“Not all gen­res in music are self-explana­to­ry,” writes Mark Stock at The Man­u­al. “Just ask baroque pop or post met­al. With surf rock, how­ev­er, it’s pret­ty much as adver­tised.” This obser­va­tion gets at what makes surf rock so refresh­ing. Its “wavy gui­tar sounds” and rol­lick­ing beats are a musi­cal ono­matopoeia for the thrills of a sun-drenched sport. From its niche ori­gins, surf rock invad­ed garages around the world. It found its way into the Pix­ies and the B‑52s. Waves of indie surf bands con­tin­ue to wash ashore.

Surf rock meld­ed with hard­core punk, anoth­er genre that does what it says and has scored many a board sport. Where hard­core is aggro, surf is mel­low and joy­ous, even when it’s sin­is­ter and dan­ger­ous; hard­core thrives on bash­ing three-minute attacks, surf shows off its tech­ni­cal chops, even when it sticks to three chords, as in the Sur­faris’ clas­sic “Wipe Out.”

The song, a 12-bar blues dri­ven by Ron Wilson’s drum solo, pro­duced “the yard­stick for every aspir­ing young drum­mer in the ear­ly 60s” and beyond. At the time of its record­ing, Wil­son wasn’t even old enough to dri­ve.

Accord­ing to gui­tarist Bob Berry­hill, the Sur­faris formed in 1962 while the mem­bers of the band were still in high school. (Their sax play­er, Jim Pash, was 12 when he joined.) They played teen dances and tal­ent shows, and by Jan­u­ary the fol­low­ing year, they had an orig­i­nal, “Surfer Joe.” They had their par­ents dri­ve them to a stu­dio owned by a man named Dale Small­en.

We met at a place in the Cal­i­for­nia desert called Cuca­mon­ga, and record­ed Surfer Joe. In those days 45’s required a B side so Dale asked us to play anoth­er song. We had not writ­ten a song before Surfer Joe so I sug­gest­ed a drum solo type of song with sim­ple gui­tar breaks. Ron­nie start­ed play­ing the famous Wipe Out solo and in about 10 min­utes we had the song togeth­er. We need­ed a gim­mick intro­duc­tion so my Dad broke a plas­ter soaked board close to the mic and Dale Small­en let out a laugh and screamed wipe out. We gave Dale the mas­ter tape and he took it to Hol­ly­wood, and by July 1963 it was #2 on the Bill­board top 100. 

Before they knew it, the teenaged Sur­faris were tour­ing Japan, Aus­tralia, and the U.S. with Roy Orbi­son, The Beach Boys, the Right­eous Broth­ers, and The Ven­tures, a bril­liant instru­men­tal rock band who were one of the biggest things going in the ear­ly 1960s.

The Ven­tures took “Wipe Out” fur­ther into the reach­es of drum­ming leg­end in their cov­er (see drum­mer Mel Tay­lor attack­ing the skins like Gene Kru­pa in a live per­for­mance in Japan from 1965, above). Then, in 1966, the Sur­faris broke up. The Bea­t­les had wiped them off the charts, or as Berry­hill puts it, some­what bit­ter­ly, “The British Inva­sion changed music to focus more on the intro­spec­tive needs of the ‘Me Gen­er­a­tion.’” Surf lost its hip appeal, but it was not for­got­ten.

“In 1980,” Berry­hill says, “the punk/new wave move­ment revived ‘Wipe Out,’ which gave it a new audi­ence.” It popped up in com­mer­cials, The Fat Boys teamed up with The Beach Boys for a rap cov­er, even the Mup­pets had a ver­sion. Surf rock “became a sponge,” surf gui­tarist Jason Lough­lin says. “In the 80s through the 90s [it] soaked up influ­ences from punk music and alter­na­tive rock.” Bands like Man or Astro-Man? brought in peri­od sci-fi rev­er­ences; surf teamed up with rock­a­bil­ly, anoth­er genre that “had a short win­dow of pop­u­lar­i­ty and growth and then went under­ground” until the 80s.

But “Wipe Out” acquired a spe­cial sta­tus as a pure spec­i­men of surf. It remains one of the most pop­u­lar instru­men­tal songs of all time. And all because of an inven­tive 15-year-old drum­mer, his high school bud­dies, and their sup­port­ive par­ents. It may not be the most rock ’n’ roll of musi­cal his­to­ries, but it is the most surf rock of sto­ries. A tale of tal­ent, teenage enthu­si­asm, and the guile­less desire to make oth­er kids dance.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Gnarly Surf Rock of Dick Dale (RIP): Watch the Leg­end Play “Misir­lou,” Surfin’ the Wedge,” and “Pipeline” (with Ste­vie Ray Vaugh­an)

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The ukulele has got­ten a bad rap, thanks to some well-mean­ing musi­cians who turned the small, gui­tar-like Hawai­ian lute into a nov­el­ty instru­ment. Chief among the offend­ers is Tiny Tim. Explod­ing into fame in the ear­ly six­ties with his ukulele ver­sion of the ‘20s dit­ty “Tip­toe Thru’ the Tulips,” he became so famous, wrote Roger Ebert, “The Bea­t­les asked him to sing ‘Nowhere Man’ on a boot­leg Christ­mas record­ing. He did a night at Roy­al Albert Hall.” His mar­riage to Vic­ki Budinger on John­ny Carson’s Tonight Show is “still one of the top-rat­ed TV shows of all time.”

Tiny Tim played the guile­less man­child, the Pee Wee Her­man of his day. He was not a seri­ous spokesper­son for the instru­ment he pop­u­lar­ized. He died in 1996, doing what he loved, play­ing his hit to a Women’s Club in Min­neapo­lis. “The last thing he heard was the applause,” his wid­ow said.

Tiny Tim had a good run, but it may not be mere coin­ci­dence that since he tip­toed thru’ his last tulip, the ukulele has seen a major pop cul­ture revival, from indie folk singer/songwriters to TV theme songs, an orches­tra, and Jake Shimabukuro, “a genre-demol­ish­ing artist,” writes NPR, “who plays jazz, blues, funk, clas­si­cal, blue­grass, fla­men­co and rock” on his four-string axe.

Join­ing the ranks of seri­ous ukulele artists are Over­driv­er Duo, who inter­pret songs with some very chal­leng­ing gui­tar riffs and solos, like Guns ‘n’ Ros­es’ “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans of Swing,” and AC/DC’s “Thun­der­struck.” One thing these songs all have in com­mon is their melodies in the upper reg­is­ter, where the ukulele, and their vocals, real­ly shine. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” on the oth­er hand, depends on pow­er chords and pound­ing drums for its impact. Leave it to these accom­plished play­ers to turn their tiny-bod­ied instru­ments into a con­vinc­ing alt-rock rhythm sec­tion.

Con­tem­po­rary play­ers have more than earned the ukulele the respect it deserves. That’s not to say ukulele lovers of the past, like devot­ed life-long play­er George Har­ri­son, did not appre­ci­ate the instru­ment. Har­ri­son played a mean jazz uke, and took it seri­ous­ly. But even he declared “you can’t play and not laugh!” Play­ers like Shimabukuro and Over­driv­er Duo tend to inspire more awe than com­e­dy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

The Ukulele Orches­tra of Great Britain Per­forms Stun­ning Cov­ers of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The sto­ry of pop­u­lar music in the late 20th cen­tu­ry is nev­er com­plete with­out an account of the explo­sive psy­che­del­ic rock, funk, Afrobeat, and oth­er hybrid styles that pro­lif­er­at­ed on the African con­ti­nent and across Latin Amer­i­can and the Caribbean in the 1960s and 70s. It’s only late­ly, how­ev­er, that large audi­ences are dis­cov­er­ing how much pio­neer­ing music came out of Kenya, Ghana, Nige­ria, and oth­er post­colo­nial coun­tries, thanks to UK labels like Strut and Sound­way (named by The Guardian as “one of the 10 British Labels defin­ing the sound of 2014” and named “Label of the Year” in 2017).

Germany’s Ana­logue Africa, a label that reis­sues clas­sic albums from the era, puts it this way: “the future of music hap­pened decades ago.” Only most West­ern audi­ences weren’t pay­ing attention—with notable excep­tions, of course: super­star drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er appren­ticed him­self to Fela Kuti and became an evan­ge­list for African drum­ming; Bri­an Eno and Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne (who also intro­duced thou­sands to “world music”) import­ed the sound of African rock to New Wave in the 80s, as did post-punk bands like Orange Juice and oth­ers in Britain, where music from Africa gen­er­al­ly had a big­ger impact.

But the fusion of African polyrhythms with rock instru­ments and song struc­tures had been done, and done incred­i­bly well, already by dozens of bands, includ­ing sev­er­al in the East African coun­try of Zam­bia, which had been British-con­trolled North­ern Rhode­sia until its inde­pen­dence in 1964. In the decade after, bands formed around the coun­try to cre­ate a unique form of music known as “Zam­rock,” as it came to be called, “forged by a par­tic­u­lar set of nation­al cir­cum­stances,” writes Calum Mac­Naughton at Music in Africa.

Zam­rock bands were influ­enced by the funk and soul of James Brown and the heavy rock of Hen­drix, Deep Pur­ple, Led Zep­pelin, The Who, and Cream—the same music every­one else was lis­ten­ing to. As Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga from the band Musi-O-Tun­ya says in the Vinyl Me, Please mini-doc­u­men­tary above, says, “the hip­pie time, the flow­ers, love and every­thing, Wood­stock. We were a part of that cul­ture too. If the record was in the Top 10 in the UK, it was in the Top 10 here.” But Zam­bia had its own con­cerns, and its own pow­er­ful musi­cal tra­di­tions.

“As much as we want­ed to play rock from the West­ern world, we are Africans,” says Jagari Chan­da, vocal­ist for a band called WITCH (“we intend to cause hav­oc”), “so the oth­er part is from Africa—Zambia. So it’s Zam­bian type of rock—Zamrock.” The term was coined by Zam­bian DJ Man­asseh Phiri. The music itself “was the sound­track of Ken­neth Kaunda’s social­ist ide­ol­o­gy of Zam­bian Human­ism,” Mac­Naughton notes. “In fact, Zam­rock owed much of its exis­tence to the nation’s first pres­i­dent and found­ing father. A gui­tar-pick­er who took great plea­sure in song” and who pro­mot­ed local music “via a quo­ta sys­tem” imposed on the new­ly-formed Zam­bia Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice (ZBS).

Vinyl Me, Please has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Mac­Naughton and oth­ers from Now-Again Records to release 8 Zam­rock albums, “7 of which have nev­er been reis­sued in their orig­i­nal form.” The video above, “The Sto­ry of Zam­rock,” reflects their decade-long jour­ney to redis­cov­er the 70s scene and its pio­neers. In the video at the top from Band­splain­ing, you can learn more about Zam­rock, which has been gain­ing promi­nence in album reis­sues for the last sev­er­al years, and which “deserves to be a part of the musi­cal his­to­ry of Africa in a much big­ger way than it has been up to now,” Hen­ning Goran­son Sand­berg writes at The Guardian. See all of the music fea­tured in the video at the top in the track­list below.

0:00 WITCH — “Liv­ing In The Past”

0:40 Kei­th Mlevhu — “Love and Free­dom”

1:05 Paul Ngozi — “Bamayo”

3:11 WITCH — “Intro­duc­tion”

4:19 Musi-O-Tun­ya — “Mpon­do­lo”

4:32 Musi-O-Tun­ya — “Dark Sun­rise”

5:28 Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga — “Shee­been Queen”

5:37 WITCH — “Lazy Bones”

6:00 Paul Ngozi — “Ana­soni”

6:16 The Peace — “Black Pow­er”

6:46 Kei­th Mlevhu — “Ubun­tung­wa”

7:06 Amanaz — “Kha­la my Friend”

7:24 WITCH — “Liv­ing In The Past”

8:19 The Black­foot — “When I Need­ed You”

8:39 Salty Dog — “See The Storm”

9:30 Salty Dog — “Fast”

10:42 Rik­ki Ili­lon­ga & Der­ick Mbao — “Madzi A Moyo”

10:54 Paul Ngozi — “Nshaup­wa Bwino”

11:43 Amanaz — “Sun­day Morn­ing”

12:38 The Black­foot — “Lon­ley High­way”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Rad­i­cal Niger­ian Band­leader, Polit­i­cal Hero, and Cre­ator of Afrobeat

Stream 8,000 Vin­tage Afropop Record­ings Dig­i­tized & Made Avail­able by The British Library

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness