Posted on Jul 05 2024 08:31 AM
elmorto wrote:
Tremolo is used in many genres, and instruments.
Black Metal == Surf Rock == Neapolitan Mandolin Music
The History of Tremolo
Those Neopolitan Mandolin dudes really knew how to hang ten. 
There’s a lot of recycling done in music. Surf became what it was because a number of factors converged: electrification, the overall state of Rock h’ Roll at the time, perhaps some cultural factors unique to SoCal at the time, and some specific things in Rock, such as Duane Eddy and Link Ray, whose work somewhat hinted at the path forward. Add in a force of nature, such as Dick Dale, and it became inevitable.
I have a lot of respect for players who can sustain an uninterrupted tremolo for an extended period of time, regardless of genre.
terma_reverb wrote:
"Black metal without distortion is just Surf Rock" ... that is a good click-bate title right there!
You can find similarities in everything if you compare just a tiny fraction and not the whole picture. And humans tend to over-generalize because it simplifies understanding, so oxymoron assumptions like this may seem "attractive" to our brains!
On the other hand, Dick Dale is the grandfather of Heavy Metal, and both are "rock" music. So you could assume that Black Metal is the great-great grandson of Surf in the "rock" genre family tree. 
Good point. We want to sort things into convenient categories and to over generalize. When I was a child, maybe kindergarten age, I would hear the music my parents listened to on the radio, and I’d hear the music my older sister would listen to, and took note of the contrast. Over the years, I realized that there were a lot of subtle differences in between, but I also came to realize that there was a lot of cross-pollination between various genres, and that is where the new strains of music come about.
One of my favorite examples is Chicago, which I see as a compact horn section straight out of the Big Band ethos combined with a Rock rhythm section. In a sense, the two major categories on my parent’s music and my sister’s music had joined together.
Another area of cross-pollination has been the strange dance that Country and Rock have been doing, since the earliest days of Rock. These two genres have woven in and out of one another many times, over the decades. Some of the resulting music defies categorization, IMHO. I love Buck Owens’ music, and some of that, like Tiger By the Tail seems to straddle the line perfectly.
Getting back to the Black Metal/Surf comparison; I definitely see a harder edge in the Black Metal songs, than in most Surf, but I have the feeling that it would have been well received at the Rendevous Ballroom, circa 1962. Presentation is a big part of it. Had I heard the songs in the video with a lot of distortion, I probably wouldn’t have listened for very long. Highly distorted music doesn’t appeal to me, with the exception of TerrY Kath on 25 or 6 to Four. Had a Black Metal Band shown up at the Rendevous, dressed like a Black Metal band and using heavy distortion, the place would have emptied out, quickly. If the Dick Dale of 1962 walked walked into a Black Metal concert had played the songs from the video with a cleanish guitar sound, and dressed like he dressed in ‘62, I suspect that he would have emptied out that venue, as well. Same notes, same technique, but the guitar sounds different due to effects and the look of the players is different. My parents, as rooted as they were in the Big Band world, would listen to Surf, but never to Heavy Metal.
—
The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
October Birthdays 
now it's just a matter of convincing our black metal guitarist friends to switch their distortion pedals for reverb 
