The Ventures
 

Anybody into them?
I think they are majorly underrated.

So they're a purely instrumental band?

I gave them a youtube and listened to a terrible recording of Pipeline which impressed me. Walk Don't Run was pretty weak though.

If I wanted to give them a proper listen which album would you recomend?

The Ventures are great, second only to Dick Dale.

Check out -
The Ventures play telstar
and
The ventures in space.

They are pretty amazing, in the past 3 days ive listened thru their live in japan album '65 10 times. Amazing how ahead of themselves they are.

great stuff, I never thought to get an album though - but I guess if they were a one-trick surf rockin' pony they wouldn't have such acclaim...

They were bigger than the Beatles in Japan for a while, kickstarted an instrumental rock 'n roll movement all of their own. The virtuosity on display here is pretty amazing

I liked them many years ago, but have largely forgotten about them since. Hmm, I should do something about that.

Get on that **** my man.

The Ventures are a great instrumental surf band, (some don't think of them as a surf band, as a lot of what they play isn't what you would typically think of as "genuine" surf music, but I think of them as a surf band nonetheless) and I'm surprised not to see more appreciation of them on this forum. They were even my favorite band once for about a 2 month period. I have a huge soft spot for surf instrumentals, and I've always found the importance of vocals in music grossly overstated.

They have a huge discography, most of which I've found pretty much impossible to find. (and it wouldn't surprise me if most of it was pretty crappy) Most of what you see in stores is just greatest hits compilations with nearly identical track listings making it very annoying to get a hold of their material.(This very well may be a different story for those of you who primarily obtain your music through online torrents) Anyway, for newcomers to the band I'd recommend The Ventures play Telstar/Ventures in space, (their sci-fi stuff is my favorite) and Walk Don't Run: the best of the Ventures. (If you're not put off by the fact that it's a greatest hits comp - it's the best one I've found) The Ventures' Christmas Album is also one of my few genuine guilty pleasures in music.

Anyway, my first post on the forum although I've been lurking for a while. When I saw the lack of posts in this thread, I couldn't bear not to add something to help promote a severely underappreciated band.

The Ventures are a Instrumental Rock band, they're not a Surf band, they were formed before Surf music became popular in the early 60's and they played Surf music when it was popular, most of what they played were cover songs from other Surf bands, but they also play other types of music.


Let me get this right, The Ventures been around for like 50 years have something like over 230 releases which includes 75 studio albums, 38 of them made the charts, but you were a fan of The Ventures for two months, you own like 3 ablums and a compilation and that somehow makes you an aficionado were you are able to say The Ventures music is pretty crappy. It would be nice to know why do you think their music is pretty crappy did you hear it all and you stating your opinion or you never any of it and you're just guessing, right?