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Hi Dennis:
My name is Bruce Duncan. I was born in September 1952. Today, at age 52, I'm lead guitar and songwriter with the band Longboard Ranch, which plays an eclectic mix of instrumental rock, heavy on the reverb and echo/delay, somewhat like The Ventures, but with a decidedly surfier sound.
It was Autumn 1960. My family had just moved from an apartment in Brooklyn, NY to our first house, in West Hartford, CT. We were out for a Sunday drive, exploring our new town, in my dad's shiny '59 Olds. My dad decided he wanted to tune in the news on the car radio, but when he turned it on, (probably the first time he'd even used the radio in that car!), the Top-40 station it was tuned to had just started to spin "Walk Don't Run", which was making its run up the charts.
Rock music, to my parents, was evil and undesirable. My dad reached over to change the station, but I stopped him because even though I'd never heard Rock & Roll before, there was SOMETHING about that song that grabbed me and wouldn't let go! I never knew the title nor the name of the band that performed it, but I never forgot the song, and the magical, totally unique sound of the lead guitar.
It wasn't until about 1968 when I started acquiring my own records, that by happy coincidence, I discovered The Ventures, and the Walk Don't Run album was the about the sixth of their albums that I purchased.
What kind of influence did The Ventures have on the 1960's and 1970's? I would say their greatest influence was in terms of how many young people took up the guitar, inspired by The Ventures to do so. There's no question The Ventures influenced the evolution of Surf Music, and they certainly did their part to popularize Fender guitars! The Ventures' own guitars, The Mosrites, started showing up in popular surf bands as soon as surf guitarists became aware of them.
I think the 1970's was one of the most screwed-up decades in terms of pop music, and The Ventures really became more followers than leaders or innovators during the 70's.
One exception was the development of Punk/New Wave music in the late 70's, and you can hear guitar arrangements and solos in many of the top bands in that genre, if you listen for them. The Go Go's, a New Wavish girl group even wrote and recorded their own instrumental, "Surfin' & Spyin" as a tribute to The Ventures, and The Ventures themselves recorded the song, with members of The Go Go's contributing background vocals in the studio.
Thanks to bands such as Jon & The Nightriders, and in my case, The Surf Raiders, who both sprang up betweeen 1979-1980, there was a tremendous resurgence in interest in Surf and Instrumental Music. Thus began the Second Wave which lasted pretty much through the late 1980's. However, the tangential importance of Punk and New Wave can't be overstated.
In 1979, a young underground DJ named Rodney Bingenheimer, had a regular program on KXLU - Westchester. He played mostly Punk bands that weren't getting airplay on the more established stations and had a large, rather fanatical audience. One evening, just as a lark, he spun a couple of way-early Ventures tracks, and according to the story, within a minute or two, the station's switchboard was lit up like a Christmas Tree. The callers were all wanting to know who this way-cool New Wave band was, and could they hear more of their songs. Rapidly, Bingenheimer was playing 8 to 10 Ventures songs during his programs, and now, the listeners were clamoring for this band to perform live in the LA area, so they could actually go see them play.
The Ventures at this point, hadn't appeared live in LA for most of the decade, due to complete lack of interest from the club-going crowd. They continued to rake in hundreds of thousands of bucks every year from their tours and record sales in Japan, and otherwise, were living the lives of wealthy investors, having recently moved out of LA and returned to their home-grounds in the Pacific Northwest.
When Bingenheimer was able to crack through their defensive perimeter, and actually communicate directly with them, Bob Bogle and Don Wilson expressed utter disbelief that a current-day, young, trendy audience would want to spend a dime to hear their music, much less bother coming out to see them play. Ultimately, Bingenheimer was able to convince them that they should do this at least once, and after that, the rest would be up to them.
The Ventures were booked to play back-to-back a Friday and Saturday night gig at "The Starwood", a trendy club right in the West Hollywood tenderloin, near the Pussycat Theater, and The Pleasure Chest adult novelty store. I went to see them on the Saturday show, which was opened by a great New Wavish, rootsy Blues/Rockabilly band called The Blasters. The crowd was mainly Punkers in their 20's. I was 27 and felt like an old man in this crowd! Their reception was very warm and enthusiastic for The Blasters.
After The Blasters finished their set and walked off-stage, the atmosphere changed instantly. You could feel the excitement in the place, much the way you can feel the ozone level change right before a major electrical storm. The noise died down to whispers, and then, backlit from stage-left, silhouettes of guys walking out, holding Fender guitars, became visible. The crowd went totally ape-shit and the noise of the yelling and whistling was deafening. The Ventures, all well into their 40's at the time, had this SRO crowd in a total frenzy.
They got up and started to play Walk Don't Run. They had their amps set God-Awfully-Loud, and because of that, I was able to hear them over the roar of the crowd. (However, the music was so loud, my ears were ringing noticeably for almost 3 full days!) They then started to play "Bulldog", an old Fireballs song that definitely had a Punkish aspect to it. People in the mosh pit were slam-dancing. There was this one guy, who had a shaved head with a Mohawk strip of hair running front to back, and two armfuls of tattoos, who actually jumped up on the stage, then dove into the slam-dancers, knocking them down like a row of dominoes.
After that, the bouncers starting moving in his direction, but he was able to get up on the stage again, this time walking right up to Don Wilson, the rhythm guitarist, and grabbing Wilson's mike stand, which he then threw, spear-like, at the slam-dancers. He jumped down from the stage and almost instantly had three extremely large and muscular bouncers trying to escort him to the side door so they could boot him into the alley. He put up so much resistance that it took the three of them nearly five minutes to move him the 25 feet to the door, and then kick him out.
I saw The Ventures perform three times after that, all at The Palomino Club in North Hollywood, (which had been their stomping grounds in the early 60's and was where they met Mel Taylor, who was the house drummer before joining The Ventures). The Palomino appearances were in 1983, 1984 and 1985. At one of them, I managed, during their break between sets, to have a short conversation with Don Wilson. (Bogle after all those decades of public performing, remains quite introverted, and beat a hasty retreat to the band's lounge).
I asked Wilson if he remembered the episode at The Starwood, and he gave me this "duh" kind of look. I said, I was curious as to how he just kept on playing, and registered absolutely NO reaction at all to this big Punker bearing down on him on stage. Wilson laughed and said, "I literally shit my pants! I've never seen anything like that in 25 years of playing live. Damn good thing our RV with changes of clothing was parked right outside, so I was able to finish the set and then get some clean shorts on!"
The upshot is that from about 1980 - on, The Ventures enjoyed renewed popularity and record sales in their own country. Due to this, re-issues of most of their early LP's were available through the 1990's on CD, and they've enjoyed revitalized sales of their newer CD's such as "Wild Again" which was released in 1996, and "New Depths" which came out in '97 or '98.
To hear the presence of The Ventures influence most clearly, you can attend live surf-music shows going on this week, this month, this year, and dollars to donuts, you'll hear many Ventures-like riffs coming from these very modern, state-of-the-art Third Wave surf bands. Unfortunately, with the major record companies pushing out odiferous brown logs called RAP and HIP HOP, the classic songwriting/performing live musician band setup doesn't seem to have much of a place in mainstream music these days. Bands that continue in this mode are mainly forced to remain unsigned, or signed to Indie labels at best. Still, listen to enough of this type of Alternative band and you'll hear The Ventures popping through here and there.
One of the more noticeable traces of Ventures influence came when Green Day contributed their original instrumental, "Espionage" to one of the Austin Powers soundtracks. Listening to their song takes me back to The Ventures after they discovered "Fuzz" in the mid-to-late 60's.
My son, who's now 21, started learning guitar a few years ago. When I started him on formal lessons, the very first song he wanted to learn was Hawaii Five-0.
Regards,
Bruce D
Dennis Matias <dmatias812@...> wrote:
Hey, can anyone help me out and answer some questions for my history
project on The Ventures? Thanks in advance to anyone who answers the
questions. You can just email me the answers directly. Thanks in
advance for answering.
-Name
-When/Where were you born?
-How/Where did you first hear of The Ventures'? How old were you when
you first heard of their music? What was your occupation at this time?
-How did their music, in your opinion affect the 60's/70's and
yourself?
-How was their music different to the other styles of music of the
time? What set them apart from hearing it for the first time.
-Where were you at your first Ventures' concert? How was it? And what
was that experience like?
-And any other information or personal experiences that aren't asked
and would help would be great!
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