"Siren Crews" are stalking the Land of the Long White Cloud, making dawn patrol exceedingly difficult.
As any true surfer knows, the early morning is often the best time for waves. The embryonic bird catches the worm, as the saying goes, and so surfers are often up before the sun, waxing boards, loading them into Toyota Hilux SR5 Cruisers and heading to the beach for to make surfing. The winds are often nice, or at least right, in the early morning. The crowds light.
Now, it is difficult to rise and shine in the best of times. Warm beds are like bad partners. They cling and beg, promise and whine even after a full eight hours of sleep. Less than eight hours, they scream and curse. Demanding fulfillment. The true surfer must harness all of his power and fight to leave lest he becomes trapped and abused like Will Smith.
New Zealand surfers, these days, are in the midst of a brutal one.
For the Land of the Long White Cloud is currently experiencing a Celine Dion epidemic. Though are you aware of New Zealand’s “siren battles?” According to reports, rival factions are going to war by attaching the biggest, throatiest loudspeakers to cars and blasting music at full volume all through the night in order to wear the crown of “siren king.”
Celine Dion sinks surfers
The Canadian songstress’s tunes are particularly popular according to NZ site The Spinoff because “siren king” songs must feature treble rather than bass.
Anita Baker, the mayor of a Porirua, a small town near Wellington, said, “They love Dion because they like anyone with a high pitch and great tone in their voice.”
Surfers, staring at bedside clocks at 2:00 am, knowing they will soon strike 5:30 while Dion belts about her heart going on, sick to stomachs.
Except might the aforementioned surfers find grace in their ongoing hearts for the siren crews? “Basically everyone has a hobby and while our hobby can be quite disturbing and we understand how disturbing it can be,” Paul Lesoa of the S.W.A.T. Team said. “We just want our own proper, safe space away from people to do it.”
Maybe we aren’t so different after all.
If our World Surf League heroes decided to become professional sirens, who do you think would win?
Filipe Toledo still?
Smart money.
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i prefer Don Juan. The Shaman. (source: Chuck Bukowski)
where is that, Sam?
@ Happy hour!
woah…hair on skin rising. eery, haunting intro. similar to LedZep’s Immigrant Song. qualifies for a 2nd hearing…happy hour! thx, JV.
straight to my comment…the panic here is over. Leave Our Sacred Tribe Alone…
http://media-cache-ak0.pini…
prolonged periods of strong SW wind = flat on the east coast and stormy on the west coast. All though we are in the middle of the first cyclone of the season with howling E wind atm its earliest ever apparently.
Waiting for my best man(from my wedding, no judgement please) and token NZ native buddy(another badge Negs?) to provide me with his feelings via text on Celine as he enjoys the springtime in NZ with the other mostly shoeless inhabitants of that place.
You want to experiance devolution in action go to NZ , what a bunch retardiant bogans and fucked up gangs , place is stuck in the 1970s and going backwards at a rate of knots.
They’ll fight you on that accurate assertion while stroking their best looking prize sheep…
I prefer this.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And this.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
And this, obviously.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I remember The Clean from the eighties. Amazing how bands just keep going.
Just thought of some of the most obscure bands I used to listen to and looked them up. Sure enough still playing.
Wish I still had all the mixtape cassettes I made back then.
Bands just don’t stop anymore, for better or worse. Hamish from The Clean died last year, so they may be done, but who knows.
and 8-tracks, cassettes…and vinyl with state-of-the art turntable and surround sound Bose speakers. Wishbone Ash, Quicksilver, Jeff’s Airplane, moby Grape, Mountain…As for longevity, witnessed Hot Tuna and John Mayall at the local theater so decades ago. goosebump & chicken skin still!
Anything to distract them from losing the Rugby world cup to the Springboks is probably appreciated.
Hahaha, bdo long time ago, them playing and not many into it, “thank you Melbourne we love you!” Disgruntled punter…”fuck off ya sheep rootin’ wankers!”
What about when they changed their name to Pacifier after 9/11, so they didn’t scare off American audiences? Had the happy effect of a Melbourne band starting up, and naming themselves, Jihad Against America. They had twin sisters in the band, referred to as The Twin Towers. I had their 7 inch, but lost it. Sad.
Had to have seen them at BDO in NZ to really appreciate. 08 before RATM
Photographic proof that El Porto does in fact get good. Bravo!
you have to walk thru Bruce’s Beach and/or Bruce’s Beauties to get there…a german arm’s throw from LAX.
I live in the decidedly not surf-adjacent burb of Naenae in NZ. My experience of siren culture is mostly youths riding around the our little hood in the afternoon on their bikes with a megaphone attached to the front… Occasionally you’ll get a car with a couple sirens poking out.
I like it. Reminds me that we’re a Pacific island. That’s where the siren thing comes from, Samoa and Tonga mostly, I think
I should say that I haven’t heard Celine D blasting and I don’t know how I would feel about that at 3am, not good probably
The more I read about the crews, the better it all seemed. Like, time to import to America.
It’s a fun vibe! I feel like we don’t have enough public sharing of music these days, everyone’s just on their airpods listening to their own little niche thing that they like and then here comes some 16 year old kid on his pushbike like, I’m going to impose my musical tastes on all of you and it’s going to sound ridiculous and treble-y and you’ll listen to my siren going long after I’ve passed you by up the road…
That doesn’t sound right for some reason
I think I’ll head down there and loop Sex Pistols God Save the Queen, some Ween and Wheeler Walker Juniors Puss In Boots until they throw me out
https://youtu.be/JY-sS-tVd4…
I lived in Samoa in 1999 and taught at a local college for 6 months. The public buses used to blare the Venga Boys non-stop all day out the loudspeakers. I didn’t much like the Venga Boys back then but I loved getting the public buses and seeing 6ft, 120kgs grandmothers bouncin’ their feet to the beat with kids on their knees. Laughter, smiles, clangs of Vailima in plastic bags.
To this day, every time I hear anything Venga Boys my mind drifts back to those great days in Samoa.
Seeing as the story in the link is a year and a half old, I’m very disappointed not to have heard of this amazing phenomenon before now, much fun has been missed out on.
Though I notice Twillsy hasn’t been seen around here much in that time.
Has he joined the Siren Kings ?
Is ELo still in Abu Dhabi ?
Does Jessi F. Cyrus make questionable clothing choices ?
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Possibly
Probably
Undoubtedly
where all retired BG punters go? cross-over dressers amid sexual confusion? Hades!
Well that was quite an easy find.
https://youtu.be/jI99ScMCWM…
N.B. Home to a terrible little wind-blown siren stain of a wave.
Shannon Hughes and Cote duet, all action no lolz
Cote’ responded to me once. both big fans of Steely Dan. Katy and the Gremlin
By Denny Dias (from Expanding Dan)
She is lovely yes she’s sly, but we were ordinary guys. I still have a 30ips safety (copy made from the master tape) of Katy Lied that Roger Nichols signed in blood! Yes, Katy was a bug. She got to all of us. I remember trying to master the record by myself because no one else wanted to work on it any more. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.
In 1975 we had great expectations and lots of enthusiasm. We had excellent musicians ready to perform in a state-of-the-art recording studio. We had our radical super hi-fi monitor system that consisted of electromagnetic flat panel Magneplanar speakers with three amplifiers and two subwoofers and active crossover tuned to the room with a real-time analyzer. They sounded great. The songs were great. The musicians were grateful. What could go wrong? Well, things happened. Some could be attributed to human error. Others could be blamed on mechanical failure. The rest will never be explained.
outing the location of that spot with that photo there, Troll. That’s how you get BG commentator blow ins at your local…
Me thinks that spot is either already world famous or the troll is doing a little trolling with the geographic markers.
Waiting to be discovered
“We hope it never changes…” says a recent, first time visiting surf writer last year.