![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/Los_Straitjackets_2024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSurf music is often associated with a specific time and place. The rock subgenre featuring instrumental tunes built around sonorous electric lead guitar enjoyed its heyday in the late 1950s and pre-Beatles early 1960s. And the form is most closely associated with Southern California. Artists like Dick Dale, The Chantays (\u201cPipeline\u201d) and The Surfaris (\u201cWipe Out\u201d) were exemplars of the style. But as with all trends, the popularity of instro-surf crested, then ebbed.<\/p>\n
But it never washed away completely. Several subsequent revivals have brought surf music back into the limelight. And the unbridled joy, excitement and humor built into the style has meant that surf music has continued to delight new generations. Today it inspires and influences musicians who might not have even been alive during the original surf era.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Without a doubt, the most heralded and successful of modern-day surf revivalists are Los Straitjackets. Founded in (of all places) Nashville in 1994, Los Straitjackets put their own unique spin on the form. \u201cWe wanted to play instrumentals, and we wanted [our show] to be vintage entertainment, like the Ventures,\u201d says guitarist Eddie Angel. As for the name, \u201cwe liked the absurdity of it.\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n
Dressed in matching outfits and sporting matching custom guitars, the quartet cuts a distinctive image. All four members appear onstage wearing Mexican luchador<\/i> masks, and the group spokesman addresses the audience in a hilarious, gringo-fied Espa\u00f1ol. The band executes tightly choreographed stage moves while spinning out impossibly catchy, twangy and heavily reverbed instrumental tunes, inevitably eliciting broad smiles from everyone in the audience.<\/p>\n
Angel co-founded Los Straitjackets with fellow guitarist Danny Amis (aka Daddy-O Grande). After successfully wrestling a bout of cancer, Amis retired from the group, settling in Mexico. Today Angel leads the group, joined by longtime member Pete Curry (a Bay Area native who played with an early lineup of the Chocolate Watchband) on bass, guitarist Greg Townson and drummer Chris Sprague.<\/p>\n
Los Straitjackets\u2019 music is a dazzling mix of originals (with vintage-sounding titles like \u201cCaveman\u201d and Rampage\u201d) and inspired surf-instrumental reworkings of unlikely tunes like Celine Dion\u2019s \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d and Nirvana\u2019s \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit.\u201d The group is astonishingly versatile: they\u2019ve collaborated onstage and on record with rock heroes like Deke Dickerson, Marshall Crenshaw and Nick Lowe; a new Los Straitjackets album with Lowe is due later this year. They\u2019ve released nearly 30 albums \u2013 three of them Christmas-themed \u2013 and succeeded brilliantly in breathing new life into a genre that was popular more than a half century ago.<\/p>\n
Angel admits that while he and his band mates were serious about Los Straitjackets from the start, it was a bit of a goof. With the wrestling masks, Aztec medallions and Shadows-style synchronized moves, \u201cwe didn\u2019t know what we were doing,\u201d he admits with a laugh. \u201cWe just thought it looked cool. I didn\u2019t think we were going to make a career out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Los Straitjackets began, Angel was already a rock veteran. \u201cI had been in bands my whole life,\u201d he says. \u201cMoved to Nashville, got a record deal, lost a record deal.\u201d But when he donned that luchador mask, everything changed. \u201cI realized that something magical was happening,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
With the tightly arranged songs and patented moves, it would seem that there\u2019s little room for spontaneity at a Los Straitjackets show. But Angel says that\u2019s not really the case. \u201cSome songs I play the exact same solo every time,\u201d he admits. \u201cBut on some songs, my solo is never<\/i> the same.\u201d Moreover, the band is always in tune with the audience, and that audience can sometimes be a wildcard.<\/p>\n
Angel recalls a recent gig in Connecticut. \u201cThis one blonde girl was out there dancing. So Greg jumped out into the audience with his guitar, and started dancing with her while he was playing.\u201d After the show, the woman approached the group and introduced herself as Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club). \u201cShe and her husband Chris Frantz were at our show!\u201d Angel says with pride.<\/p>\n
In the group’s early days, Daddy-O Grande did the song introductions, declaiming lines like, \u201c\u00a1Muchas gracias, Damas y caballeros! \u00a1Los Straitjackets presentamos \u2018Rumble\u2019!\u201d Angel says that Amis was \u201creally good at it; he was animated and funny.\u201d After Amis retired, the duty of serving as Los Straitjackets\u2019 emcee fell to Angel. \u201cAt first, I really tried to get it right,\u201d he admits. \u201cI wanted to get the grammar correct and everything. But I sound like a gringo from upstate New York.\u201d So he relaxed. \u201cI realized,\u201d he says with a chuckle, \u201cthat it\u2019s probably funnier if I get it wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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