Summer Lovin'

I couldn't resist putting that in, above. I love bubble-gummy, brain-dead pop tunes from every decade. Yes, it's Sheena Easton doing "Morning Train."

But this is serious. It's time for me to put together my annual "play list" of beach music for our upcoming week-long jaunt to Wildwood, New Jersey.

A moment's explanation. Wildwood is tightly wound up with my childhood. My grandmother took me there for the Feast of the Assumption every year (August 15), starting when I was about 8 or 9 and continuing until I was 13. She liked to soak her feet in the ocean on the Feast Day of the Virgin's Bodily Assumption into Heaven (look, if you're not Catholic, you're not going to understand any of this, so just move along.)

It was the late 50's and early 60's. Those days of "Wildwood Nights" (by Bobby Rydell). The boardwalk was one of the largest in the world. There were amusement piers all along it's length, in addition to game arcades, rides and tons of beach food establishments selling Philly cheesesteaks, candy apples, cotton candy, Fralinger's Salt Water Taffy and all of it washed down with genuine "Frank's" ginger ale.

It was paradise to a 10 year old. And a buck or two would last the night.

Besides, Wildwood was where all the "cool kids" who appeared daily on American Bandstand, when it was still in Philadelphia, came for the summer. They all had summer jobs working those arcade games, rides and short-order cooking at those fast food joints.

I haven't been there since the summer I turned 14. 1962. I remember the year because rather than doing "kid stuff" that summer, I couldn't wait to see "Lawrence of Arabia" which was playing at a theater on the boardwalk. I was officially too grown up to be at the beach with my Nana. It was no longer seemly for an older woman, clearly not my mother, to be escorting me around town -- and vice versa.

Anyway, after many decades my college buddies and I decided to try for Wildwood this year after two years of Cape Cod and eons of summers at the Delaware shore before that.

So I decided to put together a play list of songs which I can download to my MP3 player and plug into my portable stereo for playing at the beach this summer.

This is what I've come up with so far:

Title .................................Artist
Heat Wave...................... Martha & the Vandellas
Under the Boardwalk .. The Drifters
Wipe Out........................ The Surfaris
Good Vibrations............ Beach Boys
Surfin’ USA ....................Beach Boys
California Girls ..............Beach Boys
Satisfaction ....................Rolling Stones
Summer in the City ......Lovin’ Spoonful
Happy Together ...........The Turtles
Summer Wind ...............Frank Sinatra
Up On The Roof ...........The Drifters
Wildwood Days .............Bobby Rydell
Kokomo .........................Beach Boys
Telstar ..........................The Ventures
Octopus’s Garden .......The Beatles
Walkin’ on Sunshine ....Katrina and The Waves
Glad All Over ................Dave Clark Five

If anybody has any suggestions for other "summer-beach" type pop tunes over 20 years old, please feel free to post 'em. I'm all ears.