Tiny Bubbles - with a real tiki - on Lawrence Welk

The subject title says it all. From a 1968 Lawrence Welk episode, country star sings the classic Don Ho song, accompanied by Buddy Merrill on the steel guitarist -- all with a fair-sized tiki standing nearby!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAmoEED_mvA

The horror, the horror! :) Another one of those moments in pop culture history that poignantly underscores the scope of the generation gap between the Polynesian pop veterans and their Beat and Rock-loving children.

Here is one more from you .... no tiki, but with very colorful shirts!

'Sweet Leilani' with vocals by Joe Feeney, and Myron Floren on accordion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apWyqR9ufOE

This is from 1978 - one year after Myron's notorious 'Disco Polka' Lp was released.

Vern

Love it! Lawrence Welk did a few Hawaiian shows, including one where they actually FLEW here and filmed on location...some great shots including duet singing while riding in the Sheraton Waikiki's glass elevator.

Here's another Welk Tiki addition,

The Lawrence Welk Presents George Cates' Polynesian Percussion LP.

"Another one of those moments in pop culture history that poignantly underscores the scope of the generation gap between the Polynesian pop veterans and their Beat and Rock-loving children." -bigbrotiki-

I'm not trying to be an ass* but I seriously can not figure out what your point is regarding this clip.

*It just comes naturally to me.

Thank you for explaining that this is an earnest request for an explanation. :)

My point is that the THE main reason for the sudden disappearance of Tiki culture was the so-called the GENERATION GAP, a phenomenon that began in the mid-60s and continued into the 70s. It describes the huge gulf that opened in cultural, social and political consciousness between the generations that invented and enjoyed Polynesian pop, and their children, who wanted to have NOTHING to do with what the older generations thought was cool. Though this attitude is somewhat inherent in every generation change, the 60s/70s generational divide was more radical than any other before or after, and swiftly relegated Poly pop and Tiki to the scrap heap: One can vividly imagine how a young fan of the Beatles or Stones would have recoiled in horror at the clip Vern posted above.

I think this post would be a fine occasion to discuss this cultural phenomenon with some other examples.

On 2010-04-08 21:33, bigbrotiki wrote:
My point is that the THE main reason for the sudden disappearance of Tiki culture was the so-called the GENERATION GAP, a phenomenon that began in the mid-60s and continued into the 70s. It describes the huge gulf that opened in cultural, social and political consciousness between the generations that invented and enjoyed Polynesian pop, and their children, who wanted to have NOTHING to do with what the older generations thought was cool.

From what I have seen, a vast majority of us are in our 40s and 50s. So WE started and furthered the "Generation Gap" - WE were responsible for the near-death of Tiki!

I am 48 years old - was 7 years old when the Lawrence Welk 'Tiny Bubbles' clip first aired. It was more likely those 10-20 years older than myself then that rebelled against the older generation.

One of my favorite examples showing this gap was the movie 'The Graduate' - released one year before the Welk clip. Here is an excerpt of what I previously posted several years ago on this topic.

In the Graduate, the older generation is the one that is into mixing cocktails, and it is Mrs Robinson who wears the exotic leopard-skin outfits and goes to hotel lounges to listen to the bands playing there.

Young Benjamin, played by Dustin Hoffman - hates this whole culture - and equates it with being plastic - he prefers drinking beer in the pool versus cocktails, and prefers rock and roll music to the old bump and grind music being played in the strip clubs.

I consider the success of 'The Graduate' to be one real reason of why the original lounge culture never was adopted by the younger generation of that era. But now it is 42 years later, and the generational differences that existed in the 60's are long past - we are more free to listen to whatever music we like, without having the emotional baggage it once did. Some of us listen to the music with an awareness of its historical significance, while others will listen to it simply because they like the way it sounds.

Vern

On 2010-04-09 11:51, MadDogMike wrote:
From what I have seen, a vast majority of us are in our 40s and 50s. So WE started and furthered the "Generation Gap" - WE were responsible for the near-death of Tiki!

Not quite. We just continued what our older brothers, the dope-smoking long hairs had set in motion. But we already had an easier attitude with our parents and grandparents culture, and though we were into Punk, that Anti-attitude was directed more towards our brother's Hippy and Rock Star generation than that of our forefathers. Lawrence Welk was already somewhat amusing to us. Sid Vicious singing My Way was a tip of the hat towards the later Lounge revival.

In the BOT and Tiki Mod I mention a few of the factors that spelled the end of the WW I and II generation's cultural influence on (late) 60s and 70s daily life and after:

The John F. Kennedy assassination
The Vietnam War
The Beatles and other long hairs after them
Women's Liberation

All these and more happenings created disillusionment about old ways and inspired new modes of thinking and acting. This was a good, necessary way of maturing as human beings. It was just too bad that in the wake of it Tiki culture was not recognized for its unique qualities and left in the dust.

What other historic events -social, political, or cultural- can you think of that relegated Tiki to the old fart heap?

[
The Beatles and other long hairs after them

All these and more happenings created disillusionment about old ways and inspired new modes of thinking and acting. This was a good, necessary way of maturing as human beings. It was just too bad that in the wake of it Tiki culture was not recognized for its unique qualities and left in the dust.

What other historic events -social, political, or cultural- can you think of that relegated Tiki to the old fart heap?

I have been saying it for a long time now....and I make enemies every time I say it! But it is something I firmly believe in!
The Beatles and other long hairs after them were the DEATH OF TIKI and LOUNGE CULTURE!

And that's a truly unfortunate thing, because the style, music, architecture and music was excellent.

really, I can't think of any other historic events that helped it's demise other then hippy-rock culture. The Hollywood celebs and other "cognoceti" who had previously been into Dave Brubeck now latched onto the stones and the Beatles as the next big thing. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Even artists I love like Frank Sinatra and Sergio mendes started playing Beatles songs. Of course, I like their versions better! (But that's another story).

Perhaps it was the adoption of youth pop/rock culture by Hollywood that helped kill Tiki and Lounge culture. We see how influencial hollywood still is, noteably in the world of Hip Hop. Hip Hop use to be an underground movement, now it is mainstream. Watch the Disney channel and see how many cartoons and characters are from the hip hop world. It's pervasive, and kills what came before it, same as rock music did.

I need to make a disclaimer, because I am separating the style of the 60's rock culture with an actual long hairsyle worn by many today. I have many friends who have long hair, so it is not about that, per se. Why, look at a guys like Spermy or Big Tiki Dude. They both have long hair, but are heavily into Tiki culture, and know and understand it and it's roots. So this is not anti-fashion, ok? If you have long hair, don't be offended by what I am writing.

It's just that the old lounge scene was a vital and wonderful scene, in a wonderful time period. The generation gap between that and what came after could not be deeper or sharper, as Sven pointed out. Why is that?

Start with slogans like "don't trust anyone over 30" and go from there.

Nowadays, you watch a show like "Icarly" (Yeah, I watch because of my daughter) and the characters use words like "Old Dudes" referring to anyone older then them. But these same old dudes can take their children to a rock concert and both young and old will enjoy the music. Just go on youtube and read the comments from so many kids liking old clips of REO Speedwagon, for example.

This kind of co-habitation never happened in the 60's. The Beatles wiped the past clean for these people, as sure as a Tsunami can wipe out a whole town like it never existed. Sad, really, because they killed Arthur Lyman in the process!

Lucas, you still sound like as if, while you "tolerate" the long hair wearing TCers of today, you see the long hair generation of the 60s as some kind of "bad guys"? This strikes me as odd. They were just children of their time, and they were more inspired by a need for love and honesty than many generations before and after.

Here's another classic that was a death knell to the Mai Tai generation: Watergate

bigbrotiki said, the 60s/70s generational divide was more radical than any other before or after. Absolutely the truth. I am in my early 50s and the difference between my generation and my parents is vast while the difference between my generation and that of my children is slight. My kids and their friends see nothing wrong with enjoying the music or fashions of older generations or in sharing their music and fashion with their elders. It can be cool to be "retro". Of course my kids and their friends had their rebellious stage but it didn't involve the wholesale trashing of everything associated with previous generations. The 60s were a unique passage in history.

On 2010-04-09 15:12, bigbrotiki wrote:
Lucas, you still sound like as if, while you "tolerate" the long hair wearing TCers of today, you see the long hair generation of the 60s as some kind of "bad guys"? This strikes me as odd. They were just children of their time, and they were more inspired by a need for love and honesty than many generations before and after.

Here's another classic that was a death knell to the Mai Tai generation: Watergate

Put it this way, Sven...whereas I agree with their 60's liberal values completely, I just have a problem with their sense of style, fashion, and choice in music and art. The love and honesty part I have no problem with. Nor their need to challenge the status quo, the "man" or the "system". If you were to peel off my outer wrapping, you would very much see the soul of a hippy.

The ironic thing is, very few of the performers that invented exotica or lounge music, were "children" in any sense! They were adults, living in an adult world that loved their martinis and gin and tonics. If you look at the demographics, the people making this music in 1958 were already adults, well over 30 in most cases. They may have been children at one time, sure, but they were children of the swing and big band era, and that was not so dissimilar from what they were doing at the time.

But yes, you are right...I do see them as bad guys and I make no bones about it. They helped kill off a great era in culture! I tend to overlook things like watergate, because they are irrevelent (in my opinion) to the wonderful night club scene of the same era. Sure, we had watergate (which was a disgrace) but we also had the Apollo space program, and those astronauts were into cocktails and easy listening music, for the most part. I choose to remember the "golden" era for what was good about it, not what was bad.

On 2010-04-09 14:20, bigbrotiki wrote:

.....though we were into Punk, that Anti-attitude was directed more towards our brother's Hippy and Rock Star generation than that of our forefathers. Lawrence Welk was already somewhat amusing to us. Sid Vicious singing My Way was a tip of the hat towards the later Lounge revival.

Yes, absolutely. Punk Rock generation = Tiki Revival generation.

Actually one of the first "ironic" lounge acts was the Circle Jerks. Their act was captured in "Repo Man" (1984), a full decade before the Lounge Revival.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUbnOFPud3M

So Lucas, what do you think of this guy?....

(And Lucas knows who it is. For those of you who don't, it's NOT Jesus Christ, Jim Morrison, or Charles Manson.)

Also I finally caught the Hula Girls tonight (although Vigor-less). I'll post on that elsewhere.

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2010-04-10 00:52 ]

On 2010-04-09 16:10, lucas vigor wrote:
The ironic thing is, very few of the performers that invented exotica or lounge music, were "children" in any sense! They were adults, living in an adult world that loved their martinis and gin and tonics. If you look at the demographics, the people making this music in 1958 were already adults, well over 30 in most cases. They may have been children at one time, sure, but they were children of the swing and big band era, and that was not so dissimilar from what they were doing at the time.

This is a good point that is very regrettable about that big change in society:
We dis-empowered our own elders, and from that point on, youth culture became the important thing. Experience and wisdom began to matter less than innovation and youthful beauty. That is why I parallel the Tiki revival with "ancestor worship", and support respecting what out forefathers created.

[So Lucas, what do you think of this guy?....

(And Lucas knows who it is. For those of you who don't, it's NOT Jesus Christ, Jim Morrison, or Charles Manson.)

eden ahbez is someone that hippies always like to use to show a connection between hippy music like the Grateful Dead, and the exotica/lounge scene. Yet, he is an asbolute anomaly. The one guy back then who adopted a hippy look, yet also had a pseudo exotica album, and wrote "Nature Boy" (which is not an exotica tune, by the way). But, he is hardly a real example of much crossover between two polar opposite genres of music!
The only real crossover between the two worlds occured when bands like Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny, Les Baxter (and also people like Wes Montgomery) started covering 60's pop songs. And I only see two aspects of that: One, it was pandering and an attempt to stay relevant, and two, often times the end result was actually BETTER then the original versions of the songs!(in my opinion).

But of course, this is hardly restricted to exotica and lounge, of course. Earth Wind and Fire did a version of "got to get you into my life" by the Beatles, which in my opinion, blows the original away!

My explanation for all of that is at the heart of something I truly believe: Good musicianship! Let's face it, the people of the exotica, jazz and lounge era were true musicians, with advanced, highly technical training (usually through serious classical music lessons from an early age) So of course, when they cover a song that was originally performed and/or written by untrained, amateur rock musicians, they jazz it up and make it better. The same can be said for most of the funk bands of the 70's. These were in no way amatuer musicians, and when you look at bands like CHIC and others of that genre, you see that most came from the "straight" music world (but also the gospel/church scene)

Of course, I am speaking in generalities, and there are rock musicians with the same amount of training and experience, who chose rock over "straight" music as thier main gig. But those are few and far between. In general, most rock music came from someone's garage, and most exotica/lounge/jazz came from a music conservatory. It's not for nothing that Miles Davis attended Julliard, for example.

[ Edited by: lucas vigor 2010-04-10 08:08 ]

What a scene!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7h-Igawp5Y

Great bongos and flute! Very much in the same style as Bobby Troup!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijioI5wQ4hM&feature=related

http://www.myspace.com/lucasvigor
http://www.myspace.com/thesmokinmenehunes
http://www.myspace.com/thehulagirlsband

[ Edited by: lucas vigor 2010-04-10 08:41 ]

So 20 years earlier, another version of this concept?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJ27TgBvJE

(deleted double post)

[ Edited by: ikitnrev 2010-04-11 08:58 ]

The only real crossover between the two worlds occurred when bands like Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny, Les Baxter (and also people like Wes Montgomery) started covering 60's pop songs.

That crossover was the standard modus operandi for many of the musical artists of the pre-rock era. If you look through many of the LPs from artists of the 1950's, you will see many of the same songs appearing over and over again - the standards. A band/artist would come up with their own new arrangement of a song that most everyone was already familiar with. You would see LPs with titles like 'Singer X sings the songs of Ella Fitgerald' or 'Singer Y Goes to the Caribbean.' I've created several 'one song' compilation CDs, filled with two dozen interpretations of songs such as Dark Eyes, Miserlou, Temptation, and others have done the same for songs like Caravan, Quiet Village, and Brazil.

Frank Sinatra wrote very songs himself, but he would tap the talents, and interpret other songwriters music in his very own way. Most of the other adult 'lounge/Vegas' singers were of the same vein. The songwriter, and the musical arranger, were much more prominent in that era. When the 60's rock and roll scene came around, the older generation continued to do what they had been doing - record LPs full of hits made by others - and thus we saw 'lounge' versions of the classic rock hits ..."Singer W sings the hits of the Beatles' or 'Singer Z and the Now Generation." They were doing what they had always done - re-record new arrangements of songs they liked, but the younger generation didn't like this - they saw it more as the elder generation moving onto their turf, and ruining music that was theirs only.

Most rock bands of the 70's era would record songs that they had written themselves, and you didn't see much of the reinterpretation of others songs. Thus you end up with the Eagles recording 'Hotel California', but very few other artists making their own version of that song. You can easily imagine multiple artists singing a song like 'Fly Me To the Moon,' but when you think of 'Hotel California' you think of only the Eagles.

[ Edited by: ikitnrev 2010-04-11 08:59 ]

I'd love to blame the Beatles and hippies for the downfall of Tiki culture but I can't think of any 20th century popular culture style/trend that lasted longer than a couple decades.

A desire for novelty comes from having the leisure time to be able to think of something other than hunting and gathering. Novelty needs to be "different, new and unusual" and once something has been around a while it's no longer novel.

While most the offspring of the Cocktail Generation definitely wanted something different to set themselves apart from their parents* they weren't entirely to blame for the demise of Tiki. There had to be more than a few grownups who lost interest in the once exotic Tiki joint or rolled their eyes at the idea of another patio luau.

Tiki couldn't last in the form of its Golden Era, no pop trend ever has. Thank God we all had the taste and brilliance to keep it from being almost completely forgotten.

*Years ago I read something by someone somewhere who pointed out how the Boomers vowed they would not live the cocktail culture of their parents and then went on to create the wine and cheese culture of the 70s.