The Blue Hawaiians

Last updated
The Blue Hawaiians
OriginLos Angeles
Genres Surf rock, exotica
Years active1994 – present
MembersMark Fontana
Mark Sproull
Gary Brandin
Past membersBron Tieman AKA The Crooked Cowboy
Erik Godal
"Maxwellvision"

The Blue Hawaiians are a Los Angeles band that combines elements of surf music, exotica and lounge. [1] They formed in 1994 to play at the opening of their friend Michelle's Hollywood club, The Lava Lounge. [2] They soon gained recognition with the help of the connection of one of their earliest fans, Quentin Tarantino, and appearances on the soundtrack of the television series Friends and the 1996 film Sex . The group have since released several albums which have generally fared well with critics. The band also composed and recorded music for the cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants , and their song "A Cheat" was featured in an advertisement for Guess Jeans.

Contents

The band features bassist/vocalist Mark Fontana (The El Caminos), lead guitarist Mark Sproull, and steel guitarist/rhythm guitarist Gary Brandin (The Vanduras, The Tikiyaki Orchestra, The Hula Girls). [3]

Discography

Albums

  1. Christmas on Big Island (October 24, 1995)
  2. Live at the Lava Lounge (August 4, 1997)
  3. Sway (March 4, 1998)
  4. Savage Night (July 13, 1999)
  5. Live at the Lava Lounge 2 (November 15, 2005)

Singles

  1. "Glimpse of Savage Night" (January 26, 1999)

Television Music

SpongeBob SquarePants

  1. "Hawaii Bob"
  2. "War Blowers"
  3. "Heat"
  4. "Hawaiian Walk"

Related Research Articles

Martin Denny was an American pianist, composer, and arranger. Known as the "father of exotica," he was a multi-instrumentalist and could play a number of percussion instruments. In a long career that saw him performing up to 3 weeks prior to his death, he toured the world popularizing his brand of lounge music which included exotic percussion, imaginative rearrangements of popular songs, and original songs that celebrated Tiki culture.

Exotica is a musical genre, named after the 1957 Martin Denny album of the same name that was popular during the 1950s to mid-1960s with Americans who came of age during World War II. The term was coined by Simon "Si" Waronker, Liberty Records co-founder board chairman. The musical colloquialism exotica means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. Denny described the musical style as "a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient...what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like...it's pure fantasy though." While the South Seas forms the core region, exotica reflects the "musical impressions" of every place from standard travel destinations to the mythical "shangri-las" dreamt of by armchair safari-ers.

Kalapana is an American pop-rock band from Honolulu, Hawaii. They are known for their songs “Naturally” and “The Hurt”.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blue October</span> American rock band

Blue October is an American rock band originally from Houston, Texas. The band was formed in 1995 and is currently composed of singer/guitarist Justin Furstenfeld, drummer Jeremy Furstenfeld, multi-instrumentalist Ryan Delahoussaye, bassist Matt Noveskey, and lead guitarist Steve Schiltz.

Combustible Edison was an American neo-lounge music group founded in the early 1990s in Providence, Rhode Island. They were one of several lounge acts that led a brief resurgence of interest in the genre during the mid-1990s.

The Bomboras are an American all-instrumental surf band from Los Angeles, California, United States. The band was formed in the summer of 1994, sharing a love of 1960s surf and garage music such as The Ventures, Booker T, and The Sonics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Leaves</span> American garage rock band

The Leaves were an American garage rock band formed in the San Fernando Valley, California, in 1964. They are best known for their version of the song "Hey Joe", which was a hit in 1966. Theirs is the earliest release of this song, which became a rock standard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Birch</span> American musician

Robert Wayne "Bob" Birch was an American musician. He was primarily a session musician, playing bass guitar as a sideman to a variety of notable artists.

William Joseph Cowsill Jr. was an American singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead singer and guitarist of The Cowsills, who had three top-10 singles in the late 1960s. From the mid-1970s until his death, he was a successful alt-country artist and producer in Canada.

Merrell Wayne Fankhauser is an American singer, songwriter and guitarist, who was most active in the 1960s and 1970s with bands including the Impacts, Merrell & the Exiles, HMS Bounty, Fankhauser-Cassidy Band, and Mu. In addition, 12 songs recorded by Merrell & the Exiles were later released under the group name Fapardokly, even though that group never actually existed.

Anthony "Top" Topham was an English musician and visual artist who was best known as a blues guitarist and also for being the first lead guitarist of The Yardbirds. Topham left the band before they achieved mainstream popularity and was replaced by Eric Clapton, the first of three lead guitarists from the Yardbirds to gain an international reputation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Skip Heller</span> Musical artist

Fred "Skip" Heller is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Although active in many different types of music as a performer, producer, and historian coming out of the Philadelphia jazz scene, and in spite of local critical recognition, he did not make a large mark in his hometown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Karan</span> American guitarist and singer (born 1955)

Mark Karan is an American guitarist and singer. He is best known for his long-term work with former members of the Grateful Dead, in RatDog (1998–2013), the Other Ones (1998–2000), Mickey Hart's band Planet Drum (1999), and Phil Lesh and Friends (2012). Karan has also played and toured with Terrapin Flyer, Delaney Bramlett, the Rembrandts, Sophie B. Hawkins, Dave Mason, and Paul Carrack.

The Pyramids were a surf group from Long Beach, California, United States, who formed in 1961. In early 1964, they made the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 with their instrumental "Penetration". It proved to be the final major instrumental surf hit.

Bambi Lee Savage is an American singer, songwriter and musician who also has worked as an audio engineer, most notably assisting on U2's Achtung Baby. Her song "Darlin'" was featured on the Sling Blade film soundtrack and her four independently-released albums are Matter of Time (2003), GJ and the PimpKillers (2009) Darkness Overshadowed (2012) and Berlin-Nashville Express (2019).

"King" Ernest Baker was an American blues and soul singer. He recorded "I Feel Alright" and "That's When I Woke Up." Baker was born in Natchez, Mississippi, and died in a car crash in 2000, just after finishing recording an album.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Mark</span> English singer-songwriter and guitarist (1943–2021)

Jon Mark was an English singer-songwriter and guitarist, best known for his recordings with Marianne Faithfull, Sweet Thursday, John Mayall and Mark-Almond. Mark, who received a Grammy in 2004, lived in Rotorua, New Zealand.

Surf's Up! At Banzai Pipeline was a 1963 various artist record album compilation that featured recordings by The Surfaris, Dave Myers and The Surftones, The Soul Kings, Coast Continentals and Jim Waller & The Deltas. It has been re-released a couple of times since.

The Amazing Colossal Band is an album by the Finnish surf rock band Laika & the Cosmonauts, released in 1995. It was one of many instrumental rock albums released in 1995, part of a mid-1990s trend that encompassed lounge, surf, and space rock styles.

The Tikiyaki Orchestra is a seven piece modern exotica band that combines the sounds of traditional exotica with the Music Of Hawaii, surf music, crime jazz, lounge music and space age pop to create a soundtrack for the Tiki sub-culture.

References

  1. "128 – The Blue Hawaiians – Sway - AmbientExotica.com – Music Reviews of Ambient, Vaporwave & Tiki Exotica Albums". www.ambientexotica.com. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  2. Cuda, Heidi Siegmund (1995-12-28). "Club Review : Lava Lounge Still on Top of the Wave of Surf Music". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-05-28.
  3. "The Blue Hawaiians". Discogs. Retrieved 2023-05-28.