The Phantom Surfers

The Continental: Can you go through a brief history of the band, including line-up changes?

Michael Lucas: The Phantom Surfers were formed in early 1988. We played at the University of California Santa Cruz campus' tavern after a last minute cancellation by David Nudelman and the Wild Breed (which had originally included me and the Phantom Surfers' original drummer, Danny Seelig, in its lineup [and on the Wild Breed's first EP, in fact]). We played a thirty minute set after twenty minutes of rehearsal (most of the songs weren't rehearsed all the way through). We played various oddball shows (the live scene in the S.F. area was pretty dead, so we wound up playing some strange and humorous shows and decided that we were ready to record an album later that year (sometime in the summer). This eventually came out on Norton (18 Deadly Ones). In the meantime, we played in the Northwest and Estrus offered to put out an EP, which was recorded after the LP but came out before. Other LPs (too many 7"s to bother listing); Play the Music of the Big-Screen Spectaculars (Estrus), The Exciting Sounds of Model Road Racing (Hobby Hut, re-released on Lookout), With Dick Dale (the short-lived reconstituted Crown, soon to be re-released on Lookout), and The Great Surf Crash (Lookout), but you seem to be well informed enough to already know all that. We've played in 12 or so states (Northwest, Southwest, East Coast, WI, TN) and the D. of C.; also Canada (just B.C.), Japan (four times) and Europe (although not Spain, which we hope to do later this year). The current line-up is me (bass, conceptualization), Mel Bergman (guitar, master of the hounds), Maz Kattuah (guitar, occasional drums), Russell Quan (drums, occasional vocals).

The Continental: What do you think of today's surf/instro scene?

Michael: It's an honor to play with people like Vanilla Ice.

The Continental: What has been your most memorable show?

Michael: We dug Dick Dale up when he was playing in Glitter Gulch in Vegas (now very moderne with its laser light show) and booked him to open for us in SF at the Paradise Lounge (which used to be a regular gig with us but has since become a yuppie Hellhole). He brought one of his tigers, but hadn't bothered to tell us in advance. We rode up to the show on an elephant, which caused his tiger to bolt. No one knew where the tiger was, which made the people who knew about it nervous - it turned out that he was under the stage for both sets!

The Continental: What kind of gear do you all use?

Michael: Fender junk, Silvertone crap, Mosrite garbage, a bunch of unmatched drums with decoupage of porno on them.

The Continental: Who thinks of all of your crazy gimmicks?

Michael: Einstein, Fermi, Whitehead, Nietzsche, De Sade and Vanilla Ice (reverse chronological order).

The Continental: What kind of advice do you have for rookies wanting to get into the slot car scene?

Michael: I have a 1:1 scale slot car. I'm just waiting for them to slot the highways. My advice to rookie wanting to get into slot cars is keep on eye on the thrift stores and church rummage sales (there are some interesting not-too-expensive slot car sets in the likes of "Toys 'R' Us" from time to time, as well). Most importantly, keep your contacts clean (a pencil eraser will work just fine).

The Continental: What's your stand on the whole hi-fi/lo-fi debate?

Michael: Hoo boy, the "hi-fi/lo-fi" debate. These terms mean nothing and have become rallying cries for fruitless debates. Each one of our LPs has been recorded in a significantly different way to achieve a distinct sound (why make the same record over and over, after all?), but self-appointed guardians of surf purism claim that they all sound as if they were recorded on portable cassette recorders from across the street where we were playing. Of course, these people just go into some digital studio and let the engineer do whatever he thinks is right, because it's the supposed "industry standard" of the time and come out with lame sounding shit which is even worse than the "lo-fi" camp who DO, in fact, use portable tape recorders even though the built in condenser mikes can't handle any bass tones and make the whole thing an inaudible blur. We've always known what we were doing and why, but who cares? It's all bullshit, so hooray for everybody.

The Continental: What do you all like to drink?

Maz: Horchata and Bickel (sweet/sour Japanese drink)

Mel: Duff

Russell: Diet Pepsi

Michael: "Claret for boys, port for men, brandy for heroes."

The Continental: What do you all have coming up in 1998?

Michael: 1998 will find us waiting for the surf glut to end; in the meantime, we'll continue to bring new elements into our stupid sound in the same subtle way that has kept anyone from noticing when we did anything new and different in the past. Acting like idiots has kind of worked so far, why should we stop?

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