POP MUSIC REVIEW : Dale Proves He Can Still Make Waves

Anyone familiar with Norse mythology, or at least the Marvel Comics’ version of it, knows that Thor, the god of thunder, wasn’t particularly concerned about anyone making off with his storm-bringing Uru hammer. The hammer was mystically bound to him, and he’s the only guy in the universe who could heft it.

There is a not-dissimilar relationship between a certain left-handed gold metal-flake Fender Stratocaster and Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar. Woe upon the unworthy who try to fret the royal instrument, for along with Dale having the thing strung upside-down, his guitar strings are nearly as thick as bridge cables. When explaining why no other surf guitarist could attain his overwhelming tone, Dale, clearly in a charitable mood, once suggested that “their puny little fingers couldn’t even push down the strings I use.”

Dale truly is the stuff of legend. Where the origins of other musical styles may be misted, there is little dispute that the surf music genre began with Dick Dale at Balboa’s Rendezvous Ballroom. He wanted, he has said, to capture the sensation and power of huge waves curling over a surfer, and damn if he didn’t achieve that, both 30 years ago and at the Coach House Saturday night.

There is an elemental, downright spiritual force to Dale’s playing. Though he developed a stunning technique, with a staccato speed-picking approach derived from Middle-Eastern oud playing, his best moments went far beyond technique. As Jimi Hendrix would do a couple of years later, Dale painted with sound, going beyond musical logic with expressionistic splashes of screaming reverb and rumbling, surging bass lines to create palpable seascapes that touched on the full majesty of nature.

While other guitarists might sometimes break a pick or wear one down, Dale starts with the heaviest picks he can find, and literally causes them to melt with his speed picking. The late Orange County guitar-making genius Leo Fender devised his Showman amp, the loudest thing of its day, in response to Dale’s needs, and used Dale’s punishing gigs as the endurance test for his new equipment.

Dale was no less maxed-out offstage, surfing all the hot spots (he rarely toured nationally because he didn’t want to be away from his beaches). His coastal success--including beach movies with Frankie and Annette--enabled him to acquire the Wrigley mansion at the tip of the Balboa Peninsula, which he shared with live tigers and other wild creatures he felt akin to.

In the ‘80s Dale’s legend took a tragic turn. He lost the mansion in a bitter divorce and lived for a while out of a trailer. His shows became uneven things which at times seemed more in tune with Vegas lounges than they did with the sea. His hands were burned in a kitchen accident, and he wasn’t expected to recover their full use.

Dale persevered, and at some shows in the last few years his playing approached that of his glory days.

In the last year a few of his performances have even surpassed his early accomplishments, roiling with a spirit and passion few performers could approach. Most of the “original” surf bands that still gig are plump guys in Hawaiian shirts out for a few bucks and some weekend chuckles. But from the exuberant shout of “Let’s Go Trippin’ ” (Dale’s first 1961 surf hit) that kicked off Saturday’s show to the last reverb splash 80 minutes later, Dale clearly was playing for keeps.

Working with the “power trio” version of his Del-Tones--with longtime drummer Steve Aschoff and bassist Ron Eglit--he tore into such classic instrumentals as “Surf Beat,” “Death of a Gremmie” (a gremmie was a non-surfing beach nuisance), “Shake and Stomp” and “The Wedge.” That latter song, along with his version of “Miserlou,” mixed a Middle-Eastern melodicism with his beach-bound bass-string riffs.

His new instrumental, “Desert Storm,” would have seemed a natural to benefit from such a stylistic combination as well, but it stuck instead to a simple blues progression.

There were a number of other new tunes in the set, some perhaps whipped up by Dale and his band on the spot, though his “F-16” bore more than a passing resemblance to Led Zep’s “Moby Dick.” Some of those instrumentals (he didn’t give the titles to most) really kicked, raising hopes that Dale might enter a recording studio again soon.

Other standouts in the set were his pulsing “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” a rampaging version of the “Peter Gunn” theme, and a power-picked version of “Pipeline” (he had recorded a version of it with the late Stevie Ray Vaughan for the “Back to the Beach” soundtrack) which led into “Wipeout,” wherein drummer Aschoff whacked out energetic solo fills. Throughout the show his drumming, highlighted by propulsive double-bass-drum work, and Eglit’s bass playing proved an ideal spur to Dale’s playing.

Dale dedicated one of his tunes to the environmental mural artist Wyland (famous for his “Whaling Walls”), who was in attendance. Dale praised his friend’s activism for the embattled marine life both love, while saying of himself, “I just ran away to the high desert (Dale now lives near Twentynine Palms) and said the hell with it all.” He’s being too hard on himself, for though the music industry may not spread his work the way Wyland’s now is, Dale’s music still speaks compellingly of the beauty of nature and its humbling force.

Dale will appear next on July 14 at Foxfire in Anaheim Hills.

The show was opened by the quintet Parental Guidance. One can only presume the band must have blood relatives in the surfwear company which sponsored the show, as there was little other justification for their sub-kegger set of KROQ oldies and reggae covers to be presented on a professional stage.