The name goes back to my dj-ing days in small, smoky St. Pauli bars. In the late nineties. I used the name for the first time writing the linernotes to my surfband’s album (Looney Tunes, LP Modern Sounds of…, Gee-Dee Music / String Records) in 1995.
I grew up with rock’n’roll. Elvis, Jerry Lee and the Stray Cats were my early idols. But I am always looking for unknown musical discoveries – and soon arrived at surf. From 1993 to ’98 I had my surfband together. Unfortunately we disbanded after only three albums. But I decided to keep making music, nonetheless. Meanwhile I had expanded my horizon to easy (Bert Kämpfert), incredibly strange music (1 & 2) and obviously hapa haole und exotica. Dj-ing was a wonderful chance to engulf my beloved surfmusic in a cloud of exotic, wild, primitive, pre-psychedelic and most of all atmospherically dense sounds. Where it belongs, to my ears.
So here I was. Free as bird, having successfully harvested the trad-surf field in the years before – now I could mix anything the way I pleased. The first track to be released was Gogo Sitar. And this piece is a good example of my music. Because it connects many elements, which some might not realize as belonging together.
I would describe it as follows:
Jack Lemmon and Doris Day enter a weird dancing bar, 1966. Jack has a coffee while Doris downs three ominous cocktails. The victorian interior is painted in pink, bright green and lots of purple. As soon as the band starts playing (Gogo Sitar) the intoxicated Doris jumps from her yellow stool and joins the crowded dancefloor. Most of the time she dances with a blonde surfer guy wearing a t-shirt and white levi’s, and a suave but slightly shady dandy type with sunglasses and something beatnick-y about him – at the same time. During the organ lead Jack has made his way to her to touch her arm, but before Doris realizes him, Jack is dragged away again by a group of three pro-to hippie girls…
After Gogo Sitar I recorded another 11 tracks and called the collection in honor of my dj-nights (Kahuna Kawentzmann’s Tiki Lounge) The Tiki & The Guitar.
Then I was washed ashore in Berlin. After one of my extremly rare public appearances Jochen of Living Room Pictures asked me, if I was available to create some music for his DVD-of-Tiki-project. What a question! This music is finished for some time now, and available under the title of Tiki Traveling.
Through Jochen’s project I was re-assured, that my good 25 years of homerecording and composing, enable me to create good and on the target scores and such. Which was only a notion, before. I also offer a special guitar recording service: if a production is lacking guitar, which particular sound and style I have on offer, I record the necessary bars for small money and send them electronically to the client. Hopefully dropping his jaw when he witnesses the audio-clarity coupled with the extremely authentic sound.
If you would like to keep track of future releases, you can subscribe to my rss feeds at my blog (http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheExoticBlogOfKahunaKawentzmann) or my homepage (http://www.kawentzmann.de). Or become my friend on MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/kawentzmann).
- The Tiki & The Guitar by Kahuna Kawentzmann at iTunes stores!
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