A Soundtrack for the Ride - Surfing & Music

“The hills are alive with the sound of music,
With songs they have sung for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music.
My heart wants to sing every song it hears.”
The Sound of Music - 1965

You’ve reached the backline, your arms feel like linguini and your brain is looping a tune that refuses to budge. Again and again the chorus dances circles around that numb spot in your head. Bumps on the horizon hit the pause button, bringing a brief respite, but it’s not long before the bass line starts to throb, throwing jabs and uppercuts at 160 beats per minute against your cranium. Your ice-cream headache pounds in 2/4 time. You should have worn a hood, but that thought cross-fades into the ether as a perfect left wails your name to the strains of “that song” wedged between your Frontal and Parietal lobes.

Old Davy Jones has been rocking, jiving, rapping, swinging and getting jiggy to every style of music known to man and the odd alien visitor since humans first took to riding waves? The ocean is imbued with a natural sense of rhythm, and our tunes are a mere embellishment.

Half the fun of surfing is getting there, and what would our path to the beach be without a soundtrack? Music fuels our passion, anticipation and imagination, creating dreamscapes where we pull off impossible moves backed by a ditty of our choice. Our musical fingerprints are evident in the lines we draw or sometimes smudge across the waves we ride. Surfing and music are inextricable; from strumming ukuleles to spinning discs, it was love at first sight for surfers and music.

Our sport has attracted all sorts of musical charlatans and wannabe rockers, including some of the most cacophonous cowboys and tepid songsters imaginable. Perhaps the 90s and a 21st century groundswell of political correctness are to blame for the current dearth. Musical integrity spiralled out of control in the 90s into a yawing blur of white noise. Watch a 90s VHS surf movie and prepare for an aural epiphany of the worst kind. Embarrassing stuff, that’s best left to gather dust in a very dark corner next to that crystallised tub of neon zinc.

Surfing royalty, including style maestro Tom Curren and übermensch King Kelly have pottered about the hallowed halls rock stardom. His HRH Kelly teamed up with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder for a quid pro quo of skills. Curren’s “Light Becomes a Fire” and “Ocean Wide” are worth a listen; including eclectic hints of Country music and shades of John Mayer.

However, from here on a precipitous downhill awaits. Retro single fins, an unkempt Donovan Frankenreiter, Brushfire records and the saturated hues of 16mm analogue film presented surfers with the musical equivalent of the sedative benzodiazepine; Jack Johnson. It escapes me how Jackie boy, a respected North Shore surfer, conquered the genre and reduced the irreverent energy of surf music to a formulaic fireside warble.

Clearly Jack has applied the “safety through repetition” rule to his compositions providing his fan base with the essence of predictability. A post-pubescent music critic recently likened one of Captain Jack’s “variations of a theme” to a seminal moment in 20th century popular music, The Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” album. Sorry bru, but that’s like comparing a rubbery jelly baby to a sumptuous Chocolate Mousse.

If you’re a die-hard Jack fan give Israel Kamakawiwo a listen. Not unlike Jack, he strummed his way from the islands and is the unchallenged Eddie Van Halen of ukuleles. Sadly, Israel passed away in 1997 but his interpretation of “Somewhere of the Rainbow” is an unassuming classic.

Yes, post-surf fireside troubadours have their place, but those sensitive strummers, and there are legions of them out there, are galaxies apart from the raw vigour of a band like Midnight Oil. Peter Garrett and the Oils hailed from Sydney, and performed for the local surf community at Narrabeen and the Bondi Lifesaver Club. They were uncompromising, took no prisoners and spoke the same language as surfers. They gave us classics such as "Blue Sky Mine", “The Dead Heart” and “US Forces”. With the exception of the Prodigy, I’ve never experienced a more energetic live performance that captured surfing’s zeitgeist so aptly.

But therein lies the beauty of music and surfing; each to his own. Pinning a particular genre or style of music to surfing is absurd. Wave riding is far too mercurial an activity to be pigeonholed, and what would surfing be without the reverb of Dub, or the chainsaw scream of a classic Metal solo? Even Rap has its place; LL Cool J doesn’t surf but I can’t help imagine him tearing into the New Pier bowl, and perhaps a fisherman or two.

However, much like going SUPPING in a speedo, a few cautionary notes are in order. Avoid the pompous electro musings of Radiohead or bleating “bubblegum in your hair” sounds of the Jonas Brothers or Justin Bieber. Listening to “musicians” of their ilk will lead to inevitable stylistic disaster in the water.

Yet surfers will continue to caress long point waves to the sublime art of Mozart, and tear onshore bowls apart to the dissonant genius of the Aphix Twins. From duct-taped Kombis swaying to a stretched cassette recording of LKJ’s “Forces of Victory” to Landcruisers with Blu-Ray players popping the latest bubblegum, it’s all about those spaces in between the notes and how they affect you; just you.

Yes, the hills are alive with the Sound of Music, but I somehow doubt you’ll be encountering Julie Andrews and the Von Trapp brood at the backline anytime soon. Now go surf!