Show 41: Living Stereo!

From RCA Living Stereo liner notes:

"The most dazzling and ear-provoking demonstration of stereophonic sound."

"No name defined the Golden Age of High Fidelity more than RCA Living Stereo. Conceived in the mid-1950's by RCA producers and engineers, it pioneered the leap from monaural to stereo recording... Living Stereo was hailed by critics and public alike as the ultimate audio achievement. Living Stereo recordings ushered in the Golden Age and set the standard for musical and technical excellence... On a Living Stereo record, music comes fantastically alive. The sound is so vivid you can almost see and feel the music. Your ears will be able to distinguish where every instument and voice comes from - left, right or center."

And so much to choose from! I have a lot of Living Stereo records... so I just pulled out a bunch for the show and only realized after having finished production, that I forgot to include a track from the one that started it all for me... Music of the Islands by the Mauna Loa Islanders. Oh well... next time, I guess.

By the way, in the Lounge for this week's show is a special guest who will explain some of the more technical aspects of the Living Stereo process.

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Song 1 : : The Beat
Artist : : Henry Mancini
Album : : The Blues And The Beat

Liner notes

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Song 2 : : No Moon At All
Artist : : The Ames Brothers
Album : : Destination Moon

Info

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Song 3 : : Poinciana
Artist : : Chet Atkins
Album : : The Other Chet Atkins

Info

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Song 4 : : One More Dance
Artist : : Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba
Album : : Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall

Info

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Song 5 : : Maria Bonita
Artist : : Perez Prado
Album : : Prez

Liner notes

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Song 6 : : The Gold Bug
Artist : : Buddy Morrow
Album : : Poe for Moderns

Info

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Song 7 : : Perdido
Artist : : Marty Gold
Album : : Skin Tight

Info

Show 40: New Exotica

Rather than looking to the past this week, we're playing tunes by a few folks who are keeping up the exotica tradition... This music makes for an oh-so-perfect soundscape here in the Mauna Loa Lounge.

The Tikiyaki Orchestra is a new project... a work in progress... that sounds very promising! This is great stuff and I'm looking forward to hearing a complete CD of this material. For now, I'm playing two preview tracks, which you can purchase for download along with two others on the Tikiyaki Orchestra's web-site.

I recently had a chance to sit down for a evening of exotic cocktails at the Jardin Tiki here in Montreal with Mr. Ho from the Boston-based exotica combo, Waitiki. Their album, Charred Mammal Flesh, recently won a Hawaii Music Award for Best Exotica Album for 2006. You can read all about it, and learn much more about the band, on their website.

An interesting Waitiki off-shoot is the Waitiki Orchestrotica, which includes the members of Waitiki of course, along with other musicians who've come together as a 20-or-so piece orchestra dedicated to faithfully recreating and performing the arrangements of Juan Garcia Esquivel.

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Song 1 : : Crossing Kiluea
Artist : : Tikiyaki Orchestra
Album : : from the forthcoming CD Stereo Exotique

Song 2 : : Mai Tais on the Moon
Artist : : Tikiyaki Orchestra
Album : : from the forthcoming CD Stereo Exotique

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Song 3 : : Primitiva
Artist : : Waitiki
Album : : live in-studio recording

Song 4 : : Wada-da
Artist : : Waitiki
Album : : studio recording

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Song 5 : : Frenesi
Artist : : Waitiki Orchestrotica
Album : : live recording

Show 39: Baxter and Dunn

I'm back, baby, I'm back! Finally back up and running in my usual semi-normal state... So I've managed to slap together a new show celebrating a couple of mid-March birthdays. These two guys get a lot of play in the lounge but it's well-deserved...

First, the mastermind of all exotica as we know it and love it in the lounge and in Tiki bars around the world: Les Baxter. I've restricted my musical choices to selections from the Baxter exotica repertoire, though he's done plenty of work in other genres as well. A great place to get information on every aspect of Baxter's career is the Official Les Baxter Website. This other site concentrates a little more specifically on The Exotic World of Les Baxter.

Also born on March 14th is Artie Dunn. Who's Artie Dunn, you ask? Well, as you may have noticed, I'll play music by The Three Suns whenever I have the chance on the show... The combo made some of my favourite music of the space age pop era. Artie Dunn was the organ-playing Sun in this guitar-accordian-organ group. However, I've cheated a little bit here in that Artie doesn't really appear on any of the tracks I've selected from The Three Suns RCA Living Stereo era records. At that point in the group's career, Artie was probably on the road with The Three Suns live performance group, while the other two Suns, along with a few brilliant producer-arrangers and a host of session players were in the studio laying down these great tracks. A complete Three Suns history can be found at the excellent Three Suns Universe website.

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Song 1 : : Tropicando
Artist : : Les Baxter
Album : : Les Baxter

From a really bad budget CD of late-period Baxter exotica. For the fun use of this song in a video, go here.

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Song 2 : : Cairo Bazaar
Artist : : Les Baxter
Album : : Zenith presents The Best of The New Exotic Sounds


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Song 3 : : Movin' 'n Groovin'
Artist : : The Three Suns
Album : : Movin' 'n Groovin'



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Song 4 : : Like Young
Artist : : The Three Suns
Album : : Fever & Smoke



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Song 5 : : Jungle Drums
Artist : : The Three Suns
Album : : Movin' 'n Groovin'

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Song 6 : : Acapulco
Artist : : Les Baxter
Album : : The Scared Idol

Still on the mend this week... So it's another "encore presentation." Think of it as a chance to hear something you may have missed when it first aired.

It's a repeat of my "imaginary fishing trip" show from back in October... a fun one, I think. Dig through last year's October archives for a playlist and info.

Back with new a new one next week guaranteed...