Album Review:

In 1963, Annette Funicello abandoned her Mouseketeer image at Disney and branched out onto the teen idol world, becoming the undisputed surfer queen of the silver screen. For her second 'beach party' outing, the Gary Usher-Roger Christian songwriting team was joined by Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who is credited as co-writer on 4 of the tracks.  

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‘Muscle Beach Party’ is a strong Wilson-Usher track, while ‘A Girl Needs a Boy’ is a tender love song penned by Guy Hemric and Jules Styner, much in the fashion of ‘Promise Me Anything’ off Beach Party. With a boogie-woogie backbeat and a handful of starts and stops, ‘Surfer’s Holiday’ has Brian Wilson written all over it, and the second Hemric-Styner number, ‘I Dream About Frankie’ could have easily been recorded 4 years earlier. ‘Muscle Bustle’ is a stab at the dance craze genre and, incidentally, the final song from the movie. 

With all the film soundtrack songs exhausted by the end of the first side, Side two displays a few Usher-Christian originals. ‘Custom City’ and ‘Draggin’ U.S.A.’ are both top-notch productions in true with Usher's distinctive backing tracks. ‘Rebel Rider’ ventures into ‘Little Honda’ territory, and ‘Waikiki’ is one of the most underappreciated songs of the whole surf/hot rod genre. One can’t help but smile at Ms. Funicello’s uncharacteristic delivery of ‘Shutdown Again,’ as she describes her drag-racing ventures. The only downside of the album is the two filler tracks, ‘Merlin Jones’ and ‘The Scrambled Egg-Head’, which were tied to the 1964 Disney screwball comedy starring Annette and Tommy Kirk. These Sherman Brother tunes conclude each side of the album and have nothing to do with surfing, hot rods, or muscles, for that matter.

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Muscle Beach Party is a fine album; full of strong vocal numbers (and yes, unfortunately, a couple of bumps along the way.) Such is the road to Surf City...