The great state of Minnesota invented ice surfing, and the great Trashmen invented ice surfing surf rock, which required an immense imaginative leap because ice surfing is a rural legend, I mean who was going to go stand on the ice of Lake Winnibigoshish on their surfboard in swimming trunks and turn into a human popsicle while going nowhere, which is just one of the reasons why Minneapolis’ Trashmen were so awesome, that and the fact that they bequeathed us (even if they stole it) the timeless and brilliant “Surfin’ Bird,” which could well be the most loony tunes (and hence best) song to come out of the Gopher State this side of Cows’ “Whitey in the Woodpile.”
Yep, there’s no gainsaying the mad amphetamine rush of Bob Reed’s frenzied vocalspiel on “Surfin’ Bird”; he basically invents the Ramones, barks and squawks, cackles maniacally, flaps his gums and produces raspberries and stutters, and finally gives up on human speech altogether as an inadequate tool for imparting the World Changing message that he has to convey, namely that the bird is the word, man, the bird is the word. You can travel all ‘cross this crazy land and never hear anything like it, Reed’s demented siren call to arms, and I’m here to tell ya that nobody, not Syd Barrett or Arthur “The God of Hellfire” Brown or Britney Spears even, ever went this far out on the limb of total insanity and lived to tell about it.
1990’s Sundazed Records release of Live Bird 65-67 is pretty much self-explanatory; on it the Trashmen roam the U.S. spreading dementia the way that apocalyptic cell phone pulse does in Stephen King’s Cell, playing songs like “Surfin’ Bird,” the great follow-up “Bird Dance Beat,” the very cool “King of the Surf,” and “Ubangi Stomp,” all of which are guaranteed to jump-start your bing-bang-boom heart in ways having nothing to do with the lobes of your cerebral cortex. Which is tremendous; who needs free moral agency when they’ve got “Mashed Potatoes?” Or one of my own personal faves, the raucous “Henrietta”?
No, the Trashmen are El Primo Primitivists and Humble Purveyors of the Pure Pulse, kicking your animal brain into doing dances you didn’t even know you knew. Why, even the liner notes on where they played are awesome; seriously, whose brilliant idea was it to set the degenerate Trashmen loose at The Home School for Girls in Sauk Centre (population 4,317!) Minnesota on September 17, 1966? And what I’d give to step inside the unfortunately defunct (I looked it up) Airway Bar in Marshfield, Wisconsin, where the band played on New Year’s Day, 1967!
And when the Trashmen aren’t knockin’ out classics like “Green Onions,” Link Wray’s “Rumble,” or Dick “King of the Surf Guitar” Dale’s “Let’s Go Trippin’” they’re talking to J. Walter Beethoven, Minneapolis radio jock, from on the road in what Beethoven calls “The Trashmen Report.” Talk about your audio verite! Why, I don’t even care that not one of the Trashmen interviewed has even an iota of “on air” charisma. And talking about audio verite, hilarity ensues as the announcer at Proches Popular Ballroom in Ellsworth, Wisconsin (which burned to the ground in the early 1990s) attempts to find four female volunteers to do a “go go thing” on stage during the band’s badass live take on “Surfin’ Bird,” and says, “A guy wants to volunteer? No, I’m sorry, it has to be a girl.” Outraged at the very idea, like.
No, landlocked surf rock never sounded this good, and once you’ve tossed in some cool garage and rockabilly numbers, what you have is a great slice of rock history, right down to the cover, which features the boys in the band posing in front of a white van with The Trashmen painted on it in red. Perhaps they came to your town. They never came to mine, alas. Hell, I never even heard “Surfin’ Bird” on the radio. In short, I led a deprived childhood, and am feeling very sorry for myself. Ice surfing may not be a “thing,” but ice surf rock most certainly is, so what do you say we all meet at Lake Winnibigoshish this New Year’s Day in our swimming suits and do the dog to “Surfin’ Bird”? Why, we can even light a roaring fire on the ice and do the mashed potato until the sun goes down on a world that is a much better place with the Trashmen in it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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