Orhes Stenyt And The Metropolitans

Featuring: Oreste Donttini

condition (record/cover): EX / EX- (minimal wear)

The Italian budget-label Hawaiian record is a genre of its own, and this is a textbook example: an unidentifiable steel guitarist under an implausible name, a studio band called The Metropolitans, and a label called Bang!! Bang!! with two exclamation marks per word. The repertoire is the standard mid-century Hawaiian songbook filtered through a Milanese studio, which means the steel glides are correct but the rhythm section thinks it is playing a slow foxtrot.

We include it because the sale has a Hawaiian thread running through it (see Buckie Shirakata and The Waikiki's) and because these records document a moment when Italy, Belgium and Japan were all manufacturing their own Pacific without ever going there. Treat it as exotica, in the strict sense.