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October 19, 2014 by tomdalzell

Gabby Collects Tiki

As my friend and I were working on the revised tiki postings, our friend Gabby was in Panama with Young Emily.  She went to record and understand the saloma (yodel) in Panamanian rural music.  Singers start their performances with a saloma, in essence a warm-up not dissimilar to the manner in which trained singers warm up, but executed in Panama as part of the performance.  With the saloma, a singer reaches high notes and finds their point of resonation.  Young Emily was fascinated by the melodies that are built of disjunct intervals and abrupt shifts of register, for which the employment of falsetto is necessary.

While in Panama, Gabby visited David Fishlow.  He knew David from David’s days as the editor of the UFW newspaper in Delano, El Malcriado.  David had been in Panama with the Peace Corps and went back in the 1990s to open a B&D.

Screen Shot 2014-10-18 at 6.44.30 AM

Finally getting to the point – Tiki – in Panama City Gabby came across a Kon Tiki resort.  He thought we might be interested.

But this was not the end of things with our friend Gabby.  After Panama he stopped in Denver for a few days.  Young Emily drove up to Boulder to talk with a professor of Voice, Opera, and Choral Studies about the saloma research she had done.  Gabby stayed in Denver and with nothing better to do set out to build an instant Tiki collection, focusing on paperbacks, magazines, comics, and record albums.

He played with his normal rules – $200, no complete collections bought, Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon.   He is good at this.  When he was done he packed it all up and sent it to my friend.  You will see that Gabby’s criteria for inclusion might be slightly looser than mine, but, still, great images.

The paperbacks:

Tiki P.I. Tiara Tahibit Taboo Table Shag's Tiki Drinks L'amour a Honolulu Maitresse Noire Aventura Wayward Wahine 2 Lani Pleasure Island It Happened in Hawaii Half-Caste Hawaii Five Oh Blue Hawaii Five Oh Red Voodoo Murders Strumpet Seas Tiki Joe Mysteries Jungle Seas South Pacific Affair Aku-Aku Moai Murders Totem y tabu Rendezvous met Virginia Wayward Wahine Masque Bleu Les Sept Croix de Plomb Beachcomber Moment of Danger Diamond Head Gentleman of the Jungle Fate Savage Love Hawaiian Eye Pagan Lesbians Tiki of Hawaii Love in the South Seas Long Goodbye From the Sea and Jungle Misterios de la Polinesia Landfall Tahiti Honolulu Snatch Mystery of Easter Island richard sale not too narrow Wake-of-the-Red-Witch EasterIsland2Screen Shot 2014-10-19 at 6.43.42 AM 589-1 51u7+lHiU-L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ Cushman 125046 51Ax9F2UsZL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ 490-1 cannibals-headhunters 61LWZjt7VzL._SL500_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ 51rdQtnfzwL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ SouthSeaTales South Sea Tales 2Magazines were not as plentiful as he expected.  The street giveth and the street taketh away, right?

7837ff8d7648fee965d3425d2e605498 MAN'S ACTION - 1960 04 April - Cover by Basil Gogos-8x6 9089x4c22705b Tiki Zombie be959bb83f67f72fd5c316b06041824b 5038x4c2263d1

At this point, Gabby confessed that he broke one of his rules.  He bought a big batch of South Sea Stories magazines.  He justified the rule violation by (1) pointing out that he found them at a garage sale, not a store, and (2) pointing out that he had not actually bought them, but traded them for a paperback first edition of Kerouac’s Dharma Bums  that he had found somewhere on Larimer Street.  You can decide about the rules – here are the magazines:

4234x4dae9fa6 SS2-1 south_sea_stories_196209 32881073-6168078322_a93aa429cc_o1 south_sea_stories_194002 south_sea_stories_194008 South Sea Stories - 1962 07 July - v2_n6-8x6 South-Sea-Stories-October-1961 south_sea_stories_196007 SS2 south_sea_stories_194010_v1_n5 South Sea Stories - Dec 1939, 1st issue-8x6Most of the comic books he found were Tales from the Tiki Lounge.  He claims that he did not buy these as a collection, but found one or two at number of different places.

Unknown Screen Shot 2014-10-19 at 7.00.25 AM 739c88da3a062113c943c1bdf779f73fweird-tiki-comics-#1-cropped-200-dpiTikiTales_Cover 8560344bbe4466b37a51cf98337c8cea 5514x4f93b97f 5514x4f2a661d 5514x4d72dd12 5514x4d6d6601 7a4f3afa04f46a3bee003689951b5f77You can see from the number of books as opposed to the number of record albums that Gabby was focused more on books than albums.  That’s okay.  Here are the albums he sent:

7-hawaiian hits-hawaii-polynesian-south seas-stereo-vintage-retro-album-sarong-red-batik-1960s 6529035735_e5c0c42601_z LP3 1312787387_the-tikiyaki-orchestra-aloha-baby_novyj-razmer TikiDelightsFront Tiki+Music+From+The+Islands tiki tiki-tones-suburban-savage Tiki Tiki Les-Tikis-Zizou-Bar-Tahiti-1965-L723721023553 Exotic Sounds of Tiki Gardens bcd16338 1966145 30099I get exhausted when Gabby goes off on his manic collecting binges.  Sure, I admire the limits he imposes on himself.  Sure, I admire his love of the hunt.  And I respect the fact that he sends his friends most of his collections.   But – still – I am exhausted by his hunt here.

My friend went off into memory-land while going through these photos.  I asked him what he was thinking about.

seattle-worlds-fairHe showed me a photo of his father walking into a pavilion at the Seattle World Fair in 1962.  Packrat that he is, my friend had other photos and postcards:

nk_c21_swf_program 3279831005_30153a5d43 detail-of-program-from-1962-seat 8169x4e14b587This was all near the tail-end of his mainstream, straight life.  He remembers it with fondness, no bitterness at all about the fall-out of his decisions a few years later.

What, though, did he think of the Gabby Instant Tiki Collection?

IMG_3677

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