Departing from a recent psychedelia thread which contained "Neb's Tune" by Ahab and the Wailers:
What I'm looking for here is late 50s and early 60s mostly instrumental music, mainly guitar-based, some of which might fall vaguely under the heading of surf, or sometimes rockabilly, which is more experimental or weird than the norm. I've been picking up Strictly Instrumental compilations on the Buffalo Bop label recently, which often have a few of these sandwiched between the endless, poorly-recorded variations on "Wipeout." Others pop up on comps like Las Vegas Grind, and still others I find just by tumbling down the youtube rabbithole. I'll start with a few of my favorites.
The Five Sounds - Clumsy Dragon
Crazy Crickets - Expressway
Jimmy and Stan - Tahiti
Joe Nathen & the Hornets - Radiation
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 10 October 2012 22:20 (8 months ago) Permalink
your thread just sent me to amazon to buy a copy of 'Strictly Instrumental, Vol. 6' for 'Clumsy Dragon' and 'Tahiti' -- thanks
― Milton Parker, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:15 (8 months ago) Permalink
This site has a lot of great stuff in a similar vein. http://exoticaproject.com
― wk, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:17 (8 months ago) Permalink
Zappa did a lot of this sort of thing in the early 60s at PAL/Studio Z with Paul Buff.
The Rotations, "Heavies" - a bit of this was spliced into Lumpy Gravy later in the decade -
The Hollywood Persuaders, "Grunion Run" - heavy Johnny "Guitar" Watson influence in FZ's solo:
― WmC, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:22 (8 months ago) Permalink
I don't know if organ-led stuff is acceptable or not...
― wk, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:31 (8 months ago) Permalink
actually the other two songs on this page too http://officenaps.com/?p=1301
― wk, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:33 (8 months ago) Permalink
A lot of Vinnie Bell's stuff is pretty weird
― wk, Wednesday, 10 October 2012 23:45 (8 months ago) Permalink
almost forgot Big Jim Sullivan
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:05 (8 months ago) Permalink
twangy guitar gets going about a minute in
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:09 (8 months ago) Permalink
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:13 (8 months ago) Permalink
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:15 (8 months ago) Permalink
great thread! keep 'em coming.
― zappi, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:43 (8 months ago) Permalink
Great Thread!!and my favorite
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 11 October 2012 00:57 (8 months ago) Permalink
FOR RESEARCH ONLY
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 01:08 (8 months ago) Permalink
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 01:10 (8 months ago) Permalink
More from Office Naps
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 01:23 (8 months ago) Permalink
Christopher Monte - Giants of Bombora (Jack Nitzsche/wrecking crew instrumental):
― 50 miles of lmao room (unregistered), Thursday, 11 October 2012 01:40 (8 months ago) Permalink
Wonderful input, everyone! Almost all of these were unfamiliar to me. What a way to start my morning. Here are a few more I like:
The Rhythm Masters - Exotique (this whole comp of Norman Petty-produced instros is excellent)
The Imps - Uh Oh (borrowed by The Cramps for "Goo Goo Muck" - discovered this on a comp of Lux & Ivy's favorites)
Billy Boyd - Shuffle Boogie (just got this the other day; standard R&B, but I love the wall-o-reverb production)
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 14:57 (8 months ago) Permalink
Also, this is a great site for the "sleazy rockin'" sound (some images kinda nsfw)
http://tittyshakers.com/jukejoint.htm
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:01 (8 months ago) Permalink
Takeshi Terauchi defeinitely belongs on this thread. I'm having trouble finding youtubes for the songs I want, but this should do (from my favorite album of his so far):
― _Rudipherous_, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:10 (8 months ago) Permalink
Well, it's probably a little later than you were asking for, but it's from outside the U.S., so there tends to be a delay anyway, if you know what I mean.
― _Rudipherous_, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:12 (8 months ago) Permalink
Hey Dan have you heard this intoxica It's really great!
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:19 (8 months ago) Permalink
<3 this stuff, hope no one minds some greasy sax monster music
― llurk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:21 (8 months ago) Permalink
Does anyone know why it's hard to find these 45's out in junk shops, flea markets, or even record shops? Was there a massive haul of people coming here looking for this sound before it became collectible or has it been collectible longer than I think?
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:33 (8 months ago) Permalink
I love sax, played it in school band and one teenage rock combo. Sax, organs, bring 'em on! I think you guys are all perfectly in tune with what I'm digging. I have "Weird" on a compilation, seems like a textbook example of "what if we play a variation of "Rumble" and add some yelling. (i.e. great!)
Rudipherous, what year/era is that Takeshi Terauchi cut from? The Japanese sure love surf/guitar instro music. I have fond memories of hearing an entire Ventures comp late one night in an Osaka restaurant.
Jacob, I have a Revels collection with "Intoxica." That label comp looks cool, I know a couple other tracks. And I think the reason the 45s are tough to find is they were mainly tiny labels, small pressings. Yeah, collectors have been after this stuff for a while now.
I should also give a shout out to the Dog's Bollocks compilation series. The samples on this site are actually full length songs. Not all great, but "El Dorado" by The Coachmen certainly is, and it's not on youtube.
http://jukebox.au.nu/instromania/miscellaneous/compilations/various_dog_s_bollocks_of_american_r_r_instrumentals_vol_4/
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:50 (8 months ago) Permalink
So far I'm liking everything I'm checking out from the original post. There's some great stuff here.
― _Rudipherous_, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:52 (8 months ago) Permalink
That Terauchi is from 1966.
― _Rudipherous_, Thursday, 11 October 2012 15:55 (8 months ago) Permalink
The surf and exotica scene was pretty big in the '90s and I think the Incredibly Strange Music books probably exposed a lot of people to the idea of collecting this stuff. So in the past 20 years all of the good deals probably got snatched up.
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 16:01 (8 months ago) Permalink
wk, I've just started scratching the surface of the exotica project site. Ho. Lee. Hell...
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 16:05 (8 months ago) Permalink
This mix made by one of the guys involved with that site made this mix which is amazinghttp://canopycanopycanopy.com/podcasts/23-time-is-endless
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 11 October 2012 16:12 (8 months ago) Permalink
should've reread that, sorry
Yeah that guy has some amazing stuff. He has a bunch of sites, that Exotica one, the Office Naps blog, the "lonely beat" thing, and they're all excellent.
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 16:19 (8 months ago) Permalink
and here's his youtube channel. http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeNaps?feature=CA4QwRs%3D all stuff from the blog I think, but this is an easier way to get a bunch of stuff going on a playlist.
I noticed that the cicodelico guy that posted one of the songs in the original post also has a great youtube channel http://www.youtube.com/user/cicodelico?feature=CA4QwRs%3D
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 16:21 (8 months ago) Permalink
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 17:21 (8 months ago) Permalink
Yeah, when I first found out about The Spotnicks I went on a huge bender finding everything I could by them. Amazing.
Guitar sound on those is, I believe, tape echo which led me to several weeks worth of rautalanka videos.
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 17:38 (8 months ago) Permalink
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 17:46 (8 months ago) Permalink
yeah, I never heard of the Spotnicks. At first I thought somebody had just put some random video on top of the music but it took me a minute to realize that's actually the band!
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 17:47 (8 months ago) Permalink
The Polaras' "Cricket" is a good example of my original post, a standard surf chord progression yet obviously trying for a gimmick guitar sound to make the record stand out.
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 17:58 (8 months ago) Permalink
yeah, it's not great but that "cricket" spring reverb sound at the beginning is pretty fun.
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 18:02 (8 months ago) Permalink
It's interesting to me to picture these bands and producers recording this stuff way back then. Here's a little thing I wrote in a surf music thread.
’ve been listening to lots of obscure instro music, marveling at an era (1961) when record producers were throwing ANYTHING at the wall to see what might be a hit with America’s youth market.Take the melody to “Three Blind Mice,” have a few (presumably) session musicians play it on some twangy, fuzzy guitars with a twist beat, and add sped-up vocals to ride the coattails of the then-popular Alvin and the Chipmunks. Give it a little more hep title: “Three Gassed Rats” (blind and gassed being two synonyms for drunk!) and call your “group” The Handclappers. (Johnny and the Hurricanes had big hits with the twistin' standards concept on things like "Red River Rock." I can picture this producer saying "well, if THAT made money, AND I combine the novelty vocal appeal...")Well, it didn’t make them rich and famous, but my three year old loves this – and my inner child does too.
Take the melody to “Three Blind Mice,” have a few (presumably) session musicians play it on some twangy, fuzzy guitars with a twist beat, and add sped-up vocals to ride the coattails of the then-popular Alvin and the Chipmunks. Give it a little more hep title: “Three Gassed Rats” (blind and gassed being two synonyms for drunk!) and call your “group” The Handclappers. (Johnny and the Hurricanes had big hits with the twistin' standards concept on things like "Red River Rock." I can picture this producer saying "well, if THAT made money, AND I combine the novelty vocal appeal...")
Well, it didn’t make them rich and famous, but my three year old loves this – and my inner child does too.
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 18:13 (8 months ago) Permalink
There are some good stories like that in various books about 60s recording like the Wrecking Crew book. The thing is that sometimes people threw stuff together like that and it did work! It's kind of fascinating to think of a time when people could throw an idea together in a little independent recording studio, press up a test disc and have it to the local radio station that same day, and end up with a big hit that made serious money. All from basically one song and a piece of filler on the other side.
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 18:42 (8 months ago) Permalink
I mean Phil Spector did it when he was 18. He wrote a song, recorded it with his friends and had a #1 hit that sold a million records!
― wk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 18:45 (8 months ago) Permalink
Those early Travis Wammack sides are great!!
― JacobSanders, Thursday, 11 October 2012 18:45 (8 months ago) Permalink
xp with Joe Meek being like the ultimate example of this.
His 'I Hear A New World: An Outer Space Fantasy' EP is proto-psych ground zero
― llurk, Thursday, 11 October 2012 19:25 (8 months ago) Permalink
I still haven't seen the Joe Meek movie. Need to do so.
― Baked. And yet so soupy. (Dan Peterson), Thursday, 11 October 2012 19:29 (8 months ago) Permalink
This isn't weird or experimental, just a straight-ahead three chord riff with a little bit of Link Wray menace. My band covers this, and it's the menace part that's hard to replicate.
― Dan Peterson, Friday, 12 October 2012 15:18 (8 months ago) Permalink
Explosivos Bargs - green starOs Terriveis - mar cruel
― meisenfek, Thursday, 22 November 2012 11:21 (6 months ago) Permalink
I didn't see this thread was ever revived, so two months after the fact: thanks, meisenfek. Both tracks are killin' me.
There's not much exceptional about this song, but the production is beautiful. Les Diables Noirs - Surf Board
― I like sex, don't steal my hot dog! (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, 23 January 2013 23:17 (4 months ago) Permalink