Surf Music

Surf music evolved from late 1950s instrumental Rock & Roll in the USA, particularly associated with the surfing culture in Southern California. Artists such as Duane Eddy, Link Wray and UK group The Shadows combined catchy rock & roll rhythms with distinctive 'twangy' lead guitar, laying the early blueprints for Surf Rock. This was soon confirmed by Dick Dale, dubbed 'The King of Surf Guitar', with singles such as "Let's Go Trippin'" and "Miserlou" sparking the genre's explosion. A string of surf-themed hits adopting the sound followed in the early 1960s, including The Surfaris' "Wipeout" and The Lively Ones's "Surf Rider". The vast majority of this initial style of surf music consisted of short, fast-paced instrumental tracks (and is indeed sometimes retroactively referred to as 'instrumental surf'), emphasising the aforementioned twang of the reverb-drenched electric tremolo guitar melodies. Bands typically performed drum breakdowns as well as making use of Fender guitars, which could produce a wet effect said to emulate the sound of waves. Dale (alongside his backing group the Del-Tones) pioneered both the addition of Middle Eastern and Mexican Music influences and the use of the 'alternate picking' technique in surf music, which involved hitting the guitar strings both upwards and downwards in rapid succession. By 1963, Vocal Surf had gained huge popularity with the success of The Beach Boys and Jan & Dean, exploding after the former's hits "Surfin' Safari" and especially "Surfin' U.S.A.". This new surf style shifted the emphasis from riff-heavy instrumental breakdowns to harmonised Doo-Wop and falsetto vocals, usually with surf-themed lyrics. Instrumental backing often used piano, saxophones and less twangy, more traditional Chuck Berry-esque rock & roll guitar work. This mix was a crucial part of the development of the 'California sound' during the early-to-mid 1960s. On top of surfboards, sun, sea and girls, many groups began to write surf songs featuring lyrics about cars, leading to the term Hot Rod Music. By the mid-1960s, surf music had mostly died out in the USA due to the British Invasion and the rise in popularity of Garage Rock and Psychedelic Rock. Various surf rock-inspired scenes appeared globally during this time, however, including Eleki in Japan, Wong shadow in Thailand and Rautalanka in Finland. The wave of Punk Rock in the late 1970s and early 1980s brought about new developments in surf music, both in the emergence of the fusion genre Surf Punk and in providing an influence on the development of Skate Punk. Man or Astro-Man? are a practitioner of both surf punk and a 1990s surf rock mini-revival. The influence of surf has been seen in various soundtracks, both during the craze (the famous guitar lick played by Vic Flick on "The James Bond Theme"); later on in the decade (amongst the melting pot of influences in Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western scores); and decades later (the use of numerous surf rock hits in Pulp Fiction).