“Sydney band The Denvermen was one of the premier Australian surf-instrumental groups of the early 1960s and although they have been somewhat overshadowed by their better-known contemporaries The Atlantics, they certainly deserve more recognition. The original lineup was formed in late 1961, by members of two earlier Sydney groups, Digger Revell and the Lonely Ones and Paul Dever and the Denvermen. The group was ‘discovered’ at the Teenage Night-club in Sydney in mid-1962 by New Zealand-born rocker Johnny Devlin, who offered to take over their management. He arranged for an audition tape to be made of two of the group’s instrumentals, “Outback” and “The Mexican”. The tape was sent to EMI Records, who were so impressed that they issued them as a single, released on HMV, but unfortunately their debut was not a success.
In late 1962, The Denvermen began working on a lyrical, “Sleepwalk”-styled instrumental, conceived by their lead guitarist Les Green and producer/manager Johnny Devlin, that was eventually named “Surfside”. Devlin added sound effects of breaking waves and when it was released in December 1962, “Surfside” hit the Sydney Top 40 during the second week of January 1963, and soon reached #1. It also did very well in Melbourne, where it peaked at #6 in Melbourne, and by April it had made the charts in every state, thus becoming the first Australian “surf” hit. This was a significant achievement, since capital city radio was still very parochial at that time and it was common for records by Sydney bands to be ignored by Melbourne radio (and vice versa). “Surfside” was also released in the USA on Capitol; over the years it has been included on many anthologies of surf music and is rightly considered one of the perennial classics of the genre.
The band released a string of ‘surf’ instrumentals on RCA from 1963 to 1965.”
More surfin’ instros from the other side of the globe. Check out this fine The Shadows/Duane Eddy styled Oz surf rockers. Lets Go Surfside !!!
SURFADELIC 