On a hot June day in Southern California, the beach is still the place to be, especially here in Surf City. This world-famous stretch of sandiyes, Surf City is a trademark, as well as a songiis packed with bronzed locals, pale tourists and barefooted soccer and volleyball players. The shore break is dominated by body surfers and boogie boarders, while, farther out, the more experienced dudes “shoot the pier,” dodging pilings and thrilling the hodads watching from above.
Just west of the international Surf Museum, the Main Street promenade is bustling with elaborately tattooed boulevardiers and skateboarders. Jeeps and vintage cars cruise the scene as if a gallon of high-test still cost as much as a McDonald’s hamburger, circa 1963.
While it’s possible to find the Beach Boys and Dick Dale on the jukebox in the historic Longboard Restaurant & Pubias good a place as any to watch the parade pass byithe most-punched numbers belong to songs separated by 30 years of pop-music history: Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” and Alanis Morissette’s “ironic.” On the plaza outside, a blues band is entertaining a crowd of kids clad in baggies and bikinis.
Someone must have forgotten to tell these denizens of Surf City that America’s in the middle of a major surf-music revival and that they ought to get with the program.
“The sport never died in popularity, but the music went underground,” declares James Austin, one record company executive who knows the nose from the tail of a surfboard. “Then, along comes the movie and blam! -all of a sudden, Dick Dale’s in peak popularity again.”
Austin is senior director of A&R and special projects at Rhino Records, which just released “Cowabunga!: The Surf Box,” a four-disc collection encapsulating 35 years of a sound inextricably linked to a sport. The movie he’s referring to is 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” whose soundtrack resurrected such sun-soaked anthems as the Tornadoes “Bustin’ Surfboards,” the Lively Ones’ “Surf Rider” and Dick Dale and the Del Tones’ “Miserlou.”
The pop archivists at Rhino know a good thing when they hear one and moved quickly to catch the swell. In the tradition of the Los Angeles-based company’s surprisingly popular “The Doo-Wop Box” and “Sounds of the West,” the comprehensive “Cowabunga!” package pulls together 60 classic surf songs and another 22 tracks from the genre’s “new wave.”
“I’d love to say the box was my idea, but I thought there was no chance of doing anymore surf music,” said Austin, sitting in an office filled with ’50s-era trinkets and campy movie posters. “When my boss came in and said they wanted me to develop a surf box, I thought, `Am I hearing right? One volume of surf music goes out of print and now you want me to do three CDs? Yeah, right.’ “
Austin, whose surfing credentials extend back to “Gidget,” quickly enlisted the assistance of music historian and guitarist John Blair. They produced a lavish package that includes an informative 66-page booklet–complete with glossary and evocative photos–and about as much nostalgia as could be stuffed inside the box, which could double as a freshly waxed board.
“This project was a dream come true,” Austin explained. “Having loved the music and having been involved with sport, I wanted to make something that I would buy.
“There’s obviously a sentimentality for the early days of the sport, of that genre of music. If you bring it back, you have to show the music isn’t locked into the early ’60s, but that it’s been going on in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, and it’s come full circle.”
Thus, the collection begins in 1959 with the Fireballs’ “Bulldog”–recorded in New Mexico by Buddy Holly’s producer, Norman Petty–and ends with a mid-’90s track by Dick Dale, the Duke Kahanomoku of surf guitar.
A totemic figure
Like the Hawaiian surfing pioneer, Dale is a totemic figure. Even before his appearance on the “Pulp Fiction” soundtrack, the original “king of the surf guitar” was enjoying a resurgence in popularity. (He has just released another album of new material, “Calling Up Spirits,” on Beggars Banquet.)
In the early ’60s, Dale found a way to recreate the sonic texture of a breaking wave on his guitar and merge it into his music, which was a hot hybrid of rock, R&B, rockabilly and Mediterranean. His technique would allow him to stand out from other local bands of the period, who were covering tunes by the Ventures, Link Wray, Duane Eddy. Sandy Nelson and the Coasters.
To further his tonal explorations, the guitarist collaborated with Leo Fender, whose company produced the famous Stratocaster guitar, as well as speakers and amplification equipment. Dale persuaded Fender to incorporate a reverb device–then available only in organs–to the Showman amplification unit, and a new pulsating rhythm was born.
With crashing glissandos and ferocious double picking, Dale created music that effectively duplicated the sensual forces experienced while surfing. He already was popular with the teens who would gather at Newport Beach’s Rendezvous Ballroom, but this new “wet” sound soon also won over the sandal-wearing stompers and began to inspire other acts.
Carrying the message
In March, 1963, with the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ U.S.A.”–which borrowed freely from Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little 16” and Chubby Checker’s “Twisting U.S.A.”–the mostly instrumental genre developed a voice to carry the message of bitchin’ beach culture beyond the borders of California. Jan & Dean and Frankie and Annette soon would follow, only to be eclipsed in the mid-’60s by the British invasion and rampant psychedelia.
“All the really great surfers at the time were into R&B . . . Bo Diddley,” Austin recalled. “It was the wannabees who saw it as utopia: the chicks, the sun, the sand . . . and there’s music too!
“Brian Wilson will tell you that the Beach Boys wasn’t a surf band–it wasn’t surf music–but it got the imagery out there, spread the gospel. They talked about Santa Cruz, Trestles and, all of sudden, all these mysterious faraway places with perfect waves were in my head and made me want to go there.”
Paydirt in `Pipeline’
The Chantay’s were a group of teenagers from Santa Ana, who, in 1963, struck paydirt with “Pipeline,” one of the songs most credited with popularizing the genre. Like “Miserlou,” it made full use of the Fender Reverb Unit.
“We started out like the Ventures, Link Wray, Duane Eddie, the Fireballs or Johnny and the Hurricanes . . . hypothetically an R&B band, prior to being stereotyped as a surf band,” recalled Bob Spickard, who co-wrote and played lead guitar on the song. “All the guys in our band surfed and some of us still do, whereas Dennis was the only Beach Boy who surfed. We definitely were a garage band: play till the cops come.”
Their big hit, which reached No. 4 in the Billboard chart (behind “He’s So Fine” and “Puff the Magic Dragon”), almost belonged to an entirely different musical genre.
” `Pipeline’ went through a couple of different names,” Spickard said. “There was `Liberty’s Whip’–from `The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’–and it was called `.44 Magnum’ for a while. It evolved into `Pipeline’ after our bassist Warren Waters and myself went to one of Bruce Brown’s original surf movies, which showed the Bonzai Pipeline on the north shore of Hawaii.”
Last year, the song became part of the “12 Monkeys” soundtrack and, according to Spickard, it has been “ripped off” by companies pushing products ranging from tacos to tires. The Chantay’s put out a self-produced album of cover songs in 1994 and will release a CD of new material next month on the Pacific label.
The contemporary artists on Disc 4 represent Canada, Finland, Germany, Seattle and San Francisco, as well as L.A. Their sounds variously are described as “space surf,” “post-modern,” “punk” and “psychedelic.”
“What we do is definitely rooted in what Dick Dale has done and the basics of rock ‘n’ roll, but it has involved into an individual thing,” said Jim Thomas, guitarist and songwriter in San Francisco’s Mermen. “I think that (Dale’s) `King of the Surf Guitar’ is an amazing record that stands as some kind of iconoclastic weirdness of invention because of that place and time.”
Riding a new wave
Thomas credits college radio stations with advancing the message of modern surf music. But, while the Mermen’s exciting brand of “ocean music” may be finding a following in small clubs and on alternative stations, MTV and mainstream radio still avoid non-verbal recordings.
“It was relatively easy to hear instrumental music on the radio in the late ’50s and 1960. It became more difficult in the early ’60s,” Blair concurred. “A few years ago, I went to the trouble of looking at the Billboard charts for the period between 1961-65 and finding all of the surf records that made the top 100.
“Half of them were instrumentals, but they charted much lower. In Southern California, the instrumentals did much better. Dick Dale had three songs in the top 10, locally but not nationally.”
Fans of surf music looking forward to the “Cowabunga!” box owe a debt of gratitute to people who supported Rhino’s previous genre collections, and boxed sets that celebrate the careers of such disparate artists as Bobby Darin, Buck Owens, Otis Redding, the Monkees, Spike Jones and John Coltrane.
Co-producers Austin and Blair–whose John & the Nightriders is represented in the set with “Storm Dancer”–have been down the surf route before for Rhino. While admitting they were hard-pressed to come up with neglected treasures for this box, they are impressed by the scope and polish of the finished product.
“Anybody with half a brain can start a record company, get rights to the tracks and put it out,” Austin argues. “But I think you have to celebrate the genre or the artists and leave the music a lot better than you found it.”
For Blair, who also collects hot-rod records, the message in the music–which, in fact, can be heard at the surfing museum every Sunday afternoon–is as clear as a summer day on the beach.
“The appeal for all age groups is that it is safe, positive, upbeat and fun,” he emphasizes. “You can’t use those same words in a review to describe any rap or heavy metal album. There’s no politics or message, it’s feel-good music.”
SURFERS RIDE ECO-FRIENDLY WAVE
At a time when surfing may be more popular than ever–and well-sponsored tournaments proliferate–certain dark clouds hover over the sport.
Los Angeles area newspapers regularly report on violent encounters between “locals” and intruders who are accused of such infractions as reckless surfing and wave theft. More crucial to the future of the sport, however, may be the danger of pollution.
The Surfrider Foundation is an international organization dedicated to cleaning up beaches and coastal waters. On July 2, an album of new surf music and covers of classic songs–“MOM (Music for Our Mother Ocean)”–will be released on Surfdog/Interscope to benefit the foundation’s environmental efforts.
Among the artists participating in the project are Pearl Jam, Porno for Pyros, the Beastie Boys, Everclear, the Ramones and the Rev. Horton Heat.
