September/October 2009 Issue

Music Monday: Review: The Waitiki 7, Adventures in Paradise

This new band has a great old sound: tiki torches meets jazz meets 1950s exotica.

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Fire up the tiki torches. Break out the umbrella drinks. The debut of Hawaii’s Waitiki 7 harks back a half-century to the golden age of exotica, when lounge-music giants like Martin Denny walked the Earth. Yet Adventures in Paradise‘s exotic bird noises and camp camouflage virtuoso musicianship. A cover of jazz great Lee Morgan’s “Totem Pole” showcases a mesmerizing sax-trumpet dialogue, while the sleek violin of “Mood Indigo” would please Duke Ellington himself. And you can’t top the title track, the theme from a mediocre ’60s adventure series, for cheesy fun.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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