RECALCITRANT RADIO 0028
The Centurions - Intoxica
The Centurions - Intoxica (from the album, Surfers' Pajama Party Recorded Live on the U.C.L.A. Campus (Del Fi Records, 1963), currently available as a reissue entitled Bullwinkle Part II, Del Fi Records) First posted July 20, 2013
I was ready for the death metal selection but the appropriate discs are in "storage". I tried to get to them but they were too far back and under. So, what sort of consolation gnarliness can I resort to? Intoxica! This track, by the Centurions (sometimes known as the Centurians), is the greasiest, nastiest surf music I know. Lots of current retro-surf bands emulate this sort of gnarliness but there's some sort of primordial purity in the original's insistence that knowing emulations can never achieve.
I thought this version of Intoxica was pretty obscure but I just discovered that it was on the soundtrack of Pink Flamingos, which I first saw long after I bought this record. When I got interested in this stuff, I found a head shop in Fresno that had a couple boxes of used LPs. Each one had "25c" hugely scrawled across the front of the jacket (this was an irritating place, even for a head shop) so I very cheaply got some choice early surf records with horribly defaced covers. One of the least promising looking was "Surfer's Pajama Party" by the Centurions (see below for cover). As if that wasn’t obscure enough, in a fit of fiscal responsibility (or something), Del Fi records used the cover and title for two entirely different albums. The Bruce Johnston Surfing Band had that band name in somewhat small print superimposed on the upper part of the photo of “UCLA Students”. On Discogs, that text is in light blue although on my copy, it’s in white. And on the back the small paragraph giving little information about the Centurions is replaced by a tiny picture of Bruce Johnston. I just looked for it but didn’t find it but my recollection is that other than the text on the picture and the tiny picture/biography, the covers are identical. I believe that both have “Bruce Johnston Surfing Band” on the spine. Bruce Johnston later became a member of the Beach Boys touring group and eventually a full band member.
The original recording of Intoxica was a kind of gentle number with a sort of spoken vignette of some teen wolf trying to get a giggling girl to get drunk. A few versions down the line, the Centurions featured insane laughter, honking saxophones (the Centurions had two, a tenor and a baritone) and a very cool staggered guitar figure which added up to a wild sounding record.
And just for an added weird fact, somehow Phil Spector encountered the Centurions and had them back up Bobb B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans on several songs on their Spector produced Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah album. I’m pretty sure I have that - I found out about the Centurions connection since the last time I saw it. I’ve got to hear that again.
Hear it here:
I have listened to quite a lot of surf music over the years. Growing up in Australia in the 60s and 70s it was The Atlantics that turned me on to it from a young age. They were all young immigrants (like The Easybeats, AC-DC, BeeGees...) and injected some of their Greek musical influences into early 60s guitar surf music. Case in point Bombora.
My recording studio is all digital. I use Cubase 6. What do you have that you need to blow the dust off?
Wow, just the first 5 seconds of this had me! I'm gonna binge on your Recalcitrant Radio posts for a while, thank you!