Issued in 1964 by Vee-Jay Records, It’s Monster Surfing Time may appear to the sophisticated modern observer as an undisguised fusing of a trend and a gimmick. While it most assuredly fits that description, its instrumental surf bedrock has proven more than just a fad and likewise, the creature feature matinée gimmick has endured across generations. The Deadly Ones offer a fun taste of legitimate surf flavor, but their album signifies a whole lot more; its vinyl reissue is out on April 8 via the Concord Music Group.
Founded in 1953, Vee-Jay Records stands as one of the great labels in 20th century popular music’s pre-corporate era. Initially successful in the fields of doo-wop (The Spaniels, The Dells), R&B (The Impressions, Dee Clark), blues (John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Reed, Memphis Slim) and gospel (The Staple Singers, The Swan Silvertones), the company also managed a small but worthy jazz line (Wayne Shorter, Wynton Kelly, Lee Morgan, Walter Perkins) and perhaps most famously had the foresight to be the first US home of The Beatles.
It’s well documented how the Fab Four helped to metamorphose rock ‘n’ roll and youth music in general into a more serious proposition, but the change didn’t occur overnight, and there is no better proof of its gradual transformation than It’s Monster Surfing Time. The disc positively basks in a lowbrow aura prompting visions of a cigar-chomping label-boss orchestrating an unabashedly mercantile concept through colorful language and a cloud of smoke, though I’ve discovered no evidence to actually support James Bracken or his wife Vivian Carter (the Vee to James’ Jay) fitting this salty descriptor.
Surf music naturally inspires thoughts of waves, wipeouts, beach parties, and couples doing the swim, but in its unadulterated instrumental form its range isn’t especially wide; in 1963 Vee-Jay issued Come Surf with Me by Aki Aleong & the Nobles, a fine if less than earth shattering attempt to hang ten on the style’s popularity, and it would seem that by the following year it was deemed necessary to give the template a considerable shaking up.
Exactly how it all went down is elusive, but it quite possibly could’ve been the brainchild of Joe “Games People Play” South, since he’s credited with writing five of the record’s tunes and is rumored to be the session’s guitarist; the possibility of South as the LP’s main creative instigator gets nicely enhanced by the circumstance of his first chart hit being ’58’s “The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor.”
If It’s Monster Surfing Time’s musical focus provides a healthy dose of rock ‘n’ roll prior to the influx of weightiness and ambition, this air of the lighthearted receives a substantial boost by the choice of subject matter. In 1968 George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead almost singlehandedly redirected the course of film scares; similar to The Beatles’ modernization, the adjustment was incremental, but in due time the dominant purpose of the horror flick was to induce intense squirming and discomfort in (hypothetically) adult audiences.
Although the name The Deadly Ones somewhat foreshadows another film of 1968, namely The Ghastly Ones by no-budget (and some would say no-talent) oddball auteur Andy Milligan, It’s Monster Surfing Time cultivates an atmosphere less Michael Weldon’s Psychotronic magazine and more James Warren and Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland.
The topical thrust of those two publications certainly does overlap, but Psychotronic cinema frequently leads to the grindhouses, while the celluloid monsters borrowed by The Deadly Ones are essentially once formidable entities defanged and made safe for youth consumption; for verification, one need look no further than It’s Monster Surfing Time’s third track, “There’s a Creature in the Surfer’s Lagoon.”
Referencing Jack Arnold’s 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, the frills-lacking R&R is immersed in schlocky phrases, humorous quips, exaggerated exclamations, and playful screams; it lands squarely in the territory having served as inspiration for The Cramps and the legions of garage, surf and trash groups that drank from the same fount.
Contending with snorts, howls, ominous laughter, and Karloff impressions, the opening title number is ultimately revealed as a pretty good if undeniably familiar tune, though that’s to be expected in a subgenre where everybody sounds a little or a lot like everybody else; a surefire way to stand out from the surroundings to resuscitate a bunch of characters from the backlots of Universal Studios and even more appropriately, American International Pictures.
The surf-monster theme is occasionally relaxed and to the record’s lasting benefit; this is the case with the pure twang indulgence of “Outer Limits Surf,” and while added effects are present on “Surfin’ Dock Side,” they take a back seat to a stripped-down Ventures/Chantays framework. The maniacal mirth does resurface, along with horn charts, an organ led digression into the discotheque, and a mess of tub thumping during “The Mad Drummer Part 1.”
And it all gets restated as the track’s second part closes side one and more than insinuates that the album’s concept was stretched a mite thin. Yet not to terribly detrimental effect, for the flip corrals solid if not mind-blowing versions of proto-surf nuggets “Raunchy” by Bill Justis and “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy.
The second side continues to intermittently relax the LP’s hybrid, a decision elevating “The Moonlight Surfer” in the overall scheme as the moans and shrieks deepen the Bo Diddley/Johnny Otis groove of “Help.” Things go a tad overboard in “Igor Goes Surfing,” but the situation ends well with “The Lone Surfer,” a cut from South reminding these ears just slightly of The Ventures’ reading of The Tornadoes’ “Telstar.”
At this late date, most of It’s Monster Surfing Time’s flaws have become aspects of endearment. Instead of delivering a masterpiece destined to collect dust on the shelf, The Deadly Ones dished a platter that’s likely to be pulled out at least every October.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B
