Sound of the Surf
Director: Tom Duncan
Year: 2022
Rating: 6.0
Surf Music fan
here. The reverb guitars have always gotten to me. Can anyone hear Miserlou
and stand still? It was a phenomenon for a few years in the early 1960s till
those boys from Liverpool showed up and changed everything. Wipe Out for
surf music. This documents the rise and decline (and supposed rise again)
of surf music. It does a solid job in its 68 minutes touching on many of
the bands and has interviews with many of the surviving musicians.
The surf scene in Southern California had
been around since the mid 1950s but it was a secret to most Americans. Jazz
was their music of choice at the time though releases from the Ventures (Walk,
Don't Run) and Dick Dale changed that. The music was usually instrumental,
loud, guitar driven and danceble. It changed the music scene that been overrun
by pop idols like Avalon and Fabian. The film Gidget - girl midget - brought
surfing to the attention of the public and then the Beach movies. Groups
like Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the Sufaris, the Ventures, The Challengers,
Eddie and the Showmen went national. The Beach Boys were of course huge,
but the surf music scene considered them phonies. And then the Beatles came
and conquered and practically over night surf music disappeared with the
occasional revival. But it still sounds good to me.