365 Days #155 - Learn to Speak Hawaiian (mp3s)

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)

Comments

[Pol Dodu]

Funnily enough, Howe Gelb and Giant Sand have been known on many occasions to perform live along to a Spanish language method to stunning effect. The method taught seems to be very close to this one, except it sounded more professional and there was no backing music.

[Vic Perry]

Amazing, this has been up here just eight hours and Dan Howland, who first played this tape for me, and with whom I had lost touch, wrote me that the man behind "Learn to Speak Hawaiian" is named Michael Proft. Thank you Dan!

[Disastrogirl]

Ha, I just got an email from Dan as well. Hey Dan!

Michael is a good friend of mine. He still works as a projectionist for Landmark. Mainly he is a painter, but he also plays the marimba, kalimba, mbira and flute. He also makes these incredible wayang kulit-style puppet and makes little plays for them I will show him this as soon as I can.

[Bat Guano]

CHARLES MAUU & THE ROYAL POLYNESIANS, "TAMURE" -- that's the second song, as he's going over the vowels. Charles Mauu was an actual Tahitian chief who also came to appear in 1950s Hollywood films like "The Road to Bali", "Pagan Love Songs" and "Hell Ship Mutiny". Authentic native songs of the south seas.

[Dan Howland]

I was shocked and delighted to find this on the WFMU blog. I'm not entirely sure, but I may have given Michael the "Learn to Speak Hawaiian" booklet when we both worked at the same movie theater. Maybe. There was a lot of sharing of thrift store crap in that Ken Cinema clique.

One of Mr. Proft's many interests at the time of this recording was card model building. He built architectural models from paper kits and used them as elements of surreal dioramas at the theater, using old popcorn machines as the display cases. I still fondly recall his HO-scale Frank Lloyd Wright house with a Lambretta scooter dealership in the back yard, defended by wee Zulu warriors. I picked up the hobby from him, and still build paper models today. So my girlfriend has him to blame for all the damn paper castles in our living room.

See:
www.cardmodelgeek.blogspot.com

I remember him as a great artist and an odd thinker -- probably the highest praise I can lavish on anyone.

[Del Dolemonte]

"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."

LOL! Gowdy is God.

Not only did I live in Hawaii for several years right after Statehood, which makes this mp3 fest a hilarious treat (Kent Bowman would love it!) but while I lived there the 50th State had a AAA baseball team called the Hawaii Islanders. They played in the old long-gone Honolulu Stadium.

In the early to mid 1960s, the Islanders hired a guy right out of AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio) who as I recall was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base at the time, to do their play by play. Since the station couldn't afford to send him on the road (and obviously being in the 1960s there was only phone line technology) they had him "re-create" all of the road games in the studio in Honolulu, while the game was actually long-over on the Mainland. This included smacking a number 2 pencil against a block of wood for the noise of the bat, crumpling cellophane for crowd noise, etc. This particular announcer later said that if he wanted to get out of work early on a certain night, he would speed the game up re-creation wise.

Said announcer's name was and is Harry Kalas, who some of you may have heard of. And when he left the Islanders (who have since ended up in Colorado as a AAA team) in the mid 1960s, another young pup named Al Michaels replaced him.

[Vic Perry]

That's great Del! And to bring it back home, I believe the Islanders became the San Diego Padres Triple-A team. Also, didn't Ronald Reagan do fake baseball broadcasts of the Chicago Cubs way back when?

[Del Dolemonte]

Actually, when I lived in Hawaii the Padres were still a PCL Triple A team, in the sane division as the Islanders.! And yes, Ronnie Reagan also did the re-created games.

[Del Dolemonte]

Belated addition-the Hawaii Islanders did later become the Padres farm team. And after leaving Hawaii, the team ended up in Colorado Springs, where they're now called the Colorado Sky Sox. They're the AAA farm club of the NL champion Colorado Rockies, who are in serious danger of being swept in the World Series by my beloved Boston Red Sox.

[Dan Toda]

During the mid-60's, I think it was Marty Chase and Hal Sax (or was it the other way around?) who did the broadcasting on KORL. They would turn up the volume for crowd noise and do the pencil thing for the crack of the bat. You could listen to Giants and Dodger games that must have come over on short-wave radio because the sound would go up and down in a wave-like pattern. That was way before the Telstar satellite when tv baseball games would be shipped over on United and Saturday's game would be shown on Sunday. Chunky's was the hamburger joint just across the street from the stadium.

[Mel Wenger]

Lordy, just when I thought I couldn't love Michael Proft any more!
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!!!

[Craig]

" LOOKS HARD AT FIRST...CAREFUL WITH THAT TWANG BAR! "

humu'humu'nuku'nuku'a'pu'aa

[none]

both these files is named "part one"

[Pengobatan Luka Bakar]

Thank's for the information