Introduction

PIPELINE (1963)
1) Pipeline; 2) The Lonesome Road; 3) Tragic Wind; 4) Runaway; 5) Blunderbus; 6) Banzai; 7) Sleep Walk; 8) Night Theme; 9) Wayward Nite; 10) El Conquistador; 11) Riders In The Sky; 12) Last Night.
Few, if any, surf rock instrumentals have managed to achieve life everlasting, but as good as ʽMiserlouʼ and ʽWipe Outʼ might sound, ʽPipelineʼ probably has the best chance to outlive them all. While the typical surf instrumental was supposed to be loud, cheerful, and optimistic, a musi­cal celebration of sun, waves, youth, and happiness, The Chantays went for a slightly more... introspective approach. The loudest instrument here is the rhythm guitar, spilling out dark bass notes in unison with the bass proper — a precursor to the heavy metal paradigm, you might say — whereas the lead part is quietly and inobtrusively wobbling in the background, along with an almost lulling electric piano (quite a novelty for the typical surf band). All over the song's measly two minutes, you get not so much a sense of cheerful exuberance as a feel of «dangerous beauty», inviting you to sit back and carefully take in the sounds rather than straightforwardly dive into them with complete recklessness.
It may be funny, indeed, but the song that most closely resembles ʽPipelineʼ in spirit, the way it feels to me, is no less than The Doors' own ʽRiders On The Stormʼ — and I would not be in the least surprised were I to ever learn that the sound of ʽPipelineʼ somehow influenced, perhaps even subconsciously, Ray Manzarek's and others' vision for ʽRidersʼ. The steady bass rhythm, the sound effects, the quiet electric guitar, and, most importantly, the huge role that the soothingly ominous electric piano plays for both songs, all of this counts. (Not coincidentally, another song on the Pipeline album is called ʽRiders In The Skyʼ, although this was a tune covered by just about anybody in the early Sixties, from Dick Dale to The Ramrods etc.). It is not even very clear why the tune became such a big hit, what with its mood so pensive and worried and with the skies so visibly cloudy instead of filled with sunlight — but perhaps it was the very novelty of the approach that made people pay surplus attention to the vibe.
Unfortunately, The Chantays never properly managed to capitalize upon the success of the song, missing a good chance to become the chief competitors for The Ventures. Not for sheer lack of talent or professionalism, though, as is well evidenced on their first LP — predictably titled Pipeline after the big hit, it features eleven more instrumentals, many of them written by the band members themselves (most importantly, Brian Carman and Bob Spickard on guitars) and all of them sounding quite nice, with quirky use of reverb on rhythm guitar and fairly maniacal drum­ming from Bob Welch on most of the numbers. The only problem is that they never manage to outshine ʽPipelineʼ — when they are trying to play something like it, they end up with pale sha­dows, and when they are trying to move away from it, they lose direction.
The record is well worth a visit, though, because there's enough diversity and quirkiness here to provide for proper entertainment. ʽThe Lonesome Roadʼ, for instance, joins its minimalistic melancholic riff with the main melody of ʽMoney (That's What I Want)ʼ, played on electric piano, before piano player Rob Marshall tires of it midway through and switches to a more cheerful rockabilly solo — after which the theme of ʽMoneyʼ never properly resurfaces again. ʽTragic Windʼ does a bit of Beethoven plundering, and we're not even in the disco era yet. ʽBlunderbusʼ is prime rockabilly with Bob Welch at his filling best, and ʽEl Conquistadorʼ dutifully pays its Latin dues, because how could a good Californian instrumental band live and not be influenced by the Mexican scene? And while the slow sentimental shuffles (ʽSleep Walkʼ, ʽNight Themeʼ) are not at all different from the typical slow teen dance numbers of the era, the lead guitar on the former and the piano on the latter are quite pretty.
Of course, if not for the title track, none of this would be sufficient motivation to give the album a thumbs up. But in a way, having these quirky semi-original compositions fill up the rest of the space was a better deal for them than to rely on covers of well-known hits (their version of ʽRun­awayʼ is absolutely nothing special) — so there's nothing wrong in going for the entire album if you ever get a chance (it did have a CD release, and is obviously not difficult to find these days as a digital download).
TWO SIDES OF THE CHANTAYS (1964)
1) Move It; 2) Maybe Baby; 3) It Never Works Out For Me; 4) Love Can Be Cruel; 5) I'll Be Back Someday; 6) Only If You Care; 7) Three Coins In The Fountain; 8) Beyond; 9) Greenz; 10) Space Probe; 11) Continental Missile; 12) Retaliation.
The second and last record that The Chantays made before splitting up and vanishing from the active scene until their reunion in the Nineties is at least a sincere attempt to advance beyond the level of ʽPipelineʼ. The title is actually a meaningful pun: while Side B of the album consists entirely of surf-rock (and similar) instrumentals, Side A is given over to vocal pop songs, trying to establish the band as a legit pop act that can not only play dance-oriented surf tunes but also sing love songs — and not just sing, but also compose: after a style-setting cover of Buddy Holly's ʽMaybe Babyʼ, everything that follows is self-written.
Unfortunately, as pop composers and singers, The Chantays never managed to be anything more than merely competent. They can sing, and they can harmonize, and they can even compose — I do not recognize these songs as directly ripped off from somebody in particular, and ʽLove Can Be Cruelʼ just needs a slightly more haunting arrangement and a bit more personality about its multi-tracked vocals to count as a 1964 classic. But this is precisely where the rub lies: The Chan­tays take the folk-pop of The Searchers and play it without managing to sound properly broken-hearted. In ʽOnly If You Careʼ, when they sing "I want some mighty fine loving from you", you simply do not get the impression that such is indeed the case, which is a pity because I kinda like how they weave in the ʽLouie Louieʼ riff in this dark love ballad.
The second side is more traditional and, consequently, much better — particularly ʽThree Coins In The Fountainʼ, with its sound of coins dropping in the fountain actually providing part of the rhythm (not that Roger Waters ever got his cash register idea from here, but it's always hip to find indirect predecessors), and a proto-psychedelic echo-laden keyboard part providing the romantic melodic part. On ʽGreenzʼ (a veiled reference to ʽGreen Onionsʼ?), The Chantays expand into R&B territory, with impressive energy from the rhythm section and some weird guitar figures; on ʽSpace Probeʼ, they try to go for a suitably «astral» sound, laying on the echo and some primitive electronic sound effects; on ʽContinental Missileʼ, Rob Marshall bangs the shit out of his electric piano to a fast and furious rhythm track, though I would not precisely describe this as the typical sound of a continental missile; and on ʽRetaliationʼ (what's up with all the war imagery? just how obsessed with the Cold War could those kids be?), they play with distortion, power chords, feed­back, and frantic tom-tom drumming in a manner that presages the classic Who sound of 1965, even if they only make one tiny step in the direction where The Who would make a giant leap.
Still, neither continuing to experiment with various genres nor splitting their personality in two distinct halves helped The Chantays get along — even though The Ventures were keeping the art of the short pop instrumental commercially viable, The Chantays lacked their instrumental prowess, and their cautious experimental moves stunned no one. It took me at least three listens, in fact, to begin to discern how much thinking, if not exactly inspiration, was invested in the preparation of this album — what with its total lack of flashiness and the boys' rather sparkless vocals. But it is quite a curious artifact from 1964, well worth exploring and, in my opinion, de­serving of a modest thumbs up just for the sheer number of various ideas that turned it into quite an eccentric and eclectic little record, one that was probably doomed to fail, but these days, could easily be reevaluated to help somewhat restore the jaded reputation of surf-rock.
NEXT SET (1994)
1) Killer Dana; 2) Bailout At Frog Rock; 3) Baja; 4) Pipeline; 5) Mr. Moto; 6) El Conquistador; 7) South Swell; 8) Hot Doggin'; 9) Blunderbus; 10) Riders In The Sky; 11) Penetration.
Considering the date, one could almost certainly ascribe The Chantays' decision to reconvene and release yet another album thirty years after their previous one to the surf-rock revival instigated by Pulp Fiction. But nope — actually, the slight resurgence of interest in Dick Dale and his fol­lowers took place already before Tarantino's project hit the mass conscience on a nuclear scale, and The Chantays, explaining that they were simply resuming the original smooth course that was so rudely interrupted by the British Invasion, got together in early 1994; by the time Pulp Fiction hit the theaters, the new album had already been circulating for several months.
Well, perhaps «circulating» is too heavy a term, because the guys could not even ensure proper distribution: labeled as «A Chantay Production», it was self-released on CDr and distributed at their live shows (and later, could be ordered on-line through their website). For some reason, the platter was tagged as «recorded live», though a more proper tag would be «recorded live in the studio» (somewhere in Dana Point, California): apparently, it was important to show that even after all these years, the original Chantays could still proudly hold it together as a tight, energetic, groovy surf-rock outfit. Which, sure enough, they did.
Even laying aside the question of true surf-rock relevance in the mid-Nineties, though, Next Set suffers from the usual problem shared by most oldies acts: they still have to remind old and young listeners alike of what it is that made them cool in the first place — so expect a healthy share of re-recordings of the classics; and they are so deeply rooted in the past that the best they can do is offer a few variations on the same classics — so meet the new songs, same as the old songs. No fewer than four songs are recycled here from Pipeline, including ʽPipelineʼ itself; and they also pay friendly homage to some of their early competitors, covering The Bel-Airs' ʽMr. Motoʼand The Pyramids' ʽPenetrationʼ.
One big change for the better is, of course, the advantage of modern production: as The Chantays get themselves precisely into the mindset of 1963, yet profit from thirty more years of technolo­gical advances, I can wholeheartedly recommend these versions of ʽEl Conquistadorʼ and ʽRiders In The Skyʼ over their predecessors. But there is also one big change for the worse, which some­how got sidetracked in the few press releases and interviews that I've seen connected with the Chantays revival: original keyboard player Rob Marshall is no longer involved with the band, and instead of replacing him, The Chantays prefer to go with no keyboards whatsoever — depriving themselves of the key ingredient of their classic sound. ʽPipelineʼ without the keyboards just ain't properly pipelinish, you know? Replacing the cool, wobbly, almost psychedelic electric piano solo with just another echo-laden clean electric guitar passage is a cheap substitute.
As for the new compositions, all of them are strictly and loyally in the classic surf-rock idiom and even sport strict and loyal titles: ʽKiller Danaʼ (referring to a large wave), ʽBailout At Frog Rockʼ (referring to a near-fatal accident), ʽSouth Swellʼ, well, you know. The best main theme is pro­bably on ʽHot Doggin'ʼ, with a crisp, quasi-grinning little riff, one of these quirky little beasts that goes well with pulling all sorts of faces onstage; however, the dialog between the high-pitched fugue and the low-pitched grumbly response on ʽKiller Danaʼ is also an amusing melodic find that shows the guys still have enough strength to work productively within the surf formula — and Bob Welch is still able to support them with top-notch drumming.
All in all, fans of classic surf-rock might be delighted to scoop up this addition to the catalog as long as it is still being sold on the Chantays website. This is very strictly one side of the Chantays, a straightforward nostalgic gift to all those who, unlike the late Jimi Hendrix, want to hear surf music again — but it is their best side, and, frankly speaking, what else would we have them do in 1994? A doo-wop cover of ʽSmells Like Teen Spiritʼ?..

THE CHANTELS

WE ARE THE CHANTELS (1958)
1) Maybe; 2) The Plea; 3) Come My Little Baby; 4) Congratulations; 5) Prayee; 6) He's Gone; 7) I Love You So; 8) Every Night; 9) Whoever You Are; 10) How Could You Call It Off?; 11) Sure Of Love; 12) If You Try.
Allegedly, the first relatively successful African-American girl group were The Bobbettes, whose ʽMr. Leeʼ (available on various Atlantic compilations) is a fun, giggly romp and who lasted all the way up to 1974 — but with only a small handful of singles to their name. The Chantels, how­ever, came right on their heels, and with ʽMaybeʼ, pretty much invented the classic girl group sound. Technically, it is still in the doo-wop paradigm, but with Richard Barrett's loud, brash piano playing and lead singer Arlene Smith's go-all-the-way shrill, gospel-and-classical-influ­en­ced vocals, ʽMaybeʼ does to doo-wop pretty much the same thing that the Beatles did to pop music. It isn't much of a song, but it's a hell of a performance, and it must have sounded just as liberating for young girls in 1958 as Little Richard did for young boys.
The good news is that the single caught on so well that The Chantels got to release a whole LP on the End Records label — no mean feat in 1958 for five young girls from The Bronx, who probab­ly deserve to have their names listed: Arlene Smith, Sonia Goring, Renee Minus, Jackie Landry, and Lois Harris. The bad news is that, although Richard Barrett (lead singer for The Valentines who took the girls under his patronage and produced their records) wrote some songs for them and Arlene Smith herself also contributed to some of the numbers, most of the other tunes pale in comparison to ʽMaybeʼ, largely based on the same '50s progression but not adding much to the original impact — not surprising for a cautious pioneering act in the late Fifties, but twelve songs set to the exact same doo-wop melody can be as mind-rotting as twelve 12-bar blues tunes in a row. Correction: eleven songs — the twelfth one, ʽCome My Little Babyʼ, is the only one here to feature a more playful R&B sound, a massive sax solo, group vocals rather than lead vocal with harmonies... and is the most embarrassing and silly one of the lot.
Repeated listens still bring out some specific goodness in the Smith/Barrett collaboration on ʽThe Pleaʼ, with some of the most nicely chirped baby-baby-baby's ever, and in the bass-heavy ʽCon­gratulationsʼ, which describes the classic situation of betrayal with a nice mix of desperation, sarcasm, and arrogance. But overall, it is useless to dwell on the minor differences between the songs — as a single, somewhat monochrome package, they all get by largely on the strength of Arlene Smith's lead vocal, in the tenseness and shrill power of which you can see the seeds of everybody from The Ronettes to The Shangri-La's (particularly the Shangri-La's, with their em­phasis on total broken-heartedness). And after all, it is not that bad to have to listen to 11 cases of the doo-wop progression in a row when you have such a great voice to drive 'em.
The weirdest deal here might be with the original album cover where, for some reason, the Bronx ladies are dressed in «Southern Plantation» style despite not having anything whatsoever to do with the art of cotton picking. Maybe somebody found that embarrassing even in 1958, because the album cover was quickly withdrawn and replaced with an even weirder choice of two utterly white teenagers, a girl and a boy, picking out a Chantels song on the jukebox — then again, ʽMaybeʼ did hit #15 on the pop charts (in addition to #2 on the R&B charts), implying that white folks were probably just as enthralled by this new sound as black folks. But regardless of the silly (or offensive, if you prefer to look at it from a 21st century perspective) taste in album covers, and regardless even of the not-too-great variety of compositions, We Are The Chantels deserves a thumbs up for both historical importance and one fine wave of personal charisma.

CHER

ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO (1965)
1) All I Really Want To Do; 2) I Go To Sleep; 3) Needles And Pins; 4) Don't Think Twice; 5) She Thinks I Still Care; 6) Dream Baby; 7) The Bells Of Rhymney; 8) Girl Don't Come; 9) See See Rider; 10) Come And Stay With Me; 11) Cry Myself To Sleep; 12) Blowin' In The Wind.
It's too bad, I think, that the debut album of Cher as a solo artist does not include ʽRingo, I Love Youʼ — her first single, issued in 1964 under the rather hideous name of Bonnie Jo Mason and allegedly co-written by Phil Spector in person. It is such a silly Beatlesque pastiche (one out of hundreds, of course) that the only point of interest there are Cher's vocals, so unusually low for the time that, rumor has it, some radio stations refused to play it because they thought they were being duped. And although she probably had no say whatsoever in these early decisions at the time, the song still set a career pattern that would be rigorously adhered to for the next fifty years: if it ain't trendy, the dark-haired lady can't be bothered.
Fast forward a bit to October 1965, by which time the dark-haired lady had teamed up with Sonny Bono and became an international celebrity by means of ʽI Got You Babeʼ. No sooner had the duo released their first LP that Sonny put forward the idea of crafting a parallel solo career for the wife — a golden throne for her and a grave for himself, as it would later turn out, but seeing as how he, at the moment, was the only one of the two with songwriting talent, the poor guy obviously could not see it coming. And thus, with the release of ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ as a single and the same-titled LP quickly following it up, the green light was given to one of the most, umm, let's say «predatory» careers in show-business, ever. A career as historically instructive as it is almost delightfully tasteless, and one well worth studying in detail, if only because it pretty much reflects the entire history of pop/rock music in its crooked mirror.
Anyway, it's October 1965, and the Byrds are one of the hottest things on that side of the Ame­rican market that tries to be friendly to «mainstream» and «alternative» audiences at the same time, so, naturally, at this time Cher is a folk-rocker, singing pretty arrangements of Dylan (three songs), Pete Seeger and The Byrds themselves (ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ), Jackie DeShannon, and a bit of British Invasion to round out the picture (a cover of The Kinks' ʽI Go To Sleepʼ which they never released officially at the time anyway). No expense was spared during the recordings, as a large part of The Wrecking Crew was recruited for the sessions, and Sonny's production, though not as masterful as Phil Spector's, still managed to come close to capturing the wall-of-sound effect — actually, considering that most folk-rock at the time was produced by young bands without much experience or simply with no desire to go beyond minimalistic arrangements, Sonny had the advantage of merging the «innocence» of the folk sound with Spectorian bombast, and at least in purely technical terms, he did it well.
Of course, Cher's voice at this time is both an asset and a problem. Asset, because if you care for low-timbred female vocals at all, there's just no way that at least some Cher songs could not ap­peal to you — when she's really on, she's a powerhouse, and as calculated as the whole thing (and the whole Cher career) is, I struggle to think of a 1965 album by a female artist (white, at least) that would better convey the idea of «woman empowerment». Problem, because one thing Cher has never had is subtlety — she rips through all this material, diverse as it is, as if she had boxer gloves on throughout the sessions, and while this is perfectly all right for some songs, it is defi­nitely not all right (and, in fact, embarrassing) for others.
First, the highlights, though. ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ, set to the predictable, but tasteful jangle guitar and chime keyboard, is a stunner — definitely a song more suitable for Cher than even The Byrds, taking Bob's tongue-in-cheek joking chauvinist jab at over-intellectualized females and turning it inside out in favor of the other sex. It is actually the only song on the album where the lady sounds like she's having fun — playing around with her limited range and sometimes arching out that "all I really wanna doooooo..." as if teasingly mocking the song's addressee — and it's kind of a pity that the other two Dylan covers here are ʽDon't Think Twiceʼ (a tune that is not intended to be screamed out, whatever the cost!) and ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ, done in a manner as grand as any national anthem and just about equally stultifying. Of course, it would have been too much to expect her to go ahead with ʽSubterranean Homesick Bluesʼ (although she'd probably do a great job with it), and there'd be gender problems with ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ, but... uh... ʽMaggie's Farmʼ, perhaps?
Other tunes where she is vocally spot on include ʽShe Thinks I Still Careʼ, a bitter-mocking rendition of Dickey Lee's ʽHe Thinks I Still Careʼ; and a rousing ʽSee See Riderʼ which manages to pack just enough brawn and arrogance to stand up to all the sprawling competition. Some others are just bizarre — for instance, a reading of Jackie DeShannon's ʽCome And Stay With Meʼ that should have honestly been retitled ʽCome And Stay With Me, Bitchʼ: where Marianne Faithful, who originally performed the song, sings the lines "I'll send away all my false pride and I'll forsake all of my life" as if she really means it, tender and on the verge of breaking, Cher's natural, never-shifting timbre makes it sound as if she's totally mocking the guy — probably giving him the finger behind the back, too. I do not doubt that the irony was unintended, and that, like so many other titles here, it was simply a matter of poor song choice, but the effect is still hilarious all the same, especially considering that this is one of her best-sung tunes here.
Specific downers, on the other hand, would include ʽNeedles And Pinsʼ — Sonny wrote it, yes, but not for her, and she just ploughs through the subtle hills and valleys of that song with a vocal bulldozer — and ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ, where she seems to just lack the technique and even ends up singing awfully off-key in spots. And although the dreamy baroque arrangement of ʽI Go To Sleepʼ is a very nice alternative to the minimalistic piano demo accompaniment of Ray Davies, one thing Ms. Cherilyn Sarkisian will always have a very hard time to simulate is that feeling of late night loneliness without a loved one. (Oh, I mean, it might just be a matter of her voice, it's not as if I'm implying she never ever felt lonely without a loved one herself.)
Overall, this is just like it will always be from now on — there's material that lends itself to the Cher treatment, and then we're in for a hell of a treat, and then there's material that fights back, and then we're either in for a hilarious oddity, or, more often, for a corny embarrassment. But this is precisely what makes the exploration of her backlog such a fun thing — you find yourself in the position of an involved historiographer, describing the never-ending shift of balance between treats, oddities, and embarrassments, and isn't that what life's all about in the end?