You're not the first to wonder

https://surfguitar101.com/forums/topic/34092/

Storm Surge of Reverb: Surf & Instro Radio

Joelman wrote:

Ok I know I’m behind the times a lot.
But,,,
can someone please explain the connection between sci-fi movies and surf music?
I just don’t see the connection.
Oh and the talking that goes on before the music starts.
Thanks
Joel

There is no real connection between surf music and science fiction films. As far as I know in the older films orchestration was used and if a guitar was used it was used to produce shrill sounds or in moments of action or sth like that. In the early sixties with the space race in full force and the early successes of the USSR, instrumentals became more and more "space-themed" (Telstar, Space Race, Moon Relay et al), but that died pretty much alongside the (temporary) death of the genre during Beatlemania.
It came more to the forefront with the arrival of Man or Astroman? who integrated sounds from the films into their music. And that's what it's always has been: surf and instrumental music always has integrated science fiction more than the other way around.
As for speaking words integrated into instrumentals, that's a trend started in the 80's and not in surf or other instrumentals. Lots of post-punk bands started their songs with audio from old films because it made them look intellectual. That trend was taken over by surf and instro bands because it adds a layer of depth or purpose to the tune: the listener can now imagine in which context he has to place the music: gangster, car races, cowboy, etc.
I do it myself in some tunes for that very same reason, just like I add some background choir to some tunes. This used to be done a lot in instros in the 50's/early 60's (mr Richard Monsour has a few tunes with a background choir) because it adds richness and atmosphere to a tune. Always wondered why modern bands don't use background choirs on for example ballads. It really beautifies a tune.

Hope this answers your question.
Cheers from Dublin.

Albums:
_Introducing; Impala '59; An Evening with; Herr Magnatech Bittet Zum Tanz; Europa

Changing label.

https://magnatech.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/magnatechmusic
https://www.magnatech-music.com

frundmragone wrote:

Its a theme really adapted moderately during the late 50's to early 60's when the satellites were new and interesting and 90's groups like man or astroman took it to the next level theming it and including sound clips kind of setting a blueprint for the sci fi genre. Its only connected if you want it to be essentially. Just adds fun and a bit of nostalgia

Thank you for your reply! This helps.
Joel

Last edited: Apr 29, 2023 14:27:11

Listen to the Shadows Man of Mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHjoi_0YhGA

… or Frightened City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CXoBtUenlQ

I wouldn’t argue that either of these are Surf, but they demonstrate just how dramatic instrumental guitar, with a bright sound, can be. To the average listener, the distinctions between Surf guitar, and other guitar based Instrumental Rock are not obvious. Film and television producers are looking for whatever grabs the attention of their audience, so they are going to look for songs that are going to be relevant to the audience, at the time the movie is being produced.

While it’s not really Sci Fi, the somewhat noir movie, Charade, featured the Mancini tune by the same name, and the sound was not far off from a Surf sound. It repeats throughout the movie, and gives it a sound that would be be relatable to a wide audience when the film was released, in 1963.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

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

A well-reasoned explanation, JojobaPlant.

It would be possible to write many, many pages about the cultural influences of music in the US, and the US is a place with a lot of cultural influences.

For example, my youngest years were spent in southern Minnesota. My older sister and I listened to Rock and Roll, but there were a lot of polkas heard at social gatherings. Then my parents moved to a suburb of Denver and I went from a land of Scandinavian grain farmers to a place where there were a lot of people of Italian origin, Hispanics, families of German origin who had migrated to Denver from the Kansas and Oklahoma agricultural regions during the Great Depression, and black families, not to mention families of Japanese ancestry that had moved to Denver after having been interred at the Amache Internment Camp during WW II. Even with all of those different origins, people tended to get along pretty well when I was in Denver. Then I moved to Arizona, and ended up working on the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation. The O’Odham play a music they call Waila, which is Polka music, so I eventually came full circle.

Jojobaplant wrote:

I've heard all sorts of complicated theories about how surf music came to be and in those theories you'd think that surf music would be a separate genre, all on its own and therefor not rock and roll, ergo blues and country. But that is just a nonsensical mystification of a sub genre. Surf music is, like all other modern American musical genres based on blues and country. Vocal surf music just added doowop into the mix.

Literally the only difference between surf instrumentals and other (American) instrumentals was Dick Dale. Prior to Dick Dale, the kids played plain old rock and roll, after the event of Dick Dale the style of the music changed because they all wanted to imitate him. Taking off from him, the music evolved of course.

I love surf instrumentals, but let's just keep it on the ground - no mystification needed as far as I'm concerned.

NB: I am only talking about the period of grossly 1955 - 1965. Modern European surf/instrumental bands have of course adopted the American style nowadays just like American bands have adopted the European style. Back then the difference was more clear.

When people talk about Surf Music, it means different things to different people. The phenomenon of Surf in SoCal gave us some great songs, but the social phenomenon didn’t extend to the rest of the country. We may have identified with it, to some extent, but we couldn’t live it. There’s only one SoCal, and we can’t all live there.

Now I said all that, to say all this; finding a root cause for any musical phenomenon is like peeling an onion. I mention the multilithic culture of the US, because that is what I’ve experienced, but there are a variety of cultural influences everywhere, if for no other reason than that we have recorded music which can be played in many places, and emulated by people of other cultures, while bringing in influences of their own. The Tielman Brothers are a perfect example. Interestingly enough, in my home town in southern Minnesota, there was a local band, comprised of four brothers, who had a weekday noontime TV show, who looked a lot like the Tielmans, albeit they were Minnesotan farm stock, and not Indonesian. The first time I saw the Tielman Brothers, the connection seemed obvious.

I see Surf Guitar as a phenomenon of many influences. Musically, it arrived on the heels of the Twist craze, and I think that the insistent, pounding beat of the Twist played a significant role in what happened in SoCal. But there was also the Chuck Berry influence, the Duane Eddy influence and the Ventures, who never claimed to be a Surf band, but definitely had some parallels. As a child in the upper Midwest, overhearing Surf on my sister’s favorite Top 40 station, it seemed a logical development from the Twist phenomenon which had dominated the conversation just a year earlier.

But apart from residents of SoCal, I don’t think that most people hearing Pipeline on the radio made any connection to Surfing. It was cool guitar music, much of which had the same energy as the Twist songs that were the previous big thing.

I realize that my opinions on this differ from those of some forum members, and I assure you that I mean no disrespect to anyone else, or their opinions. To me, Surf, in its strictest sense, is a sub genre of Instrumental Rock. Instrumental Rock came quickly on the heels of Rock n’ Roll. I’ve heard Bill Doggett’s Honky Tonk described as the Big Bang of Rock n’ Roll guitar. There was Tequila, Sleepwalk, Rumble, and the Duane Eddy “Twangy Guitar” music, with natural reverb from a water tank, and I see this as the spiritual ancestor to Surf. No, the energy was not the same as Surf Music, but the guitar sound bore a strong family resemblance.

My own take is that Surf guitar, as it appeared in the early ‘60s, was Duane Eddy’s sound, and a Twist beat. Of course, it developed from that point, and branched into various directions. It should also be pointed out that some Surf bands, such as the Bel Airs, didn’t use reverb. IMHO, there are no hard and fast rules.

Another aspect is how Surf has developed in the Pulp Fiction era, and beyond. In the US, Surf, and other Instrumental Rock were pretty much forgotten by the ‘70s, but in other places, there was still a lot of interest. I met a fellow from Germany, and he was a huge fan. From him I learned that there was a lot of continuous interest that dated all the way back to the ‘60s.

Not long after Pulp Fiction, the Internet became a consumer product, and it wasn’t long before various forms of Internet communication allowed Surf guitar enthusiasts from all over the world to find one another and to communicate. IMO, this brought to light what had been happening in this area of musical interest in the decades when few in the US were paying any attention to the genre.

What I’ve noticed is some wonderful music coming out of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc. Many of these places have musical traditions where minor keys were prevalent, and IMHO, this added a lot of interesting content. I recall hearing some Hungarian minor scales, for example, and it was a great addition to the Surf sound. Mel Waldorf did some great Surf treatments of traditional Jewish music. Messr Chups strikes me as another great example.

I’m not into hair-splitting, or gatekeeping. I like Surf guitar, and I love that it has survived. Not every new Surf artist is to my taste, but I’m glad to know that people are still creating new music inspired by the Surf I heard when I was a kid.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

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

Here's my favorite Chantay's song Joel

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

Danny, the Chantays did do two space(?) songs. If you want to call them that.
the album you are drawing from was not a popular album. It was absolutely dismal.
The two songs on the album you posted alluding to space, Space Probe, and "Continental Missile,, were not what I am referring to in my sci-fi question.
I’m referring to the videos of space monsters and vampires. Being shown in the music videos. what brought this on in surf music?

Joel

Joelman wrote:

Danny, the Chantays did do two space(?) songs. If you want to call them that.
the album you are drawing from was not a popular album. It was absolutely dismal.
The two songs on the album you posted alluding to space, Space Probe, and "Continental Missile,, were not what I am referring to in my sci-fi question.
I’m referring to the videos of space monsters and vampires. Being shown in the music videos. what brought this on in surf music?

Joel

I see, sorry about that Joel. Perhaps it was the influence of Big Daddy Ed Roth and his cartoons, which tied into monsters and eventually to space monsters?

Danny Snyder

"With great reverb comes great responsibility" - Uncle Leo

Playing keys and guitar with Combo Tezeta

Formerly a guitarist in The TomorrowMen and Meshugga Beach Party

Latest surf project - Now That's What I Call SURF

Joelman wrote:

the album you are drawing from was not a popular album. It was absolutely dismal.

I concur. The Chantays made absolutely great music, but this wasn't their best album. To put it mildly.

I’m referring to the videos of space monsters and vampires. Being shown in the music videos. what brought this on in surf music?

Three reasons I can think of: 1) relevance to the track title; 2) childishness and 3) -excuse my French here- horniness.

Not sure if you saw the clip for the track "Christopher Lee" on my upcoming EP? That's basically a trailer for the first British Dracula movie in 1958. There is a vampire in it, but I always try to make video clips that are relevant to the title of the tune. In this case, Dracula over here is most well known as being played by Christopher Lee. The previous clip I made was about Elephants.
I suppose other bands do this too. I personally think all the stuff going on about monsters, creatures from whatever lagoon etc. is just childish for grown up men to talk about or act like you're a monster. That's what you do when you're a pre-teen and it's still exciting but not when you're in a band and you are 40+. But that's just my personal opinion. My new album will have a track with the word "monster" but it is in a sort of comedic way: "There's a monster in the manure lagoon!!" it's called, so you can figure how serious that title is.
Finally there's the type of men who display this in their clip because they secretly want to display sort of "erotic" images. Since they can't do so in public, they take images from old '50's sci fi or monster movies in which women, due to the sexist spirit of the time, nearly always are somehow scantily clad damsels in distress in need of being saved by strong he-mans.

Albums:
_Introducing; Impala '59; An Evening with; Herr Magnatech Bittet Zum Tanz; Europa

Changing label.

https://magnatech.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/magnatechmusic
https://www.magnatech-music.com

synchro wrote:

A well-reasoned explanation, JojobaPlant.

Thanks! I tried to keep it as short as possible

It would be possible to write many, many pages about the cultural influences of music in the US, and the US is a place with a lot of cultural influences.

I am a trained historian and I tend to write longer pieces about historical topics (as this of course is) because I was taught that saying things without giving the reason or (a bit of) context makes it nothing more than just personal opinions or just sth somebody shouts out for effect. Unfortunately we see that happen way too often nowadays.

For example, my youngest years were spent in southern Minnesota. My older sister and I listened to Rock and Roll, but there were a lot of polkas heard at social gatherings. Then my parents moved to a suburb of Denver and I went from a land of Scandinavian grain farmers to a place where there were a lot of people of Italian origin, Hispanics, families of German origin who had migrated to Denver from the Kansas and Oklahoma agricultural regions during the Great Depression, and black families, not to mention families of Japanese ancestry that had moved to Denver after having been interred at the Amache Internment Camp during WW II. Even with all of those different origins, people tended to get along pretty well when I was in Denver. Then I moved to Arizona, and ended up working on the Tohono O’Odham Indian Reservation. The O’Odham play a music they call Waila, which is Polka music, so I eventually came full circle.

Thank you very much! As I wrote to Joelman, I always love these personal stories as they provide a better insight in the times' spirit than any history book can. As a fun side-fact: I am very familiar with Minnesota. My brother lives there after he married a Native American lady and I have visited and traveled around the state quite a few times Also, the fact that my sister-in-law is Native American, I got the chance to learn more about their culture and heritage.

When people talk about Surf Music, it means different things to different people. The phenomenon of Surf in SoCal gave us some great songs, but the social phenomenon didn’t extend to the rest of the country. We may have identified with it, to some extent, but we couldn’t live it. There’s only one SoCal, and we can’t all live there.

Of course you're right. With the pre- and post Dick Dale sentence I meant that once Dick Dale introduced an overly amount of reverb and the Byzantine scale, kids in bands started to do that too and so the character of surf music changed. I don't live in Southern California nor have I ever lived there, so I can approach it only from a music-historical perspective. Prior to Miserlou, "Middle Eastern" sounding tunes were scarce, I think there'd been only one or two tunes and it was mainly meant as a gimmick. Sheba by Johnny + Hurricanes comes to mind. The number of Middle-Eastern themed tunes exploded after 1962, when Miserlou came out.

Now I said all that, to say all this; finding a root cause for any musical phenomenon is like peeling an onion. I mention the multilithic culture of the US, because that is what I’ve experienced, but there are a variety of cultural influences everywhere, if for no other reason than that we have recorded music which can be played in many places, and emulated by people of other cultures, while bringing in influences of their own. The Tielman Brothers are a perfect example. Interestingly enough, in my home town in southern Minnesota, there was a local band, comprised of four brothers, who had a weekday noontime TV show, who looked a lot like the Tielmans, albeit they were Minnesotan farm stock, and not Indonesian. The first time I saw the Tielman Brothers, the connection seemed obvious.

Yes, the Tielman Brothers' blend of wild rock and roll with Eastern European folk song melodies was unique at the time (for Europe at least). Not only did they introduce Europe (and to an extend the UK) to wild rock and roll antics on stage like jumping on or off standing basses, playing guitars whilst holding the instrument on their necks etc. -things that even the wildest British rockers didn't do. Their wild rock and roll in combination with their melodies, sounding somehow familiar to European audiences, inspired a humongous amount of European bands. They were big in Germany and when you're big in Germany, you're big in Europe. It's just like that. That's why it always has amazed me why they don't get as much credit as the Shadows, who were also massively influential. All of the brothers have passed now and I am thinking of doing a tribute tune for them, focusing on one of their trade marks: two beat-tempos in one tune (6/8 to 4/4).

I see Surf Guitar as a phenomenon of many influences. Musically, it arrived on the heels of the Twist craze, and I think that the insistent, pounding beat of the Twist played a significant role in what happened in SoCal. But there was also the Chuck Berry influence, the Duane Eddy influence and the Ventures, who never claimed to be a Surf band, but definitely had some parallels. As a child in the upper Midwest, overhearing Surf on my sister’s favorite Top 40 station, it seemed a logical development from the Twist phenomenon which had dominated the conversation just a year earlier.

I agree, the Twist craze was a welcome distraction from what else there was in pop music: Franky Avalon, Bobby Rydell, Fabian, the many female counterparts - the general nothingness of sweet sounding tunes without any substance.
And it makes sense to put the event of surf music in that context, but as you say, surf music primarily was a thing for Southern California, it never reached the levels of Beatlemania, Punk and other "shock-changes" in music, which then after a few years always get usurped by commerce somehow. You had the occasional national hit, but indeed, most ppl wouldn't associate Pipeline with surf music when they first heard it. Heck, for myself I can say that I've heard Pipeline and Wipe Out long before I heard Dick Dale and I knew both terms had sth to do with the act of surfing, but given they were on a rock and roll compiler, I just thought they were rock and roll instrumentals titled after some spectacular event like other bands sometimes did. It was quite a bit later that I first learned there was even a thing like surf music. I liked the funny laugh at the start of Wipe Out and I liked the glissando at the start of Pipeline, which was my favorite of the two, but I nowhere connected them to some "surf culture" that had lived in parts of California.

I realize that my opinions on this differ from those of some forum members, and I assure you that I mean no disrespect to anyone else, or their opinions. To me, Surf, in its strictest sense, is a sub genre of Instrumental Rock. Instrumental Rock came quickly on the heels of Rock n’ Roll. I’ve heard Bill Doggett’s Honky Tonk described as the Big Bang of Rock n’ Roll guitar. There was Tequila, Sleepwalk, Rumble, and the Duane Eddy “Twangy Guitar” music, with natural reverb from a water tank, and I see this as the spiritual ancestor to Surf. No, the energy was not the same as Surf Music, but the guitar sound bore a strong family resemblance.
As for opinions - that's the beauty of us all being different. This is not a political theme nor is it sth that will change other ppl's lives, so as for "offending others" is concerned: I can't imagine you offending people with what you wrote. If they are there's sth else wrong with them. But if they do give you crap, just take my dad's advice to heart: "as long as they don't pay your bills, you don't have to care about what they say about you." I've lived by that all my life and whilst I may not be the easiest to work with, I do my best to keep everyone at peace, but on the other hand I simply don't like nonsense. In good Dutch tradition I am really down to Earth.

Another aspect is how Surf has developed in the Pulp Fiction era, and beyond. In the US, Surf, and other Instrumental Rock were pretty much forgotten by the ‘70s, but in other places, there was still a lot of interest. I met a fellow from Germany, and he was a huge fan. From him I learned that there was a lot of continuous interest that dated all the way back to the ‘60s.

Yup, whilst there was a rock and roll revival in the 70's (every music comes back 20 years later), instrumental rock was mostly ignored. Unless it was some novelty kind of record. Then it did get attention. Indeed, I agree that Pulp Fiction has been the breeding ground for many bands that are now ironically are called the "old guard". For myself Pulp Fiction was a blessing as records I had been looking for quite some time suddenly became better available for me to buy. My big push toward surf music had already been in the very early 80's when I heard Jon + Nightriders on the radio and the Surf Raiders which I heard in the record store I was a little later to buy J+N's album. My Bday money that year was sufficient to buy both albums and since then my love for surf music was part of the mix of my love for old music. But it was an "extra" as my first and biggest instrumental love were the European instrumental bands as that was what I had been grown up with. The Shadows, Spotnicks, Tielman Brothers etc were the ones I'd hear played in my family's homes during parties or visits all through my early life.
As Magnatech I consider European instrumentals, surf from the early 60's and the second wave (J + Nightriders and Surfraiders) as my influences. I may be offending some here, but I generally skipped the entire, what I call, Pulp Fiction generation as influence.

Not long after Pulp Fiction, the Internet became a consumer product, and it wasn’t long before various forms of Internet communication allowed Surf guitar enthusiasts from all over the world to find one another and to communicate. IMO, this brought to light what had been happening in this area of musical interest in the decades when few in the US were paying any attention to the genre.

That is true - the internet made things easier, learn about new tunes you've never heard before and also to actually buy these records. This is a good aspect of the internet. If only we can now erase the bad aspects of the internet, it'd be perfect!

What I’ve noticed is some wonderful music coming out of the Balkans, Eastern Europe, Russia, etc. Many of these places have musical traditions where minor keys were prevalent, and IMHO, this added a lot of interesting content. I recall hearing some Hungarian minor scales, for example, and it was a great addition to the Surf sound. Mel Waldorf did some great Surf treatments of traditional Jewish music. Messr Chups strikes me as another great example.

Where the Us is a big multiethnic state, it still is one big melting pot where all of them come together and intermingle. In Europe most of these different cultural things exist, but they are all contained in 53 silos of the diverse countries here. Minor scales are prevalent indeed, which makes for more dramatic and beautiful melodies. Most of my own tunes use minor scales for that reason. For my new record I wanted to do a Hungarian gypsy song I found done by a gypsy band that was active until a few years ago, but I never got around to it. I've got the chord scheme and the melody is not that difficult; I will do it somewhere in the future.
I also agree that Mel and his Meshugga Beachparty did great things with Jewish traditional songs and his band has always counted as one of the rare favorites I have in the Pulp Fiction generation. A while ago, he gave me the chords to Zemer Atik (old melody) as I wanted to do that song, but like the gypsy song, I didn't get around to do it for the new album, but it will be done some time in the future. The Messer Chups are a bit of a weird story to me. I saw them once live in Berlin, can't remember when, but it was around the millennium, and they played this type of industrial avant garde stuff I couldn't really place and to my surprise a couple of years later I saw them suddenly billed as a surf band. I like some of their tunes, especially the cover they made of "Temps de l'amour" from Françoise Hardy (Surf D'amour) and Magneto. But whilst they are accomplished, I just get the feeling they ride the waves of whatever is popular at a given time and their vocal experiment is sth that is best left on the shelf in my opinion.

Not every new Surf artist is to my taste, but I’m glad to know that people are still creating new music inspired by the Surf I heard when I was a kid.

Well, I hope you at least like Magnatech But then again, I am not completely new even though Magnatech is only 3 years old. I have been playing in bands since 1980 and we did play instrumental tunes then as part of shows, sometimes surfy instrumentals, sometimes other ones. They were mainly vocal bands though, because, you know. In 1992 I had written my first two original surf instrumentals, but the band had split up by the time the tunes were done and as it turned out a 27 year hiatus due to life, work, education started. In other words, life got in the way for more than 25 years until I finally could not resist the urge to play electric guitar again ;)

Thank you for your response to my post and cheers from Dublin, Ireland!

NB: I've used both 1992 tunes: the first track of my first album is one and the other is a bonus track on the new EP which will be out in the next two months.

Albums:
_Introducing; Impala '59; An Evening with; Herr Magnatech Bittet Zum Tanz; Europa

Changing label.

https://magnatech.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/magnatechmusic
https://www.magnatech-music.com

Last edited: May 01, 2023 07:09:20