Post #357723 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Jan 28, 2008 6:13 PM

Brian, I used to go to Mecca. It was all kinds of exotic themes, Bali, Sufi, Maya, etc. They would show Bollywood musicals for kicks and giggles before anyone else did. Stuart Sweezey and Brian King were just into all things weird and esoteric in general, just like their bookstore. In terms of Tiki (nobody called it that then), their main focus was the music, EXOTICA, especially Martin Denny and Les Baxter....not so much decor, architecture, restaurants, or cocktails. Because of that, you can't really call it "80s Tiki". What I would understand under that term is Chinese Restaurants with cheap Orchids of Hawaii decor, bad drinks, and Tikis painted in garish colors, that's 80s Tiki. :D

Jeffrey Vallance was perhaps the only one who had a Tiki backyard then, directly taken over from his parents. My friend Charles Schneider kept telling me to go and see it, but then Jeffrey moved, and that was that. But it was mostly the music that was the catalyst for the hipsters of the 80s.
There were collectors like Dale Sizer, but they were not connected.

Here is a little bit about Throbbing Gristle that popped up on TC a short while ago:

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=26783&forum=11

And here is what I wrote about it in TIKI MODERN, without having the room to get further into it, just touching on it:

"Although Tiki Style was completely banished from public consciousness by the 1980s, its obscure imagery survived under the radar in the minds of a few underground avantgardists. Artists Jeffrey Vallance, Boyd Rice and bands like Monitor and Throbbing Gristle referenced the Exotica music of Martin Denny and their parents’ Tiki backyards in their works. Beginning in the 90s, scattered members of the “lounge revival”...."

This "Pre-Tiki Revival/Pre-Lounge revival EXOTICA REVIVAL" :) is a worthy subject to get into, especially since most of the participants are still around.

Say, are you doing anything about Buddy Collette in your new book? Do you know his fantastic "POLYNESIA" album? I am so into that beatnik/jazz/exotica/ G.I. poetry that they do on it, I want to know more, I wanna ask him about it....