Somewhere out there, beneath the clear moonlight, some kid is looking at this disc for the first time in his uncle's CD collection and asking himself, "What's a Del-Tone?" He is afraid that there is no answer, and begins to wonder if he can ever relate to something when he has no frame of reference to it. Someone, somewhere, must have known what a Del-Tone was at some point. Someone must have thought that it was a good idea to name a band that at some point. But, as regular viewers of Mad Men know, then the Sixties happened, and we were left, like the Simpletons of a post nuclear-apocalypse, hunting for meaning amid the ruins of a culture that made sense.
I first heard Dick Dale the way the rest of you did, five minutes into Pulp Fiction, my mind blown by the juxtaposition of blistering surf guitar, Tarantino's screwball-comedy-esque dialogue, and the threat of impending violence. The first ten seconds of "Misirlou" (which means...?) shows up the the Beach Boys, and the Byrds, and the Doors, and any other California rock group for the posers they are.
Dick Dale didn't add layered harmonies and inventive instrumentation to his sound. He didn't desperately try to trade punches with the British Invation. He didn't wave his genitals at the crowd and then die in a bathtub. Dick Dale surfed the California beaches, and played guitar. He did things with guitars that no one had ever done, left-handed, without re-stringing the instrument the way Hendrix did.
Yeah, but what's he done for us lately, insists the zeitgiest. Hell, that was almost 50 years ago. Where's the relevance?
Here's what I had to say about that at this very blog, back in 2004, after suggesting that listeners load Fugazi's Repeater into their stereo's right after The King of Surf Guitar, to enjoy the striking similarities:
Whatever. Anyone who uses the word "relevant" and means it is either unable to see that hunting "relevance" leads to the same kind of empty ephemerality as the record industry's business cycle, or they see it and ignore it. In either case, the position renders them blind to the truth: that Dick Dale is Rock n'Roll.Case in point: the following was once considered the heppest thing since ukelele's:
Rock n'Roll is dated. It's yesterday. Your mom and dad used to dance to it. We've all smelled that desperation in the recent issues of Spin, trying to sell the Music That Rocks, succeeding in selling the Music That Rocks, only to have the Music That Rocks still swamped like a tiny boat in the sea of Music That Goes Platinum. Hip-Hop is what lights MTV's fire, and Hip-Hop is what all the kids are listening to no matter what their melanin level. Rock is still there, but it just ain't the big dog no more.
So Rock is yesterday. It just so happens that yesterday is almost endless, today is but 24 hours, and the future doesn't actually exist in our frame of reference. And since we can't go four years without examining in excruciating detail all the cool and uncool stuff that happened in the previous decade, I say we drop, for good, any pretense of interest regarding what's going on "today." If VH1 has taught us nothing, it's taught us that whatever we think is cool today stands a real good chance of being embarrassingly laughable tommorrow.
Maybe "The Dorks" was taken?
That's Dick and the D-T's, limping their way through "Miserlou" in the year that "Miserlou" was a #1 hit. As a critic, I'm supposed to point out that rock was much better in the old days, when the stuff was pure and real. I think we can put that tired notion to rest, like the idea that R&B means anything, after comparing the awkward affair above with that below. Here's Dick doing "Miserlou" and anything else he felt like playing, in 1996:
Seriously, let's see Brian Wilson do this.
I show the above not just to demonstrate that Dick Dale's music does not age, but also how effortlessly each song slides into the other, like the waves that Dick surfed. And if you listen to all of The King of Surf Guitar, you'll notice how, like Chuck Berry, each song is less a stand-alone piece than a movement in the symphony of Dick Dale. People who buy CD's are not supposed to like this. They're supposed to want variation, tempo shifts, all the bells and whistles that talented professional musicianly bands offer. Everything I imagine you'd find on a Coldplay disc.
But really, all we want from rock n' roll is to get hit. Smashed. Knocked out. Blown away. Transported to a state of simplified consciousness, where our stress and strain and labor and life slip away from the moment we inhabit. Or, as this Amazon.com reviewer put it:
I've owned this particular CD for years, but I have been kind of reluctant to review it. Y'see, to me, Dick Dale is kind of like the Tao; "the Tao that is spoken about, is not the Tao..." The Dick dale that I speak about is not really Dick Dale. Dick Dale needs to be experienced in order to be appreciated. I can't explain his music.
Without getting too far into the weeds of the difference between speech and reality (which would kill the purpose of this blog), he's basically right. Dick Dale cannot be praised as I would praise John Lennon. John Lennon wrote songs. Dick Dale played guitar. So for me to say that "Banzai Washout" is my favorite lesser-known track on this disc is irrelevant. That is but the Dick Dale that I have heard.
So to ask "What a Del-Tone?" is to invite the child's circular response: "That."
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