Surf rock was about as mainstream as it got before the hippies had their day in the sun. It took The Beatles’ "I Want To Hold Your Hand" to finally push this genre out of the way for the next big thing, and overnight it went from the soundtrack of the hot rods, to discarded as last year’s rage. From then on, the establishment was pretty much done with Surf rock, making sure anyone with taste, culture and privilege had nothing to do with the beast. But this beach-obsessed brand of party music didn’t die with Beatlemania as the history books tell it. Instead it went another, more surprising route… underground. – Read Mike Levine’s feature about the Surf Rock influences on the NYC indie scene of the new millennium here. This article appeared in the Summer 2011 printed issue of The Deli.
