Yes, there do not seem to really be visible waves in the ground. The story I've heard is that when people are put on shake tables, the room around them appears to have similar big waves, and instrumental records also do not show large amplitude, short wavelength motions, although there was debate about this in the scientific community about 30 years ago.

Love and Rayleigh waves have similar amplitudes, and if one is sufficiently close to the earthquakes, the S and surface waves somewhat overlap. Sufficiently close means the duration of rupture, which can be 10-60 seconds in M6.5-7.5 earthquakes is similar to the time separation between S and surface waves, which separate at the rate of about a sec every 5-10 km. So closer than about 100 km to an M7 event, the waves likely overlap, you might just notice a progression from shorter-period weaker motion to stronger and longer-period motion (P->S->surface)..