I am amazed at how much surf music sounds as if it were written the be the theme of spy movies.
The James Bond Theme is essentially surf music.
The Peter Gunn Theme may not have started out as surf music, but it’s been covered by so many surf bands that surf versions are probably more recognized than the original.
Pulp Fiction featured The Black Eyed Peas performing Pump It!, which is mostly a cover of the surf classic Misirlou.
Then there’s the Hawaii 5-O Theme, another franchise taken over by surf musicians and The Secret Agent Man Theme.
And just for illustration, here are a couple of more surf tunes that sound like the should be played under thriller movie scenes, El Nino and Killer Dana.
And when you look at surf music titles, the people writing them seem to be pretty obsessed with science, science fiction, and technology.
I’m just curious about this combination of ideas that feed into the genre and whether anyone else has thoughts about it. Also whether there is more surf music that is used in music and TV shows.
In an alternate universe, there was this!
Seems like a hip swinging sixties thing, baby.
I’ve always thought that this opening could hold its own with any surf music themes ever written. The band rejected that category, though; even releasing a song on one of their CDs called We’re Not a Fucking Surf Band.
Bonus points to anyone who knows what it is before clicking.
No, Pulp Fiction featured Dick Dale’s version of Miserlou, which was much later heavily sampled by The Black Eyed Peas.
“Surf music” is just a name, apart from Dick Dale most of the people who played “surf music” were not surfers.
Both “spy movie music” and “spaghetti western music” owe a lot to “surf music”, and to some extent the labels are interchangeable. “Hot rod music” is another, lesser known, example. “60s guitar-based instrumental music” is a better name, though less catchy, and it excludes the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean who played pop music with surfer themes and not surf music as such.
My favourite in the “early rock instrumental” genre is The Shadows’ Apache, and I doubt those boys were anywhere near a surfboard in their formative years.
This is pretty much the entire point of Top Secret!
Perhaps you will also like the Incredible Bongo Band’s version of it. No idea whether they got any closer to a surfboard, though.
Maurice Jarre wrote surf music? Who knew?
Yes - I thought about “Apache,” as well as Link Wray’s “Rumble”, which predated “Apache” by two years, and basically paved the way for all surf-spy-spaghetti western music.
I don’t think Link ever got near a surftboard, either.
And, just to confuse things further, don’t confuse surf music with Beach Music, neither of which were played by the Beach Boys!
The Beach Boys played some surf music, notably Moon Dawg, and Surf Jam, both instrumentals.