Frankie & The Pool Boys

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Somewhere over Iraq with Jet Powers
Howdy,
Here’s how this Frankie & the Pool Boys project came together–
After years of heavy duty activity, and for various adult reasons, Pollo Del Mar had to take a break. I was patient, then I got bored... Really bored, and itching to do something. I remembered the Zappa album “Rueben and the Jets”, where Frank took some of his Mothers’ songs and recast them as Doo-Wop songs. I thought, “Hey, I’ll take some old PDM songs and recast them as Surf Music.” Imagine that, Pollo Del Mar playing surf music!?!
Dusty came over and we did some recording, but I got bored working on old songs and some of those Pollo tunes just didn’t want to get squeezed into the surf mold anyway. So Dusty came over again and we recorded some new stuff. Then I thought, “Man, you know who would sound great on this song?” and I called them up and they said, “Yes” and it all started to come together. But, it wasn’t really a Pollo CD, and it wasn’t really not one either. Call it a “side project”, and, please, anything but “solo effort” – that’s the kiss of death!
So who really are “Frankie & the Pool Boys”? Just a bunch of teenage idiots without a care in the world. They have day jobs cleaning your pool, a night shift parking cars, fake I.D.s and an 8-Track. They’ve got a ‘72 Mustang that will be rolling any day now, a date with your daughter next Friday and big, big plans for the future.
"Finito Bandito"
"Ewa on the Beach"
Vintage Guitar - May 2009
by Dan Forte
If The Ventures, for instance, were still in the practice of mining regional bands' repertoires for material, they do well to check out ... Frankie & The Pool Boys. This self-titled splinter project of Pollo Del Mar guitarist Ferenc Dobronyi features every surf band's drummer of choice, Dusty Watson, and PDM bassist Jeff Turner along with such guest guitarists as Slacktone's Dave Wronski, The Surf Coasters' Shigeo Naka, The Space Cossacks' Ivan Pongracic and The Ventures Bob Spalding (supplying "wiggly guitar" on the Ventures' "Fugitive," one of the album's few covers.
Fourteen of the CD's songs were written by Dobronyi. Inspired by Frank Zappa's Ruben & The Jets, he began recasting Pollo songs as surf instrumentals, and then started writing new tunes. The result is perhaps the party record of this batch! You want reverb? Try on the throbbing "The Raven" or the seductive (and onomatopoetically titled) "Teke Teke Teke." In the mood for whammy bar? There's the Shadowesque "Finito Bandito" or the whacked out "Little Woman, Big Dog" featuring Naka. And, just for yucks, Frankie & Co. turn Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance March" into "Pumpin' Surfing Stance" (get it?). Graduation day will never be the same.
New Gandy Dancer - December 2008
by Davy Peckett
"This is quite definitely our album of the year - my God is it good! In a break from the sublime Pollo Del Mar, Ferenc Dobronyi put together Frankie & The Poolboys to rearrange some of Pollo's instrumentals into a surf style. They added new tunes and two covers. Dusty Watson (Dick Dale, Agent Orange, Slacktone) - hell, he plays with so much confidence, just totally at home with both recording and playing like a battering ram on his own, with PDM's excellent Jeff Turner on Bass, Ferenc's own guitar with guests Shigeo Naka (Surf Coasters), Dave Wronski (Slacktone), Ivan Pongracic (Madeira, Space Cossacks), Mel Waldorf (Meshugga Beach Party, Los Mel-Tones) and Bob Spalding (The Ventures). The material is superb, mainly originals except for an almost bluesy "Fugitive" and a rocked up "Land Of Hope & Glory"! "Magyara" is infectious guitars and fun loving; for "No Surf Today", think "Endless Dream" - quite Shadows actually; there's the huge drama of "A Man Called Dirt" and the truly outstanding finesse of "Finito Bandito" complete with great hi-hat work. Wrap all this up in the hands of so many experts in the field of both classic and modern day surf and you get what you expect. Just the best album we've heard in years. * * * * *