Post #47378 by Hanalei_Pirate on Mon, Aug 11, 2003 4:45 PM

On 2003-07-19 11:29, thejab wrote:
Generally speaking, most fans of Polynesian Pop are into the Rat Pack through their love of lounge music and booze, and their appreciation of classic playboy style.

I would agree - if you go back to 1995 or so at the 2 cultures Rat Pack and Tiki were merged - there was (and possibly still is) a web group called the Exotica list and that group of folk are heavy collectors of lounge and exotica music - they collect martin Denney, Les Baxter, etc while collecting spy jazz music and various other type lounge music of the bygone era. Also, someone from that list wrote a big thesis on lounge music (which at that time would include exotica/tiki) which I read and used to have a copy of. I wrote about it in my column back when I wrote for a lounge fanzine called Organ and Bongos out of Seattle Washington - prior to my stint with Organ and Bongos which came out quarterly and was a small fanzine, I wrote for a punk zine called Flipside based here in L.A. I transitioned from writing about punk into writing and covering the lounge tiki scene in Flipside, then leaving Flipside and writing exclusively for Organ and Bongos (I quit writing a couple years later in order to concentrate on writing my masters thesis in urban geography) The lounge scene died due to over-exposure but the tiki stuff lived on - tiki parties still happened here and there here in L.A. One of the biggest party-throwers was a guy named Bobby who went on to open his own successful bar here in the L.A. area called The Bigfoot Lounge - he used to have some rad tiki parties at his old apartment back in those old days. The club is very successful - I'd say a mainstay of the punk/hipster/Silverlake club scene today - Lee Joseph deejays there on Saturday nights.