Freelancewriter wrote:
Hi all. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is
Ed Mitchell. I wrote the surf article in Guitarist
magazine.
Welcome, Ed!! Great to have you here!
I want to say thanks for all the positive
comments. I'm a fellow surf music freak so as you can
imagine this was a brilliant project for me.
Indeed!! You definitely know your stuff - well done!!
My mission was to make surf music sound exciting and
enticing to those guitarists that hadn't been exposed
to it; or bothered to dig deeper than the usual
well-known recordings. I hope I managed to do that.
Absolutely! One thing I do wish you were able to do was to talk just a bit more about the modern surf scene. I completely understand that you have certain constraints within which you have to work when you're writing a piece like this, and like I said above, I do think you did a great job, but it gets frustrating that whenever surf music seems to be discussed in the more mainstream media, it's always all about the classics. As you undoubtedly know, it's a living genre, with hundreds of bands around the world gigging and recording, and many of them recording some pretty remarkable music, equal to the classics IMO, and I just wish you were able to convey that a bit more. But i understand that for mainstream readers, the classic stuff might be a more effective 'gateway drug.'
Along similar lines, there's no question that Deke, Rick and Eddie know and understand surf music - but the first two are not surf guitarists (though Deke was at one point, and Rick can certainly pull it off as well as anyone when he wants to), and Eddie's heart is really more with Link Wray and '50s rock'n'roll (whether instro or not) than surf. Again, it would have been nice to interview a true-blue surf guitarist, someone like Dave Wronski or Mikko Lankinen of Laika & the Cosmonauts or whoever else. But again, this is a minor gripe.
The slight problem with this type of article is that
you have to go over some ground that has been
well-trodden. That's obviously frustrating for the surf
faithful who know a lot of the history of the music
already, but it's necessary to pull in the intrigued
and unconverted.
Of course, and I think everybody here undestood that. No problem.
My comments re: Dick talking about the aborigines was
designed to illustrate just how fascinating he is to
speak with... and amusing.
I believe the majority of us around here are fully aware of Dick's... emmm, let's call them eccentricities. I personally really enjoyed how you dealt with that issue. Nicely played.
Anyway, I'm thrilled to see the positive feedback. I
thank you all for your comments.
You're very welcome, and thanks for doing such a great job with the article, and doing surf music justice! Here's hoping they'll let you do a follow-up in due time. Good luck!
—Ivan
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