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Tiki Talk with Ben Willis: The History of the Lei and High-Seas Style · Mega Rock On Demand

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's Friday afternoon and it's time once again to light the torches for Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ben Willis with you.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you talk about fashion and tiki, one of the most iconic things that you can wear, other than perhaps an Aloha or Luau shirt or dress, has to be a flower lay.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is so closely associated, especially with tourism to Hawaii in particular.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: However, lays are a common sight in cultures all across the Pacific.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: In one form or another, the concept of stringing together a garland to be worn is something that obviously took deep root in the cultures around the Pacific.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Practically any material can be strung together into a lay.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Traditionally it would have been flowers or leaves, pieces of vines, fern fronds, seeds, as well as more durable items like shells, bones, feathers, and in modern cases, plastic flowers, fabric, paper, paper money in some cases.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And even edible things like candy can be strung together in a lay, as long as the ultimate goal is for it to be worn.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now the ley made inroads into stateside fashion, as the legend goes, during World War II, once again.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It all goes back to World War II, doesn't it?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: When some local gifted a departing sailor, supposedly, a flower lay and a kiss.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that became tradition during wartime, and then continued with tourists long after the war as well.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this worked its way into the public consciousness, stateside, to where now, when you think about allual, when you think about tiki culture and parties and fashion, I mean, if you go to a party store, along with your inflatable palm trees, you're gonna find a package of plastic lays to throw around your neck.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I am guilty of hoarding lays in whatever form I find them, be it lay cukui, shell lays, dried flower lays.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was even so lucky as to come across a pair of carefully dried and preserved mixed media lays that are some of the prized components of my collection.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can see pictures of that up on our Facebook page at Mega Rock VA on Facebook.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond the flowers and the shells and the seeds, you get a lot of other neckwear associated with tiki culture and design.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Shark's teeth, very popular on the West Coast, especially among the surfer crowd.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, stemming from souvenirs that you would have gotten in the mid-century up until this day, the little tiki carving on a rope around your neck, made all the more popular by the now infamous two-part episode of The Brainy Bunch visiting Hawaii.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And these were manufactured by companies like Hawaiian Island Products, HIP, Coco Joe's, and others who made resin casts mixed with powdered black lava, which made you could cast a whole bunch of these little figures very easily, and they'd still come out looking like they were carved from volcanic stone.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Tiki pennants worn around the neck got so popular into the late 1960s and through the 1970s.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, not only could you buy them from ads on the back of comic books quite often, you'd sometimes find plastic versions being dispensed out of gumball machines.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Suffice to say, tiki neckwear has cemented itself absolutely in the mind in popular American culture.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And if you ever find yourself having to sit down and string together a bunch of flowers for a very special someone, you might want to be sipping on a drink, and the perfect drink for that situation would have to be the Laymaker.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a ginger drink with pineapple juice, and of course, brandy.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you build it.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In a shaker with ice, you're going to put two ounces of pineapple juice, one ounce of ginger liqueur, something like Canton brand would be perfect for this, and one and a half ounce of good brandy.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to use Corbel, but if you want to be true to the original recipe, that's what they suggest.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Seal that up, shake well, and be forewarned when you have this much pineapple juice in a shaken cocktail, it is going to foam up significantly.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then take a tall glass filled with some fresh ice, strain out from the shaker over the ice, and top off with an ounce or more of your choice of lemon lime soda.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Garnish, by the way, is with a candied ginger slice just perched on top.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely fantastic.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the laymaker, the joke that writes itself.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So until we meet again on another island out there somewhere, this is Ben Willis saying aloha.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll leave you with one of the most fun bands I have ever heard: the presidents of the United States of America, with a morality story straight from 1996.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's Tiki God on Tiki Talk on Mega Rock.