The cover of the Brigantines 2012 album, “Vacation!”
Surf music isn’t exclusively a West Coast thing. There are some New Jersey devotees of the genre, including The Brigantines, who billed themselves as “New Jersey’s Number One Surfing Group” on their 2012 album, Vacation!
The band is actually from Freehold, not Brigantine (which is in Atlantic County, just north of Atlantic City). Bassist Aaron Leonovich told Pop-break.com in 2012: “We wanted name that captures the essence of the music we play, with some sort of geographic reference to New Jersey. We searched a map of looking for cities along the shore that might fit. Brigantine, N.J. turned into The Brigantines and it grew on us!”
Included on Vacation! is an instrumental, “Brigantine Barrel”; “barrel” is surfing lingo for a wave that arches over a surfer, creating something like a hollow tube (as in the photo on the album cover, above).
Check out the song itself, below.
New Jersey celebrated its 350th birthday in 2014. And in the 350 Jersey Songs series, we marked the occasion by posting 350 songs — one a day, from September 2014 to September 2015 — that have something to do with the state, its musical history, or both. To see the entire list, click here.
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