“Surfin’ Bird” could have been one of the most annoying and forgettable novelty tunes in the history of rock ‘n’ roll music. Instead, it became the No. 1 hit in Minnesota in early 1964, and made it to ...

Rick Shefchik: "In 1963, you’d turn on the radio and you’d have Roy Orbison and the Trashmen and Ricky Nelson, and the Trashmen were as big as any of those bands when 'Surfin’ Bird' hit." For sure the ...

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Who doesn’t love a little “Surfin’ Bird”? The 1963 surf rock anthem from The Trashmen was a huge hit when it was first released. It climbed to no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that very year. The ...

California, we were fighting the Vietnam War, gas cost 30 cents per gallon and Bob Dylan caused a folk music uproar by using an electric guitar. The Minneapolis-based garage band visited the West ...

We must by now have reached the moment that The Trashmen predicted: At long last, it must be that everybody’s heard that the bird is the word. After all, when this local surf-rock band welded together ...

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Okay, so the Trashmen were from Minneapolis, not LA, which means we're breaking a rule for these word clouds that says to be eligible for West Coast Sound inclusion an artist must be from LA. But ...