Incredibly Bad Music, page 2
Revival of this late-'50s to early-'60s dreck confirms one of the many glowering concerns expressed by the Beats of the same era. Kerouac's colleagues worried that if bohemia became universal, absolutely every cultural expression that had not been read, watched, or listened to for five minutes would become "cool." The independence and resistance of the outsider would become corrupted until it applied to anything that wasn't inside at the moment. Modes and artifacts would become cool simply because they had once been uncool. And so it came to pass that Tony Bennett is "alternative music" and ultra-lounge is hip city.Those with any sense of history know that the underground sound of 1960 was Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James (and to a degree, Thelonious Monk) -- not Peggy Lee and Wayne Newton. Only because blues, R&B, and rock triumphed so decisively can their pallid former competitors seem outlandish. If ultra-lounge was safe for suburban rec rooms everywhere, there's no way it was "incredibly strange." Some 10 years ago, Los Angeles artist Byron Werner coined the term "space age bachelor pad music" and noted its intended audience was "lonely guys with too much disposable income who are picky about their stereos." In short, early '60s nerds. Now, you can be an ironic early '60s nerd if you want, but make no mistake, that's the incarnation of ultra- lounge.
The Capitol series does offer some fleeting delights. Each disc contains about one moment of deathless camp: Julie London's "Go Slow" on "Rhapsodesia," Tak Shindo's "Bali Hai" on "Mondo Exotica." But how much of a kick is the retro atmosphere of busty babes and guys with shiny hair? It's a world that vanished because it was no more than a fragile veneer. Given the current yearning for a past that never happened, ultra-lounge may deserve another name: Republican ambient.
After a while, slogging through another selection of ultra-lounge can become a living heck. Especially when fans of pop lunacy can find superior incredibly strange music if they look further. It's distressing how ultra-lounge purveyors back then assumed there was no market for hard stuff like straight jazz, experimental works by non-zany composers, and the styles played by nonwhite people in other countries. Anyone can hear and enjoy the authentic article now, so getting all excited about musical chop suey is repugnant. It's especially offensive to those who cherish the power and pride of regular pop music from overseas. Maya Angelou assesses her own calypso work as "singing clever little songs only moderately well." No argument here. Her career as a hotcha entertainer should never be suppressed. One only worries that in the ultra-lounge universe, that's all she could be.
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