Diamondheads sparkle on East Coast

When you think of surf music, you probably think of California, Hawaii, or some other equally sun-drenched region. It used to be an invention of purely West Coast origins, but since its beginnings in the 1960's, however, surf music has migrated East. Local surf guitar group, The Diamondheads is living proof that surf can thrive in the city too.

Surf music is a genre marked by thunderous and steady drum beats, is dominated by the virtuoso electric guitars and is so guitar-focused that it rarely includes any vocals at all. Surf guitar, rather, tells its stories of surf and sun with instrumentals. It has made it's way into the mainstream with such well known hits as "Wipeout" by the Surfaris, "Bustin' Surfboards" by the Tornadoes and more recently, was spotlighted in the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction in the form of"Misirlou" by Dick Dale and his Del-Tones.

The Diamondheads' name comes from a volcano that cuts an impressive silhouette along a piece of Hawaiian coastline famous for it's surfing. Not that surfing is a requirement to play surf music anymore. In fact, of all the Diamondheads only the drummer, Dave Bradley, is an experienced surfer. The band's guitarists, Brian Lavelle and Dave Grauer are surfers-in-training, and bassist, Mark Harp, only surfs the web.

Harp says he wasn't into the surf guitar genre before he joined The Diamondheads, but that once he did, he became a quick study. Immersing himself in the music of surf guitar greats like Dick Dale and his Del-Tones, The Ventures, The Shadows (England's version of The Ventures), and a particular band favorite, Los Strait Jackets -- a contemporary Nashville based surf guitar band that wears Mexican wrestling masks in concert and introduces their songs in Spanish -- Harp soon became a prolific surf music writer. He wrote three songs on the first record and nine on the latest CD -- making him a major contributor to the Diamondhead sound.

Harp, a production assistant at CityPaper by day, explains how he came to join a surf guitar group, "I was looking for a band where I could just play the bass and not have headaches. They put an ad in the CityPaper looking for a bass player. I get to see the paper a little ahead of time and I called. They said, "The paper didn't even come out yet!' but I told them, "I have my ways.'"

The Diamondheads are a band that is fun to look at, let alone listen to. The quartet all sport Hawaiian shirts, the drummer twirls his drumsticks like a majorette leading a marching band and the guitarists play vintage Fenders -- one baby blue and the other a pastel aqua. Harp's bass, front center, is bright red and rip roaring to go and on the night I saw them perform at Frazier's on the Avenue in Hampden, the weather was as close as it gets to tropical in Baltimore in October. If you ignored the rope lights and smoky bar, the stage was perfectly set for an evening of surf guitar music.

Harp introduced one of first songs joking, "This is a tribute to our late vocalist -- what was his name again? Jeffrey? Jeffrey passed away two weeks ago."

Other highlights of the show featured a cover of "Journey to the Stars" by classic surf band, The Ventures, which featured a solid tribal sounding drumbeat reminiscent of a set of waves rapidly pounding the shoreline coupled with a spacey stroll-through-outer-space sort of melody. Another cover, "Any Way the Wind Blows", was a tribute to surf guitarist, Frank Zappa and brought shouts of "Cowabunga" from the crowd.

The strains of "Surf Less, Young Man" featured a bouncing, trotting cadence of guitar rhythm straight out of the Bonanza TV series theme song, and I certainly wasn't the only one who noted the tune's country western influence. After it was over, the sound technician in the back of the room shouted, "Thought you were "gonna play "Rawhide" after that!"

For the most part, The Diamondheads' guitars sounded smooth, twangy, and metallic, almost like steel guitars more likely found in honky tonks and cantinas rather than at beach bonfires. Yet, this is the signature style of surf guitarists everywhere, which only goes to show that they're cowboys too, the only difference is they don't wrangle cattle, they wrangle waves.

A more mellow tune, "Diamondhead Dusk," wound up the evening's repertoire. Plaintive and frank in its seductive "Come on and slow dance with me, pussycat" tones, the song's measured pace, in striking contrast to the nimble-fingered "hang ten" tunes that preceded it, allowed the guitar licks to shimmer and echo in a very Brian Setzer Orchestra kind of way. Lesson: Swingers, cowboys, and surfers aren't so different after all.

Surf music, does indeed have an infectious appeal that accounts for its influence on a cross section of decidedly non-surfing cultures and its emergence in Baltimore and Harp says that the group's catchy tunes are only getting catchier. "It's an odd genre -- playing instrumentals -- and we're damn good at it."

The Diamondheads' latest CD can be purchased at Atomic Books and Record and Tape traders.