Surfing about Music by Timothy J. Cooley

Author:Timothy J. Cooley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780520276635
Publisher: University of California Press

Organizers. James Rodd, the Sports Vision manager introduced above, agreed to sit with me in the pressroom for a recorded interview. I asked him directly about the connections between music and surfing: “What does music have to do with surfing?” He explained that not everyone in Newquay was there for the surfing and that the festival organizers have to provide what he called “commercial” music for the general audience, but that the festival organizers also make an effort to “get the vibe right” and include what he termed “surfy” music as well.16 Rodd mentioned Pete Murray, an Australian acoustic songwriter, who was playing the Beach Sessions later that evening, as having a surfy sound. When I asked Rodd to explain what he meant by a “surfy” sound, he laughed, saying music was not his strong point, but then he went on to describe two contrasting styles that I find informative: laid-back and punk rock. Rodd made a connection between laid-back, acoustic, singer-songwriter music and surfing, while what he called a “punky attitude” is more closely associated with skateboarding. Yet skateboarding, as Rodd noted, owes its early popularity to surfers riding skateboards when there were no waves. Skateboarding is a bit more gritty, he said, and this lends itself to punk and rock music. In Rodd’s conception, surfing music was more mellow, in line with his perceived roots of surfing. Thus, what may seem like contrasting aesthetics are linked through the entangled histories of surfing and skateboarding.

Rodd also pointed out that the music festival at Watergate Bay has four stages, each with a different emphasis, as can be seen on the back side of the festival’s poster (fig. 22b above). While two of the big stages were devoted to contemporary music, in Rodd’s terms, the main stage did include sets by surfers Ben Howard from Devon, United Kingdom, and Tristan Prettyman from San Diego (the latter scheduled after the posters were printed). In addition, one of the stages held a lot of punk rock, which Rodd associates with surfing and skateboarding, and the smallest stage, the Jägermeister Stage, was billed as “local,” featuring bands from Cornwall, the county where the festival is held and a place that is known for its surfing beaches. Rodd believed that the Cornish (that is, from Cornwall) bands would appeal to local surfers. He volunteered that the festival has received some criticism for taking the focus off surfing, but he believes that this is a misconception. He stressed that the music was for the competing surfers as well as the general public. In my conversations with some of the competitive surfers, several were indeed excited about the music parts of the festival.

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