Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S.

(Doctor Dream)
by Clarendon Lavorich

“Good afternoon, Mr. Phelps. The man you see before you is agent 007, James Bond. Yes, he’s on a surfboard. His arch nemesis, Blofeld, is tanning himself on the beach and some guy in a Peter Sellers-like pink cat suit is guzzling down sangria. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find out what the hell is going on here. This message will self-destruct in 10 seconds. Good luck, Jim, and don’t forget your tanning butter.”

Surf music and spy movies may not seem like the perfect combination at first, but actually, the two styles blend so well together, that an album was born. Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S. (Doctor Dream) is a compilation of 13 surf bands doing all the hits of cloak and dagger. From Laika and the Cosmonauts ripping up “Mission Impossible” to Deadbolt producing an inebriated version of “You Only Live Twice,” … S.O.U.N.D.S. has it all.

Combustible Edison chills out with “A Shot In The Dark” while Man Or Astroman? absolutely burns their way through “Goldfinger.” Doctor Dream decided to put some originals of a similar vein on this CD, so we get the contradictory guitars of Los Straight Jackets‘ “G-man” alternately grinding out ears with over the top distortion and reverbing their way into the inevitable buxom girl’s bed. Ending the disc are the Hillbilly Soul Surfers combining “Peter Gunn” with Freddie King’s “Hideaway” and ending up with (naturally) “Peter Gunn’s Hideaway.”

I wonder about the omission of “Secret Agent Man,” the theme from “The Prisoner,” “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” or even (try to picture this) “The Wild, Wild West.” Ah well, Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S. is still one of my favorite surf discs to come around in a long time, and I especially like the decoder ring included on the CD itself.