![[Incredibly bad music]](musiched.gif)
The Lounge Revival allows early '60s nerds to be ironic. Ick.
By MILO MILES
You can call it "space-age bachelor pad music" or "ultra lounge" or "that junk Dad used to listen to on the hi-fi before the Beatles took over," but like many wondrous and terrible things, the music's rebirth began with a book.
In early 1993, San Francisco hepsters V. Vale and Andrea Juno's RE/Search publications, known for their breathless surveys of all kinds of fringe culture from midnight movies to body piercing, brought out "Incredibly Strange Music Volume 1." The styles included were all over the map, but the corresponding CD anthologies (there was also a "Volume 2") sold well enough to show that Vale and Juno had identified one of the last tiny untapped markets for music.
The ultra-lounge really opened up for business in 1994 when Bar/None records issued the groundbreaking retrospective "Esquivel!: Space Age Bachelor Pad Music," surveying the career of Mexican composer and bandleader Juan Esquivel, who had been considered no more than an oddball from the decadent days of big-band swing. Now there are hefty lounge-music sections in record chains, where one can find at least four Esquivel anthologies, plus a mess more by his like-minded peers Martin Denny (the tiki-music master of "Quiet Village" fame) and Les Baxter (who wrote numerous Denny tunes). Peculiar offshoots include the resurrection of famed playwright Maya Angelou's calypso record and the rehabilitation of multi-octave warbler Yma Sumac. Dozens of young bands now apparently make a living playing some updated variety of space-age bachelor pad music. And finally, Capitol has topped it all by releasing a six-CD series called simply "Ultra-Lounge."
"Ultra-Lounge" is both a definitive set and proof that what began as a tiresome lark has become a full-blown pernicious drag. The six volumes do a fine job of clarifying the categories that have come to dominate what started as a wild grab-bag of neglected music.
"Volume 1: Mondo Exotica" (features Denny and others) -- World music for tourists (Denny founded the style in Hawaiian hotel bars). International in the sense of International House of Pancakes.
"Volume 2: Mambo Fever" (Luis Oliveira and His Bando Da Lua Boys, The John Buzon Trio) -- Cuban dance attempts by folks with poor connections to the real thing or by legitimate Latin performers trying to sell out.
"Volume 3: Space Capades" (Les Baxter, David Rose and His Orchestra) -- Pseudo-far-out instrumentals from the era when astronauts were new; musical equivalent of the hula-hoop.
"Volume 4: Bachelor Pad Royale" (Cy Coleman, Line Renaud) -- Lite-jazz trifles, ideal for late night brooding after you struck out with the date; background music for soft sobs.
"Volume 5: Wild and Swingin" (Dean Martin, Vic Damone) -- Sappy (and sometimes crappy) uptempo lite-jazz ideal for the same guy trying to impress the date who did agree to stop by the pad.
"Volume 6: Rhapsodesia" (Jackie Gleason, Al Anthony a.k.a Wizard of the Organ) -- Gooey whitebread romantic tunes intended for even later in the evening when the moist mating rituals are taking place. I ask you, who would want Jackie Gleason around at this time?
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