Rumble-O’s to play live score to The Endless Summer!

The terrific surf band I play bass with, The Rumble-O’s have been asked to perform a live soundtrack to the classic surfing film “The Endless Summer” at this year’s Greenman festival in the prestigious cinema tent. The festival runs from the 14th to the 17th of August. We are performing at 8pm on Saturday. We will also be appearing on the Solar Stage in Einstein’s Garden on the Friday at the same festival.

Lead guitarist Andy Taylor

Keys and trumpet player Banga Stanley

Drummer James “Slippy” Phillips

Bassist Gaz Williams (yep that’s me!)

Writing a complete soundtrack has poised an interesting challenge to the band as we haven’t attempted anything collectively like this. We do have individual experience though as lead guitarist Andy also performs with leading silent film soundtrack specialists Minima with whom I also played keyboards with between 2008 and 2009 gaining valuable insights into this peculiar art form. Rumble-O’s keyboardist Banga Stanley also composed a live soundtrack to images of acclaimed comic writer Ben Dickson’s Falling Sky.

We have written 8 brand new pieces of music for this commission and together with another 8 of our existing catalogue we have extensively rescored this glorious celebration of the nascent days of surfing. The original soundtrack was performed by The Sandals and is charming and quite beautiful at times. Although the temptation to copy them was strong we found that our existing tunes were the perfect match with the bespoke tunes filling in the gaps nicely. One of the joys of playing with The Rumble-O’s is emulating the naivety and spontaneity of music from that era. From a musicians perspective, it’s important to not be too technical and to essentially play in a direct and simplistic manner. Being all instrumental too is challenging as we have to ensure that the music has plenty of hooks and memorable moments keeping self indulgence to a minimum and fun to the max!

Here is a sneak preview of one of the specially written tunes, Hang 10. The recording is just a rough run through at one of the rehearsals. In fact this is one of the first ever run throughs of the song.

The original producers of the film Bruce Brown Productions/Monterey Media have been incredibly helpful and supportive with our adaptation partly due to the imminent 50th anniversary of this classic film. Although released in 1966 it was shot fifty years ago in 1964. The film follows two young American surf fanatics as they circumnavigate the globe seeking the perfect wave. A particularly memorable scene has the boys surfing off the coast of West Africa giving locals their first ever glimpse of the sport. The film has subsequently attained legendary status and has been credited with introducing millions of people to the pure elemental joy of surfing!