Totally awesome retro acts

More photos: Click thumbnails to enlarge

Similar stories:

• Surf music: SLO County's radical history

  Surf music: SLO County's radical history

  In the summer of 1962, 16-year-old Tommy Nunes and his group The Sentinals toured the country in a station wagon, promoting Nunes’ instrumental song “Latin’ia.” Meanwhile, members of The Impacts, another teen band from San Luis Obispo County, were preparing to record an instrumental called “Wipe Out.”

  While both tunes would later be known as surf songs, at that point, the genre was still new.

  “When we first started playing, the term ‘instrumental surf music’ hadn’t been coined yet,” said Merrell Fankhauser, of The Impacts, who remembers an old Tribune headline that called it “twist music for surfers.” “We were right there at the very beginning of it.”

• Tribute bands ABBA-Mania and Night Fever will play the Clark Center next week

  Tribute bands ABBA-Mania and Night Fever will play the Clark Center next week

  ‘Mamma Mia,” the musical written around the music of ABBA, was a huge hit with critics and fans when it opened to sold-out crowds in London and Broadway.

  But when music promoter Gary Lichach saw it, his reaction was more like, “Eh.”

  “I saw the stage play of ‘Mamma Mia’ in rehearsal in London, England, and it wasn’t that good because they didn’t sound like ABBA, and they didn’t look like ABBA,” Lichach said. “But the show was sold out a year in advance.”

• Doobie Brothers are still smokin' after all these years

  Doobie Brothers are still smokin' after all these years

  In the liner notes for his new song “Chateau,” Patrick Simmons writes that the Chateau Liberte — the old saloon where the Doobie Brothers got their start — was a “really neat bar” that featured “no trouble” and “no fights.”

  Yet, in a 1979 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Simmons said the Chateau was a raucous place, where “it was a general rule that a fight would break out.”

  So was the Santa Cruz bar the happy, mellow hangout Simmons described, or the rowdy former bordello known for public sex and fisticuffs — which Simmons also described?

• Real 'Jersey Boys' to embark on national tour

  Real 'Jersey Boys' to embark on national tour

  In a basement in a quiet suburb 10 miles west of Manhattan, the characters of a bygone era in pop music are brought to life in mellifluous four-part harmony.

• ‘Beer grass’ band is hit countywide

  ‘Beer grass’ band is hit countywide

  The Mother Corn Shuckers is an acoustic bluegrass band that “started out as a bunch of guys around the campfire” playing music, said Mark Hughes of Arroyo Grande.

  Hughes coined the term “beer grass” because “we all like to drink beer,” while playing around the campfire.

  The group’s website calls them a “ragged band of surf-a-billies,” who play “foot stompin’ melodies.” Some of their songs include “Corn Liquor,” “Bottom of the Sea” and “Highway.”