Hot Rod & Biker

From surf it wasn't far to go to consider the famous woodies and other vehicles that toted surfers and surfboards. Hot rods, super stocks, dragsters and any other form of California car culture were fair game. Add to that motocross bikes, motorcycles, and in the furthest extention of the gearhead idiom: jet boats and even jets. Anything fast with an engine counted. From the earliest days, back when Gary Usher's Super Stocks were the Hondells, two-wheelers were part of it. By the late 1960s the biker portion picked up steam as a slew of biker-movie soundtracks rolled out; the music in these films rarely moved very far beyond the sound of the hot rod classics, however. Despite other trappings of the later era (mini-skirts and psychedelia), it wouldn't do to have biker gangs coming off as sophisticated!

Most of the same people and ideas went into hot rod as went into surf. With surf it was tried to dub in the sounds of waves crashing, but that was never a widely popular gimmick. With cars, however, engine noises received much more of a welcome. In addition to guitar instrumentals and pop songs, now there could be a third stream: tunes with motor sounds added in anywhere or just tacked on to the ends. And then came records just of the engine sounds or sounds from the dragstrips; these were more like field recordings for engine nuts. And of course budget labels got into the act, as the music and sounds of revving engines carried very little overhead.

Buying: Hot rod is like surf; it's never too late. The competition may be more fierce for certain titles, however, as the jacket photos of some cars are seen as more unusual or desirable than surf scenes, popular as surf photos may be.