Post #357892 by BC-Da-Da on Tue, Jan 29, 2008 2:03 PM

My exposure to exotica came during the '90s, via my obsession with Dick Dale and Brian Wilson. After "Pulp Fiction" came out, I bought a lot of other surf intrumental CDs and LPs. Eventually, I stumbled onto "Pet Sounds" and "Smile" by the Beach Boys, learning like many that Brian Wilson was a creative tour-de-force, and that he had quite an interesting catalogue of psychedelic material... "Smile" being the most far-out.

By 1995, I had the most important bootlegs of "Smile" and was an active member of the Pet Sounds Mailing List, in the early days of the internet... the list being still on black screen, with white lettering! Anyway, a writer named Domenic Priore posted something about "Let's Get Away for a While" (a track from "Pet Sounds") and "Wind Chimes" (from "Smile") being influenced by Martin Denny. I loved those songs and proceeded to buy a Martin Denny Rhino "Hits" CD at Tower Records the next day. It just seemed magical to my ears. It was moody, campy, hip, cool... the percussion was so subtle.

Then came the "Book of Tiki," Combustible Edison, "Tiki News" and other things I learned about. But that first experience of putting about six Brian Wilson exotica songs onto a mix tape with maybe eight Martin Denny songs, and listening to it all in a row in my car... I couldn't explain it to anyone in Philadelphia. No one understood it. But driving around each day, I had my own private Shangri-La.