Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I've never been a huge fan of surf rock, but that never applied to strongly to The Ventures in my eyes. In 1965 when this was recorded most bands seemed to treat their instruments like frail delicate flowers, mostly focusing on vocal performance and 4/4 foot tapping romance bile. The Ventures were one of the first groups to really focus on exploring the extra space that electric instruments provided. Granted the surf rhythms are their to an extent these guys had a couple of genre defying tricks up their coat sleeves that took rock guitar to new levels. Their use of minor chords produced a darker, more melodic sound to the overall chord structures causing a less than sunny feel at times. The upbeat stuff was more of a west coast hat tip to the Memphis sound a decade earlier. But the truth is if you were going to play an electric guitar in front of the Japanese in the 20th century... You best rock. Japanese folks don't put up with neutered rock.


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