When I was 10 or 11 and in the fifth grade at Henry Clay Elementary near Rolando Park, I got my first gig as a sax player. It was as a member of a surf rock combo with some other fifth graders -- one bassist, two guitars, and a drummer. We were called the Wipeouts, named after the one song we learned to play as a group: "Wipe Out," by the Surfaris.

We learned that song not so much because it was a monster hit record, but mainly because our drummer, a kid named Chris Anderson who was in possession of a blue sparkle-tone kit, could handle the part. That's what made the song -- the drum attack, considered wild and unruly by 1963 standards. This was well before the big drum solo game-changers like "Toad" by Cream or Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Davida" had even been thought of yet.

The Wipeouts played only once as a band. It was at the annual Henry Clay student talent show. And for for a week thereafter, we were child rock stars: that drum solo. But the memory lingers even to this day, and when I heard that the Surfaris would be in town to play Fiesta del Sol in Solana Beach, I got Bob Berryhill on the phone. He's the last of the original Surfaris members.

"This is the 50th anniversary of "Wipe Out," he says. Berryhill's retired from teaching, and with his spare time he says he'd like to tour the Surfaris -- which now consists of himself, and his wife and their two sons -- a whole lot more.

"Things are picking back up again. We've been asked to play a parade in Honolulu in July. We'll probably play "Wipe Out" 25 times along the parade route," he says. "And we're gonna have people come up and do the Wipe Out laugh."

The last time we talked, Bob Berryhill told me that "Wipe Out" had taken on a life all of its own. "The Surfaris aren't remembered so much," he said, "but everybody knows "Wipe Out." It's a beautiful feeling. The song just keeps going."

"Wipe Out," a throwaway instrumental recorded by four Orange County teens, sold over one million copies -- huge numbers in the day. It became the most famous of surf tunes and actually charted twice on the Hot 100 - once in 1963 (#2) and again in 1966 (#16.)

But perhaps most important, "Wipe Out" set fire to a new and emerging style of music that featured reverb-enriched guitars and tribal drumming. Today, we call it surf rock. Back then, before the British Invasion, it was just rock.

Surf rock was born in Southern California in the early 1960s. At first, it was simple guitar-and-sax driven dance music. Duane Eddy and The Ventures were the pioneers of such instrumental rock, but it was Dick Dale who put surf rock over the top and on the charts with "Let's Go Trippin'" in 1961. Soon after, the Beach Boys would add their complex vocal harmonies and melodic extensions to the mix.

For a brief time surf dominated the air waves. But it was about fashion as much as music and it impacted everything from language to clothing, even hair cuts well into the middle 1960s.

"California surf had its own style and its own lingo. If you weren't hip to all the words you had to figure out what's a grommet? What's a hodad?" To this day, Berryhill says he still surfs. But when the Surfaris were new everyone wore board shorts and Converse high-tops or Jack Purcells. We called them 'smileys.' No one had even heard of Beatle boots yet.

That was all about to change.

On February 9, 1964, the Beatles made history when they appeared on a weekly television variety show hosted by an entertainer named Ed Sullivan. This would constitute the launch of the so-called British Invasion, a time in American pop culture that saw a sharp rise in the popularity of all things British rock and a rapid decline in instrumental surf rock. The Stones, Dave Clark Five, and the Animals pushed the Bel Airs, the Chantays, and the Challengers to the sidelines.

But Berryhill says it wasn't just the British Invasion that obliterated California's main contribution to pop music. He says it was the assassination of President John Kennedy in November 1963.

"It wasn't until after Kennedy was shot," he says, "that the idea came to life that music could have a deeper meaning that just pop."

Television personality Morton Downey Jr. claimed more than once that he wrote "Wipe Out." He did not. The true story is this: sometime during the winter of 1962, Bob Berryhill, Pat Connolly, Jim Fuller and Ron Wilson, all teens, went out to Pal Recording Studios in Cucamonga, California and recorded "Surfer Joe." This was a song born of a dream that Wilson had. It was also the only original they knew.

But the record needed a B side and the four had to stay until they came up with something. The pressure was on. After some jamming they recorded "Wipe Out" in three takes. Berryhill's parents had coughed up the fee for the recording session. The record was released both as a single and also on the Dot Records Wipe Out/Surfer Joe album in 1963.

Fifty years is a long time. How many times does Berryhill estimate he's performed "Wipe Out" over the last half-century? "Half a million." He laughs. "Sometimes, two or three times a day."

The original group disbanded by 1966. For a time, guitarist Jim Fuller traveled with his own franchise of the Surfaris. Berryhill, who actually owns the band name, still plays 20 to 30 dates a year. What of the rest of the original Surfaris? Jim Pash and Ron Wilson are dead.

On Jim Fuller: "As far as I know," Berryhill says, "he is still very ill. He's not expected to ever play music again, but miracles happen."

(I checked in on Fuller again after I wrote this update. His condition remains unchanged. Mr. Anderson now plays bass guitar in a local band called the Ballad Mongers.)

The Surfaris: Sunday June 2, 3 p.m., Fiesta del Sol, Fletcher Cove, Solana Beach, 9am-9pm June 1-2. Free.

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