I got the urge to record again while reading Kent Crowley's Surf Beat: Rock and Roll's Forgotten Revolution, a so-so history of the rise of surf music in the US in the early '60s and its demise following the tide of British Invasion bands that rolled flooded America from 1964 onwards. So I got my old band-mates together - tracked the drummer down to a hostel for the homeless in Hastings, found another stacking shelves at Morrisons - got their instruments out of hock, and spent the weekend working on the sort of moody surf rock I've now been enjoying for five decades.
For the musos amongst you, I was intrigued to read that some of the early surf groups didn't use an electric bass, so I wanted to try doing without one as well - the deep notes you hear on everything apart from the two choruses (or breaks, or whatever they're called) are played on the low E string of my telecaster, deturned to a D. I lost my nerve in the breaks and added some midi bass to fill the sound out a bit - and to cover up the fact that our timing goes awry. To try to get the authentic loose feel of some early surf music, we recorded the whole thing without a metronome and without automatically adjusting the timing (amd almost got away with it).
It was fun getting reacquainted with Garageband and the Tele - and I know that at least one reader north of the border will be delighted to learn that The Fulminators are still in business.
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