Tuck
I wonder if anyone knows what the explanation is for the song title Tor-Chula. I have a few imbecile theories of my own, but I figure a healthy dose of SG101 expertise might save me a lot of embarassment.

OK, I don't know either, but I like that one. It's like "Tequila's" cool cousin.

-K

"Turn the knob to 10 and break it off!" -Baja Marty

Since everybody else is guessing, too, I suppose it's only fair that I should reveal my own guess. I was wondering if it was a contraction of something and chulo/chula which is something like a 'male/female hottie'. (Except that the masculine form isn't usually meant to be complementary.) The only first element that comes to mind is Torrance, about which I know mainly that it is in California somewhere. Any chulas in Torrance? Is this kind of compound even sensible in the context?

What does 'chula' mean in Spanish?

Or just google "what does chula mean"?

I guess "tor-chula" would scan where ever "tequila" did, if you needed a word to call out during it.

I grew up in Torrance and went to Torrance High School, I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with Torrance. I don't even think anyone surfed Torrance Beach. Maybe Chula Vista.

Actually it's the other way around, The Sentinals were from San Luis Obispo. Perhaps it is a play on Torquay?

Yep! Oops! And I was worried about the geography ...

dp
I think there is an island in the Mediterranean called "Torchula"... but, it's not coming up in any of the search engines I've tried...

I may have been looking in the same places ... I had found a reference to an island named Torchula appearing in quadrant D1 of a map by Ortelius, an early Dutch cartographer. I wasn't able to make much of the map image, which was apparently a segment of the Mediterranean around Italy. However, I think I was able to figure out from other places in that quadrant that it was in the Adriatic, and it turns out there is an island of Korcula off Croatia. Since t and k are sometimes interchanged thanks to old handwriting, I suspect that the Torchula on the Ortelius map is Korcula. The c in Korcula has a hacek over it, so it's approximately a "ch" in English terms. I'm not convinced that any of the early surf bands had that particular spelling of that particular island in mind, but it's the first almost real word torchula I've run into.

It turns out that Tor-Chula was also performed by the Impacts, another band with a lot of musical overlap with the Sentinals and Original Surfaris. I didn't find a writing writing credit on the Internet. It may have been recorded later (?) by Merrell Fankhauser of the Impacts. Or maybe that's just the Impacts' version again. That tends to show up repeatedly in obscure collections.

By the way, the Instromania site linked to "performed by the Impacts" above is interesting in having a semi-working attempt at an index by songs. It beats anything else of the nature that I've seen. Unfortunately, a number of the band pages are currently broken (showing leakage of the underlying scripts into the text, etc.), and the only performance of Tor-Chula that makes it into the song index is the one by the Original Surfaris, though the Sentinals and Impacts versions are in their respective bands' pages. This encyclopedic site is a labor of love, and very useful in spite of some glitches and incompleteness.

Tuck
I'm not convinced that any of the early surf bands had that particular spelling of that particular island in mind

I'm also skeptical to believe that any of these bands of young kids even knew this island exists. This is the first I've ever heard of it. (My apologies to the Croatian-born members of the forum for my unworldliness.)

If writing credit is given to the San Luis Obispo-based Sentinals, then odds are that the origins are more local than the Adriatic. For example, my limited experience with the word "chula" in Spanish is that it can be used as a term of endearment for a pretty or "cute" girl. Coming from a band that named one of their songs "Latiña," that might not be entirely unlikely.

It's just the "tor-" part I don't get:
Tor-ta?
Tor-tilla?
Tor-onja?
Actually, scratch those possibilities. Those are all food. I'm kinda hungry right now.

look what wikipedia gives for "tor". some inetresting stuff, such as a formation of rock, and a Bmovie actor from the interbellum or so.

My best bet though is that they obviously ripped tequila, needed a name that sounded similar with a similar mexican vibe/sound and came up with torchula. maybe it's a word play on torch and tortilla. perhaps getting spicey tacos before a show was popular back then as well?

eitherway, whatever it mans, after they came up with torchula, they figured that everyone would pronounce it with the stress on torch - making it osund not like tequila at all. so they inttroduced the - in an attempt to have it pronounced torCHUla.

about as far fetched as the Croatian island.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

may refer to:

In biology:

TOR (gene), or Target Of Rapamycin, a protein kinase
The genus name of the mahseers, a group of large game fishes in India
In geography:

Tor (geography), a type of rock outcrop formed by weathering
TOR, an abbreviation for Toronto
The former name of the city Sloviansk, Ukraine
El-Tor, a port on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt
Tor, Spain, a small village in the Catalan part of the Pyrenees, close to Andorra
TOR, an FAA identifier for Torrington Municipal Airport
In mythology:

An alternative name of the god Thor
Sir Tor, a Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend
In popular culture:

Tor (comic book), by Joe Kubert
Tor Books, a publishing company specialising in fantasy and science fiction
Tor, the name of a fictional robot featured in the science fiction film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Tor, the name of a character in the books, The Hero and the Crown and the The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
The name of the alter ego of the eponymous main character in the animated television series Mighty Mightor
Tor, the Shuttle zord was a carrier zord from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
In sports:

Toronto Raptors (Abbreviation: TOR)
Toronto Maple Leafs (Abbreviation: TOR)
Toronto Blue Jays (Abbreviation: TOR)
In technology:

Tor (anonymity network), an "onion router" that enables its users to communicate anonymously on the Internet
The Russian name of a surface-to-air missile system, whose NATO designation is SA-15 Gauntlet.
Terms of reference a document which describes the purpose and structure of a project used frequently in project management
Other:

A tribe of the Pashtun people
Tor functor, a derived functor of the tensor product in mathematics
Tor Johnson (1903–1971), a Swedish-born professional wrestler and actor who gained cult fame by appearing in B-movies
TOR, an abbreviation for Tornado or tornado warning
TOR or ToR. an abbreviation for the Tournament of Roses Parade
Transport of Rockland, a transit operator in Rockland County, New York
Tales of Rebirth
Tor Missile System, a Russian air defence system

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"When in Italy, if the menu says something's grilled, don't assume it is."

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JetBlue
After Tor-Chula, maybe we can work on "Kuk"

The explanation of Denver-area drummer Jesse Carraway - currently in the Royal Aces - is that it's supposed to be "kook." As in a kookie (crazy, strange) person, a weirdo.

Jesse has tracked down and talked to some of the Astronauts, but I don't know if his notions on this are from them or not. He was the one who sang the song when he was with the AquaSonics, and I think I've also heard him do it with the Royal Aces. The reformed (or latter day) AquaSonics still do it, too - with bassist Matt singing - so those two bands may be the world's biggest body of experts on Kuk.

I'd add that kook has the (long or tense) oo of boot, coot, toot, etc., not the (short or lax) oo of book, cook, took, foot, etc., which is probably the source of the uncertainties about spelling it. Another way to put it would be, it doesn't rhyme with puck, Tuck, or the f-word.

====

Cauton: The rest of this is of no musical interest whatsoever and goes on for ever. It does warn us that the mysteries of Tor-Chula may depend on how you say it, an issue raised by WR. (Good idea, WR!)

====

Another factor in figuring out oo and u words in English is whether or not there is a y-onglide to oo, as in cuke (kyook) < cucumber or puke. There is considerable regional variation on that. I believe most Americans pronounce duke and Luke as dook and loo-k (but not like the real word look, which has short oo), while at least some of the English make them dyook and lyook. I did run into an English woman from East Anglia once, though, who had oo, not yoo in just about everything with "long" u but the name of the letter u. I particularly remember hooge for huge, as in "That made a hooge difference."

I also remember a huge - well, an enormous - debate once back in college days about how to spell pube (?) (pyoob) < pubic, referring to a pubic hair. One faction favored pub, which, like kuk, would (for me) have the schwa of cub or pub < public house, or the f-word, for that matter. Most of the time most of us weren't all that interested in orthographic issues, but this one caught our attention.

Remind English to order a working spelling system after I've died and don't have to learn it ... It would just confuse me now.

Last edited: May 08, 2011 20:11:48

Tuck (Took? Tyuk?)

you are one funny doode!

PS, you might want to pick up some Irvine Welsh books, he writes many of his dialogues in phonetic Scottish (Edinbrough accent) ... his latests book has some episodes in SanFran btw.)

Rules to live by #314:
"When in Italy, if the menu says something's grilled, don't assume it is."

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