POP MUSIC REVIEW : Pied Piper of ‘Pipeline’ Riding High : Dick Dale’s Del-Tones Savor the Surge of ‘60s Propulsive Surf Rock

The essence of surf music has been obscured by all the lightweight imagery that went with it back when the Southern California dream was being retailed to an eager nation: Frankie and Annette, beach blanket bingo, fun fun fun in the California sun.

All those trappings may have helped sell surf music back in its early-’60s heyday, but it is the core musical notion behind the style that makes it worth listening to now. The idea was to infuse a rock instrumental with the feeling of being caught up in a wild, elemental surge.

As the prime inventor of surf-guitar music, Dick Dale is not likely to neglect that essence. It has been more than 30 years since he created the style in the long-vanished dance halls of Balboa and Huntington Beach. But playing Friday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano with his current bunch of backing Del-Tones, Dale showed that he still knows how to take his guitar on a wild, dramatic ride.

Dale’s two 50-minute sets covered the lighthearted, beach party aspect of his genre with honking, horn-driven R&B; numbers, ‘50s rock classics and a few of his own more chirpy oldies. But the real thrills came when Dale, 51, set the bouncier stuff aside and got down to blazing dramatics.

After quickie renditions of a couple of his lighter signature tunes, “Let’s Go Trippin’ ” and “Mr. Peppermint Man,” Dale began to play definitive surf rock that featured fast, staccato picking, reverb-soaked tone and careening slides down the neck of his old, gold-spangled Fender Stratocaster. It all came together on a propulsive “Surf Beat,” then continued as Dale changed the mood to flamenco-style grandeur during a fine, shifting number that alternated between flurrying riffing and slow, stately Spanish motifs.

The segment closed at a gallop, featuring the Del-Tones’ punchy young three-piece horn section.

At the end of the early set, Dale and rhythm guitarist Ron Eglit got into some fiery dueling as they replayed the “Pipeline” guitar duet that won Dale and Stevie Ray Vaughan a 1987 Grammy nomination (the Vaughan-Dale guitar shoot-out is the closing track on a new, 18-song Rhino Records CD release, “King of the Surf Guitar: The Best of Dick Dale & His Del-Tones”).

The ideal way to see Dale in concert might be in one of those old-time rock ‘n’ roll revues of the early to mid-’60s, where each act got to display its best stuff for 15 minutes or half an hour. Then the set could be one driving wave, with maybe a couple of jaunty numbers like “Let’s Go Trippin’ ” thrown in for relief between surges.

But Dale and the Del-Tones also had a good-time, dance-band function to fulfill. They did a capable job of it, judging from the lively dance-floor traffic through most of the show (when the “Peter Gunn” theme turned out to be a crowd favorite, Dale took his band through three different renditions of it).

Dale, looking like a craggy-faced John Wayne under his black cowboy hat, played most of the show off the cuff, singing a snippet of one song, then launching abruptly into another. A round-the-world routine in which Dale played just about every instrument on the band stand, including trumpet, keyboards and drums, had more shtick value than musical appeal.

Dale’s audience ranged from old-time fans to fashionable, scrubbed-looking kids who would not have looked out of place at a Depeche Mode show. Being a local hero probably helps his continuing appeal, but Dale’s playing remains a strong attraction on its merits, and a must-see for guitar aficionados.

The surf-guitar style may be historic, but the wild rides Dale takes with it are by no means history.