Wednesday, June 20, 2012

CRO-MAGNON SURF MUSIC


You know what bugs me? Okay, you know what one of the things that bugs me is? Any band that's come down the pike in the last five or ten years that uses the word beach or surf in the name of their band, or the name of a song. You know what also bugs me? Any mention of dreamy lo-fi surf pop, psych surf, or any other type crap that elicits a Jesus-criminey, haven't these young yahoos done any listening at all? This all sounds like the ranting of a surf music purist, you're wrong. I dig surf music in the classic sense. I also like offshoots of surf music, and I even like wacko modernized surf music. Just keep that indie hipster shit the hell outta my way.

If'n I were a surf music purist, I'll tell you where I'd start. You'd have to go back to the very late fifties, when Bud Brown (the man who gave us The Endless Summer a few years later) did a couple surf films called Barefoot Adventure, and Slippery When Wet (among others). As there was no so-called surf music, and Dick Dale was still a year or two away from putting out his seminal "Let's Go Trippin'," Brown needed some music to play with his movies. Let's back up. In the late fifties and early sixties, Brown toured the West coast of the U.S. playing his movies in rented halls, school auditoriums, and occasionally in a bona fide movie theater. His was an real DIY routine. With no sound on the actual movie reels, he'd tour with his trusty reel to reel, playing music, and actually narrating the films live, in his deadpan cornball style (think Bob Newhart).


Slippery When Wet (1958)

The music he played for those two films was recorded by one Bud Shank, and let me tell you: if you want to go back to the source, Shank's soundtracks are a good place to start. Not at all the guitar driven type surf music, Shank was a West coast jazz artist, playing alto sax and occasionally flute. The laid back stuff he recorded for Brown's films put you in an era before surf culture went mainstream.

Before the beach party movies, before the surfer stomps, before the Beach Boys, before the marketing of surfing, before all the crowds showed up. This was when surfers were very much a sub-sub-subculture. Surfers hung out without any hoopla (well, very little). To surf was to be an all around water man, and somewhat of an outsider. Boogie boards and surf leashes where decades away. If you lost your board, you swam to get it. SPF50 was three letters and two numbers. If you decide to stay at the beach for dinner, you didn't go to Taco Bell. You went back in the water and got your dinner, and then cooked it over an open fire. But you, dear reader, have your i-Phone.

Stop the presses: The blog Dumb Angel did a nifty post about Laurindo Alemeids, who the cite as the first surf guitarist. Among others who he recorded with, in the fifties, was Bud Shank. It's a good post, so bone up poseurs.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
For you finicky "no jazz" types:
The Astronauts - Baja mp3 at The California Girls
The Pyramids - Penetration mp3 at Bowling League Records
Johnny Fortune - Soul Surfer mp3 at Rocky-52
Full LP
Bud Shank - Slippery When Wet (via Mediafire) at Black Sea Surfer If the Mediafire link doesn't work here, go here and scroll down to the fifth album. If you want to sample it first, watch the clip above.
Video:
Slippery When Wet - Another clip at YouTube
Bud Shank & Clare Fischer -Misty (Frankly Jazz TV show, early 60's) at YouTube
Bud Brown interviews Greg Noll about his shaping (early balsa board) at YouTube

2 comments:

popeye cahn said...

Mark Neill used to be baffled by comments about his surf guitar technique, of course he was since he approached his guitar tone from a Joe Maphis/Chet Atkins viewpoint... so when Dick Dale's name got mentioned he thought Dick Dale was a golf pro and that a 'Pipeline' was in fact just that- a pipeline for oil, water or gas!

Tom G. said...

Post idea! Thanks Dave, Shit, Grady Martin, Phil Baugh, uh oh, here we go...the picker abyss.