“LSD-25” by the Gamblers is one of several surf instrumentals toward the end of the Pebbles, Volume 4 CD.  This track dates from 1961; the allstar line-up includes Bruce Johnston, Larry Taylor (later in Canned Heat), Elliot Ingber (Fraternity of Man, Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, etc.), and famed drummer Sandy Nelson.  According to the CD’s liner notes (by Nigel Strange):  “Actually, surfers were the first subculture to embrace LSD, at a time when it was almost exclusively the plaything of the academics.  With their footloose existence, and a sometimes mystical rapport with the ocean, the early surfers (we’re talking years before the craze, of course) were in many ways the true inheritors of the beatniks’ existential tradition, standing outside normal society and contemplating the void.  In any event, this must surely be the first acid reference to appear on a record by several years.”  

(December 2014)

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Decades later, these slapped-together recordings still have the ability to charm their listeners – or at least this listener.  I have one of Kim Fowley’s collections of his early recordings entitled Under Ground Animal, filled with 15 great songs by virtually unknown bands plus one of his own excellent recordings, “Astrology”.  Among these obscurities are “Teen Animal”, the second single by the Gamblers; Discogs notes that the “A” side of their first single, “Moon Dawg!” is sometimes regarded as the first surf music single (“LSD-25” was the flip).  

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Fleshing out the details (via Wikipedia), Kim Fowley’s first venture into music was to become the manager in 1957 for a band called the Sleepwalkers that included Bruce Johnston and drummer Sandy Nelson; future superstar record producer Phil Spector was also occasionally with the band.  Last month I mentioned a band called the Gamblers which released an instrumental in 1961 called “LSD-25”; Johnston and Nelson were both in that band also. 

(January 2015/1)