STOKED!
takfam | 05/02/2000
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I grew up in Hawaii in the '70s, and first saw "Five Summer Stories" in the old Haleiwa surf theatre on the North Shore of Oahu. I bought this CD a few years ago, and I was astonished and delighted to re-discover how good Honk actually was. Too bad Honk will remain unheard by most people. They were an excellent band, exquisitely capturing the essence of laid-back, California-Hawaii surf culture of the '70s. It's one of those mysterires how such an excellent, original band could remain so obscure to this day. Their arrangements and harmonies, as well as musicianship, on cuts like "Blue of Your Backdrop" and "Don't Let Your Goodbye Stand" are timeless. The instrumentals "Lopez" and "Pipeline Sequence" are masterful-- as good as anything else produced in that era. "Pipeline Sequence" received a lot of airplay in Hawaii in those days, and is still THE surf instrumental for us Hawaii surfers who came of age back then. Honk's music is light-years better than the frenetic, punked-out surf video music of today. So get this CD, relax, and remember (or imagine) what it was like to paddle out to Sunset Beach on a huge west swell, with no leash and a single fin, and Barry Kanaiaupuni, Jeff Hakman, and Gerry Lopez calling the shots out there!"
Doesn't get any better
takfam | 05/07/1999
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The vocals, the lyrics, the music, the mood...Honk is the best of the best. My wish is that the other Honk lp's would be released on CD. I never get tired of listening or seeing Honk...and I have been doing it since the 70's..."
Soundtrack of the 70's surfer
Jim jmathrusse@aol.com | Northern California | 08/21/1998
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Many of the tracks from this film soundtrack have become classics. Instrumentals such as "Pipeline Sequence", "Brad and David's Theme", and "Lopez" truly defined the "70's surf" music. In a genre spilling over with the frantic stylings of the early 1960's (and again in this decade), Honk's gentle-yet-intense trademark really took listeners into the barrel. Vocal tracks like "Don't Let Your Goodbye Stand" were not reminding anyone of Brian Wilson. The "Pipeline Sequence" still rests in the Pantheon of surf music, as this soundtrack (despite its occasional dips into country twang) has outdistanced even the immortal FSS films that it was created to back up."