Post #808500 by mike and marie on Thu, Mar 23, 2023 7:26 PM

Great thread and owners definitely need to be called out for it. Why not? Mention it in reviews and take notches down if it's bad. Because it is bad. It's also lame. It's like having a Mexican restaurant with great food and drinks, and nice decor and murals, but they play nonstop Italian opera all night because the owner is into opera and doesn't really care about the Mexican vibe at all. Or an Italian restaurant that takes great pains to have an "authentic" menu and elaborate decor, and then they blast Slovenian polkas all night. It's just stupid.

That said, different operations call for different music. A good portion of the new Tiki Revival places opened in the last 15 or so years do not get it and do not take care to be truly immersive. Surf and rockabilly have their place in some operations. They've become the default for most tiki bars now (see the tiki snob thread), which is actually unfortunate because great vibes and atmospheres could be conjured up with the right jazz and easy listening mood music. The old Don the Beachcomber in Huntington Beach regularly booked surf and rockabilly bands, and when they weren't on the stage they played a lot of that music in the bar, and it was appropriate to the place. But you don't want to hear that everywhere. We loved the Hala Kahiki in Chicago because, in part, the music matched the mood perfectly -- they played nothing, absolutely nothing, but pure native Hawaiian music. Martin Denny was actually out of place there. It was nothing but traditional Hawaiian stuff, and it worked great. Some of the better tiki bars have DJs playing vintage vinyl records, and if they have a DJ who gets it, the sound enhances the atmosphere and doesn't take away from it. That analog sound is also a part of it. It's understood that not every for-profit operation is going to get that far into detail, but in the old days a lot of lounges would have reel to reels going when they didn't have a live vinyl DJ or live music.

We are genuinely bummed by bars and restaurants that don't play the right music. There are certain tiki bars we would visit much more often if they had better music (and better lighting). At one place I know it's because of the bartenders, they are not tiki people in the least and have zero interest in exotica or lounge music, so they play the dumb contemporary pop that they like. But, that's not the fault of the not-tiki-at-all bartenders. No. It's the fault of the management. They just don't care, and they don't get tiki at all.

[ Edited by mike and marie on 2023-03-23 19:27:05 ]