Rich here. A mere handful or fewer of you may recall that a few months after I first started contributing to this excellent blogsite last year, I opined that the definitive Surf Guitar song of all time was "Miserlou" by Dick Dale back in 1962, which was not only the record that came to define the sound of Surf Guitar, but also was the first commercially successful surf song, instrumental or vocal.
Now it's true that Surf Music hit its commercial peak not long after "Miserlou" hit the charts. And the genre was mostly forgotten by the time of "Rubber Soul," so much so that by the end of the Sixties Jimi Hendrix jokingly declared: "you'll never hear surf music again." Although no surf guitar records have topped the record charts since then, Surf Rock never died and has had a revival or two. And particularly since the Eighties, Surf Rock has remained a consistently popular underground phenomenon up to the present day, with bands like The Aqua Velvets; The Blue Stingrays, a band led by Mike Campbell, the lead guitarist from the late Tom Petty's band The Heartbreakers; The Surfragettes, an all-female surf-rock band; and Laika & The Cosmonauts from Finland, of all places! And all of them revitalizing the sounds of the heyday of Surf Rock.
But here in 2026 who would have foreseen that the best surf group in the world may arguably be a band best known as a hip country band, Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives, who last year released "Space Junk," an album chock-full of the retro-future sounds of Surf and Space Rock guitar, including this song.
