Same charge, and slightly more explanatory, but still not very:

The Shadows were very influential in the rest of the world, which at that point was still more affected by the British culture than the American culture. Especially in Europe, where hundreds if not thousands of bands sprung up between '61 and '63 with dreams of sounding just like The Shadows. The Beatles obliterated all that in England and Europe, just as they killed instrumental surf music (or really all other instrumental rock except The Ventures) in the USA. [Editor's note: Although The Ventures' survival was due more to the groups' strong worldwide fan base, especially in Japan, The Beatles, in fact, eliminated The Ventures from mainstream radio.]

I think the basic idea is that surf rock was the Big Thing in the very early 60s, but then when the Beatles came along they (and the style of music they repopularized) became the Big Thing and no one cared about surf rock any more.

In other words, the surf rockers felt that they were right on the cusp of world domination when the Beatles showed up and ruined it all.

But what about the Beach Boys? I'm confused about this argument that teo seems to be doing an honest and admirable attempt to make on the surf rockers' behalf.

I think the idea (and I'm venturing into very uncertain territory here) is that the Beach Boys were prevented from reaching the levels of stardom they could have by the presence of the Beatles. That is, if the Beatles hadn't been there and surf rock had continued its upward progress, the Beach Boys would have claimed the position in rock and roll that the Beatles ended up with. Either that or the Beach Boys don't count as "pure" surf rock for some reason, maybe because their style was corrupted by Beatles-esque rock.

Did the band you saw play any Beach Boys?

(The argument I'm making here is basically that surf rockers are delusional, hubristic crazy people.)

(No offense to any surf rockers in the audience, of course.)

6: Good point, there. Nope. I've heard the Beach-Boys-are-better-than-the-Beatles thing from other angles, including Pet Sounds being released too late or something. I don't really have a dog in the race, so I'm mostly amused by the different camps and their different narratives.

Why did you go to this concert, anyway?

I think there's a distinction usually drawn between surf rock a la e.g. The Ventures vs. surf pop a la e.g. The Beach Boys. The Beach Boys had many songs about surfing, but didn't really have that reverby guitar-heavy surf rock sound

11 seems to support the second arguments in 5. I suspect there are camps making both arguments, but that the second is more identified with people like the guy Stanley saw perform.

Austin used to have a really good surf rock band called Death Valley. They did this awesome cover of "Our Lips Are Sealed".

Laika & the Cosmonauts, from Finland, are a relatively well-known contemporary surf rock band.

I think the genre got the name "surf rock" due to it being centered in So Cal in the early days, not because the songs themselves were necessarily about surfing.

It's not that the Beach Boys weren't pure surf rock or had their sound corrupted by the Beatles. They never really played surf rock to begin with. As I said above, "surf rock" does not equal "songs about surfing".

Why did you go to this concert, anyway?

Roommates said, "Hey, come on. Get off the goddamn internet for awhile."

Fair enough. I do think that makes it even less plausible to believe that surf rock was about to take over the world of music until the Beatles got in the way, but it makes it more plausible to believe that that's what the surf rockers think.

15: And do you regret your mistake?

5 is an example of lamentably non-dialectical thinking.

Golly. I was there. This is a very good question, and maybe impossible to explain to someone who wasn't there, or who didn't completely immerse themselves in early 60s music, but the Beatles were serious. I remember the exact moment in the kitchen when "Twist & Shout" came on the radio...quantum leap, dude.

Maybe (I'm working hard on this) one thing you can do is to compare Carole King's versions of some of the songs on Tapestry to the original girlgroup covers of them. It is a matter of personal expression vs performance.

As silly as "I Saw Her Standing There" mght sound today, at the time it sounded real authentic personal in a way "Peggy Sue" did not. Only country (Hank Williams) and the blues allowed that kind of space.

Not only surf music but the Brill building died with the Beatles. Before Dylan, the Beatles moved the song into a vehicle for personal emotional narrative.

Of coutrse there is all the musical genius etc, but I think the lyrics just made everything else look silly and featherweight. Everybody got to be a poet.

In any case, as Stanley notes in 6, in addition to the anti-Beatles surf rock discourse there seems to be a parallel but apparently independent anti-Beatles surf pop discourse, which holds that the Beach Boys were better than the Beatles and should rightly have been recognized as such but unjustly weren't.

I, of course, don't really know what I'm talking about here at all, so I should probably shut up. I'm mostly just putting off going to bed.

I think the general idea is more that there were a string of hit singles in the surf rock genre from various bands in the early sixties, and it looked to be growing in popularity. Then the British Invasion happened, it was incredibly popular, and surf rock basically dropped off the charts. The result: less radio play, fewer performance venues, fewer record deals, and thus fewer and fewer surf bands and less new surf rock produced.

I mean, I wasn't at the concert Stanley attended, so maybe this particular guy does think that some particular surf rock band or artist would have been as big as the Beatles if not for those bastard fab four. But I think the garden variety "the Beatles killed surf" argument is much less grand than that.

17: I regret not requesting this song.

I think the general idea is more that there were a string of hit singles in the surf rock genre from various bands in the early sixties, and it looked to be growing in popularity. Then the British Invasion happened, it was incredibly popular, and surf rock basically dropped off the charts. The result: less radio play, fewer performance venues, fewer record deals, and thus fewer and fewer surf bands and less new surf rock produced.

This is basically what I was arguing, actually. There was some hyperbole, admittedly, but I don't actually think the surf rockers think they could have been as big as the Beatles.

22 to 16.

And now I really should go to bed. Much as I hate to admit it to myself, I do have to work tomorrow.

26: Be sure to eat a good breakfast in the morning.

1) Beach Boys, Jan & Dean.

"Little Old Lady From Pasedena" "Fun Fun Fun"

The Beach Boys were great fun, but rarely serious, and IMO, when Brian tried gravitas...I don't know "God Only Knows" is good but "I Wasn't Made for This World" is just a little embarrassing. Tryin too hard.

Real "Surf Music" Like Wray and Dale and one of my favourites, The Fireballs with Jimmy Gilmer?
Jazz, man. Peaked with the peak of jazz and died with jazz. But very limited, and barely bothered to explore what the instruments could do. Wray vs Hendrix, dude.

Was it George Harrison who came back to England after a trip to visit his sister in Chicago (this is pre-Ed Sullivan appearance) and said, basically, "Don't worry, they have nothing like this over there"?

Was the hit song "Telstar", from Britain, surf rock?

I agree with 28 re: The Beach Boys.

But the assertion that Link Wray "barely bothered to explore what the instruments could do" is just crazy talk. Yes, Hendrix, later, took it further. But no Wray, no Hendrix.

Jazz, man. Peaked with the peak of jazz and died with jazz.

There's probably something to this. It was genuinely awkward when a song had lyrics. "Dude, just keep playing," I thought.

Few are the jazz vocalists. Maybe it's about vocals?

Maybe it's about vocals?

Well, I think so, I think the Beatles turned the song, or rediscovered the song, as an expressive art rather than performative.

There is so much performing art that is very very good that I don't want to criticize it too heavily. But everybody talks about the Beatles energy and enthusiasm and that means they were really really into the fucking song. Like they were singing more for themselves than for the audience.

It is really hard to explain or describe, but check out the progression on Dylan's first few albums. His delivery changes, and you no longer feel he is singing to an audience.

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" is sung to a particular girl, every time it's sung. And they aren't acting.

I tried the great Sinatra/riddle albums, and they are great, but Sinatra was always acting. Beatles were like Brando. They made it real.

Given that the Beatles also killed pop, I think there's a pattern emerging here...

The Beach Boys were sekritly better than the Beatles claim also gets the ordering wrong. Wilson wrote Pet Sounds specifically as a response to the Beatles. He talks in interviews about how inspired he had been by Rubber Soul (and also by the Ronettes) and how he was trying to take on board the sorts of writing and production that he was hearing from them. The stuff that we take, today, as being the pinnacle of Wilson and the Beach Boys output wouldn't have happened at all if it wasn't for the Beatles.

Good surf guitar music is great, though. There's quite a bit of surf revival stuff around. Los Straitjackets are great.

Man or Astroman also does good surf rock.

One of my lit professors theorized that it helps in being expressive when you're inspired by works not familiar to your audience. There may be something to that - if you can get outside a lot of expectations, it's easier to do something new and personal.

It was Jimi. He confessed in Third Stone from the Sun.

Although your world wonders me,
With your majestic and superior cackling hen
Your people I do not understand,
So to you I shall put an end
And you'll
Never hear
Surf music again

35 gets it exactly right.

Data point: Telstar may be the greatest song of all time. And I don't even like surf rock!

I thought the description in 35 was sort of what surf rock people were complaining about; all the surf bands and proto-surf bands were so excited about the false idol of the Beatles that they started hiking their guitars up way high and burning their reverb pedals, and thus was Eden lost.

You guys sure are up early.

re: 41

Maybe. I don't think surf was much more than a minority genre even then, though. If it wasn't killed by British invasion pop, it'd have been killed by Motown, and the rise of soul and RnB, or by the slightly later British blues boom and heavy rock, or by Dylan, ... etc. ad infinitum.

Instrumental pop music in general was already on its way out by the time the Beatles came along anyway. In the late 40s and 50s there were million selling instrumental superstars in genres other than surf. Johnny Smith sold millions of copies of 'Moonlight in Vermont', Les Paul (with Mary Ford) was huge, big bands and small-group jazz was popular, Western swing groups were superstars, etc. They were all already fading long before British invasion pop hit.

Tweety,

When's the big day? How long are you guys gonna be in this area? Are you coming back for a bit post honeymoon?

What the guy is saying is utterly the conventional wisdom about what happened to surf rock. The conventional story is that surf rock completely dominated the charts, and then the Beatles blew them away. It's not a Beatles versus Beach Boys story -- there were a bunch of other acts that ceased to be popular.

I'm sure that if you look at the actual charts it looks much more complicated.

Here are The Shadows doing "Apache" back in the day. The video is somewhat blurry, but worth watching for the cigarette action at 2:30.

re: 47

The odd bit is how 'Apache' later came, via a cover version, to be hugely influential in the nascent hip-hop scene in the early/mid 70s.

I'm sure that if you look at the actual charts it looks much more complicated.

Next you'll be wanting us to read the articles linked in the posts.

Ah, the inimitable Jet Harris.

48: odd only if you don't recognize the centrality of Michael Viner's Incredible Bongo Band to all music before or since.

That concert sounds interesting. I would have enjoyed it.

There used to be a video on youtube of Misirlou which started out all in darkness, with just a glint off the head of an electric guitar. It was sweet! But I can't find it anymore.

What that be this one?

Yessssssss.

Here's my secret research technique: Perform this search and click on the first result. I'm thinking of developing a course.

(Daring to snark after writing "what" for "would"!)

I don't have permission to access /2001/tma1/wav/feelit.wav on that server.

I did search, on youtube itself, you jerk.

59.1: Hmmm, interesting. Here's the page it is from.

I did search, on youtube itself

That second bit is your problem right there. Unless things have changed recently, doing a Google search with "site:youtube.com" or just "youtube" in your search terms is more effective than using YouTube's own search.

That, and the fact that, since the preview image isn't the image I was thinking of from the beginning, I didn't recognize it even though it was the second hit.

The Cro Magnon track "Habemus Pampam" (should be "Papam") has a little surf guitar interlude, and all the music of Forever Einstein and Vril is indebted to surf guitar. Fact!

"Misirlou" has an interesting history.

One of my lit professors theorized that it helps in being expressive when you're inspired by works not familiar to your audience. There may be something to that - if you can get outside a lot of expectations, it's easier to do something new and personal.

That is a fascinating comment. It makes sense, but I wouldn't have thought about that. Do you think that it means that it helps "to be expressive" or "to appear expressive"? I would imagine that if the artist is working with a sense of structure that they audience doesn't perceive, that it would make the audience more attentive to the emotional content of the work, but not necessarily make the work more emotional for the artist.

183

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Horrifying news of the day: Hollywood contemplates the despoilation of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-ca-travis12-2009jul12,0,7793187.story?page=1

|>

Horrifying news of the day: Hollywood contemplates the despoilation of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee.

Time for LB to break out the orange post titles again.

Heh. I wonder if they're going to keep up with the 'Whoops, my girlfriend was just killed by a freak Bulgarian assassination method/direct hit from explosion shrapnel/brain cancer/head injury that she actually survived but that means she doesn't like me anymore/meteor strike/superintelligent extraterrestrial fungus/wild dogs/Nazi frogmen" theme. Based on the books, they could run through five or six female leads in a two-hour movie.

The role of the Byrds is missing in some of the above. By electrifying Dylan, they paved the way for some of what you hear on Rubber Soul. Their "Mr. Tambourine Man" came out in the summer of '65; the Beatles recorded Rubber Soul in the fall. Dave Crosby is actually the person who introduced Harrison to classical Indian music as well.

68: The Starsky's Girlfriend/Red Shirt Syndrome? I'm going to like them anyway 'cause in one story, when Travis needed some expertise in psychedelics, MacD mentions by name people I used to work with at Einstein.

Oh, I liked the books a lot. I can't imagine a movie not sucking, though, or if not sucking at least being a fairly interchangeable shoot-em-up -- most of what was interesting was McGee rambling about stuff, and that's hard to do in a movie (My Dinner with Meyer?).

35: The stuff that we take, today, as being the pinnacle of Wilson and the Beach Boys output wouldn't have happened at all if it wasn't for the Beatles.

Undoubtedly true, but of course there certainly was the reverse influence as well as both tried to push the envelope. Here is a passage describing some of the influence of Pet Sounds on The Beatles. But unquestionably Wilson and The Beachboys were a distant second in the "competition".

64: With a back story like that, Misirlou was probably our best chance at world peace. Too bad the fucking Beatles killed surf-rock.

Well, I think so, I think the Beatles turned the song, or rediscovered the song, as an expressive art rather than performative. ... Everybody talks about the Beatles energy and enthusiasm and that means they were really really into the fucking song. Like they were singing more for themselves than for the audience. ... I tried the great Sinatra/riddle albums, and they are great, but Sinatra was always acting. Beatles were like Brando. They made it real.

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm not sure. I absolutely agree that Sinatra is overtly theatrical/stagey, but I'm not sure that I believe that dichotemy acurately describes the way in which the Beatles were revolutionary.

I mean the Beatles feel very stagey to me compared to the Everly Brothers. Or, thinking about Country music, what about Hank Williams or Jimmie Rodgers? Both of them seem very expressive.

re: 72

Yeah, McCartney has talked about the influence of Pet Sounds on him. It was reciprocal. I can't see that passage, btw. I don't think it's available from a UK IP.

I mean the Beatles feel very stagey to me compared to the Everly Brothers.

That's just crazy talk.

Have I mentioned here before (obviously I could check but I won't, 'cause I'm crazy like that) seeing the Everly Brothers brought out in the middle of a Simon & Garfunkel set to do a few numbers? Their voices have held up remarkably well.

re: 75

Heh, I didn't know the Ventures did that, although I've heard their version before. I know it best through two other versions.

First, the original, which is (the great) Johnny Smith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HwQxdrmwY8

And second, the John Barry/Vic Flick version, which was, I think, the best known version in the UK. Vic Flick is, famously, the guitar player on the James Bond theme.

The Barry/Flick version is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn1GArGX8PY

Those are some reverby drums.

Smith, btw, is a total legend, especially since he more or less disappeared after 1960:

http://classicjazzguitar.com/artists/artists_page.jsp?artist=29

Among many Smith stories, he was famously parachuted into some premiere/recording of a Schoenberg piece where a famous classical guitarist had been struggling to get something down for a couple of days. Smith sight read it.

The story here:

http://blacktorrent.blogspot.com/2006/11/you-could-only-hope-to-live-in-ivywild.html

[re: Schoenberg, etc]

Nobody brought up Dick Dale yet?

re: 85

Apart from the discussion of, and links to videos of, Misirlou above?

While we're at it:

The Chantays on Lawrence Welk with Pipeline and The Surfaris Wipe Out.

Have I mentioned here before (obviously I could check but I won't, 'cause I'm crazy like that) seeing the Everly Brothers brought out in the middle of a Simon & Garfunkel set to do a few numbers? Their voices have held up remarkably well.

At the United Center?

What's with the swaying everyone did?

Destroyer's "Signs" (audio) to today's threads:

The bird is not the word. Quit being so cryptic with the way you rock and swerve. Remove your shoes, panic ensues. Nothing left to do. If you don't believe in recompense, who will fix the fence for you?

Don't wanna clear the floor anymore. Her interests are classical at best. Bested modern times, modern minds. Signs, signs, everywhere signs.

Actually, I'm rather meh about City of Daughters.

Dick Dale has been mentioned, but not I think
Jerry Cole

I mean the Beatles feel very stagey to me compared to the Everly Brothers.

That's just crazy talk.

Yeah, it is crazy talk. I admit to not being a Beatles fan, but the strongest case I could make would be that some Everly Brothers' songs are more expressive than some Beatles albums (for example, the last time I listened to Sgt Pepper I found it unbelievably stiff).

[I also see that Bob had already mentioned Hank Williams and I missed it.]

What made me think of the Everly Brothers, however, was Bob's line about, "they were singing more for themselves than for the audience." The best Everly Brothers songs definitely make me believe that they find the song emotionally moving.

The best Everly Brothers songs definitely make me believe that they find the song emotionally moving.

I also think this is true of some of the 50s stuff by Elvis, and also many rockabilly stars of that era.

Comment 98 is not by me.

This does mean, of course, the if the bloglords delete the original comment #98, my previous comment will become both self-referential and false.

Likewise original 101. Although note strategic misspelling.

You are now obligated to post as Stormcow when commenting drunk.

104: From my frat house.

Ok, Stevie Ray Vaughn + Dick Dale just blew my mind, and not just for Dick Dale's hair circa 1987.

That is surprisingly great.

Have you listened to any of the sessions with (a very young) Stevie Ray Vaughn and Albert King?