27/05/2019: “Out Of Limits” by The Marketts

I love a bit of surfer music. It has a set of distinctive guitar styles, reliably energetic rhythm sections, and usually a fair amount of horns and other assorted musical accoutrements.

The Marketts are distinctive for their rather space inspired instrumentation, using organs to produce pretty cosmic sounds. This leads to music that is possibly more tense and paranoid than many other surf groups.

“Out Of Limits” starts with a nervous guitar riff, chiming uneasily with the background, before a more assertive hook kicks in, to play alongside a menacing horn refrain.

Then the organ flares into action, setting a more relaxed pace before the guitar jumps back in.

The song was released in 1963, and shot to number 3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1964. Since instrumental surf music was a relatively short lived phenomenon, the Marketts did well to have a hit near the beginning with “Surfer’s Stomp” in 1961, and this one just as the sound was starting to fade.

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