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Tiny Bubbles - with a real tiki - on Lawrence Welk |
bigbrotiki
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 25, 2002
Posts: 10601
From: Tiki Island, above the Silverlake
|  Posted: 2010-04-09 11:57 pm Permalink
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On 2010-04-09 16:10, lucas vigor wrote:
The ironic thing is, very few of the performers that invented exotica or lounge music, were "children" in any sense! They were adults, living in an adult world that loved their martinis and gin and tonics. If you look at the demographics, the people making this music in 1958 were already adults, well over 30 in most cases. They may have been children at one time, sure, but they were children of the swing and big band era, and that was not so dissimilar from what they were doing at the time.
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This is a good point that is very regrettable about that big change in society:
We dis-empowered our own elders, and from that point on, youth culture became the important thing. Experience and wisdom began to matter less than innovation and youthful beauty. That is why I parallel the Tiki revival with "ancestor worship", and support respecting what out forefathers created.
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lucas vigor
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 12, 2004
Posts: 3453
From: "I've chopped my way through real jungle
| Posted: 2010-04-10 08:05 am Permalink
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[So Lucas, what do you think of this guy?....
(And Lucas knows who it is. For those of you who don't, it's NOT Jesus Christ, Jim Morrison, or Charles Manson.)
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eden ahbez is someone that hippies always like to use to show a connection between hippy music like the Grateful Dead, and the exotica/lounge scene. Yet, he is an asbolute anomaly. The one guy back then who adopted a hippy look, yet also had a pseudo exotica album, and wrote "Nature Boy" (which is not an exotica tune, by the way). But, he is hardly a real example of much crossover between two polar opposite genres of music!
The only real crossover between the two worlds occured when bands like Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny, Les Baxter (and also people like Wes Montgomery) started covering 60's pop songs. And I only see two aspects of that: One, it was pandering and an attempt to stay relevant, and two, often times the end result was actually BETTER then the original versions of the songs!(in my opinion).
But of course, this is hardly restricted to exotica and lounge, of course. Earth Wind and Fire did a version of "got to get you into my life" by the Beatles, which in my opinion, blows the original away!
My explanation for all of that is at the heart of something I truly believe: Good musicianship! Let's face it, the people of the exotica, jazz and lounge era were true musicians, with advanced, highly technical training (usually through serious classical music lessons from an early age) So of course, when they cover a song that was originally performed and/or written by untrained, amateur rock musicians, they jazz it up and make it better. The same can be said for most of the funk bands of the 70's. These were in no way amatuer musicians, and when you look at bands like CHIC and others of that genre, you see that most came from the "straight" music world (but also the gospel/church scene)
Of course, I am speaking in generalities, and there are rock musicians with the same amount of training and experience, who chose rock over "straight" music as thier main gig. But those are few and far between. In general, most rock music came from someone's garage, and most exotica/lounge/jazz came from a music conservatory. It's not for nothing that Miles Davis attended Julliard, for example.
[ This Message was edited by: lucas vigor 2010-04-10 08:08 ]
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lucas vigor
Tiki Socialite
Joined: May 12, 2004
Posts: 3453
From: "I've chopped my way through real jungle
| Posted: 2010-04-10 08:32 am Permalink
What a scene!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7h-Igawp5Y
Great bongos and flute! Very much in the same style as Bobby Troup!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijioI5wQ4hM&feature=related
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[ This Message was edited by: lucas vigor 2010-04-10 08:41 ]
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MadDogMike
Grand Member (3 years) 
Joined: Mar 30, 2008
Posts: 6490
From: The Anvil of the Sun
| Posted: 2010-04-10 5:47 pm Permalink
So 20 years earlier, another version of this concept?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJ27TgBvJE
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ikitnrev
Grand Member (8 years) 
Joined: Jul 27, 2002
Posts: 1298
From: D.C. / Virginia
| Posted: 2010-04-11 08:55 am Permalink
(deleted double post)
[ This Message was edited by: ikitnrev 2010-04-11 08:58 ]
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ikitnrev
Grand Member (8 years)
Joined: Jul 27, 2002
Posts: 1298
From: D.C. / Virginia
| Posted: 2010-04-11 08:56 am Permalink
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The only real crossover between the two worlds occurred when bands like Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny, Les Baxter (and also people like Wes Montgomery) started covering 60's pop songs.
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That crossover was the standard modus operandi for many of the musical artists of the pre-rock era. If you look through many of the LPs from artists of the 1950's, you will see many of the same songs appearing over and over again - the standards. A band/artist would come up with their own new arrangement of a song that most everyone was already familiar with. You would see LPs with titles like 'Singer X sings the songs of Ella Fitgerald' or 'Singer Y Goes to the Caribbean.' I've created several 'one song' compilation CDs, filled with two dozen interpretations of songs such as Dark Eyes, Miserlou, Temptation, and others have done the same for songs like Caravan, Quiet Village, and Brazil.
Frank Sinatra wrote very songs himself, but he would tap the talents, and interpret other songwriters music in his very own way. Most of the other adult 'lounge/Vegas' singers were of the same vein. The songwriter, and the musical arranger, were much more prominent in that era. When the 60's rock and roll scene came around, the older generation continued to do what they had been doing - record LPs full of hits made by others - and thus we saw 'lounge' versions of the classic rock hits ..."Singer W sings the hits of the Beatles' or 'Singer Z and the Now Generation." They were doing what they had always done - re-record new arrangements of songs they liked, but the younger generation didn't like this - they saw it more as the elder generation moving onto their turf, and ruining music that was theirs only.
Most rock bands of the 70's era would record songs that they had written themselves, and you didn't see much of the reinterpretation of others songs. Thus you end up with the Eagles recording 'Hotel California', but very few other artists making their own version of that song. You can easily imagine multiple artists singing a song like 'Fly Me To the Moon,' but when you think of 'Hotel California' you think of only the Eagles.
[ This Message was edited by: ikitnrev 2010-04-11 08:59 ]
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woofmutt
Tiki Socialite
Joined: Mar 26, 2002
Posts: 2584
From: Seattilite Telstar
| Posted: 2010-04-20 11:02 pm Permalink
I'd love to blame the Beatles and hippies for the downfall of Tiki culture but I can't think of any 20th century popular culture style/trend that lasted longer than a couple decades.
A desire for novelty comes from having the leisure time to be able to think of something other than hunting and gathering. Novelty needs to be "different, new and unusual" and once something has been around a while it's no longer novel.
While most the offspring of the Cocktail Generation definitely wanted something different to set themselves apart from their parents* they weren't entirely to blame for the demise of Tiki. There had to be more than a few grownups who lost interest in the once exotic Tiki joint or rolled their eyes at the idea of another patio luau.
Tiki couldn't last in the form of its Golden Era, no pop trend ever has. Thank God we all had the taste and brilliance to keep it from being almost completely forgotten.
*Years ago I read something by someone somewhere who pointed out how the Boomers vowed they would not live the cocktail culture of their parents and then went on to create the wine and cheese culture of the 70s.
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