Ventures In Cardboard

My favourite record cover of all time belongs to a 1967 Ventures album called $1,000,000.00 Weekend. The picture shows an enraptured woman listening to what looks like a slightly clunky white cell phone. It would have to have been a picture from the future, given that cell phones, as we now know them, didn't become widely available until almost 30 years later. Of course what she's listening to is a transistor radio - your grandparents' iPod; she doesn't even have an earphone.

I'm not sure what the appeal is; perhaps it's the time capsule aspect, without all the obvious psychedelic trappings, perhaps it's just her mascara.

I have a collection of Ventures albums - not everything they did, but most of their releases from 1960 until 1970. I don't know why, but the group fascinates me. Unlike so many instrumental groups of that era, they were a real group, with real members, with names. Ask me and I'll tell you - Bob Bogle, Nokie Edwards, Don Wilson, and Mel Taylor - that was the classic lineup, although Howie Johnson played drums on "Walk Don't Run". They put out albums with themes - country songs, surfing songs, songs to twist by, songs with colours in the title. Later they got into a kind of faux psychedelia, which sometimes sounds perilously close to the real thing.

It just fascinates me, that's all. I wonder what they were thinking when they recorded Ventures A Go Go in 1965, or Swamp Rock in 1969. What made them, in 1966, record an album of TV themes, with only three TV themes on it? I keep checking Amazon, but no luck. A "Story of the Ventures, as told by…" is long overdue.

And the covers - the covers are priceless. I've actually considered ditching the LPs and just keeping the covers. My favourites, apart from the one mentioned, are: (The) Ventures In Space showing a couple parked in an old roadster, overlooking the city down below at twilight, Golden Greats, showing a girl in a bikini, with way more weight on her midriff then would be allowed in today's anorexic world, The Ventures Play The Greatest Surfin' Hits Of All-Time, a later LP with a bikini clad model with not an ounce of fat within a hundred miles.

Musically they were too genuine for the supermarket budget rack, but not genuine enough for Rolling Stone. Judging by what's in the grooves, they were good axemen, but nobody puts Bob Bogle in the same category as Randy Bachman. They are barely a footnote in the history of rock music, notwithstanding the timeless appeal of "Walk Don't Run", the immortal bass run on "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue", the preternatural grunge of "Needles And Pins".

And after about 1970, they went from being a footnote to a footnote to a footnote.

And this notwithstanding the fact that the group is still around, with Wilson, Edwards and Bogle still on board. Drummer Mel Taylor died in 1996, and his son Leon is now playing in the band. And of course they have a web site.

But you can't judge a book by its cover, nor can you judge a Ventures album by the model on the front. Everyone has his favourites and so do I. I am partial to The Fabulous Ventures, if for no other reason than that it has the aforementioned cover of "Needles And Pins", which I always thought would be a great theme for an oldies radio show. There are a couple of others that I especially get into, but my least favourite is $1,000,000.00 Weekend; the album is a collection of instrumental versions of popular hits of the day, like others they did, but this one is just kind of lifeless. Maybe the radio needed batteries…