It’s hard to even imagine it, but there’s more to life than 50s Westerns.
For me, there’s Surf Music. And I’m lucky enough to be just 34 miles from The Instro Summit, “America’s biggest all-instrumental music festival.” It’s more than 20 bands over three days, and it’s this weekend. All-Rockin’, No Squawkin’!
To mark the occasion, I give you Los Straitjackets’ terrific take on Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magificent Seven.”
Back in the saddle on Monday. In the meantime, go read Maury Dexter’s book.
Yikes!!!…………..Fifties Westerns has morphed into Sundazed Records!
Have a fun weekend Toby; and many thanks for the Maury Dexter
link………….Brilliant stuff!
There’s no way you can say enough good things about Sundazed. Wish I had everything in their catalog.
Enjoy Maury’s book. My interview with him covered some of the same stuff, and I tried to learn all I could about the Regalscope films we know and love.
He was a joy to talk to.
Those Maury Dexter/Lippert/Regalscope Films are what MOD was
made for! Fox need to get their act together and start releasing some
of these films.
What I would not give for lovely scope copies of films like
THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH and THE YOUNG GUNS OF TEXAS.
Wasn’t that HOUSE OF THE DAMNED (one of Maury’s pictures) DVD gorgeous?
Sure Was!
Its just a shame so many of his films are on the missing list.
Would love to see WALK TALL which was shot by Floyd Crosby.
As mentioned before,Olive films are going to release two non-Maury
Regalscopes:SHOWDOWN AT BOOT HILL and AMBUSH AT
CIMARRON PASS which should find plenty of takers as there are
many Bronson and Eastwood comptetists out there!
Who knows that might start the ball rolling.
Those two Regals make sense as the entry point. But there are others that may be better films, just with less star power — namely, Frontier Gun and Quiet Gun.
For your listening pleasure, here’s Australian surf-punk band The Celibate Rifles’ take on “The Magnificent Seven” (as a cigarette advertisement) in their 1983 track “Kent’s Theme”. Absolutely worshipped these guys growing up.
How was it?
Terrific. If you get a chance, and you like such reverb-y things (and I know you do, Henry), check out The Madeira. Their new record Tribal Fires is really incredible.
http://www.doublecrownrecords.com/2012/02/22/the-madeira-tribal-fires-cd-surf-instrumental-rock/
I’ve never seen so many Fender Jaguars and Jazzmasters in one place.
One band, The Intoxicators, did a cool arrangement of “Pipeline” and “Paint It Black.” Doesn’t sound like it’d work, but it was perfect.
There was a cool open call thing Saturday afternoon to see how many guitarists could get together to play Link Wray’s “Rumble.” Twenty.
All in all, a blast. It gets better every year.
Wonder how long my ears will be ringing?
Lots of Fenders but no Mosrites. I listened to the Madeira tracks and they’re terrific–You don’t that often hear acoustic guitars playing rhythm in surf music–or maybe you do and I never noticed. I really liked Tribal Fury–I have a love for Middle Eastern gtr instrumentals. I guess that starts with Miserlou or exotica in general, pre-gtr band–Martin Denny, Les Baxter etc. I’m no expert–I heard a lot of Exotica growing up (Yma Sumac) but like most folk we really heard Eastern stuff with the Beatles and Butterfield (East West). Found later on there were tons of jazz guys playing with these ideas in the early 60′s.
I heard much talk of Mosrites over the weekend, buts saw not a one. Surf music people, as you’d imagine, LOVE to talk about their gear.
The Madeira come at Surf from the Dick Dale side, which helps explain a lot of the Eastern stuff. (They’re also heavily influenced by The Shadows, right down to red Strats. “Twilight” is their Shadows-y tune on this one.) As powerful as the record is, they were even harder live, and just as tight. They’re an amazing band.
It’s amazing how much The Beatles influenced, with an entire generation’s idea of the East being just one. How many people in the late 50s learned of Polynesia from the decor at their local tiki bar?
Somebody more learned than me could explain if there’s an actual connection between Polynesian and Indian music. I guess you can throw in Middle Eastern while you’re at it. Seems like The Beatles and Mike Bloomfield fell into Indian around the same time, the East/West tour was a big influence on psychedelia and they pulled a lot of that out of Yusef Lateef and jazz. George Harrison probably pulled a sitar into his hands from somewhere–that sitar scene in A Hard Day’s Night, or maybe while he was scarfing a plate full of hot vindaloo.
Misirlou apparently starts out with Rembetika, when the Greeks and Turks were forced to work together in the ’20′s on the docks. Can’t explain where Dick Dale and The Beach Boys and Bobby Fuller Four got into it.
But how about this: while we’re studying 50′s Westerns, at the same all the Exotica music was on the radio. A great decade.