When the lamp is low
When the nights draw in
Then I like to hear guitars
Played not as pentatonic pendulums
But improvising The Byzantine Scale
Surfer sounds of 1962
On limited edition 45s
Some anthologised
Some curated solely
By last remaining ‘Surf guitar’ survivors
They mostly cut their discs
Self-produced in back-street studios
Proud sounds laid down and pressed
For loyal fans attending dwindling gigs
Along the California coast
Sometimes a local D.J. spun
Their sample airplay late at night – seldom to gain
National attention or acclaim
They were the ‘Little Magazine’
Equivalence in sound –
The lost young lyrical poets
Asserting their riffs and melodies as if
‘Written on water’
Aqua-cathedral reverberation
They turned aside from blues-pop pentatonic –
To Hungarian and Spanish Gypsy scale
Adopting the Byzantine
They faced down the Pacific
Skipped a pebble across the pond
Into the infinite –
For Japanese teens head-over-heels
Fell in love with their ‘Eleki’
The Tokyo grid
Took to electric ‘Kakin-Joshi’
As sauce to spice traditional folk melodies –
Doing more than ‘protest’ pop
To emphasise our universal bond
I think of them heroically
Working to afford continuation
Capturing three minutes onto vinyl
And trying for a microtonal difference
To catch the wave ensuring fleeting fame
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Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer
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