Man, I love these girls. They surf rocket... La Luz. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=820Wgc2fDus&sns=em

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Better some cute, cool and creative young gals playing moderately surfed-up music than much of what is considered cool in pop music, and gets labelled 'surf' these days. Then there is the 'hardcore surf community' with just us in it... I'd welcome lowering the bar a few notches to admit some youngsters. And the fact that they are all female is a nice counterbalance to the overwhelming maleness of the strictly instrumental scene.
La Luz's use of vintage surf-instro sounds is refreshingly sincere and fun to boot. These days the hip young guitarists are aiming for vintage sounds and still so much that gets called surf is nearly devoid of the sounds and feel to which we aficionados are addicted.
I'd say La Luz delivers a healthy helping of cool guitar and the vocals are natural and tuneful without the sissy affections ubiquitous on the radio this year. I give 'em a thumbs up. Not serious surf, but not pernicious detractors.

Squink Out!

Last edited: Feb 24, 2014 19:54:04

Is there room in surf for vocals? That has been and will continue to be discussed and discussed. Depending on the answer, La Luz is either a vocal band that also plays surf or a vocal surf band.

IMHO, they have fun, play well enough, and their audiences have a great time. Since I generally fall in the, "vocal surf is on the pop side of surf but is still a variety of surf," camp, I think they play a kind of surf. YMMV.

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Last edited: Feb 25, 2014 07:26:37

Of all the surf pop bands that I have heard people rave on over the past few years, this band is the closest I have seen to there being a genuine connecting thread relating to Surf. I am still not hugely fond of this movement, but it is turning ears. Rather than arguing about it, perhaps this is the key that we should all be trying to figure out a way to latch onto in hopes of increasing visibility for what we do. We have been asked to play with a lot of these bands over the past few years and they, as well as their audiences, have been very receptive to what we do.

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For what it's worth, SurferBill's link is to an instrumental named Damp Face. La Luz really only do a few instrumentals, it's true, but this is one.

I don't know what he actually meant, but read his subject line as "In the future this is what people will think you mean when you are talking about surf music," and "When they themselves say 'surf music' this is what they will have in mind." We don't have a copyright on the term, as we have always known (and bitched).

But then, as we've always known but tended not to admit, the original surf bands weren't really particularly pure purveyors of what the second wave idealized as "surf music." They sang a lot and did other kinds of music that we quickly skip over where it got recorded which, for us, was all too often. And they did weird things like play saxophones and pianos as often as guitars, even trumpets occasionally, and some of them couldn't find anyone to play bass at all or traded a bass around among themselves because no one wanted to play it all the time. And you have to wait til the first wave started making some money to hear much Fender equipment.

If you think about it, you have to go to non-surf bands like the Ventures and Shadows to get that "classic guitar combo" sound anything like consistently early on. Kind of toward the end when surf music was on its way out you hear a few surf bands with "the classic guitar combo sound" and no sax. Except when they were doing that psychedelic stuff and singing Beatles covers.

Of course, there's no sax in Wipeout, but the sax player couldn't get the day off to make the record. His dad made him help at the store.

There are plenty of young guys who play killer surf that appeals to people their age. Partly because they are that age and partly because any classical trappings are built in, not a costume wearing re-enactment. The Worms do great riotous surf music and I suspect their audience is having too much fun to know or care much where it came from or whether they have the tone just right. God, I wish they were a Denver band! Or Grand Junction, that would be close enough.

Actually there are plenty of young people who do great re-enactments too. And plenty of old people doing all of the above as well. But what you can't get young people (or even many old people) to do is follow around from gig to gig old people who do re-enactments or even classical sounding new stuff. If they are tearing down the house, maybe. Otherwise think of your reaction to guys in straw hats singing barbershop. What defines "a cover band" is not playing covers. It's having certain attitudes - a variety of them, mostly deadly to cool - to the act of playing covers.

Last edited: Feb 25, 2014 11:09:59

I always appreciate a nod to Surf (when done sincerely)and think these gals do a great job at it.It might even encourage some of the audience to seek out the roots of the genre they way a lot of us did at one time.

A little of my own surf music angst may be coming out here, too.

I didn't mean that La Luz was compromised artistically or technically but that to keep Surf Music viable we have to forego purism.

As long as younger audiences will tolerate the presence of older surf fans (and folks of different ethnic stripe) we have the possibility of keeping things open and flowing freely between genres that are close enough to fit well on a bill. The generational and cultural-linguistic divide is a challenge we ought to face and overcome.

Razabilly – thew wholesale adoption of Hillbilly Rock & Roll by LA Pachukos in the 1990's is an interesting phenomenon. I hope Razabillies will welcome non-latino musicians and fans in their midst.

Surf has willy-nilly become rather white, male and mature, but there are lots of bands that are none of those things. I hope we can open the gates enough to keep things lively.
Johnny-O wrote:

I see your point but I disagree that any "bar lowering" is necessary to accommodate the younger generation. That lightbulb went off for me over a year ago at one of the last nights at the Doll Hut (which recently reopened, yay !!). The Tequilla Worms, who are all probably even younger than La Luz, were playing to a predominantly young Latino Rocker crowd (in fact BTD observed he was the only White guy in the place). Anyway those kids were going NUTS over the Worms' heavy Surf sounds. I realized then that Surf's audience could be much more than just middle-aged White guys sitting in chairs. That show to me was "the future of Surf".

Squink Out!

kaijusaafu wrote:

killbabykill34 wrote:

Of all the surf pop bands that I have heard people rave on over the past few years, this band is the closest I have seen to there being a genuine connecting thread relating to Surf. I am still not hugely fond of this movement, but it is turning ears. Rather than arguing about it, perhaps this is the key that we should all be trying to figure out a way to latch onto in hopes of increasing visibility for what we do. We have been asked to play with a lot of these bands over the past few years and they, as well as their audiences, have been very receptive to what we do.

The key? Get these guys to book your tours and plug you into their network of mass media tastemakers.

You nailed it.

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Looks like they're in Denver on March 20th, presumably with the new bassist. Same place as before, Moe's Original BBQ, which is also where Dick Dale has played the last two times he was through. (He used to do the Gothic Theater a couple of doors up Broadway.)

https://www.facebook.com/laluzusa/app_308540029359

For some reason they're listed at the Treefort Music Fest in Boise the same day but also the 22nd. I assume the 20th in Boise is an accidental duplication of the 22nd.

Last edited: Mar 10, 2014 19:10:01