Surf Rider Wipes Out/Gremmie Out of Control: Surf Record Liner Notes
JERRY DELUCA Do they make surfboards out of plastic, Sandy?
SANDY SANDERS I don't know, but nothing comes between me and my woody!
JERRY DELUCA Isn't that a car? A station wagon?
SANDY SANDERS The same word can mean different things in surf culture, Jer.
-Flashback to Never, Season 2 Episode 2, “Second Time's A Charm"
Ain’t it the truth? Part of the appeal of surf rock from the beginning was the subculture it represented - and the youthful, in-crowd jargon that accompanied it. Great as the music was, it was kind of secondary to the feeling of being part of a really cool club.
Look no further than the liner notes to the Ventures’ April 1963 LP “Surfing,” a record that came out almost a full year into the craze and still felt the need to print a handy lexicon. All of those landlocked Midwestern teens wanted to follow along - so that they could feel like they too were regulars at Dick Dale’s legendary performances at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, California in the summer ‘61:
CRUNCHER – Hard-breaking big wave that folds over; almost impossible to ride.
GREMMY – Comes from Gremlin. Beginners or young hangers-on who are troublesome to surfers.
HANGING FIVE – Five toes over the nose (or front) of the board.
THE HEAVIES – Very big waves, 18 to 20 feet high; found only in Hawaii.
HERO – One who thinks he’s greater on a surfboard than he is.
HO-DAD – A greaser, sort of a hot rodder with long hair and sideburns.
HOT DOGGER – A great and showy performer on the board.
PIPELINE – A very large “tube.”
PSUEDO – Pretends he’s a surfer but isn’t.
SHOREBREAK – Small waves that break close to shore.
SPINNER – A full 360 degree turn while riding a wave; a very difficult maneuver.
TEN-OVER – Ten toes over the nose.
THE TUBE – The hollow part of the wave.
WIPE-OUT – Being spilled by a wave.
WOODY (or WOODIE) – The station wagon a surfer uses to haul his board.
THE SURFER – A magazine published in Dana Point, California, which is the bible of surfing.
Elsewhere in those same notes, was some handy advice on proper usage:
In describing a wave in surfers talk, it might go something like this: “Look at that hot-dogger! He’s hanging five in the curl.”
“He’d better back-peddle before he pearls and takes a wipe-out.”
Dick Dale’s regional hit "Let's Go Trippin'" helped spawn a national craze for surf music that lasted roughly from 1962 to 1964. His second LP, “King of the Surf Guitar” was released in June 1963, and the liner notes continued to fixate on the jargon of surf music, as well as the authenticity that language bestowed:
Dick’s talents are just about limitless: He not only sings and play guitar, he also plays trumpet, drums, sax, piano, and many other instruments. And he doesn’t just make music for surfers, he’s a surfer himself - and a good one. Recently when he showed up with other surfers for a scene in the American International film “Beach Party,” he was the only one among them who didn’t need bronze body makeup. Dick’s bronze is for real, and he keeps it that way by almost daily visits to Huntington Beach or Dana Point, or wherever the “big ones” are coming in.
Dick created the Stomp - or rather, he created the driving, rhythmic beat that started the new dance sensation. As he says, the kids just moved with the music, and the Stomp was born.
Even place names became a hep linguistic signifier unto themselves - Huntington Beach and Dana Point meant nothing to an Indiana kid except that someone as cool as Dick Dale apparently thought they were great places to “bronze.”
Our resident surfer on Flashback to Never is Sandy Sanders, chill to the max and certainly no gremmie, even if the best waves on Lake Lemon barely topped six inches. He’s a real ho-dad, content with the shorebreaks, but never giving up on his quest for a real heavy - maybe even a cruncher one day, if the wind out of Monroe State Forest is just right. He’s at Lake Lemon the day the season opens in May, and he’ll hang ten in the pipeline until the hayrides start up again in the fall - a corn-fed true-believer in the California dream.
See if you can pick up what he’s laying down on the latest episode of Flashback to Never, a little show about a time not so long ago - when the hot-dogger was still king. New episodes every other week - for anyone who thinks that they just don’t make music like they used to!