Post #806817 by Prikli Pear on Thu, Dec 8, 2022 12:22 PM

Mexicali Brass is great! One of the better Herb Alpert knockoffs. And the James Brown was fantastic. I was friends with a DJ in the late 90s at a station that aired the Dr. Demento Show, and he'd give me the syndication CDs after airing. I ended up with several years' worth. The Christmas episodes are some of my absolute favorites. Some of the stuff is terrible, but lots of gems mixed in there as well.

And, getting back on topic, I think the evidence points to the main culprit in poor tiki music selection being unsupervised employees or ownership with no real understanding or faith in tiki. I remember visiting Kanaloa in Houston for a few years ago. The first (and only) time we visited they had boy bands playing. It was mostly empty. We talked with the frustrated bartender, who said the owners ordered the music selection because that's what other bars on the street were playing, therefore that must be what the customers wanted. Owners weren't tiki folks, but rather investors chasing a hot trend. Drinks and decor were fine, but Justin Bieber really killed the vibe. We ended up cutting our visit short and going over to Lei Low. Kanaloa's gone now. They ran it as neither fish nor fowl and failed. Likewise, when we visited the Alibi a number of years back, the decor was amazing--a time capsule from the 1950s! Drinks were so-so, but that music! Foghat? Tin Lizzy? BTO? I mean, I like those bands, but they killed the vibe. Now I know the Alibi has evolved into its own thing with karaoke and such, but there were maybe six people in the bar besides us that afternoon, and those folks were focused on the slot machines in the corner. There was no reason they couldn't play a more tiki appropriate playlist during the day and shift over to other stuff when it got crowded. Again, we cut short our visit and headed over to Hale Pele.

I'm not a purist and have some pretty wide tolerances if deviation from tradition is made with intent. A tiki-appropriate playlist isn't going to run off any customers (well, maybe college kids wanting shots of tequila, but if that's your main client base your problems run deeper than the music). I guess it comes down to whether the bar actually has confidence in its concept or not. As I've said before, tiki's probably the most expensive concept to get into if you're going to do it right. If you've got reservations, better to invest in pretty much any other concept. Your return will be there without that massive investment in decor. And you can play any music you want without folks like us carping on the interwebz!