Whipping up a few '50s-style musical mai tais

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Don Tiki has been known to put on entertaining shows filled with musical guests and friends: from left, dancer Lokelani; Don Tiki's Lloyd Kandell, known among his fans as Fluid Floyd; band member Sharene; percussionist Carlinhos de Oliveira; writer/arranger/keyboardist Kit Ebersbach (aka Perry Coma); and dancer Alaana. 'The Forbidden World of Don Tiki' 9 and 11 p.m. today and Saturday South Seas Village/Hawaiian Hut, Ala Moana Hotel $20 735-4333

Purists of the mostly orchestrally tinged pop-jazz instrumentals laced with Latin, Asian and Polynesian influences, however, prefer the term "exotica," thank you very much. And the members of Don Tiki are not just Hawai'i's resident keepers of exotica's kitschy '50s era hi-fi and pineapple-wedge-and-cherry-speared-by-a-mini-umbrella flame, but deeply respectful lounge music purists who claim mere servitude at the altar of "The Holy Trinity of Arty, Marty and Les."

"That would be Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny and Les Baxter," says Lloyd Kandell, addressing the hopelessly clueless. Um, that would be me.

By day a casually dressed ad executive with a wisp of a salt and pepper soul patch and the boyish face and thick mane of an older, wizened Bobby Sherman, Kandell is — in the universe of Don Tiki, at least — known as Fluid Floyd, an encyclopedic guide to the world and music of exotica.

"Floyd's role on stage is your congenial host," offers Kit Ebersbach, the left side of the Tiki brain trust to Kandell's right — or maybe it's the other way around. "He floats around the stage doing this and that. He hypnotizes the dancers." He pauses to glare at Kandell. "I wouldn't want him to do anything that would actually require tone or anything like that."

Ebersbach's Tiki alias is Perry Coma. The ensemble's writer, arranger, keyboardist and (along with Kandell) co-producer of Don Tiki's 1997 "The Forbidden Sounds of ..." and 2001 "Skinny Dip with ..." CDs, Ebersbach — with his receding hairline, rounded spectacles and often steely gaze — is like the alternately bemused and taciturn UH-Manoa music professor to Kandell's still matriculating honors student.

Lounging in Ebersbach's downtown Honolulu recording studio, the duo chatted about this weekend's "The Forbidden World of Don Tiki," a something-old, something-new redux of the band's sold-out pair of impeccably detailed exotica stage shows at the Hawaiian Hut last October. Generously stuffed to its thatched roof with resident Don Tiki musician friends such as percussionists Carlinhos de Oliveira and Noel Okimoto, guest artists (Teresa Bright, Jimmy Borges, Jake Shimabukuro and Lopaka Colon, among them) and imaginatively choreographed Tahitian-style dancers courtesy of Tavana progeny Tunui Tully and show director/producer Pam Sandridge, "Forbidden's" warm reception practically demanded another round.

Heck, even Martin Denny himself — all of 90 years old and still a Honolulu resident — materialized for one show.

No surprise then that Don Tiki's quartet of Hawaiian Hut shows this weekend features much of the same cast of characters and behind-the-scenes personnel that made "Forbidden" such a hit the first time around.

Ask either of the Tikis to elaborate on the show's surprises, though, and they retreat instead into discussions of all things exotica.

"There are a lot of people who just consider exotica kitschy and goofy, but we come at it from a very reverential place," Kandell says.

Follows Ebersbach: "There's a lot of substance to exotica musically ... particularly with Les Baxter and Martin Denny's work. A lot of (the music's) more orchestrated approach actually comes from Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Ravel ... that kind of impressionistic stuff. Sort of like the musical equivalent of Gauguin."

And oooh, does it ever sound kooky on a hi-fi!