Post #605985 by tiki mick on Thu, Sep 8, 2011 4:10 PM

On 2011-09-08 14:11, JOHN-O wrote:

No one is saying that Surf Music is on par with Exotica as the definitive Tiki Music.

I would go so far as to state that I think surf has surpassed exotica and lounge-based music in today's tiki scene. For a lot of reasons, but mostly the demographics and age of today's participants. Most, if not all of us come from a background of rock and punk, so surf music is no big stretch. In many ways, it has all the elements of punk and rock, especially it it's "do it yourself" attitude. The crucial difference, as you mentioned, is that surf is instrumental, and that makes it stand out big time from most rock and punk.

My preference will always be exotica and lounge, because my background is more mixed then the average socal-ite....I grew up listening to jazz first, before I discovered rock. Same with classical and world music...all was in my head before I ever got into rock music. That does make me biased.

Because, I am happy to discover that with the tiki revival, old music came back and was not scorned at or laughed at or dismissed as being pure kitsch...in fact, that's the appeal for most people!

But on the other hand, it does make me sad to see the tide turning to other types of music...such as garage rock, and then having people label it as being "tiki", when in my mind, it is not.

That does not make this new music bad at all. And I hope people understand that I am not making a judgement on it blindly. I try to find something interesting and good in even the most sophmoric and simple music. Even the blues, with it's 3 chords, can be beautiful and just plain fun to listen to.

But my preference is rich, luxurious and technically challenging music, which for the most part, rock is not.

But I think one thing all of us can agree on: Burning man and things like it have no place in tiki. There is just too far a difference in style and culture. And when you combine party city with burning man, the end result is truly, truly horrific! I can't think of anything worse then a drum circle of bearded, dirty hippies in loin cloths banging away on djembes inside a tent festooned with decor straight out of margaritaville....oh! The horror!