These came out in 1999 – or at least that’s when I got ’em. Here’s what I said about them back then (with some minor editing):
Clothes may make the man, but drummers definitely make the band. Anybody in doubt needs only to lend an ear to these latest collections of classic surfin’ safari sounds from hang-10 archivists Del-Fi.
On the surface, The Sentinals are your average ’60s beach-boy band: The usual twangy guitars, honking sax and surfcentric vocals. But the smoking sticks of ace drummer Jerry Barbata — who went on to play with every California band from The Turtles to Jefferson Airplane — turn otherwise ordinary tracks into extraordinary ones with his relentlessly pounding tom-toms, in-the-pocket R&B backbeats and syncopated Latin grooves. By contrast, Dave Myers was the better musician and bandleader; along with beach-blanket bingo classics like Church Key, his crack instrumental combo pump out noirish, moody tunes that would have fit just as easily in a cool crime flick. But for all their restrained craftsmanship, their drummer just doesn’t rock and groove the way Barbata does. In the end, this battle of the bands ends up being a dead heat.
