No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Dick Dale, Link Wray, & Duane Eddy

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

Quentin is flying solo again this week and continuing his journey through the eras and genres leading up to garage rock. A main influencer on rock as we know it today emerged in the 1960s alongside psychedelia & The British Invasion: Surf Rock. With fuzzy distortion, twangy reverb, & Middle Eastern tinged picking, guitarists Dick Dale, Link Wray, & Duane Eddy found mainstream success in their instrumental surf rock, and had an everlasting impact on rock n' roll. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get a nice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. because those are groceries, and we deliver those too, along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin, and I am still,

all about my lonesome. Travis is still busy with work stuff. He's out of town still. And I'm just going to dive right back into some more garage rock origins, I guess. First off, I want to apologize to those of you who thought that I was about to do a sidetrack on the black eyed piece. The intro song was a much used sample that was, I guess, guest popularized by the black-eyed peas. And I even hate that I've already said that band name twice now already. Apologies. But that was a song called Miser Lou by Dick Dale. So last

week I talked about psychedelia. And I covered a band called the Soft Boys who kind of fit into this post-punk neo-psychadelia category, something I've never really heard of. But yeah, it was really surf rock and psychedelia, both of which emerged in the 60s that kind of paved the way for, quote, garage rock. So real quick here, another thing that people think may have kind of started this whole thing was the British invasion. So think about all these bands that came about in the 60s. of course the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the kinks, the zombies, all these bands just kind of blew up in the 60s. Not only that, but a lot of these bands were, you know, really young at the time. And they didn't even all have that much, you know, classical training

as far as, you know, musicianship or anything, you know, with the instruments that they played. And so they had a huge influence on young people in the 60s. So a lot of kids would get together with their friends, you know, scrounge up some change or whatever, get some instruments, secondhand instruments and whatnot. And they would start practicing, you know, have band practice in their parents' garage. You think about garage rock and kind of what I talked about last week. You know, it's all about basic chord structure, distorted electric guitar, and it was always pretty unsophisticated song structure and lyrics. It was the idea that, you know, hey, I like music. I can be in a band. I can do this. You know, and that's what paves the way for punk rock and, you know, all that good stuff that comes out of the 60s.

So I'm going to focus on surf rock today, but I'm not going to play any beach voice. It's going to be instrumental surf today. So, again, the first song that I played us in with was a song called Miserloo by a guy named Dick Dale. It was Dick Dale and the Deltones. And they burst onto the scene in the late 50s. And he is known as kind of one of the founding fathers or like the pioneer of surf music. And what he did was, you know, he kind of drew inspiration from Middle Eastern music scales. And he also did a lot of experimenting with reverb. So reverb is something that's going to pop up a lot in this episode.

If you don't know what reverb is with guitars, you know, and effect pedals, reverb is kind of like the echo, you know, that it kind of creates this space. Think of like a concert hall in the way that the sounds in the hall just kind of reverberates and echoes throughout the space. That's what reverb is. And Dick Dale was really great at kind of manipulating his guitar with, you know, he had custom-made amps and all this stuff. and he kind of developed this signature sound, which really, to me, that is what surf rock is.

I think of surf rock, I think of that style of guitar. But I'm not going to focus too much on Dickdale. I just figured I needed to give him a shout-out. I'm going to focus on two guitar players today, both of who found popularity around the same time in the late 50s through the 60s. We're talking Link Ray and Dwayne Eddy. So Link Ray also had kind of a group, kind of like Dick Dale did. It was Dick Dale in the Deltones, Link Ray and his Raymond. He kind of had his origins in country music, but over time it kind of evolved into more rockabilly,

instrumental surf kind of stuff. Link Ray is also credited as being like the first mainstream rock and roll musician to use power chords. and they all point to this one song from him and his Raymond, a song called Rumble, which was recorded in 1958. So it's a single. I know this is no filler. We usually don't play singles here. But really for this sidetrack, I just wanted to kind of give you a good taste of the sound

of surf rock and try my best to avoid, you know, the generic like beach boys kind of crap that honestly, between the two of us, Travis and I have listened to enough beach boys for all of us. All I remember listening to, uh, growing up, my dad was, was and is a huge beach voice fan. So I've had enough of that. And I think you all have to. Um, so I'm going to play a little bit of Link Ray and the Raymond's 1958 instrumental track Rumble. All right, you get the idea. So listening to that song now, it doesn't sound that like, I don't want to say it doesn't sound impressive, but I mean, I just did. But, you know, that's, that is rock and roll to us now, listening to it now. But when this came out in 1958, you know, it was, it was aired on the radio.

But just looking at some, just some cliff notes here on Wikipedia, apparently this is the only instrumental song ever banned from the radio, which is crazy to me. and this is, I'm quoting from a book called the 1950s Most Wanted, top 10 book of rock and roll rebels. So it says here that Rumble was quote, a song with such a provocative name and such menace to its power chords that it could only spell trouble for impressionable listeners. So it was that crazy distortion and feedback that kind of led to this decision

to take this song off the radio. That's crazy to me. But Link Ray was one of the first guitar players to utilize these techniques and to make it to mainstream radio. Crazy. So I don't want to make this entire episode nothing but Surf Rock because honestly, you hear a dozen surf rock songs. You've heard them all. So I'm going to play another Link Ray song that I really love from a self-titled album. It's called Link Gray.

Came out in 1971. So this is with another band that he had formed in the 70s. And the sound is a lot different. It's not surf at all. It's just more like, not country, but I don't know. Americana. I don't know how to describe it. It's really good stuff, though.

This is one of my favorites on the album. I believe it was a single. This one is called Jukebox Mama. Good stuff. It's just got those bluesy gospel vibes, you know. So that, yeah, so again, that album is totally different from, you know, what he was doing with the Raymond in the 60s. That was him singing. And, yeah, that whole album is kind of like that.

It just kind of falls into that vein. So, moving right along. Let's talk about Dwayne Eddy. So Dwayne Eddie's contribution, I guess, was his Twangie guitar. So that has to do with reverb again. So his first official album came out in 1958. It's called Have Twengy Guitar Will Travel. He has a song on here called Moving and Grooven, which was like his first big hit.

And actually, you know what, I'll just play a little bit of it. I wasn't planning on it. But yeah, you were going to definitely recognize this guitar riff. Yeah, so the Beach Boys borrowed that riff for the. song Surfing USA. But so did Dwayne Eddy. That was, that's not his riff. He took that from Chuck Barry. Chuck Berry has a song called Brown-eyed Handsome Man. So that's a Chuck Barry riff. But Dwayne Eddie had this signature reverb sound on his guitar. And one thing I thought was really fucking cool. Really the only thing I'm going to talk about with this guy before we play some more

tunes. So that album was recorded in Phoenix and his producer, her sound engineer, was named Lee Hazelwood. The studio didn't have like a proper, quote, echo chamber. So what they did was they went out and purchased a 2,000 gallon water storage tank. Hulled it over to the studio and Dwayne Eddie actually climbed into this tank and they placed a microphone on one end and a speaker on the other end. And he played his guitar in this storage tank to make this, you know, twangy, super reverbed guitar sound. I thought that was really cool. I'm going to play another track for you. I gave you another little taste of this surfrock sound and what Dwayne Eddy brought to the table.

So this is another song from Have Twengie Guitar Will Travel. It is called The Walker. So what I love about this album is that bitch in saxophone. You know, so Dick Dale had his Deltones. Link Ray had his Raymond. And for this album by Dwayne Eddy, he had his Rebels. So his band was called The Rebels. And Steve Douglas is on sax in a lot.

lot of these songs. Another thing that's cool, a lot of the songs on this album have a non-lirical vocals, whoops and hollers. That's by a band called The Sharps. So I thought that was kind of funny. They pop up in a lot of songs in this album. And you know what? I think I'm going to wrap it up. You know, I just wanted to play some surf music for you all today. Again, I'm kind of focusing on the eras and genres that led up to garage rock because next week, Travis will be back in town, and we're going to finally cover the strokes and their album, Is This It? They're one of our favorite bands, and they were part of this garage rock revival that happened in the early 2000s.

So let's wrap it up. I'm tired of talking. So thanks again for listening, as always. Hop onto our website, no filler podcast.com. There you'll find show notes and a lot of other goodies. I'm going to fade us out with my favorite Dwayne Eddy song. It is definitely not in the surf rock vein. It is just this super like, I mean, I say it all the time.

I'm all about the nitty gritty blues, you know? And this song is, whew, man, it just gives a chills. This is another song off of the album, Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel. This one's a doozy, man. And just picturing Dwayne posted up in a 2,000 gallon storage. tank with his guitar, you know, belting out these riffs. Fucking awesome. All right.

So this is a song called Stalkin. And we will both be shouting at you again next week. It was the night before the gathering and all through the house. The host rapid cozy cashmere throw from Homense for their spouse. Kids toys for $6.99 under the tree. And crystal glasses for just $14.99. for their brother Lee, a baking dish made in Portugal for Tom and Sue, and a nice $599 candle, perfectly priced just for you.

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