15 Gein & the Graverobbers – “Of Gods and Monsters” (The Passion of the Antichrist)
These Bostonians carry a Satanic shtick around with them that, truly, is as goofy and feather-light as their music, which is three albums composed of all instrumentals that race-along like skittish surf-rock firecrackers. I’m not sure why their drummer is named Sloth, either, since his brisk snare fills are sure to get your head spinning.
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14 Man or Astro-man? – “Many Pieces of Large Fuzzy Mammals Gathered Together at a Rave and Schmoozing with a Brick” (Spectrum of Infinite Scale)
In the midsection of what’s very likely the premiere album of instrumental surf rock in history, these restless young dudes from Auburn, Alabama settle into what we can glean as their medium groove, a brisk, but not break-neck set of runs peppered with pauses, shrill guitar sound and of course the kind of chaos that helps make this music what it is.
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13 Thee Commons – “Sueno Psicodelico” (Thee Commons on Audiotree Live)
Perhaps the most technically gifted of this whole gang, Californians Thee Commons foment up what seems like a finer brand of surf, the type of stuff I could see playing in a swanky Santa Monica Brewery. “Sueno Psicodelico”; which would translate from Spanish to “psychedelic sleep,” gets the ball rolling on their live album with some clear but gritty beach-front vibes.
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12 The Garden – “This Could Build Us a Home” (haha)
Orange County denizens The Garden brought to the table I think some production mixes that really set the bar for a whole sub-genre’s flagship: Wyatt Shears’ bass sound is like a living organism, wooing the listener into the hypnotic jams like a masterful force.
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11 Green Day – “Last Ride in” (Nimrod)
I’m hoping every Green Day fan is familiar with this song and album. In part, I’d say, this tune is indicative of how there was really no rhyme or reason to ’90s music: bands just did what they wanted, had fun, ideally, making these rock records, and certainly didn’t pander to convention, sticking an instrumental in the middle of a punk album, as these unruly blokes did.
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10 The Revels – “Comanche” (Tequila Now)
While it is kind of red flag if someone puts this song on at a party, as it soundtracks the rape scene in Pulp Fiction, the originality, technical ability and spirit are thoroughly undeniable here, with what’s I’m pretty sure the closest thing we’ll ever get to a “demonic sax part” on God’s green Earth, courtesy of one Norman Knowles, according to Google.
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9 The Garden – “Haha” (haha)
Typically you expect an album’s title track to carry an extra sort of significance, so it’s funny to come to this “Haha” exploit and posit as to what it might mean in the larger scope of things. Well, these guys aren’t taking themselves too seriously, that’s for sure, and that’s one crazy-sounding synth to tag team with Fletcher Shears’ incessant close-picking technique, which hopefully ingratiates this song enough to the “surf” sector as requisite for this list.
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8 Man or Astro-man? – “Curious Constructs of Stemlike Structures Which Will Now Prepare Themselves to Be Thought of as Fingers” (Spectrum of Infinite Scale)
Arguably the best song ever created for listening to while you’re delivering pizza, this full-bodied, strange masterpiece is where the Astros really get indulgent, throw convention out the window and let a deliberate, eerie pace govern the simple, trippy mantras emanating out of Brian Causey’s water-y, undulating guitar.
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7 The Lively Ones – “Surf Rider” (Surf Rider)
This is the tune that sends off the closing credits of Pulp Fiction (check’s in the mail, Tarrantino), a fitting task for it, just as was anchoring my post-high-school-senior-year mixtapes, with some chilled-out, just-melodic-enough background tapestry to make me, at least for a couple weeks, the coolest kid on the block.
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6 The Garden – “I’ll Stop by Tomorrow Night” (haha)
In fitting with the general tend this style seems to have taken since its origin in the late 1950s — toward eerie, almost demonic intervals and apparent ominous suggestions — this track casts a dark chordal cloak over the proceedings, ironic of course since Wyatt Shears is apparently singing about the game “duck duck goose.”
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5 Thee Commons – “Sequined Dress” (Thee Commons on Audiotree Live)
Best drum beat on this list goes to Rene Pacheco here in emphatic form, treating the enterprise of high-hat hits like a geometric syllogism. Even as the rhythms exand out and morph, the band stays tight, Pacheco continuing to run in lockstep with his brother Dave’s virtuosic, infectious rhythm guitar runs.
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4 The Ziggens – “Sea Kelp” (Live: Tickets Still Available)
With these So-Cal goofballs who happened to be darlings of Bradley Nowell’s listening catalogue, you’ve got to like how they create this beach theme on a live stage, and with what’s relatively a pretty conventional instrumentation. It’s all technique and rhythm here, pledging firm allegiance to not giving a darn, toward more professional-grade summer mixtape chill.
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3 The Garden – “Crystal Clear” (haha)
From the way these guys sound on this track, it’s almost abundantly clear that they’d be ushering a new direction for this whole art form, if only more people heard this stuff. Again, the production and mix are unparalleled vitality and force, with the low-end sounding more like Primus or the Queens of the Stone Age than some antiquated motif from the Eisenhower era, thankfully enough.
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2 Man or Astro-man? – “Preparation Clont” (Spectrum of Infinite Scale)
The succinctness and effortless completeness of this tune have to do with why I place it so high on this list: it’s like a single swatch of pure vision from the band, a hypnotic groove and set of dueling riffs to cement these guys as all-time surf-rock greats.
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1 Dick Dale & His Del-Tones – “Misirlou” (Surfer’s Choice)
There’s no other song in the history of the planet that could have so aptly kicked off Quentin Tarrantino’s masterpiece Pulp Fiction, from the soundtrack of which, yes, I do cull four tunes from this list. It deserves to repeated, though, how Tarrantino’s musical choices helped to tailor the mood and emotional implications, here prescribing choas and maddening mania in full force, to fit with the bizarre bloodletting and dark humor to follow, in cinematic form. The original songwriter of this tune is not known, but understdood, according to Wikipedia, to have lodged in Eastern Mediterranean, or “Silk Road,” as its coloquially called (roughly the Turkey/Syria border and nearby areas), translated of course to modernity-ready glory by Dick Dale, whom Wikipedia tabs as the “pioneer of surf music.”
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