Oh yes, wait a minute Mr. Danzig...

For a few days now, I've been listening to the fabulous radio station on itunes "Sock Hop Radio." I felt like searching for a station such as this the other day and happened to come across this one. It does seem to veer into a bit of 60s music as well, but a good selection of 50s. My preference is for a completely doo wop station and this is about as close as I've come. People I speak to seem to sometimes be cloudy on the definition of doo wop or which songs/groups are classified as such, so as an example:



For some unknown reason, I just love the sound of groups and singers like this. Aside from fun and interesting harmonies (and plenty of bass vocals which now are rather unrepresented) the songs were short and cute.

After listening for a while, I did a wikipedia search for doo wop to see what it said. One of the things I happened to notice was a box on the side that listed "derivative music" that came from doo wop and listed were horrorpunk and 'beach music' which I would alter into surf music. I always sort of knew there was a retro-ness to the way the Misfits sounded and after seeing this little box, it made it quite evident that the simplicity and chord structure of many of the Misfits' songs were really tied directly into doo wop songs.
As an example of the similarities, I took a doo wop song and sped it up while lowering the pitch to give it more of a Misfits feel - Runaway Misfits. I just found it interesting how the Misfits were, in essence, a mean and modern version of doo wop music. It was probably somewhat intentional - trying to be retro in a way to have the music reflect on old horror movies from the 50s by using the music of the 50s as a basis for their songs. Interestingly enough, wikipedia says "Musically the band has drawn from punk rock, heavy metal, and 1950s rock and roll and rockabilly to inform their style" where again I disagree and say their music is much more directly similar to doo wop, not rock and roll. (If you listen to the Misfits' "Saturday Night" it sounds exactly like a 50s doo wop ballad).

The rock and roll from this era went into a much different path. While 'modern rock' really has no root in rock and roll, surf, rockabilly and psychobilly are directly taken from it. Give Jerry Lee Lewis a guitar and he's Reverend Horton Heat. Easier connection there. If you know both bands, you would probably see (or hear, rather) that Reverend Horton Heat and the Misfits don't sound too alke and this, I posit, is because their roots are actually from different genres.

I have a feeling devilocks were not quite as popular a coif back in 1957.