This came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
If you’re looking for the source of the never-ending wave of surf music crashing all around these days, look no further than L.A. retro-rebels Del-Fi.
They supplied Quentin Tarantino with the hang-10 classics that floated Pulp Fiction’s musical boat and kick-started the whole modern cowabunga craze. And that was just a drop in the ocean; the long-running label has a whole vault of beach-blanket classics that it keeps reissuing in cool new configurations. The latest: Surf Monsters, which pairs the label’s mouldy oldies with new unreleased tracks from today’s alt-rock chairmen of the board. Thus, urban spacemen Man Or Astroman?, go-go ghouls The Bomboras and Canada’s own Huevos Rancheros kick up some rocky sand between crucial twang-and-bangers from The Centurions, The Sentinels and The Surftones. And let’s not forget about the wild ’n’ woolly Lively Ones, whose new best-of set is a high-water mark of the old-school genre. Pipeline, Surfin’ U.S.A., Tequila, Rumble, Wipe Out, Surf City; they’re all here, complete with the pounding drums, smoking guitars and honking sax that would work Annette into such a frenzy she’d want to take Frankie off behind the sand dunes.
