Surf Board

From National Lampoon, the masters of raunchy comedy, comes a summer tale of beers, babes, and bros! In the surf town of Ventura, California, JD's surf board is stolen by a surfer from Los Angeles…a crime that cannot go unpunished. Gathering his friends and the local surf hero, Mike Mooney, they take a road trip to LA to get the surfboard back, then return to Ventura for the wildest summer party ever!

California may be the largest state in the Union, but it's only one state nuzzling one ocean, with only so many people living near the coastline, and a small minority of them have attempted to navigate waves on a board, much less possess the fetching physique to do so in public. Obviously, then, surf music isn't for surfers. If it were, Rhino would put out a greatest-hits EP instead of a four-disc box set. Cowabunga! is all the permanent-wave stuff most people will ever need.

Surf band from Southern California. The Lively Ones made recordings built around storming, reverb-drenched Fender guitars embellished by occasional raunchy sax breaks. Over a period of about 12 months, they ground out about five albums, filled out with many covers or retitled numbers based on rock and R&B compositions. They had a couple of hits in the L.A. area in 1963 ("Surf Rider" and "Rik-A-Tik"), but their best moment was probably "Goofy Foot," whose staccato gunfire of riffs deservedly propelled the track onto several modern best-of-surf anthologies. They ranged far and wide for source material, giving surf treatment to "Telstar", "Exodus", "Rawhide", and Cole Porter's "Night and Day."