California Tiki, Polynesian Pop

[sus]

Posting on the Music board but it's more eclectic than that, a whole culture movement

Tiki bars, paperbacks, films like Gidget
I think my interest in this stuff started when I went to AO Hawaiian Hideout in Chicago for drinks (pictured above)

Then @line b recommended the brilliant bar/restaurant Three Dots and a Dash, where I met up with @mvuent

We had a very swell time, I wrote in an email to friends

in Chitown, drinks at •••ー. Morse for V; V for (not Vendetta but) Victory: Di-di-di-dah, or Beethoven's Fifth. Three Dots and a Dash, their signature drink the primary legacy of Beachcomber Don, Pacific islehopper turned pacifist after the war. Ian orders the Ballardian Concrete Beach—Espadin mezcal, Brazilian cachaça, horchata and orgeat syrup, a splash of guava (a sugar cube, atop a lime, set ablaze and served). I give Draper's legacy a spin, hoping to taste the greatest generation (aged Martinique rhum agricole, citrus, falernum, allspice). The neck of the bendy straw? Resembles a stork.

Anyways, we're on the music board so here's our soundtrack:

 

[sus]

My understanding is that a lot of this is a distinctly Southern California cultural invention. Slotting in with all the tropical gardens: the bird of paradise flowers, the banana trees, the elephant ears that lined LA suburban front yards

It coincides with the 60s/70s rise of SoCal theme parks—Western themed parks like Knotts Berry Farms, or the eclectic (Space Age + Frontierland + fairy tale) Disneyland

With all the SoCal Space Age diners shaped like satellites and UFOS

That there is this surprising combination of Polynesian exoticism/orientalism with Wild West history (all the Westerns being churned out of Hollywood) and the Space Age, and it's all swirling around

SoCal fantasyland, a completel cultural escape, the Kitsch Valley

 

[luka]

How Bizarre

 

[luka]

There's a David Toop book about this stuff. Pretty sure I read it.

 

[sus]

And also that it's about the return of American soldiers from the Pacific Front

And the publication of books like Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki Expedition, and James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific

That Polynesian pop and the early tiki bars like Don The Beachcomber were an antidote for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the WW2 vet Don Draper type who spends his days in offices sipping hard liquor cutting deals with execs.

A pressure valve where they can escape into a nostalgia for the Great Adventure of their youth, a fantasy of their own pasts filled with exotic women and music and the campy monstrosity of tiki

 

[sus]

There's a David Toop book about this stuff. Pretty sure I read it.

Exotica: Fabricated Soundscapes in a Real World?

 

[luka]

That's right

 

[william_kent]

Martin Denny was a HUGE influence on TG

 

[shakahislop]

i just murdered owen hatherley there is literally blood everywhere

 

[william_kent]

I always preferred Arthur Lyman

Arthur Lyman - Taboo Tu

 

[william_kent]

a weirdly timed thread

only today I was thinking about finding this 12 inch in the jumble of unordered records in my flat, they all used to be obsessively alphabetised but there was an incident with a psycho ex and a hammer that I won't get into here

but today I was thinking about listening to this post Throbbing Gristle tune

thankfully YouTube can saved me the effort because it wasn't that good

 

[william_kent]

@sus do you know RE/SEARCH? The INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC volumes 1 & 2 have a lot to do with this scene / primary source material

 

[william_kent]

obviously I'll have to post the TOKYO JAPANESE deep cut of a Les Baxter tune



Melon - Quiet Village 92 mix

 

[william_kent]

this gets complicated because of the Space Age Bachelor Pad Pop Elevator Music and Lounge crossover potential

 

[0bleak]

Yeah, a lot of those industrial people were really into that stuff.
I think Boiled Lice ran a tiki bar, too.

 

[IdleRich]

It is weird the link between exotica and industrial. Les Baxter is far and away the best of the guys in this sound - cos he aint that much in this sound.

Though who was the Mexican guy who won the lottery - twice?

 

[ghost]

Equally a norcal phenom. Trader Vics of course but also Tonga Room, which has a swimming pool with a band on the boat that moves back and forth as they play, and then artificial rain as well.

 

[ghost]

It’s the only SF tiki bar with a boat in a pool, though not the only one with a pool.

 

[IdleRich]

Esquivel is who I mean.

 

[0bleak]

a long time friend of my sister/also ex roommate of mine is big on Polynesian culture, and does Polynesian dancing n stuff - she's pretty hot, too (daughter of a model), but I would never have hit on my sister's long time friend - she was also kind of mildly annoyingly millennial wokey - don't get lecturey with me about stuff (like when I told her that I used to joke around with my ex that her favorite movie is Dances With Wolves - I guess she just doesn't understand that we would give each other a bad time about each other's race, but in a good natured way!) when you're also doing your Polynesian dancing, but I guess it's ok for you because you have a degree in anthropology?