Modern as groups that still have a strong root to 60's-styled surf but have picked up a handful of outside influences mostly missing from that era. It's a pretty murky line and my choices as to which groups lie on which side of it will probably be objectionable (I'll probably disagree an hour later) but I think instro music has gotten much more diverse and it's hard to compare some of these bands against each other.