Like I said sometime before at this forum, it was fellow Goodboy Ben “The Funny Guy” Andrusaitis who first dropped the dime in my ear over beers at the Chatham Dunes Inn about turning my surf music CDs in MP3s. But how to do it? When I mentioned it to Tracey, she also looked at me as if I had two heads, saying, “you silly goose, just get yourself a little MP3 player and load it up!”. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no technological Einstein, so I started looking at MP3 players and came upon Creative’s ZEN Stone MP3 player.

What attracted me to this particular unit was the fact that it held 2 Gb in storage, and that shuffling the music loaded on it was easy – not to mention the fact that the entire unit cost less than $60 including S & H through Amazon.com and was the size of an automobile remote key device. I mean, who woulda thunk it? What an amazing advanced technological age we live in!

Of course, giving The Great White Shank 2 Gb of storage to load surf music was like offering up a Coke supplier to some street addict; I immediate began scouring Napster and Amazon for all the surf music I could find. Can you imagine how much surf music you can load on a 2 Gb device – especially when your average song is less than three minutes in length? Nevertheless, we’ve done a pretty good job of finding some fantastic surf and surf-related music out there. And, thanks to some friends at Radio Shack, with the help of a Y-adapter cable, we can now play our little ZEN Stone player through our home stereo system and let ‘er rip.

It would take me at least a day to list all the songs we now have on our ZEN Surf player – right now we’re up to 393 and counting (I’m thinking 7.5 hours worth) – but if you’re interested in the best that surf and surf-related music can offer, here are the bands currently represented in my collection:

The Aqua Velvets (A fave, their “Guitar Noir” CD is fantastic!)
The Aqualads
The Atlantics
The Beach Boys
The Belairs
The Bitch Boys
The Bomboras
The Brainwashers
Bustin Surfboards & Ralph Rebel
The Centurians
The Challengers
The Chantays
The Closet Surfers
The Cocktail Preachers (what a great name for a band!)
Cosmonauti (an Italian surf band – I love their sound!)
The Deuce Coupes
The Diamondheads
Dick Dale and His Del-Tones
Eddie & The Showmen
Eddie Montana‘s Seal Beach Surf Band (their version of “Sleep Walk” is a keeper!)
Estrumental
The Fathoms (from Falmouth, Massachusetts – a great band!)
The Ghouls
The Ho-Dads
The Impacts
Jack Nitzsche
Jan & Dean
Laika and The Cosmonauts (from Finland – their song “Floating” is a must!)
The Lively Ones
Los Straightjackets (Mexican surf band – “University Blvd.” is a must!)
The Marketts
The Mel-Tones
The Mermen
The Metalunas
Mighty Surf Lords
Monsters From Mars!
Nani Wolfgramm – Hawaiian artist. For a surf version of “Beyond The Reef”
The Nebulas (from Boston!)
Nova Surfer
The Penetrators
The Pyramids
The Rally-Packs (a.k.a. The Fantastic Baggys)
The Retroliners (Tracey loves their “Rumble In The Stratosphere 2002!”)
Richie Allen & The Pacific Surfers
The Rip Chords
The Ripsnorts
The Rumblers
Sandy Nelson
The Sandals
Satan’s Pilgrims
The Sharkskins
The Space Cossacks
Gary Usher and The Super Stocks (their “Surf Route 101” CD is a must-have!)
The Supertones
The Surf Kings
Surf Report
The Surf Zombies (A fave!)
The Surfaris
The Swamp Coolers
The Trade Winds
The Trashmen
The Untamed Youth
The Vara-Tones (another fave!)
The Ventures (their “Surfin’ To Baja” CD is a must!)
This Spy Surfs
tsmf
Urban Surf Kings
Von Rippers
ZPS

Check out any of the links and I’m sure you’ll not only be amazed at the various forms of surf music out there, but find more than a few somethings that are sure to please!