{"id":2928,"date":"2012-08-23T05:25:14","date_gmt":"2012-08-23T09:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=2928"},"modified":"2012-08-23T05:25:14","modified_gmt":"2012-08-23T09:25:14","slug":"tiki-lounging-with-merrell-fankhauser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/23\/tiki-lounging-with-merrell-fankhauser\/","title":{"rendered":"Tiki-lounging with Merrell Fankhauser"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merrell Fankhauser<\/strong>‘s name is not as well-known as some others from the rock era, but he’s been an important force in the development of both surf and psychedelia. Outside of record-collecting circles, Fankhauser’s name is recognized thanks to an excellent profile\/interview in Richie Unterberger<\/strong><\/a>‘s 1998 book Unknown Legends of Rock’n’Roll<\/em>. But thanks to a clutch of reissues and compilations, Fankhauser’s output is now readily available for modern-day audiences. In 2012, a two-volume set of episodes of his public-access-channel TV show Tiki Lounge<\/em> was released on DVD, and concurrent with that release, a 2CD set entitled The Best of Merrell Fankhauser<\/em> came out. That set surveys all of his work from 1963 to the present.<\/p>\n

\"\"Fankhauser’s groups (The Exiles<\/strong>, Fapardokly<\/strong>, HMS Bounty<\/strong> and MU<\/strong>) and his solo career all showcased music that exemplified the particular styles they aimed for. It’s remarkable how often \u2013 and well \u2013 his music seems to capture the zeitgeist of the era in which it was recorded. The Exiles-to-Fapardokly era music centered around the Antelope Valley region, now known as the home of early music from Frank Zappa<\/strong><\/a> and Captain Beefheart<\/strong><\/a>. One of Merrell’s earliest musical cohorts was, he says, a \u201cthen-fourteen-year-old guitar player Jeff Cotton<\/strong>, who later became Antennae Jimmy Semens<\/strong> in Beefheart’s band, and later joined me again in MU.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fapardokly’s \u201cSuper Market\u201d (a highlight of the bonus various-artists CD packaged with Unterberger’s first book) is easily in the same league as Love<\/strong><\/a>‘s similarly-flavored \u201cAlone Again Or,\u201d a light classic from the so-called Summer of Love. (\u201cI never heard that [comparison],\u201d claims Fankhauser.) Yet none of Fankhauser’s music really shifted big units, never caught on in a major commercial way, despite its quality and accessibility. The Exiles singles \u2013 released on the tiny Glen records \u2013 sold a bit, as the label put them out. In 1967, Glen collected an album’s worth of what Merrell calls \u201crandom songs from 1964 to 1967\u201d and released them using the group’s then-current \u201cpsychedelic\u201d name, Fapardokly. But Glen’s limited distribution kept the record from getting notice beyond the region.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merrell tells the story of first learning the commercial value of that Fapardokly<\/em> LP: It was \u201coh, ’78 or so when two Germans looked me up when I was living on Maui. They told me [affects a German accent], ‘Oh ya. We bought der open copy of der Fapardokly album at a record fair in Berlin for only $650!’ I said, ‘Say that again?’ That was total news to me.\u201d Shortly thereafter, Fankhauser flew back to California and \u201ctore apart my mom’s closet. Because I knew she had about six of ’em.\u201d He went on to sell one to a collector in Norway for nearly twice what the Germans had paid. \u201cOh, you don’t have to give me that much,\u201d he told the collector. But the Norwegian insisted. Merrell sold all but one of those copies, and the remaining copy \u2013 still sealed \u2013 is framed and on his home studio’s wall. He believes that only 1200 copies of the original were ever pressed. Of those, about a hundred went to radio stations, and about 300 sold retail. Merrell remains \u201cflabbergasted\u201d at the enduring (if specialist) appeal that his music from that era has with fans around the world. Thomas Pynchon<\/strong>‘s 2009 novel Inherent Vice<\/em> even makes mention of \u201cSuper Market.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an aside \u2013 and going backward briefly in our chronology \u2013 Merrell claims that his earliest surf-styled Exiles recordings for the Del-Fi label \u2013 including a track called \u201cWipe Out,\u201d which he insists formed the basis for the Surfaris<\/strong> hit of the same name \u2013 sold \u201ca million copies\u201d but he’s never seen any appreciable income from those sides.<\/p>\n

\"\"HMS Bounty’s \u201cThings\u201d did crack the Billboard Hot 100 around 1968. \u201cWe watched our songs going up the charts, and thought, ‘This is great.’ The album was selling, so we moved down to L.A., where we did big concerts opening for CTA<\/strong> [later Chicago<\/strong>], Canned Heat<\/strong> and The Electric Flag<\/strong>.\u201d But then HMS Bounty’s label, Uni, put its promotional efforts elsewhere: \u201cThey signed Neil Diamond<\/strong>, who already had one little hit on the Bang label. As soon as they signed him,\u201d Merrell recalls, \u201cwe watched the promotion pull away from us.\u201d That spelled the end of that band. Merrell went on to do a few sessions backed by Jim Gordon<\/strong>, Al Casey<\/strong>, Carol Kaye<\/strong>, Larry Knechtel<\/strong> and other highly-regarded luminaries of the sixties music scene.<\/p>\n

After his time with Uni was up, Fankhauser jammed with old friend Jeff Cotton (then still with Beefheart’s Magic Band<\/strong>), who took him aside one day and said, \u201cI’d really like to get out of this crazy house and play with you instead.\u201d So the pair \u2013 plus two former Exiles \u2013 formed MU.<\/p>\n

As time went by, Fankhauser’s reputation grew in stature (if not size), and counted among his fans were some influential media types. Elliott Mintz<\/strong> and others suggested Merrell host his own television program. And Merrell had an untrained but natural affinity for the behind-the-scenes machinations of TV production: \u201cI was always the guy in the studio who was asking the engineer about how he got this or that sound, and I felt the same way about TV.\u201d He conducted some interviews with fellow musicians while he lived on Maui, and guested on some TV shows there. By 1990 these efforts led Fankhauser \u2013 by then back on the mainland \u2013 to create his own satellite TV show, California Music<\/em>. After sponsorship was secured, Merrell started rounding up guests. \u201cI put the word out to all my old friends. I got Dean Torrance<\/strong> and Mike Love<\/strong> and a whole bunch of other people. Everybody<\/em> started coming out of the woodwork; even Sky Saxon<\/strong>!\u201d He also got to interview (and play with, as documented on a Tiki Lounge<\/em> DVD) legendary keyboardist-to-the-stars, Nicky Hopkins<\/strong>. In fact, Merrell’s later show Tiki Lounge<\/em> often draws on vintage clips from the earlier program.<\/p>\n

A seven-year musical project concerning what Merrell describes (with a straight face) as the Lost Continent of Mu kept him busy; the resulting record Return to MU<\/em> has also recently been reissued. Gigging both in the USA and Hawaii with some heavy friends (including, oddly enough, a Stratocaster-slinging Willie Nelson<\/strong>!) Merrell eventually found himself \u201ctoo busy for TV.\u201d But fans within the business encouraged him to get back in the game, and so Tiki Lounge<\/em> was born. \u201cI’m up to almost ninety shows now,\u201d says a justly-proud Fankhauser.<\/p>\n

\"\"Having one of his songs (the 1967 Fapardokly track \u201cTomorrow’s Girl\u201d) included on Rhino’s 2009 compilation Where the Action Is! L.A. Nuggets 1965-1968<\/em> certainly helped raise Fankhauser’s profile: \u201cI think I made seven or eight record deals since that happened,\u201d he says. \u201cI was thinking, ‘Well, my recording career is kind of mellowing out now; maybe I’ll just fade into the sunset.’ But all of a sudden, this happens. And I’m very thankful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on \"\" Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merrell Fankhauser‘s name is not as well-known as some others from the rock era, but he’s been an important force in the development of both surf and psychedelia. Outside of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}