Brian

Klas

Brian
I wouldn't necessarily say dressing up for a gig or record cover photo shoot means "living the lifestyle", and maybe this is the the source of the confusion/friction in this thread.

It's beyond me how anyone could have misunderstood my first post in this thread:

Klas
Yeah, it would definitely be great if more bands today actually "lived it" a little bit more besides just playing the music.

Confusing the above with living a full time early 1960's Southern California teenage lifestyle is hilarious.

Well that's exactly how it came across to many of us. And still does. Maybe its a language difference.

Really? I'm pretty sure that putting something within quotation marks like I did with "lived it" also in English means it shouldn't be taken literally. I also said "a little bit more ". So even if someone thought that "lived it" meant living a full time lifestyle, the "a little bit" part should have taken care of that delusion.

synchro

Klas

Klas
Yeah, it would definitely be great if more bands today actually "lived it" a little bit more besides just playing the music.

Confusing the above with living a full time early 1960's Southern California teenage lifestyle is hilarious.

Then what do you mean by "living it"?

Simply that one would be able to tell that a band is playing surf music without actually hearing the music. This could include basically anything related to early 60's pop surf culture. I'm pretty sure that was also what Johnny Bartlett meant in the quote from the book.

IvanP
I'll take "surf music" rather than "surf rock". Sorry to spoil your attempt to make the world nicely black & white, Klas....

I know there are exceptions and that's why I used the words "tend" and "usually"

T H E ✠ S U R F I T E S

FlatRacer
Nostalgia is such a funny and malleable thing. As a tail end baby boomer, I have a great deal of nostalgia for the lifestyle, even though I never lived it, and it was mostly a myth anyway. I restored three Schwinn Krates out of a sense of nostalgia even though I could only afford a Ross Barracuda when I was a kid, so what was that nostalgia for? Bikes that other more fortunate kids rode? Same thing with the music.

Eric

You said a mouthful there Eric. Very few people evre lived the "lifestyle" that movies and TV would have you believe existed back then. When Dinah Shore was singing "See the USA in your Chevrolet" there were still plenty of people driving around in old jalopies that barely ran. There were great houses in the suburbs but there were a lot of people still living in rooming houses.

The nostalgia in "American Graphiitti" was very realistic but also extremely concentrated. All of those things were quite possible, but they didn't all happen on the same night. In many subjects, many more so than the subject of Surf music, I find that there are plenty of people that want to defend their view of what is "authentic", but it's all pretty subjective if you ask me.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Brian-C
All good points.

I don't want to keep tooting my own horn, but since the subject of this thread is about the "Pop Surf Culture" book, I will tell you that we attempted to de-mythologize as much as we possibly could. We certainly took the "real" surfer to task on their long-standing prejudice against surf music, as well as the occassional surfer who doesn't fill their entire life up with surfing. One of my favorite quotes in the book comes from chapter 20, the "Midwest Surf Music" chapter:

The cliché “making lemonade out of lemons” could definitely be applied to these Midwest purveyors of the surf sound. Actual surfers should excuse their locale, bow down and worship these people who were clearly born with a major disadvantage concerning water, but showed nothing less than a full appreciation of its alluring qualities through their music.

That's an important point. Surf music was big in Minnesota during the early '60s and I'm sure it was that way across the US.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

I think it all goes to demonstrate that while Surf music and surfing go together like a hand in a glove the two are capable of existing seperately from one another. At least some surfers were said to have listened to Jazz and were into Beat poetry.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Kman1
I can't beieve you guys had a 9 page dispute without me. Good for you!

We have a team of Harvard lawyers working as we speak to find a way to blame it on you.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

There was quite a lot of surf music out of the East Coast during the first wave. Not much of it made it to radio, and there were no national hit records, other than "New York's a Lonely Town (When Your the Only Surfer Boy)," and that was more of a Brill Building exploitation cut, albeit quite good.

I wasn't personally able to find any surf instrumental bands from Virginia Beach during the first wave, though that's not to say there weren't any. I found quite a lot in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Florida, near the beach towns, especially during the summer months. These were covered in a chapter titled "The East Coast Surf Music Scene."

As for surfers listening to beat poetry and jazz, I think that preceded surf music. During the '50s, surf shops looked an awful lot like beatnik coffeehouses. Surf soundtracks were filled with jazz and world music, and surfers like Greg Noll still talk quite a bit about real surfers liking jazz and R&B. I think the old guard rejected surf instrumental rock 'n' roll vehemently as an exploitation of their private past-time.

Those few super-athletes from the '40s and '50s would have liked nothing more than to keep it isolated amongst the 100 or 200 people up and down the coastline. To say nothing of the fact that they've pretty much made their entire living based off of the popularity created by the Beach Boys and the Gidget films. I just tend to think both sides have good points. Without the pioneers of surfing, we wouldn't have had the pop moment to begin with, and without the huge early '60s explosion of surf culture, we probably wouldn't be talking about it to the extant that we are today. It's a worldwide phenomenon because of that one pop culture moment. That was surfing's shot heard 'round the world.

Brian-C
As for surfers listening to beat poetry and jazz, I think that preceded surf music. During the '50s, surf shops looked an awful lot like beatnik coffeehouses. Surf soundtracks were filled with jazz and world music, and surfers like Greg Noll still talk quite a bit about real surfers liking jazz and R&B. I think the old guard rejected surf instrumental rock 'n' roll vehemently as an exploitation of their private past-time.

Those few super-athletes from the '40s and '50s would have liked nothing more than to keep it isolated amongst the 100 or 200 people up and down the coastline. To say nothing of the fact that they've pretty much made their entire living based off of the popularity created by the Beach Boys and the Gidget films. I just tend to think both sides have good points. Without the pioneers of surfing, we wouldn't have had the pop moment to begin with, and without the huge early '60s explosion of surf culture, we probably wouldn't be talking about it to the extant that we are today. It's a worldwide phenomenon because of that one pop culture moment. That was surfing's shot heard 'round the world.

That's pretty much the way I heard it too.

Unfortunately once Pop culture discovers anything the results can be unpredictable. All I ever knew about the world of surfers came from the era of first wave Surf music. For all I knew (at the time) they had invented the sport. Obviously, when you talk about a distinct group such as surfers or bikers the era has a big influence on the way things were done. Bikers in the '50s were a lot different from bikers in the '80s and it's changed again since then. I'm sure that surf culture is every bit as fluid.

I can only imagine that the seasoned surfers of the '50s weren't all that pleased to see their interest becoming mainstream. Add in a bit of twangy guitar music and a bunch of teens and there's no doubt that there were some disillusioned verterans.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

It's fluid, and it has changed a lot over the years. But I don't think surfing has had another huge mainstream explosion on the level of what it had in the early '60s. Since then, it's just been a given, in terms of it having some cultural staying-power, and the commercial side of surf sort of changes with the times. You had your psychedelic/mod surf era... a definite hippy surf period... some great punk era surf material... etc., etc.

One thing I like about the early '60s surf boom was that it all seemed very indigenous... like no outside influences were dictating where this goes. The music, the films, the design, the fashion, the shapers and artists... they all seemed to have a definitive style that was both optimistic and also carefree/rebellious/bohemian.

I'm going to try and prove real surfers can listen to Surf! Carol has proved it.

Sonichris
I also like to think that all early 60's fender equipment is happy to be playing surf music again. After all, its the music it was meant to play.

I agree. It's not healthy to be that cynical.

Kahuna, the thing about Miki Dora is that he DID leave, for both practical reasons (he was being chased by the Feds), and for the very reasons you say he didn't. Truth is, he went on the run from the law, and "on the road" in search of new surf environs. That said, Dora did complain during the mid-'60s about surfing's exploitation. Yet, I think he took full advantage of the good-time, go-go fever that hit the sands. There are two biographies out on Dora right now, both highly recommended... the man had his fair-share of wine, women and gold. And why not? He was the best at that time. Maybe ever.