Whammer Jammer – J. Geils Band Out-Bloody-Rageous, Facelift, and Slightly All the Time – Soft Machine Cobwebs and Strange, Overture (from Tommy) and Underture – The Who Glad – Traffic Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful of Secrets – Pink Floyd Jazz (Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold), Music for the Head Ballet and Doctor Jazz by The Bonzo Dog Band
“Funk 49” by The James Gang (or Joe Walsh alone)
“Glad” by Traffic. Not exactly a rock song, but still…
“Blue’s Theme” by The Arrows
“Hocus Pocus” by Focus
“Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures
btw, “Wipeout” is by The Surfaris, not The Ventures.
With regard to the Ventures, while they did have the classic “Walk Don’t Run” and a scattering of other good originals, they are mostly known for having covered virtually every surf rock intrumental ever recorded (as well as an enormous number of pop hits). The credit for “Pipeline” should go to the Chantays (1962), and the Surfaris were the first and best with “Wipeout”.
Classic surf rock era instrumental greats include “Mr. Moto” (The Belairs), “Baja” (The Astronauts), “Apache” (Jorgen Ingmann) and possibly the best of all, “Out Of Limits” (by The Marketts), a recording I find almost impossible to listen to without conjuring up images of '60s go-go girls.
Modern surf rock has continued to be a gold mine of great instrumentals. To name a few: "San Diego Shutdown (Los Straitjackets), “La Planche” (The Vanduras), “Look! No Head!” (Laika and the Cosmonauts), “Unto The Resplendent” (The Mermen) and “Tube Screamer” (The Atlantics).
None of them have proper videos, but since YouTube seems to be the chosen medium here, that’s what you get.
I love surf instrumentals and much of the the classic rock stuff that’s been mentioned in this thread, but no, instrumental music did not end in 1982, unless your musical taste ended in 1982.
