Racing Towards Zero – Day 5:
eden ahbez – Eden’s Island

Oh wow. Ok so today was easy. I’m sorry to have done two thrift store finds in a row, but the fact that a single track of the this album had gone unheard baffles me.

For a while I was in to what is commonly known as “exotica“. You know, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Esquivel… like the music at the beginning of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. The soundtrack to the The Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. Things like that. In my travels, I came across this gem, and what’s even better than the sultry, South Pacific, tropical majesty of it all is the story behind the man himself.

Eden Ahbez was a hippie. I know, you’re looking at the picture like “Uh, thanks for the update, Captain Obvious”, but no, I mean he was the prototypical hippie. We’re talking 1941 here (though hippie roots go back even further). Actually, I should call him eden ahbez—lowercase—because he felt that “only God was worthy of capitalization”. He ran with “The Nature Boys” who lived in the canyons of Los Angeles, who were raw foodists. Take that, Height/Ashbury!

Though he only put out one full album (a second was released posthumously), his life and work were extremely influential, so without further ado, I give you the title track from Eden’s Island:

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