Earliest exposure to Exotica. That I can remember.

Courtesy of the Wild World of Animals

Still sounds awesome.

What was yours?

Good concept for a thread! My first "exposure" to Exotica was (appropriately) of purely visual nature. I moved to Berlin as a young lad of 17, partially to escape the German army's mandatory draft, because Berlin was still under allied forces supervision defense-wise back then (...that was in 1972).
A year later, I found a basement apartment in the suburb of Berlin Dahlem, where the American Forces were stationed nearby. Now, ever since I can remember I was what I would consider an "Americanophile", as opposed to other people, whose cultural inclinations would maybe make them Francophiles, or Anglophiles (people who would be into French culture, or Brtitish pop). Maybe it had to do with the fact that my parents lived in Chicago in the 1950s (before I was born), where my dad worked for my grandfather's Hamburg-Chicago shipping line.

So the US Armed Forces in Berlin had their own neighborhood with a Cinema, their own stores, even their own trash system. I was a frequent visitor to their thrift shop, where, as you can imagine in the 70s, lots of good stuff was to be had for cheap.

It was here that I first set eyes on Martin Denny's "Primitiva", and it was love at first sight! NOT the music, mind you, it was clearly the "exposure" of Sandy Warner's cleavage (and her eyes!) that shook my young man's world. I was blown away by the cover's sensuality and promise of "primitive" sexuality.
Funnily, in 1973, I was not "advanced" enough in Kitsch culture to make the leap to appreciate the MUSIC on the album, that came years later, when my friend Moritz R. had been introduced to Exotica through Boyd Rice's visit to Germany.

And I certainly had NO idea back in '73 that a whole 30 years later I would be in Hawaii one day and actually MEET the man who recorded "Primitiva", and hear him play (and that I eventually would have a reproduction of that enticing cover in TIKI MODERN).

It is pretty amazing how things can come full circle in ones life!

It is interesting to note that the early Industrial noise artists like Boyd Rice and Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge were speading the Exotica grooves as far back as the late seventies. My first exposure came from listening to TG's "live" cassettes which frequently played Martin Denny's music after their performances. It appealed to me but I had no idea who it was at the time.

Then when TG's "Greatest Hits" album came out on Rough Trade Records the back was dedicated to Martin Denny. Finally, a name. From the mid-eighties on I actively searched for his records like a kid in a candy store. My first one was "Exotica." Upon listening to it I knew this was the music I was searching for. Upon closer inspection I noticed that half of the tracks were composed by Les Baxter. Another name!!

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to discover this music for the first time. It is beyond words.

And the rest is history............

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

My grandfather was a hi-fi nut and he turned me on to Martin Denny, as well as Les Paul, Henry Mancini, Ferrante and Teicher's prepared pianos and the like, in the late 50s. Martin Denny's version of "Quiet Village" was my favorite. Even though I was about 5 years old, I liked the stuff so much that I asked for my own copies of the records for birthday and Christmas gifts. I just had a kid's record player, which my grandfather referred to as my "lo-fi," but it could play LPs. My parents threw tiki parties with tiki torches, exotica, and bowls of rum punch, so I have fond memories of that too. (I remember sneaking downstairs early in the morning after one of those parties and sampling the punch too!)

My grandfather died in 1966 and I inherited his record collection. At the time I was into the British mod scene and had put the exotica behind (but fortunately in a safe place). I pulled it out again in the 80s because it sounded better to me than the stuff that was coming out at the time. I've been a devotee ever since.

Jack

Jeff, thank you for all your supportive posts, your vinyl archeology has enriched this forum immeasurably. I wonder how many T.C.ers trace their Exotica exposure back to Throbbing Gristle. I never understood why, when they loved Martin Denny so much, they never made any music as beautiful as his! :)
And I wonder how many members of the original Exotica Mailing List are here on TC now.

Wasn't there a thread here once on all the varieties of new interpretations of the original "Exotica" cover? How many are there? Here are two examples of how Sandy Warner's bewitching come hither look on "Primitiva" inspired some of today's artists:

Coop's illustration for the Book of Tiki

detail of wonderful painting I own by Miles Thompson

...but back to the main thrust of this thread, the first MUSICAL exposure to Exotica!

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-12-27 14:14 ]

http://members.cox.net/landbreade

all will be revealed @ page 2

On 2007-12-27 14:11, bigbrotiki wrote:
Jeff, thank you for all your supportive posts, your vinyl archeology has enriched this forum immeasurably. I wonder how many T.C.ers trace their Exotica exposure back to Throbbing Gristle. I never understood why, when they loved Martin Denny so much, they never made any music as beautiful as his! :)
And I wonder how many members of the original Exotica Mailing List are here on TC now.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-12-27 14:14 ]

I was on the Exotica Mailing list (and still am) from pretty far back. As far as TG making music inspired by Martin Denny, have you heard Chris and Cosey's (of TG) "Exotika?" The title track is a great "contemporary" (it was the 80s I believe) version of...well...Exotika. Their "Musik Fantastique" was somehwt along the same lines.

Jack

On 2007-12-27 14:15, bb moondog wrote:
http://members.cox.net/landbreade

all will be revealed @ page 2

Wow, your King Quong story sounds like a dream come true. That's what I call being at the right place at the right time! And your use of the records at work reminds me of KBZet's concept of "irritainment". Like Tiki culture, for some of us Exotica had to go thru an evolution from being plain uncool to being SO uncool that they became cool. :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-12-27 14:32 ]

I have NEVER since those days worked at a place so RIPE as that little crapbox of an office with so much MIND TWEAKING...and the ones that stuck were exotica... which i still own

On 2007-12-27 14:28, tabuzak wrote:
....As far as TG making music inspired by Martin Denny, have you heard Chris and Cosey's (of TG) "Exotika?" The title track is a great "contemporary" (it was the 80s I believe) version of...well...Exotika.

Jack, check out what I dug up! My MUSICASSETTE version of the above album:

I guess I should give it another listen...

Problem is, I can only do that in my car nowadays.

Maybe that is the whole problem, that I never listened to this on a real record. :)

Jack, check out what I dug up! My MUSICASSETTE version of the above album:

I guess I should give it another listen...

Hey,

Looks like there are four versions of "Exotica" (the track) you can download from Amazon.com for $.99 each.

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Cosey/dp/B000QK52OI/ref=dm_ap_paging?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&page=2&%2Aentries%2A=0

On 2007-12-28 08:34, tabuzak wrote:

Jack, check out what I dug up! My MUSICASSETTE version of the above album:

I guess I should give it another listen...

Hey,

Looks like there are four versions of "Exotica" (the track) you can download from Amazon.com for $.99 each.

http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Cosey/dp/B000QK52OI/ref=dm_ap_paging?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&page=2&%2Aentries%2A=0

Track #62 is the best version. I really like the way this starts out but then it gets pretty dance oriented. Still a good listen. Chris and Cosey are both fans of Exotica music.

It's funny because I played this track during my DJ set at Exotica 2005 (I think), and I distintcly remember King Kukulele coming up to me and saying "Jeff, what are you doing?" I laughed and said "What! they're saying E-X-O-T-I-C-A". He said "riiight".

TG had a track called "Exotica" on their 1979 album "20 Jazz Funk Greats." Also, the closest TG ever came to a real Exotica track was on the album "Journey Through a Body." That particular track was called "Exotic Functions." Plus, who could forget the Sandy Warner type cover on their "Greatest Hits" LP. The back cover even shows all the band members in Polynesian garb surrounded by Hawaiian kitsch. Keep in mind this was 1981 when it was released here in the U.S., 15 years before the Lounge craze!!!

There are all kinds of bands that did Exotica sounding songs. Check out "Homer Hossa" by Yello, or better yet try "Pineapple Symphony" by the German band Kraftwerk.

Electronic Exotica has always appealed to me and there is a LOT out there for the curiously inclined.

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

Another "rock" manifestation of Exotica was the B-52s track, "Mesopotamia," from the LP of the same name. The song is based on the Quiet Village bass line.

Jack

1970. I am 5 years old and sitting on the floor of our living room listening to my mom's Arthur Lyman records. I have loved exotica ever since.

Hmmm....I really need to clear the cobwebs on this....but here goes.

I was born in 63' - TIKI was in full swing, but I was obviously not in any state to comprehend it yet.

I have a sister nine years older than me and I used to listen to her 45's...one of which was "wipe out". This is in, like 1967/68 . I've said in here before that Surf is really just the punk rock version of Exotica (in my opinion anyway) . Also, My mom, like everyone else in the 60's had "Herb Alpert's "Whipped Cream and other delights", and, naturally, I had a experience similar to Sven's with "Primitiva", only I was too young to know what it really was...I still consider the girl on that cover to be my first childhood crush :) Oh, I LOVED the music too.

Fast forward to the mid 90's. I'm starting to revisit surf rock, and all things great from the 60's. . I'm in a record store in Long Island. I hear a really amazing, slow, ethereal version of the theme from "Hawaii-Five 0" playing. I ask the clerk who it is (he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt by the way - yea - surf rock geek) and he says "The Blue Hawaiians", a band I'd heard about many times, having been living in LA for the past 2 years. I always meant to see them, but hadn't yet.

I don't know if I bought the CD that day of not, but once I did own it, I listened to it everyday for, I don't know....5 years ? (I still listen to it about once a week) The song "Last days of Summer" hit me the most, and probably what led me to "exotica", but also, some people I knew from the powerpop scene in LA in the mid-90's (remember that?) told me about Esquivel, and I got some of that as well. It was those two musical entities that influenced my earliest exotica recordings "Mai Tais on the Moon" and "Exotique", both on the "StereoExotique" CD.

After being a devout TIKI NEWS reader since about 96' , and then a TIKI Centralite later, I started discovering Lyman,Denny, and now a host of other obscure Exotica.

Now, there's no turning back.

[ Edited by: tikiyaki 2007-12-29 09:30 ]

I don't know if this counts, as it's not exactly classic exotica, but my parents' record collection when I was a kid in the 1970s was probably my first exposure. My dad, a university lecturer in Arabic and part-time Russian interpreter in the Royal Navy, had a number of LPs such as Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" and Borodin's "Prince Igor" that I remember listening to almost until I knew them inside out. Classical rather than Hawaiian, but nevertheless the kind of stuff that constantly turns up on the "light orchestral" variety of exotica LPs.

My dad also had an unintentionally hilarious 10" by the Orchestra and Choir of the Red Army, with versions of stuff like "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" sung in heavy Russian accents, but I digress....

Anyway, as a little kid, I also incessantly listened to stuff like the Beatles and the Monkees. This led to a life-long love affair with mid-60s beat music. By high school in the mid-80s, everybody else was listening to either rap or metal - but I was too busy ploughing my own furrow with the Chocolate Watchband and all the Nuggets & Pebbles stuff to care.

By university in the early 90s, this retro hipster thing had expanded to include rockabilly, 50s R&B, surf, "Las Vegas Grind" LPs, Mose Allison, you name it. Round about this time, I picked up a UK fanzine entitled "Ungawa", which contained an article concerning one Martin Denny, a completely unfamiliar name to me at the time. This was my first encounter with classic exotica, just in time for the upsurge in interest in this sort of music in the mid-90s, with all the reissues, the "Incredibly Strange Music" books etc.

And, until I started hanging out at this site, I had assumed (for some reason) that most current exotica fans had a similar background to me --- that exotica was another phase or facet of a general interest in retro cool, along with surf, rockabilly, garage rock, whatever. Now, of course, I realise that there's a much more diverse group of people involved. It's pretty cool.

[ Edited by: Quiet Village Idiot 2007-12-29 14:06 ]

On 2007-12-27 12:59, Jeff Central wrote:
It is interesting to note that the early Industrial noise artists like Boyd Rice and Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P-Orridge were speading the Exotica grooves as far back as the late seventies. My first exposure came from listening to TG's "live" cassettes which frequently played Martin Denny's music after their performances. It appealed to me but I had no idea who it was at the time.

Then when TG's "Greatest Hits" album came out on Rough Trade Records the back was dedicated to Martin Denny. Finally, a name. From the mid-eighties on I actively searched for his records like a kid in a candy store. My first one was "Exotica." Upon listening to it I knew this was the music I was searching for. Upon closer inspection I noticed that half of the tracks were composed by Les Baxter. Another name!!

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to discover this music for the first time. It is beyond words.

And the rest is history............

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

Our introductions to Exotica are quite similar . A buddy also told me about Arthur Lyman around the same time I found out about Martin Denny . Coincidentally , the day I first learned about AL , I went home and my Dad had just back from a yard sale with a box full of old records , among other things . Guess what I found in the box ? Arthur Lyman's Percussion Spectacular in near mint condition ! Fate smiled upon me ...

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.

The first exotica music I heard was my first trip to Walt Disney World in 1973, I was about 8. Even though the show itself has changed (Who's retarded idea was it to have the tiki poles as the "bass guys" in a doo-wop number, I'd like to SMACK them), they still play Martin Denny tunes in the Enchanted Tiki Room pre-show.

Tiki Bill.

[ Edited by: Tiki Bill 2008-01-30 17:18 ]

What a fun thread, BB!

For me, it was Kelbo's wonderfully whimsical environment in the early '60 that first sowed the "exotica" seed when I was a kid, with hapa-haole Hawaiian music playing among the illuminated blowfish and glowing net floats overhead...

My first conscious exposure to Les Baxter was in the late 60's, through his grand film score for "Master of the World", which, like Victor Young's "Around the World in 80 Days", has its exotica-esque moments, not to mention Baxter's distinctive orchestrations. Without a doubt, Alexander Courage's "Orion Slave Girl Dance" and Fred Steiner's "Space Radio" themes for the original Star Trek series were exotica in spirit if not in genre, as with Gerald Fried's moody, savage, and exotic "Amok Time" (which offers a peek into his other purely-exotica recordings). At my age then, other planets were pretty much akin to mysterious islands...

Elmer Bernstein's colorful, transporting music for "Hawaii" (a much better score than film), liberated from the bargain bins at the local White Front store around 1970, sent those irresistible Polynesian percussion rhythms through my veins, and Bernard Herrmanns' magnificent music for "Anna and the King of Siam" was (and is) a beguiling "Westernized" window into the transporting (and addictive) Gamelan tone-scale. Hugo Friedhoffer's lush "The Rains of Ranchipur" was also a marvelous exotia-esque score, the last two works pre-dating the '50's. These and certain others were an early part of my soundtrack collection, not specifically classified as exotica, but I believe seminal influences (orchestrally speaking) in the genre.

My "serious" interest in Les Baxter revived big time, along with a more studious who-did-what exploration of Arthur Lyman's and Martin Denny's works, in the early '90's, when I had the opportunity as best man to stage a major bachelor-party-luau, transforming my backyard into an ersatz salute to The Tikis, with the first raising of the Cosmic Tiki Hut, whole pig & related sides, Weber "volcano", multiple flaming tiki-torches, furtive washes of red, blue and green lighting amid the greenery -- and a custom-edited exotica soundtrack, with music by those luminaries above (plus, of course, the "Orion Slave Girl Dance" -- I'll let you guess how it was used).

I couldn't be more delighted to see the genre alive and well -- and growing -- here in the 21st Century, with (alphabetically) Clouseaux, Don Tiki, The Martini Kings, The Tikiyaki Orchestra, Waitiki, and those yet to come, carrying the (tiki)torch with great style, and blazing new trails through the mysterious and alluring realms of Contemporary Exotica. Looking forward to their future contributions. Oooo.

SOK

"Don't let it be forgot,
That once there was a Spot,
Where Blowfish all wore sunglasses,
and Tiki-times were hot..."

[ Edited by: Son-of-Kelbo 2008-01-31 11:03 ]

My earliest exposure? When professor humming flower sent me the sampler cd of exotica and Hawaiian tunes in 2003 that he wanted this project called "waitiki" to perform. i was supposed to listen to the bird calls and soon found out that vibes were central to the exotica sound. the rest is history!

On 2007-12-28 08:16, bigbrotiki wrote:
Jack, check out what I dug up! My MUSICASSETTE version of the above album:

...full of classic Exotica song titles like "Vengance" and "Dancing on your Grave"!

Didn't Yma Sumac sing the latter, and I think that Elisabeth Waldo might have originated the former (although it might have been Gene Rains).

But seriously...

On 2007-12-27 14:11, bigbrotiki wrote:
I wonder how many T.C.ers trace their Exotica exposure back to Throbbing Gristle. I never understood why, when they loved Martin Denny so much, they never made any music as beautiful as his!

I do, and very directly:

I discovered my first vintage Tiki restaurant/bar in 1991. But it wasn't until 1994 that I really go hooked on doing the research and archeology.

That year, I was playing keyboards with the band Pigface, and I was literally living on a bus with Genesis P. Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV (he was a guest-star for about half of the tour).

Gen played a Martin Denny cassette on the bus one day, and everyone else hated it and made him take it off.
But only having heard a minute of it, and not having seen an album sleeve or not even knowing whom I was listening to, I immediately understood that this was Tiki Bar Music. I understood all of the connections innately and instantly.

Of course, I quizzed Gen on the music, and he was happy that I was into it. We listened to the cassette together a few times while no one else was around!

When I got home from the tour and looked at one of the Throbbing Gristle CDs, the one with the Martin Denny dedication, and when I saw the TG LP cover designed to look like a Denny LP cover, I felt a flood of enlightenment. It all fell into place.

By the end of that year, I had visited the Islands in the Hanalei Hotel in San Diego (pre-renovation), the old Tiki bar that used to be in the Luxor Hotel, Trader Vic's in Chicago plus about three others... and then launched the Tiki Bar Review Pages in 1995 to document this research.

So yeah, Throbbing Gristle got me into Exotica - FIRST HAND!

Also (this next bit is speculation) I think that perhaps the TG fascination with Denny might have been a bit ironic or perhaps tongue in cheek. After the sonic onslaught and sheer walls of noise that TG generated, the contrast and sheer 'wrongness' of following a performance up with a Denny recording might have been exactly within TGs spirit of iconoclasm, conflict, and refusal to live up to expectations. Or it might have just been a good way to get TG's particular audience to leave!

• James T.

http://www.tydirium.net
Big Stone Head / Tiki Road Trip / Left Orbit Temple

Also drink with us at: http://www.cocktailsnob.com

[ Edited by: tikibars 2008-02-03 15:13 ]

Beautiful James.

Thanks for your input on the subject and what a great story.

I love you, man.

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

On 2007-12-28 09:57, Jeff Central wrote:

Electronic Exotica has always appealed to me and there is a LOT out there for the curiously inclined.

Cheers and Mahalo,
Jeff

I'm sure you're already aware of it, JC, but just in case, may I suggest the "Hearts of Space #562: "Gamelan":

6/4/2000
This week on Hearts of Space…

=-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- =
PGM 562 : "GAMELAN"
=-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- =
PGM NOTE : Ambient electronics meets the music of Indonesia
=-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- =
FEED DATE : 6-02-00
=-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- =

DAVID PARSONS
"Jalan Jalan" < 0:00->10:49 >
: NGAIO GAMELAN; Celestial Harmonies 13171-2; 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000J8MV/heartsofspace
: Info: http://www.harmonies.com/ns

JON IVERSON
“Metalanguage” < 10:49->16:46 >
“Alternesia” < 16:46->23:19 >
: ALTERNESIA; MA Recordings/Series Momentum M3; 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000K54O/heartsofspace
: Info: http://www.marecordings.com

ROBERT RICH
“The Forest Dreams of Bach” < 23:19->29:05 >
: RAINFOREST; Hearts of Space HS11014-2; 1989
http://www.hos.com/albumframe.lasso?shortcatno=014
: Info: http://www.hos.com

LOREN NERELL
“Part 2: Eclipse” (part) < 29:05->35:38 >
: THE VENERABLE DARK CLOUD; Amplexus XUS12; Italy 1999
: Info: http://www.amplexus.it

JON IVERSON
“Gambuh Ikat” < 35:38->43:18 >
: ALTERNESIA; see above
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000K54O/heartsofspace

ROBERT MACHT
“Anjing Ngantuk” < 43:18->46:02 >
: VISHNU; Robert Macht Productions MACH0002; 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000028F1H/heartsofspace
: Email: [email protected]
–segue–
JALAN JALAN
“Sembahyang Pagi” < 46:02->53:36 >
“Lotus” (edited) < 53:36->58:20 >
: BALI; Pacific Moon PMR 0008; 1998
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000JLJY/heartsofspace
: Info: http://www.pacificmoon.com

Very, very cool stuff, I highly recommend it. "Alternesia" is a particular favorite...

GREAT THREAD!!

My first exposure to the world of Exotica was when I was very young - 5 or 6 years old. My mother was into exotica and had left the Arthur Lyman album "Bahia" out. Needless to say I found it and put it on the record player. The first track "Bahia" started quietly with exotic bird calls punctuating the dark groove. I was immediately hooked. I played that album until I literally wore it out. I would play it and pretend I was in my grass hut somehwere in a jungle. Keep in mind I was also watching Gilligan's Island reruns at the time.

Flash forward about 20 years and exotica bloomed again with me--which lead to my discovery of the whole tiki community. I have my mother's original "Bahia" LP framed in my house today.