In UGLY THINGS 60s-oriented music magazine/deluxe fanzine recently , which I bought when I bought the stuff I mentioned on the " Genre Magazines ' thread , there was an ad for the company re-releasing 10 Ventures albums from the 60s on CD and colored vinyl , apparently straight re-releases of the 10-12 cut albums .
The albums leave out the earliest part of the Ventures' career , starting with the " TELSTAR - THE LONELY BULL all?? other folks' instrumental hits , LP , and end with the " HAWAII FIVE-O " one .
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Although I've been a fan of instrumental music since my earliest years (I always preferred Lawrence Welk's LPs to his TV show-- maybe I just didn't care for the singers), and soundtracks made a big part of my record-buying for a long time, it wasn't until late 1995 I was introduced to "surf" music (or, "instrumental ROCK") when my pal Palmyra (leader of The Friggs) urged me to stick around and hear Los Straitjackets. WOW. Over the years since, I found HUNDREDS of surf / instrumental bands. Among them, of course, The Ventures. "Walk Don't Run" was THE record that inspired Eddie Angel (one of the 2 lead guitarists of LS) to first pick up a guitar and learn to play.
Strange as it may seem, I came to love SO MANY of these bands, that The Ventures were never even in my top 10. NO KIDDING!! However, I did get some choice stuff from them. Top of the heap, VENTURES IN SPACE, or "the Halloween album". It opens with a cover of The Markett's song "Out Of Limits" (itself a weird variation on "The Twilight Zone" theme-- no wonder people confuse those 2 shows) which, for once, is BETTER than the original, then goes on to a nice collection of "spooky" stuff. I still remember the first time I played it, it immediately hit me, I'd heard the song before. Back in the 70's, Philly's channel 48, for maybe only a year or so, ran THE GHOUL, the horror-movie host from Chicago. Rather than the typical "Roland" or "Vampira" knock-off, he was like a demented, undead hippie. The Ventures' "Out Of Limits" was his show's theme song!
I also got their CHRISTMAS ALBUM, and a friend finally filled a gap for me by sending me a copy of their GREATEST HITS album. Ironically, years before that, I got SWINGIN' CREEPERS, a various-artists "tribute" comp, with a whole mess of current surf bands doing Ventures songs.
Somewhere along the way, I also got (let's see here) BATMAN, FLIGHTS OF FANTASY, TV THEMES, SUPER PSYCHEDELICS, and $1,000,000 WEEKEND.
One thing that sticks in my mind... most of the cover versions they did were not as good as the originals. Nice, but not great. The Tornados' version of "Telstar" is definitely the better one. That's what made "Out Of Limits" stand out so much. It WAS better than the original!
The Telstar and the Lonely Bull album sticks out for me because it was the first LP I ever bought. I think I had already started playing the guitar by then. It probably was the covers that pulled me in; I certainly wasn't trying to play in that style. I liked them enough to pick up Walk, Don't Run, Vol. 2, though.
...I think my fave Ventures single/hit was " Perfidia " - a song which I later found out was , in its more balladic form , my mother & father's " song " so perhaps it ran in the blood :-) !!!!!!!!!!!
I've got at least 4 versions of "Perfidia". I've got it by The Ventures (not bad), Los Straitjackets (ditto), The Shadows (much better), but my favorite, by a mile, is by Lawrence Welk. I think it's the harpsichord that really does it.
...A instrumental Shadows hit from later in their British 60s hit years I've rather liked was " The Genie With The Light Brown Lamp " .
( I said " instrumental " because , especially as the 60s rolled on , they added some singing - sorta sounding in-between the Hollies and , I don't know , an all-male Seekers , kind of " pop-folk with the emphasis on the pop...and a bit of ' theme music to the European soccer results ' "...perhaps !!! )
The Shadows were unusual in that, for most of the 60's, they recorded both on their own as a mostly-instrumental band, and, as Cliff Richard's back-up band. My first exposure to them-- decades before I really found out who they were and got into them-- was their appearance in the feature film THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!, which I saw in a theatre when it came out. It was one of many TV spin-off movies made in the 60's that failed spectacularly to live up to the potential or charm of its TV counterpart. Still, the music was nice.
A friend reccomended AN EVENING IN NIVRAM: A Tribute To The Shadows, which had a pile of surf bands doing Shadows hits. Some time later, I got ahold of SHADOWS ARE GO!, a greatest hits comp, which had a photo on the cover from the THUNDERBIRDS movie! Much later, another music fan doing a trade sent me-- I'm not kidding-- about 20 Shadows albums, in the form of MP3s (on 3 CDs). Took me weeks to get all of them organized so I could run off "proper" CDs (including art, which I put together myself).
Strange but true: way back when, The Shadows were the #1 band in England, before being overtaken by The Beatles!