PopSyndicate.com

I heart Time Life. They put together some of the best collections in music and they’ve done it again with Chasing the Sun: The Greatest Songs of Summer Music. The set is comprised of three CDs (Surf, Summer, and Shag) and a DVD documentary about surfing. The collection, apropos of title, is all about creating a perfect, happy summer mood, although it has a surfing bent. The songs are a mix you’re instantly familiar with while there are others you probably haven’t heard. Chances are you’re going to finally put an artist name with a song you’ve heard over and over again. To top it off, the four discs come in a nifty box that looks like a Coleman cooler.

Surf

The Surf CD is a blend of surf rock, weighted heavier towards the ‘60s. With this CD you’ll get everything from The Rivingtons’ great “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” to classic Dick Dale and the Del-Tones instrumentals like “Miserlou” and on to Jan and Dean. While there’s no doubt instrumental rock was influential, one or two more lyrical songs should have been included and The Ramones’ “Rockaway Beach” discarded; the song gives an odd discordant note to the collection.

Summertime

As its title implies, Summertime is comprised of songs about the season. While surf rock isn’t completely abandoned for this collection, we get a wider swath of genres, since the tracks cover 40 years of music. Motown pops its head up with tracks like “Dancin’ in the Streets” and The Young Rascals “Groovin’,” and rap even gets a nod with D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince’s “Summertime.” The odd duck here is synth poppers Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” which feels depressing when I want a smile.

Shag

The heat of the summer cranks up with Shag. Here the collection returns to earlier decades, circling the Sixties and it is really a mini-Motown collection. Standards like Betty Everett’s “The Shoop Shoop Song” to lesser known tracks like Willie Tee’s “Walking up a One Way Street.” There’s even that song “Cool Jerk” that I’ve always called “The Cool Whip Song” because of its affinity with that product. There was no single track on the album that threw me off. Shag is the best of the collection. 

Liquid Stage: The Lure of Surfing

Liquid Stage is an hour long documentary about the history of surfing, from pre-colonization-era Hawaii up until the modern era. With it you’ll learn the evolution of boards and of the sport itself, with a focus on the golden era of surfing between World War II and before Gidget hit movie theaters. There’s also a few sad stories about surfers who lost their lives, from surfing legends themselves. There’s a bigger story inside the doco that could be explored further, about the conflict between modern era competitive surfers and those of the golden era who made it a lifestyle. The documentary clocks in at a short hour and could easily be expanded into two hours for a History channel special.

I want to be a surfer. 

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