Heh Heh Heh Heh Heh . . . Wipeout! : Salt Lake Man Rides Curl of Surf Music Far, Far From Beach

The nearest beach is on a smelly, surfless saltwater lake. Snow falls in winter, and temperatures can dip below freezing in May.

But the climate hasn’t kept Robert Dalley from turning his modest split-level home in this Salt Lake City suburb into surf music central for other devotees around the world.

Letters, phone calls and e-mail pour in from kindred spirits craving the echoing or “wet” electric guitar sound that made surf music the rage in Dalley’s native Southern California in the early 1960s and that still attracts a global following today.

“The mailman hates us sometimes,” said Dalley’s wife, Linda. “During the holidays, he brings letters in those plastic tubs.”

The inquiries are for Dalley’s 364-page book, “Surfin’ Guitars,” or his “Surf Music U.S.A.” newsletter. They have questions or tips on rare recordings, or they want to join Dalley’s Salt Lake City Surf Music Appreciation Society, which boasts a membership of about 200--only seven hail from Utah.

Dalley may be isolated in a landlocked, mountainous desert, but he’s not alone in his fanatical interest in a simple form of rock music that has ebbed and flowed in popularity over three decades and now is riding a wave of interest.

“Bob’s right up there with the top five or so” surf music historians, said John Blair, a musician, writer and fellow surf music buff who has compiled exhaustive discographies of 1960s surf and hot rod music recordings.

Dalley, 49, also fits the profile of a type of fan who goes to extraordinary lengths to satisfy an interest. Not content with recording-label fan clubs, they publish their own books, newsletters and Web pages.

“They are dedicated fans spending 10 years working on something so detailed and incredibly arduous and painstaking that no professional researcher would dream of doing it because they wouldn’t make money at it,” said book publisher Tom Schultheiss.

His Popular Culture Ink. published Dalley’s second edition of “Surfin’ Guitars.” Dalley, who published the first edition himself, has a third in the works.

Dalley’s fact-crammed tome on the surf bands of the 1960s began as a friendly chat with a neighbor in Covina, Calif., who also happened to be an original member of The Surfaris--the band that recorded the surf anthem “Wipeout.”

Dalley--who doesn’t surf but has loved and played the music since the 1960s--was swept up in the 1980s surf music revival and started his own band, The Surf Raiders, when he sought out his teenage idols to learn the secrets of the true surf music sound, look and feel.

One interviewee would tip off Dalley to the whereabouts of another long-lost surf musician, and that interview led to another. Dalley, a microfilm photographer, also used his knowledge of registries and other public records to locate even more.

He found most of them to be anonymous, middle-aged working stiffs surprised that anyone today would care to know about the flash-in-the-pan music careers of their youth.

“Some of them had scrapbooks their mothers kept and enjoyed talking about it . . . others weren’t so happy I found them,” Dalley said.

Dalley’s book captures the fleeting fame of 49 instrumental surf bands that sprouted in 1960, many of them out of neighborhood garages, and wilted within five years. All were victims of the British rock invasion and the surf genre’s connection to a fun-in-the-sun lifestyle that didn’t catch on nationally.

The phenomenon first emerged in Southern California beach communities where a growing surfing culture attached itself to the loud, driving, echoing guitar music of Dick Dale & The Del-Tones.

Dale still reigns as “King of the Surf Guitar” and got a recent jump-start in popularity when the critically acclaimed movie “Pulp Fiction” featured his powerful “Miserlou.”

Adulation of Dale turned to emulation as Fender guitar sales soared and the number of surf bands multiplied, with names like The Lively Ones, The Nocturnes, The Revelairs and The Truants.

Surf music was primarily instrumental before the Beach Boys recorded “Surfin” in late 1961. The genre’s sheer simplicity was one reason why many of the bands were made up of kids who had never played a note of music before sitting down and figuring it out for themselves.

“We’re talking three chords here . . . something you could teach yourself in three days,” said Stephen Peeples of Rhino Records, whose anthology of surf music, “Cowabunga! The Surf Box,” even includes a number by Dalley’s band.

“It’s simple, it sounds great, and it’s fun to play.”

Peeples believes that’s why the music is popular today and the number of bands growing. With names like the Bambi Molesters and Satan’s Pilgrims and songs like “Sutra Vortex Factor,” though, today’s surfing bands hardly evoke the innocence of the early 1960s.

Indeed, Dalley’s book includes dozens of photographs of clean-cut, baby-faced entertainers, many too young to drive to their gigs at local high schools and community halls.

Still, the musical novices churned out hundreds of records. Only a few gained national popularity, such as “Pipeline” and “Surfin’ USA.” The vast majority never made it off the beaches.

“It amazes me how much was recorded in four years,” said Blair.

Along with the hundreds of records are the stories behind the bands, which often stumbled into and out of popularity. Dalley’s book is essentially a compendium of the odd and humorous.

For example, a member of The Surfaris suggested initially that the title for “Wipeout” be “Stiletto,” and that the song open with the sound of a switchblade knife opening. Instead, the band went with their manager’s recommendation: A surfboard cracking, followed by a maniacal laugh.

The movement also had its “Queen of the Surf Guitar,” 13-year-old Kathy Marshall, who told Dalley in 1980 that she gave the late Beach Boy drummer Dennis Wilson a wrong phone number because she didn’t want to go out with him.

Known for their gimmicks, such as shaved heads and arriving at their shows on elephants, The Pyramids shocked the audience at the Rendezvous by stripping down to their shorts.

“It made all the papers and we never did get asked back to the Rendezvous,” recalled former band member Willy Glover.

When Dalley’s interviews first appeared in the early 1980s in Goldmine, a record collector’s magazine, he was surprised by the interest they generated and quickly concluded there was a market for such reminiscences.

So he auctioned his record collection and sold his Fender Jaguar, reverb unit and Showman amplifier to pay for the 1,000-copy first edition of “Surfin’ Guitars.”

Since he sold his first copies in 1988, he said, the range of buyers has since branched beyond nostalgic baby boomers to a younger generation of surf bands popping up around the world.

The Bambi Molesters are from Croatia, for example. Japan has its own Surf Coasters, and the Looney Tunes hail from Germany.