THE GENRE PROJECT - January 7 - Surf Rock

Genre of the Day - Surf Rock

Album of the Day - Walk, Don’t Run Vol. 2 by The Ventures (1964)

Today’s genre is Surf Rock, which might be the most welcome for me thus far, as I’ve dabbled a little bit in the genre—your classic Beach Boys (although if we’re being technical their music is not really surf rock), Wipeout!, The Astronauts (shoutout Colorado despite being hundreds of miles from any beach) and I even have a song saved from decades-later-revivalists The Aqua Velvets—however, I haven’t actually listened to a full surf rock album quite yet. As an eternal fan of southern California, I love this genre, along with so many other people, for what it represents, but there’s also so much to love in its distinctive sounds and melodies, especially for guitar fans. 

Surf rock is distinct from other forms of rock mostly instrumentally, and purists of the genre like to claim that only instrumental rock counts as real surf rock, so obviously there is a ton of emphasis on guitar here. One man, Dick Dale, essentially pioneered the entire genre in the early 1960s and was indeed a surfer, introducing its hallmarks such as intense reverb, staccato picking, but a band called the Ventures—which I admittedly hadn’t heard of but is the best selling instrumental rock band of all time—also made great contributions to the genre’s sound with fuzz and ‘flanging’ (it’s funny that a single word that I couldn’t even really define if asked can definitively describe a sound) guitar emphases.

Now, The Ventures’ album I listened to today was not actually the top album, but the one on top was listed as rockabilly before surf rock anyway, and the second one was a specific Japanese offshoot of surf rock that is defined as its own genre that is on the masterlist so I thought I’d might encounter it down the line anyway. This marks the first time, I guess, that I haven’t listened to the #1 album, but #3 out of 3,089 surf rock releases can’t hurt. 

I quite enjoyed this album, as I expected, but it’s impressive that the Ventures are able to tackle a range of moods and tones with a surf rock angle. Diamond Head is the song that sounds most identifiably surf rock to the untrained listener. I love how zippy and punctuated the guitar melodies are throughout these songs. There’s something undeniably joyful and sunny about certain melodies just like the place the music attempts to evoke, but the moment you’re giddily coasting on a wave, you suddenly wipe out and a tenser, darker melody shifts the tone. These songs are dynamic, fast-paced fun, but The Ventures also explore more traditionally-southern sounding rock (Peach Fuzz) and pay their dues to the original surfing capital, Hawai’i, with the longing steel guitar (Blue Star). Across just 30 minutes, they give the listener a truly dynamic, evocative instrumental experience and this was one of my favorite listens so far.