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Well, then there's also the Serfs, which sort of reminds me of 3
Mustaphas 3 without the Absinthe. But it was more the aspect of how the
bluegrass form keeps getting 'rediscovered', that fans would not let it
die, that prompted this whole riff. That both forms keep getting
revived, and hybridized, then back to roots, then hybridized in some
weird endless cycle of reincarnation.
I wasn't proposing a shotgun wedding between 5-string banjo and a
reverb tank(Do you, banjo take this here reverb...)--and while I think
a double picked mandolin fits in better with this odd relationship than
3 fingered banjo rolls, I am in favor of any kind of experiments that
leads to something that sounds good. Isn't that how Dick Dale came to
play Miserlou in the first place? As an experiment and a response to a
challenge? Can you play a song on just one string?
On New Dimensions in Bluegrass and Banjo, the pioneering 1963 LP by
studio musician Eric Weissberg and Marshall Brickman (who later went on
to write screenplays such as Annie Hall), backed by none other than
Clarence White, there is a song called 'Riding the Waves', which, aside
from its evocative title, has nothing reminiscient about surf guitar.
There have been a LOT of Bluegrass and String bands and hybrids in the
past 60 years, some of them are pretty well known, some are not. Unless
you have really deeply delved into the culture, away from the more
commercial crap, you may not have heard a lot of the instrumental music
from lesser known groups or players. Some of that stuff, like
breakdowns done in a minor mode, start to sound like Indian Ragas, they
start to get into the same sort of middle eastern gypsy sounding space
that you hear with tunes like Latinia, or the Wedge, or Casbah.
In fact, John Fahey may have been one of the first to recognize this
connection(and record it way back in the late 50's in his bedroom)
between the folk music breakdown form, and the Indian Raga, and begin
to experiment with blues/Indian hybridization--some of those
experimentations, if slowed down, could be adapted into an interesting
surf melody: Night Train to Valhalla, leaps to mind. (He also
introduced the ideas of Charles Ives into folk music long before Lesh
and Garcia did it!) And maybe that is the thing about Jim Thomas, he's
kind of a Charles Ives, Coltrane, Szabo confluence. Can Surf music
stand the strain of alien genes retro-viruses into its DNA without
turning cancerous? Bound to produce some freaky monstrous mutations.
For years we have been taking old time fiddle tunes such as The
Swinging Gate, or Paddy on the Turnpike, or the Musical Priest, or the
Wind that Shakes the Barley, or Fire on the Mountain, and slowing them
waay down, introducing glissandos and a surf beat. Hell the Penetrators
did that song 'The Wind Beneath my Kilt'. There are a lot of Celtic
fiddle tunes that can be cannibalized in this way--and alot of these
are the basis for bluegrass. There was a group back in the 80's called
Rare Air that turned Scottish tunes(if it's not Scottish, its crap!)
into Space Rock numbers, replete with electric bagpipes, that was not
too far from the Penetrators version of 'the Wind'. I always thought
that it might be cool to replace the saxophone in a surf band with a
set of bagpipes--piped through a reverb chamber, of course.
I'm just saying that if you got a fertile swamp filled with all kinds
of exotic orchids, the bees are going to be going back and forth cross-
pollinating and causing strange hybrids, some of which might not be
worth noticing, but some of which might be quite astonishing. And
the 'astonishing part', isn't that what it's all about? I know I like
to be astonished when I go to hear someone play. I love it when I have
to hold my jaw up to keep it off the floor.
J
--- In , Phil Dirt <phildirt@r...> wrote:
> Most directly linked: Buzzy Frets and his Surfabilly Orchestra!
>
> --- Marty Tippens <mctippens@e...> wrote:
> I attempted a more direct bluegrass / surf marriage
