Canal de The Challengers
The Challengers were an instrumental surf rock band in the 1960s, located in Los Angeles. They started early in the game and helped make the genre popular. Their debut album Surfbeat is the biggest selling surf album of all time and almost single-handedly brought surf from California to the rest of the world. [1]
The band was formed out of the ashes of The Belairs. The Belairs were just high schoolers at the time, but had a hit with "Mr. Moto." Their potential was cited by many, but, ironically, it was an argument about use of the then-new Fender Reverb Unit that led to their breakup. The Belairs were originally formed by two guitarists, Eddie Bertrand and Paul Johnson, both 16 years old at the time they recorded "Mr. Moto". In early 1963. Eddie Bertrand heard Dick Dale using the Fender Reverb unit, and wanted to start incorporating heavy reverb into the Belairs' songs, since he felt reverb was the sound that would come to define Surf Music. Even at 17, Johnson was something of a "stick-in-the-mud" and told Bertrand that the Belairs had done quite well without reverb, and HE didn't see any reason at all to begin using it. The argument escalated until Bertrand finally left the band, which then broke up for good shortly after. Johnson confirmed this story in the liner notes he contributed to the Belairs reunion album released in 1986.