What is it about Surf Music, anyway?

[Veenture]

I remember when the Chantays' Pipeline came out...//...still gotta be the surfing national anthem..........

Let's go down memory lane here (to me it's like yesterday!)

[sleeperNY]

All I can say is WHY aren't they even plugged into any amps?????? I didn't think that they did that on that show. It was defiantly not them playing but it was there record.

Jim

[rog43win]

Jim.....I know Lawrence Welk had them "fake" play, to insure there would be no slip-ups.....

Dick Clark did the same thing on his show, too.....there is a clip of the Ventures doing "Walk-Don't Run", where they stand on large cylinders and faked it too......he just never took any chances on mess-ups......

I always wondered what the real musicians in Lawrence Welk's band thought about guests like the Chantays.....snot-nosed kids faking their hit song...lol.....and also how the Chantays felt faking it in front of top musicians...lol......I still love the song, though.....incredible song recorded by those kids......

[rog43win]

I have to correct myself.....in an earlier post I incorrectly referred to "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" as being from the "Ventures In Space" album.....It was from the "Ventures Knock Me Out" album..........sorry....what was I thinking? ...lol.....

Roger

[joelguitar]

As someone who grew up surfing in CA, I think it is fascinating how many non-surfers really take an intense liking to surf music. IMO, the great instrumentals really capture the instinctive, non-verbal feel when one is "in the zone" while wave riding. One thing I've seen a few times is that you change the name of an instrumental surf tune to something like "442 Cobra" and voila! You now have a car/drag racing tune. And while Boise, Idaho doesn't have waves, it does have cars, and lots of bored kids(of all ages, right?). Driving a fast car could bring about a similar sensation to surfing; It might be the sensation of being in control of something larger than yourself; something powerful and indifferent; like a force of nature i.e a wave, or a force of sciece and engineering, like a souped up T-bird? OK I'm tired and rambling, lol!

[jfine]

Miming to your record was real common on TV back then. I don't think it was necessarily because of potential mistakes so much as the lack of ability of the TV studio equipment to handle amplified music. For every show like the Ed Sullivan Show, where everybody had to play live, there were lots of other shows where they found it easier to deal with a recording rather than a live band. This was going on as late as 1970, when I did my first live radio broadcast--I was in a band called the Sagebrush Brothers, and we showed up at the studio of KPFA Public Radio in Berkeley, CA to play for their fundraiser. They weren't equipped to handle anything louder than an acoustic guitar, maybe a banjo, and here we come with amps and a drum set! I had a Twin Reverb at that time, and I had to play it at acoustic-guitar volume, which sounded really thin--and they were taking the vocals with room mics, like you would with a bluegrass band, so even at the whisper volume we had to play at, we still couldn't hear our vocals--tough when you've got four-part harmony!

[rog43win]

Joelguitar........very nice observations......I think you're right about kids loving music that has a force and drive and maybe something new.........I've never surfed either, but the "surf" music immediately takes you on the scene, and you can enjoy the magic of it all without even getting your feet wet......lol.........

Jfine.......thanks for your post....it's absolutely true about the reproduction of the same sound of an original recording on a live stage......you just couldn't make it sound the same.... I saw a clip of the Ventures on a beach with kids all around them, and they were unquestionably faking it.........
I think the Ventures could have pulled off "Walk-Don't Run" live on Dick Clark's show, but it was safer and easier to play the recording and just put the stars in front for people to see....
I'll bet that was frustrating for you and your band to have to adjust to the radio station's inability to let you guys just do your thing.....especially on a radio show where lots of people might be hearing you for the first time......and not under the best conditions, having to put out an inferior sound for their first impression of you.

Roger

[bumblebeetwist]

This might be a bit of a stretch but I think surf music was an exploration of rock 'n roll that ventured (heh) outside of the roadhouse or bar format. Like any great soundtrack music it inspires the listener to create a setting and place for the mind to wander within, and like any great soundtrack it isn't merely dependent upon the visual scene is may accompany to get the point across. 'Til that point most guitar-based rock was centered around the vocalist to provide a motive for the song, but especially the sound seemed to come from within a honky-tonk and the lyrics centering on relations 'n such.

Surf music can be seen as the guitarists leaving the windowless saloon and channeling the outside world, making music from and for a bigger picture. Reverb is space and dimension, it's less about music that originates from a stage, and more about a tone that exists in a large panorama or sometimes within the small deep recesses of the mind..

This question probably has already been brought up, but doesn't the rise of surf music coincide chronologically with the availability of portable reverb units?

[rog43win]

This might be a bit of a stretch but I think surf music was an exploration of rock 'n roll that ventured (heh) outside of the roadhouse or bar format. Like any great soundtrack music it inspires the listener to create a setting and place for the mind to wander within, and like any great soundtrack it isn't merely dependent upon the visual scene is may accompany to get the point across. 'Til that point most guitar-based rock was centered around the vocalist to provide a motive for the song, but especially the sound seemed to come from within a honky-tonk and the lyrics centering on relations 'n such.

Surf music can be seen as the guitarists leaving the windowless saloon and channeling the outside world, making music from and for a bigger picture. Reverb is space and dimension, it's less about music that originates from a stage, and more about a tone that exists in a large panorama or sometimes within the small deep recesses of the mind..

This question probably has already been brought up, but doesn't the rise of surf music coincide chronologically with the availability of portable reverb units?

Holy cow, that is deep, BBT.... .....but I like it.......
I think the Chantays set the bar with "Pipeline"....with the reverb and muted background.....and the availability of reverb units allowed anyone to nearly re-create that sound....hence, the onrush of "surf songs", and sale of reverb units.......
I still love that sound.....

Roger

[jfine]

Good point, bbtwist--I started playing in '62, and one of the reasons I was drawn to surf music was that the guitar player could be the center of attention without having to compete with one of those pesky vocalists! As far as the availability of reverb goes, early surf music didn't have it--there's no reverb on "Mr. Moto" by the Belairs, for instance, or on the original Ventures' version of "Walk Don't Run" either, but that predated surf music. Dick Dale may have been the first surf guitarist to use reverb, and after he did, everybody got into it, but reverb units actually hit the market some years earlier--Danelectro had one out in the late '50's. Fender actually came late to the reverb party--their standalone unit didn't come out until around '62, and their first reverb amp, the Vibroverb, came out around the same time--Twins and Deluxes didn't get reverb until '63-'64, and Bandmasters and Showmans didn't have reverb versions until '68-'69. Surf music predated the Fender reverb by a year or so, but that sound became the signature sound of surf--so much so, that when the Ventures remade "Walk Don't Run" as a surf tune in '64, they used "Pipeline"-like glissandos with a bunch of reverb.