This record doesn’t have a title; instead, it has a series of titles arrayed on the cover, as you see. (The spine merely reads: "The Ventures.") This album, as The Ventures wisely reckoned, needs no title. It is a work of noble minimalism, so even a name is de trop.
"The Ventures are the most successful rock band," I found myself thinking, listening over and over to these simple tunes (essentially instrumental). By which I mean the only perfect rock band. Each of their songs is realized, in a way that "Brown Sugar" (by the Rolling Stones) is not. "Brown Sugar" is a brilliant concept for a song — though treading close to racism — but the song itself is only 82% as successful as the idea. Whereas "Joker’s Wild," on this album — which I just listened to — is absolutely whole. The song begins with a recording of The Joker laughing, then abruptly transforms into a cowboy-sounding romantic anthem, the kind of music you hear in movies while the camera pans over the desolate Montana plains. Then The Joker returns, with his same disquieting laugh. Then a chaste little guitar solo, which is barely a solo, more of a tasteful elaboration of the melody. Then the melody itself. Repetition is key to The Ventures. That’s why they are the only perfect rock band.
This was dance music, apparently, for stylish 12 year olds of 1966 (one of which eventually became my wife — this was her record). Today it sounds like Vivaldi, like Muzak, like proto-Techno, like an idyllic bar mitzvah in San Rafael. And behold the striking titles: "Zocko!," "Green Hornet ’66’," "Vampcamp," "00-711." They seem to be secret jazz slang.
The Ventures are the haikuists of rock ‘n roll. Therefore, I will end with this poem by Buson:
A kite floats
in the part of the sky
where it floated yesterday.