Bleeding from your face is the new Black: Surf Party

Wandering totally by chance around uni last year at 2am in the morning, I spotted a poster advertising an Agent Orange (old-school SoCal surf punk band) gig. For those who have never been here, the UK sucks for gigs, so this was quite something. Held in this little pub/club type thing in town, there were about 30-odd people there, mostly 40-ish year old guys standing around in their Vans high-tops talking about skateboards – Incredible.

The band literally demolished their exhaustive set list; song after song, it was like being punched in the face and kicked up the backside at the same time, genuinely like no show I've been to before or since. The crowd was obviously pretty pumped, but for the most part we just stood there with our jaws on the floor, totally blown away by what we were seeing. Some guy shouted out at one point “Hey can you tighten it up a bit please?” which I think summed up the collective mindset of most of the audience.

Anyway this somewhat staggering experience led me to discover not just a new band or a few new songs, but an entire new genre – Surf music. Up until that point I listened with a blissfully ignorant and vicious exclusivity to nigh-on solely '79-'84 era American hardcore, rarely ever accepting any new bands even, let alone entire new genres.

I find just listening to surf music to be absolutely invigorating. I see it as a reinterpretation of all the qualities I find appealing in hardcore, it ticks all the boxes of what I look for in musical experience; the high-energy licks, the unavoidable feelings of speed and adrenaline, euphoria and overall uplifting aura. Not to sound too much like a complete tosser. Basically it gets me pumped and makes me wanna jerk back n' forth (in the dancing sense, not the Devo sense you pervs), which is, at this moment in time, what I want from my music.

Makes sense I should end up liking it I suppose, due to the fact that surf music obviously associated itself with surfing way back when, much as hardcore did with skateboarding. Also after listening to surf music for a while, it becomes apparent how heavily reliant a lot of bands (i.e. The Dead Kennedys) are on its conventions and practices. Perhaps surf music is where punks go to die.

Anyway enough of that, maybe I'll actually critically analyse something for a change. One song that stuck with me from the Agent Orange gig was an instrumental called 'Tidal Wave', a beautifully surfy piece (also available on YouTube) which I stumbled across later on, discovering it to in fact be by a band called Slacktone, a surf music ensemble comprised of rabid Agent Orange/Dick Dale regulars Dusty Watson (drums) and Sam Bolle (bass), with surf maestro Dave Wronski on guitar. The song is called 'The Bells of St. Kahuna'. Note it's actually performed on Huntington Beach, birthplace of the mighty Black Flag (also the H.B. Strut – a.k.a. slamdancing – a.k.a. 'the mosh pit'). How can you refuse?

The musical prowess on display here is something I find really quite astounding. Three insanely proficient musicians pouring their all into a song, resulting in an astonishingly high-energy performance,

I love the way Wronski bops around during this performance, his face a fierce battle between the all over muscle-tension involved with tremolo picking, against his all-out immersion and ecstasy in the imagery of the music. The way he gets into it, 'bopping' about the place, is something missing from so many bands, I feel; Static musicians, standing there monotonously knocking out chords, not at all feeling what they are playing, which obviously has an effect on the end product. In my opinion, if you can't 'get into' the music that you play, then you shouldn't be playing it.

Check out Dusty on the drums too. Going back to the Agent Orange gig, the guy was in a total trance the whole time, face contorted into a furious snarl, neck muscles pronounced, totally destroying the drum kit, as it literally began to fall apart towards the end of their marathon set. Focusing on the drums when listening to Slacktone just shows how much a good drummer can add to a performance, even though I think many people often view the drums simply as a formal component for the rest of the band to keep time to.

It worries me somewhat that I'm finally becoming open-minded enough to appreciate other types of music (albeit just the one), something for a long time I've worried about happening, seeing it as a sign of actually growing up and growing out of hardcore. But I suppose doing what you want and flipping the v's to anyone who doesn't like it is what hardcore's all about. So though it might make my 17 year old self turn in his preverbial grave by admitting it, I'm enjoying my time here in the reverb-drenched elephant graveyard.

For those of you bored enough to have read through this whole thing, have Slacktone's take on Misrilou as a reward. If you think Misrilou has pretty much already been done to death, think again suckers.