The Surfaris were well past the heady days of their big instrumental hit Wipe Out, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard chart in 1963, by the time this album came out two years later.
Wipe Out's flip side Surfer Joe, a vocal, also was a chart single, but the Surfaris never had another. The two tracks were recorded for Dot Records, but the band never actually had a full album on the label. Ten of the 12 tracks on the Wipe Out album were by another group, The Challengers, although contemporary issues of the LP failed to note that fact.
The Surfaris began recording for Decca in '63 and the majority of their songs were now vocals, strange for a band whose biggest success was an instrumental.
Hit City '65 is certainly aptly named as almost all of the tracks are cover versions of recent hits. It contains but one instrumental, Beat '65, written by Los Angeles producer and session guitarist Richard Podolor, who recorded under the name Richie Allen for Imperial.
Beat '65
Beat '65 was included on a 1995 Varese Sarabande CD compilation, Wipe Out! The Best of the Surfaris. It's out of print of course, but copies turn do up on line at widely varying prices. The California-based dealer Amoeba Music lists two copies for sale at a fair price.
What appears to be the same album, with a shortened title, The Best of the Surfaris, and different, cheap looking cover art, is all over the place, including on iTunes, as a download. I'd advise auditioning this before buying.
Beat '65 was also issued as a single. On the other side was this vocal, Black Denim. Sounds very Beach Boy-ish.
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