2007 JUNE 4 #155
Learn to Speak Hawaiian
MP3:
Unknown - Learn to Speak Hawaiian (Part One) (6:20)
Unknown - Learn to Speak Hawaiian (Part Two) (4:26)
Now that the 80's cassette underground is getting recognition, it's time for all good citizens to share the cassette under-underground --- pieces made for friends and selves alone, never "released" in even the most basic way. The results will be strange, amateurish, sublime, appalling, funny, and boring. I, for one, would love to hear some kid imitating Curt Gowdy over a tabletop baseball game and blowing air into the microphones to simulate the roar of the crowd. I could right now, if I hadn't taped over the thing thirty years ago.
Of course, I can barely dare to hope that there will be many more items unearthed like today's post, a classic by any standards. This was first played for me by a mutual friend of the artist's in 1986, and after securing my own copy I've played it for a couple of dozen people over the past couple of decades. And it has just never failed. The jokes are great but it's his comic timing that has made it perennially listenable. I can provide no title, artist, or year, but we've always called it "Learn to Speak Hawaiian." It was probably recorded in the early 80's in San Diego. All I know about the guy who made it is that he had the first name of "Michael" and worked as a projectionist at the Ken Cinema in the mid-80's (putting him in the epicenter, such as it was, of San Diego alternative culture). Here's hoping that some of you can fill in more details (the records he is talking over, for example), and most of all that word will get back to "Michael" of just how great we think this is.
- Contributed by: Vic Perry
Media: cassette (undistributed)
