The Rivingtons Own the Bird, Bird, Bird (videos)

There's another article with The Trashmen in their "Surfin' Bird" video.  A different, long version of the video is presented below and it gives some more background.  (Blog:  Fuck Prog Rock - The Bird is The Word - Trashmen)

Now there's yet more background as the band, as of fairly recently, was still performing.  (WIKI:  The Trashmen)

Tony Andreason is the singer in the video and he's still with them.  The background is The Trashmen didn't write the song but rather mixed a couple of others.  They did play the songs as this was long before sampling.

The original was recorded by The Rivingtons:

(worthless video but the audio tells it)

There's a case for white musicians ripping off black musicians as The Trashmen did not originally credit The Rivingtons.  Listen to each one and you'll hear it.  There's no question in my mind who wrote it and this was ultimately settled, presumably to mutual satisfaction.

Some quote Ringo saying 'everyone nicks their music from somewhere' but it's an odd thing I have rarely heard about black musicians 'nicking' music from white guys.  Either such cases never go to court, not likely for this kind of money, or it doesn't happen much.  Unknown.

With digital sampling everyone 'nicks' everything so copyright hardly means anything anymore.


The originality in The Trashmen came from that dance as Tony Andreason is credited as the singer in the band but the appearance was on "American Bandstand" and a long version of their video is included below.  Dick Clark calls the singer Steve Wahrer who is credited as the band's drummer but also as a singer.  You tell me how they did it as I saw no drums.

Maybe the band was not there and Wahrer was using a track they had made.  "American Bandstand" had to be lip-syncing to records / tapes a lot.  It's possible this was lip-synced as well.


It seems Steve Wahrer is the speedball maniac in the routine.  This kind of showmanship would be unorthodox even now but the early sixties featured boatloads of white guys wearing ties and sport coats so you had to be unusual or you would be just another band singing about skateboards.


Someone commented they must be using huge amounts of drugs but that's not so likely as good white boys didn't do such things too much in 1963.  Reefer was only just starting to circulate but it was Mexican dirt weed and nothing close to the punch of today's reefer.  Hippies turned up not too long after that and following them came the freaks (i.e of which I am one).  Freaks abused anything we could find but that wasn't common in the earlier years.


"Surfin' Bird" was their only hit but it was a big one and they have been playing ever since.  Their most recent recording was in 2014.  One of them, Wahrer, didn't make it but the others seem to still be in the band plus some additions.