'Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Gen-Zers: The 1990s Lounge Revival'
A chapter from 'Forever Lounge'
© 1998 Antique Trader Publications
A chapter from 'Forever Lounge'
© 1998 Antique Trader Publications
By Thomas Conner
A funny thing happened on the road to nowhere.
A sizable chunk of Generation X decided that we felt neither stupid nor contagious. Kurt Cobain, for all his worthwhile pioneering efforts in rock ’n’ roll, just didn’t speak for all of us. Nor did the scores of frowning, moping, slovenly kids who came through the doors that Nirvana fell through — all of them baby-faced, inexperienced and begging us to suck their angst. Indeed, some of us felt downright uncomfortable in a culture chafed by denim and overdosing on heroin chic. Really — heroin chic!
So while the record industry broke out the lobby soda machines for its younger, disaffected clientele and the flannel-shirt brigades hung shapeless, featureless gypsy rags and cover-alls on the unsuspecting youth of America, those of us reared in the neon ’80s and freshly set onto career tracks in a revived economy were left to find other soundtracks for our new, upbeat lives. So we did what every generation does when faced with this kind of cultural dichotomy: we looked to the past to usher in an innovative future.
Look at the latest fixation on electronic dance music. Synthesized sounds have been heralded as the wave of the future at least twice before, from the pioneering experiments of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno in the early ’70s to the computer-savvy sounds of synth bands like Flock of Seagulls and Depeche Mode in the ’80s. In the ’90s, though, the bite of new electronic sounds sank deeper and spawned a beast with many heads — trip-hop, ambient, acid house, electronica, techno. The new sounds were rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and just crisp enough to appeal to those of us on the optimistic and slightly hedonistic side of Generation X. It beat the hell out of recycled power chords and flailing, greasy hair. The culture around electronica — an umbrella term for the genre — encouraged dancing, etiquette, fashion, a bit of romance and an emphasis on experience, which, for good or ill, naturally couples with the pursuit of chemically altered states. The music, you see, was more about the listener’s experience than the player’s.
Sounds like the parameters of lounge music to me. That music was rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and perfectly crisp for the post-war isms, from hedonism to optimism. The goals of lounge musicians in the ’50s and ’60s were the same as modern-day electronica pioneers — the dancing, etiquette, fashion, romance and experience. The experience — transporting suburbanites to exotic places around the globe or off-world — back then used instruments and sounds not native to our happy but hum-drum American routines. Taking advantage of the newly available stereo effects helped conjure that altered state, not to mention the music’s defining musical aid: the cocktail. The drugs are stronger today, but the music scoring the new experience is directly related to the once-derided schmaltz of old. It’s also because of DJs like Dmitri From Paris and bands like Stereolab and Portishead — bookish geeks who researched the beginnings of exotica before making their own electronica — that the 1990s lounge music revival took off like a Yellow Bird.
That’s just one explanation of lounge music’s triumphant return in the century’s final decade. There are numerous reasons why the wined and refined sounds of easy listening have struck a chord in a new generation of swingers, and we’ll look at those connections here — how the many factors combined to finally give forgotten artists and composers like Juan Garcia Esquivel and Jean-Jacques Perrey their due. It’s easy to over-intellectualize this anti-intellectual movement, so pour a drink and we’ll pore through the story of lounge music’s unprophesied resurrection in the right frame of mind.
Personally, I think it started with the B-52s. One song in particular, too: “Planet Claire,” on the band’s eponymous debut. We kids would drop the needle onto this record and wait for the build-up — you know that delicious anticipation. Out of the crackling silence comes a faint beeping, a pulsing communication from space. Suddenly it turns rhythmic, supporting a small-but-mighty battery of toms that have entered the mix, suggesting that this beeping might be transmitting from a jungle out there in space. In comes an electronic, sci-fi flick melody that could have easily been produced on a theremin, and the band’s chic alien singer Fred Schneider begins sing-speaking about the mysterious origins of the girl in question, a woman so bizarre she comes from her own planet, a wacky place straight out of the cardboard-saucer black-and-white films. The guitarist props up the whole song with an instantly recognizable riff — copped from Mancini’s "Peter Gunn."
When this song trickled out of Athens, Ga. in 1979, Mancini was far from kitsch status and the country’s lounge scene was a pit of sexual irresponsibility and low class. The B-52s, though, began boldly presenting their zany art-rock agenda. Theirs was a musical barrage armed with the trappings of the lounge and exotica era — not only the multi-colored beehive hairdos of singers Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson (or Schneider’s occasional fez) but the group’s taste for old musical sounds that still sounded like transmissions from future Mars colonies and their determination to look absolutely smashing in every circumstance.
The group returned from a brief hiatus in 1998 sounding fresher than ever. They remain the ultimate party band, and their return had more to do with mere ’80s nostalgia. The lounge revival had exploded a few years earlier, and though the lounge craze hasn’t conquered the mainstream in its second life — much to the joy of the protective scenesters — it had made enough waves and influenced enough mainstream rock acts to open America’s ears to wowee sounds. In fact, with hardcore acts employing theremins and pop acts rediscovering the vibraphone, America in the late ’90s may be more receptive to lounge and surf sounds than when the B-52s started in 1979. We’re in search of something to play at parties again (because we’re having parties again!), and Alice in Chains just kills a room.
The aforementioned legions unimpressed by grunge’s distorted revolution are of greater numbers than you might think, and not all of us turned to the retreaded oldies coming out of the new Nashville. Instead, we tuned into the strains that scored our urban existences. By the mid-’90s, the polarity made for a striking subculture, as well as an easy explanation for the revival of the old music and fashions. Dean Miller, a Los Angeles lounge DJ at Mr. Phat’s Royal Martini Club in actor Johnny Depp’s ultra-hip Viper Room, summed up the lounge revival in The Lust for Lounge by Robert A, Lindquist, saying, “I see this as the ultimate backlash against grunge. These people have simply come to the realization that it's a whole lot better dressing up, sipping cocktails and smoking cigars, than not showering, wearing ripped up jeans and not getting their hair cut. This harkens back to a time when things were a whole lot classier. The men are cool and sharp, and the women aren't afraid to dress and act like women.”
Indeed, despite what most mope-rock wailers will tell you, the human race — particularly in America — is extroverted at heart. We desire the company of others when celebrating and relieving stress, and we desire the consumption of tasty, often alcoholic beverages whilst doing so. While in the company of others, we wish to shine, to be noticed, to be adored. Perhaps that’s why the parties I attended where the Stone Roses’ house-music classic “I Wanna Be Adored” was blasting on the hi-fi were loads more fun than any gatherings where “Smells Like Teen Spirit” provided the soundtrack. The former had people smiling, hoisting colored drinks and dancing because the spirit demanded it; the latter was a collage of furrowed brows, insecure small talk and way too much air guitar.
The family connection between that Manchester house scene and the swinging lounge era probably is made in fewer steps than you might think. The impulses were the same, anyway. It, too, was a pre-emptive reaction against grunge rock. Later, the resistance would polarize the American club scene. If grunge was going to be about dressing down, we were going to dress up. If grunge was going to be about catharsis, we were going to be about control. If grunge was going to frown, we were going to smile. No, more than that — hell, Lesley Gore could smile — we were going to cast devilish glances and possibly even leer, be that on a contemporary dance floor or in a retro-kitsch nightclub.
It’s no coincidence that electronica and the revived exotica grew simultaneously. The constant search by DJs for more old records to sample turned the world’s decommissioned vinyl records into gold. As new hipsters flipped through the endless bins of mid-century LPs, they couldn’t help but raise eyebrows at some of the worn covers. These were young, mostly male hipsters doing the hunting, so the alluring sex kittens sprawled across some jackets caught a few eyes. The now-quaint technological bragging (Stereo Action: The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, Spectra-Sonic Sound — The Ultimate in High Fidelity) raised a chuckle in CD-reared fan-boys. Also, bawdy titles like Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast (Julie London) or Seymour Gibbons Plays With Himself had to cause a few DJs to slap a lounge platter on the turntable, saying, “What in the world is this?”
What they found in their amusement turned out to be kinda cool, it stayed on the turntable and a seemingly fresh, welcome scene was born.
Commercial considerations also helped reignite those tiki torches. First, the industry’s elimination of the vinyl LP as a productive recording medium only enhanced its mystique. If mom and dad say you can’t have it, you’re going to go get it, right? That’s the attitude that has kept vinyl thoroughly respectable and available in the punk community, as well as the DJ market swiping up LPs from all genres to use in their mixes. Plus, a lot of aging boomers refused to surrender their turntables and — being traditionally anti-authoritarian — were actually inspired by the decommissioning of vinyl to beef up their collections and start hunting it again. The used record stores were filling with cross-generational enthusiasts, not just nostalgia nerds, and they were rifling through the same bins that held Dean Elliott, Alvino Rey and the Three Suns, all waiting to be rediscovered.
The victory of the compact disc over the vinyl LP worked the other way, too. The record labels realized that fans would want to update their collection to include their favorite titles on the new medium, CDs (some would argue that the labels engineered the change-over in dominant mediums just to seed reissues). They began scouring their catalogs for worthy old albums to reissue on the crisp, new medium. Easy listening titles — Ray Conniff, Mancini, the 101 Strings — once sold in huge figures, so they were ready candidates for digital rebirth. Also, since the labels were going to the trouble of reissuing old titles for existing fans, it was only cost-effective for them to aim their marketing machines at new audiences. Once they got wind of the exotic breezes wafting through clubland, they quickly responded with phenomenal series like Capitol’s monolithic Ultra-Lounge set, RCA’s definitive Space-Age Pop trio and Rhino’s potent Cocktail Mix. The cash, as always, was a catalyst.
Once the bandwagon was rolling, hipsters and hipster wanna-bes began jumping aboard from all sides. The reissues of old lounge standards and albums began pouring forth, whether inspired mostly by the retro fashions or its pockets. Some clubs and even a few radio stations — somehow nowadays the last bastions of change — shoved aside their alt-rock schedulings for lounge parties. New “rock” bands cropped up either completely disposed to the retro music or determined to mix the best of old and new sounds without losing the overriding lounge aesthetic.
In fact, certain circles within the rock idiom wholeheartedly embraced lounge music’s spunk, sounds and control, not to mention its simultaneous class and underhanded sexuality. Those rockers who weren’t in it solely for the catharsis and extended adolescence began tinkering with stereophonics and instrumentation inspired by the newly unearthed easy listening and exotica records.
Here is a quick look at lounge music’s occasional brushes with modern-day rock ’n’ roll:
The Revivalists
• San Francisco’s Action Plus pulls off the modern-retro balancing act with ease. The group’s self-titled and self-released ’96 CD blends dangerous, espionage guitars with South American rhythms and Ray Conniff-like wordless cooing. It’s a lean lounge machine.
• If punk and lounge can live side-by-side, so can ska and lounge. Joe Altruda’s outfit usually starts with a ska rhythm, but before you know it the song is a swingin’ cha-cha or a bossa nova or a mambo. Noted for his appearance on the Swingers soundtrack, Altruda doubles his billing as both the loungey Joey Altruda and the Cocktail Crew and the more traditionally ska Jump With Joey. Recommended: on Will Records, Cocktails With Joey and Kingston Cocktail.
• The Coctails enjoyed a swingin’ ride on the lounge revival wave they helped to launch with their debut record, Hip Hip Hooray, in 1990 — a year before grunge was the word. This bunch of Kansas City natives recorded four albums for their Hi-Ball label before relocating to Chicago and Carrot Top Records. Their eponymous CD has sold well, but the lounge-jazz group played its last show on New Year’s Eve 1995. Leader Archer Prewitt now records solo and with the subtle rock group The Sea and Cake.
• Dmitri From Paris was a bedroom DJ struggling to reconcile his love for old lounge records and new house music. Thank heavens some clubs started letting him spin; otherwise, we might never have been graced with the genius hybrid of old and new sounds that is his debut, Sacre Bleu on Atlantic. Fusing the subtle camp, airy instrumentation and a few samples from lounge’s golden era to light club beats and extended mixes, Dmitri brings together the end sof the rainbow. Magnifique!
• One ’60s album from experimental San Francisco troupe Fifty-Foot Hose is worth a listen to new lounge junkies. Cauldron — an impossible-to-find LP from 1968 that actually found CD release from Weasel Disc in ’95 — melds avant-garde rock with the era’s best examples of electronic experimentation, including intriguing handling of stereo separation and an orbital take on “God Bless the Child.” The music aims for bluesy psychedelia but falls short — and into a slightly funky space-age bachelor pad.
• Lounge was yanked into the mainstream for an instant when the Mike Flowers Pops turned its sly, swank, parodic gaze on the Oasis hit “Wonderwall,” turning the Britpop ballad into the kind of bopping lounge music Austin Powers would dig, baby. Flowers’ full-length disc, A Groovy Place on London-PolyGram, is full of such treatments — a Vegas-style Velvet Underground medley and a swingin’ reading of Prince’s “1999” — making him the “Weird Al” Yankovic of lounge.
• The Friends of Dean Martinez are a loose collective featuring past and current members of Giant Sand and Naked Prey. The group’s debut, The Shadow of Your Smile (Sub Pop, 1995), and follow-up, Retrograde (Sub Pop, 1997), are retro sets of guitar instrumentals with a lounge and surf feel. It’s more homage than revivalist, but the pieces are infused with enough wit and irony to evoke the twinkle in a hipster’s eye.
• If man’s future in space sounds like the Gentle People, let’s blast off, baby! This multinational ambient conglomerate swirls together a stew of influences, from highballs and tiki torches to rocket ships and computer bliss. Wired magazine described them, saying, “It’s as if Brigitte Bardot, the Aphex Twin and Jason King have all put on multi-colored fun-furs and jetted on to your patio for a fondue party.” A few discs on the Rephlex label: Emotion Heater, Journey, Soundtracks for Living and Mix Gently.
• Oy, what’s an ethnic lounge li-zahd going to do? Anything, according to the four wacky Midwesterners who formed the Kabalas, the world’s only polka-klezmer-cocktail-surf-jazz band. Live shows aren’t to be missed, nor the CDs, Martinis and Bagels (Dionysus, 1996) and Eye of Zohar (Dionysus, 1997), featuring such snappy originals as “The Traci Lords Polka,” “Death Takes an Ibuprofen,” and the cataclysmic showstopper “Hey! Lordy Mambo.”
• With a name like the Lounge Lizards, it’s got to be good, right? Well, the music’s good, but it’s not quite what we refer to as “lounge.” These prototype hepcats were retro before retro was cool, dressing like swingers and covering “Harlem Nocturne” with a more avant-garde and bop flair. The first, self-titled album (1982) is the best.
• Verrill Keene is a Now new find on Del-Fi Records. His light and lovely 1996 debut, An Afternoon Affair, features a divine retelling of “Norwegian Wood” alongside several dreamy originals. A Show Town Records ad described him thusly: “The pretty people are Verrill Keene’s people. His any-hour music makes everybody feel just a little bit lovelier.”
• If you’ve got the lineage, flaunt it. Matt Brubeck — of the Brubecks — leads the zany San Francisco outfit known as the Oranj Symphonette. The group’s one disc, The Oranj Symphonette Plays Mancini (Hi Fi-Gramavision, 1996), mixes up the jazz combo formula with zither, bird calls and slide whistles. It won’t be an easy album for Mancini fans to digest; the tribute is respectful but sometimes chaotic. These are, after all, players fresh from sessions with Tom Waits, PJ Harvey and the like.
• Japan runneth over with retro acts, as if our kitschy lounge recordings from decades ago have just reached those rocky shores. Pizzicato Five led the charge with their warm, revivalist reconstructions of American pop and easy listening. Their sound collages include bits from every genre of music, notably exotica, lounge and spy scores. The duo had numerous albums in Japan before coming stateside on Matador. 1995’s The Sound of Music is a good start.
• Of all the modern rock innovators that helped legitimize fringe musical forms — like lounge, bossa nova and space-age pop, among many others — Stereolab leads the pack. This group significantly expands the Cocteau Twins’ start-with-rhythm-add-melody formula. They dabble in all the retro recording technology their name implies without ever getting campy. Side projects include a billing as the Groop for Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music. Early records are the loungiest.
• And don’t forget the swing kids. The revival of hot swing in the ’90s has rippled the mainstream more, and many clubs tend to cater to both swing and lounge crowds. Notable new swing bands are Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (another bunch of hepcats that owes its life and royalties to the film Swingers), Indigo Swing (more modern-day swingers on All Aboard), the Royal Crown Revue (the high-steppers playing for Jim Carrey in “The Mask,” with a swingin’ debut called Mugzy’s Move), the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (named for a bit of sexual slang, they started the Zoot Suit Riot via Mojo Records in ’98) and the Brian Setzer Orchestra (former Stray Cats leader started touring with his 16-piece band and monogrammed music stands the year grunge broke; it took a while for us to realize how great his new swing was, and he broke in 1998 when his Louis Prima cover from The Dirty Boogie scored a Gap commercial).
The Impressionable
• The Cardigans have made some of the most pleasant pop of the ’90s, due to their lounge music fascinations and their heavy metal backgrounds. Using old recording and instrument technologies, they scored hits from their slightly retro-sounding pop record Life — full of vibes, music box chimes and a recognizable lounge sensibility, thanks in no small part to the cooing vocals of Nina Persson.
• Combustible Edison wound up being the godfathers of the lounge revival — a delicious irony considering they were signed to Seattle’s Sub Pop label, which broke Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” This New England-based bunch of neo-swingers grew from the ashes of a modern rock band called Christmas. They mix up crooning ballads and spy music with traditional lounge and exotica. They enjoyed middling success with their CDs I, Swinger and Schizophonic before providing the fabulous soundtrack to the awful film Four Rooms.
• When electro-pop practitioners Devo ducked into easy listening, it wasn’t much of a stretch. The seminal new wave band’s 1987 release, E-Z Listening Disc, finds them retooling 19 of their own tracks — including “Girl U Want” and “Whip It”" — for the electro-schmaltzy instrumental ouevre. It’s meant to be amusing, but it often misses that mark.
• Talk about switching gears. Legendary punk guitarist East Bay Ray emerged from the ashes of the Dead Kennedys to turn about and launch Frenchy, a swinging lounge band. Lead singer Carla followed a similarly surprising connection: she was inspired to lounge music after watching the Circle Jerks’ appearance as a lounge act in the cult film “Repo Man.” Together, the two created a band in which they could still play Black Flag songs — only now they play the scorching solos on marimbas. Two discs on Dionysus, Bumps and Grinds and Che’s Lounge.
• Love Jones would be one schmaltzy rock band if the lounge revival hadn’t been around to help define them. This bleary Hollywood-by-way-of-Louisville-Ky. collective was formed by two former rockers (like ex-Lemonheads drummer Ben Daughtrey) and now plays everything from bossa nova to crooning and doo-wop. Two releases on Zoo, 1994’s Here’s to the Losers and 1995’s Powerful Pain Relief.
• After the dissolution of San Francisco’s legendary power pop band Jellyfish, Roger Manning went onto his deeper retro pursuits in a duo called the Moog Cookbook. On two releases — self-titled and Ye Olde Space Band Plays Classic Rock Hits, both on Restless — and in some dynamic, space-suited live shows, the pair retool old pop and rock standards on Moogs to alternately trying and hilarious effect.
• David Johansen really just went from one glam outfit to another. Long after his seminal flashy punk band the New York Dolls dissolved, Johansen began appearing in nightclubs as a semi-comic, semi-spicy lounge act called Buster Poindexter. The gigs landed him another contract, which produced a few albums and a hit with the soca favorite “Hot Hot Hot.”
• Van Halen lost its spark when David Lee Roth left — because how do you replace a showman like this? Before completely sliding into self-parody, Roth’s first solo effort — an EP called Crazy From the Heat (Warner Bros., 1985) — features several choice and chunky lounge moments, from his hit tribute to Louis Prima in “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” to the high kicks of “Coconut Grove.”
• Lounge lizards down South aren’t afraid of the low-brow connotations in listening to Southern Culture on the Skids. The leering trio plays rocka-hillbilly with a delightful wit and often delves into lounge territory, from breezy tracks like “Make Mayan a Hawaiian” from Dirt Track Date (Geffen, 1996) to their 1997 remake of “House of Bamboo.”
• Lounge aficianados gave each other looks when Us3’s “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” became a pop hit in 1994. The jazzy rap single sampled Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island,” which Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers made into a fluid lounge hit in the ’60s.
The Dabblers
• David Bowie joined Bing Crosby for a 1977 television-special duet of “Little Drummer Boy.” That single has been overlicensed to numerous Christmas compilations. His other connection to lounge music is a lesser-known but infinitely more fascinating tale, recently told in Q magazine. In ’68, a young Bowie wrote a lyric for a French chanson called “Comme d'habitude.” Bowie's song, “Even a Fool Learns to Love,” was packed with dreamy images of lonely parties and melancholy clowns, but no one picked it up. Instead, the same French tune was used for some lyrics by Paul Anka, who pitched the song to Sinatra – “My Way.” According to Q, “Bowie sulked for some years, writing ‘Life on Mars’ as a mocking pastiche.” A similarly styled French tune-to-Bowie's words song, “Pancho,” turns up on a recent compilation from RCA, Another Crazy Cocktail Party!
• You might not expect ex-banker Harry Nilsson — singer-songwriter, rock-era hitmaker (“Without You”) and John Lennon drinkin’ bud — to show up in a lounge-music book, but A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (RCA #APL1-0097, 1973) fits the bill, and more. It’s a collection of standards, from “Makin’ Whoopee” to the minor hit “As Time Goes By,” each one taken at a pace that would have to speed up to crawl, with Harry delivering the words as though he had the weight of the world, or at least a brace of martinis, on his shoulders. Sinatra cohort Gordon Jenkins arranged and conducted.
• Robert Palmer — that stoney-faced, sharply dressed bloke who enjoys an unusual rock career mostly of covers — adds a surprisingly snazzy reading of “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” to the overlooked soundtrack to True Romance, a Tony Scott film scripted by Quentin Tarrantino (who’s own musical tastes and resulting soundtracks did a lot to turn more heads toward the gone-but-not-forgotten). Palmer had tried standards before on his 1992 outing, Ridin’ High, almost a simply irresistible collection of adult music, like a sprightly take on "Witchcraft" and the big-band brass of "Hard Head."
• She deserves the blame for bring the Eagles together, but at least she tried to spread her wings later in her career. Linda Ronstadt eschewed her country-rock roots in the ’80s to tackle several sets of standards with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. Each of these albums — What’s New, Lush Life and For Sentimental Reasons — is tame, tepid and not exactly suited to Ronstadt’s leathery pipes, but they were commercially successful and brought a touch of elegance to mid-’80s pop radio, which really, really needed it.
• Occasional genius Todd Rundgren tried to capitalize on the lounge revival in 1997 on With a Twist, an album of his own previously recorded songs retooled as acoustic lounge numbers. Knowing Rundgren’s production flair, it sounds like a promising and fun project, but “Hello, It’s Me” and “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference” simply don’t translate from FM to orthophonic high fidelity. Would have been a great EP, but the well-meaning humor fizzles midway through this full-length disc.
The Collections
• For a taste of spy music, check out Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S. (Mai Tai, 1995), featuring Combustible Edison and numerous other revival-era acts. Not far off that disc’s dangerous mission is Shots in the Dark (Donna-Del-Fi, 1996), a Mancini tribute with his spy music and lush lounge interpreted by the Cramps’ Poison Ivy, the Oranj Symphonette, Freinds of Dean Martinez, Brother Cleve and His Lush Orchestra and many more.
• A decent round-up of rockish lounge lizards is Livin’ Lounge: The Fabulous Sounds of Now! (Continuum, 1995), including Love Jones, Buster Poindexter, the Wonderful World of Joey and more.
• For the more rakish and restless of lounge tastes, sip from Cocktail Companion (Estrus), a compilation focusing on wilder, hillbilly acts like Southern Culture on the Skids and neo-surf bands like Man or Astroman?
• Lounge-a-Palooza (Hollywood, 1997) was a hit-or-miss effort, but when it hits — ooh, baby. It’s an unfocused lounge tribute with chaff like Poe and Fun Lovin’ Criminals, but occasional insight from Edwyn Collins (“Witchcraft”) and the James Taylor Quartet (“Music to Watch Girls By”). The one-two punch, though, is a supergroup — Glen Campbell, Michelle Shocked, Freddy Fender, Sheila E. and the Texas Tornados — doing “Wichita Lineman” and a truly exquisite arrangement of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” sung by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
- 30 -
A funny thing happened on the road to nowhere.
A sizable chunk of Generation X decided that we felt neither stupid nor contagious. Kurt Cobain, for all his worthwhile pioneering efforts in rock ’n’ roll, just didn’t speak for all of us. Nor did the scores of frowning, moping, slovenly kids who came through the doors that Nirvana fell through — all of them baby-faced, inexperienced and begging us to suck their angst. Indeed, some of us felt downright uncomfortable in a culture chafed by denim and overdosing on heroin chic. Really — heroin chic!
So while the record industry broke out the lobby soda machines for its younger, disaffected clientele and the flannel-shirt brigades hung shapeless, featureless gypsy rags and cover-alls on the unsuspecting youth of America, those of us reared in the neon ’80s and freshly set onto career tracks in a revived economy were left to find other soundtracks for our new, upbeat lives. So we did what every generation does when faced with this kind of cultural dichotomy: we looked to the past to usher in an innovative future.
Look at the latest fixation on electronic dance music. Synthesized sounds have been heralded as the wave of the future at least twice before, from the pioneering experiments of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno in the early ’70s to the computer-savvy sounds of synth bands like Flock of Seagulls and Depeche Mode in the ’80s. In the ’90s, though, the bite of new electronic sounds sank deeper and spawned a beast with many heads — trip-hop, ambient, acid house, electronica, techno. The new sounds were rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and just crisp enough to appeal to those of us on the optimistic and slightly hedonistic side of Generation X. It beat the hell out of recycled power chords and flailing, greasy hair. The culture around electronica — an umbrella term for the genre — encouraged dancing, etiquette, fashion, a bit of romance and an emphasis on experience, which, for good or ill, naturally couples with the pursuit of chemically altered states. The music, you see, was more about the listener’s experience than the player’s.
Sounds like the parameters of lounge music to me. That music was rhythmically innovative, culturally transcendent and perfectly crisp for the post-war isms, from hedonism to optimism. The goals of lounge musicians in the ’50s and ’60s were the same as modern-day electronica pioneers — the dancing, etiquette, fashion, romance and experience. The experience — transporting suburbanites to exotic places around the globe or off-world — back then used instruments and sounds not native to our happy but hum-drum American routines. Taking advantage of the newly available stereo effects helped conjure that altered state, not to mention the music’s defining musical aid: the cocktail. The drugs are stronger today, but the music scoring the new experience is directly related to the once-derided schmaltz of old. It’s also because of DJs like Dmitri From Paris and bands like Stereolab and Portishead — bookish geeks who researched the beginnings of exotica before making their own electronica — that the 1990s lounge music revival took off like a Yellow Bird.
That’s just one explanation of lounge music’s triumphant return in the century’s final decade. There are numerous reasons why the wined and refined sounds of easy listening have struck a chord in a new generation of swingers, and we’ll look at those connections here — how the many factors combined to finally give forgotten artists and composers like Juan Garcia Esquivel and Jean-Jacques Perrey their due. It’s easy to over-intellectualize this anti-intellectual movement, so pour a drink and we’ll pore through the story of lounge music’s unprophesied resurrection in the right frame of mind.
Personally, I think it started with the B-52s. One song in particular, too: “Planet Claire,” on the band’s eponymous debut. We kids would drop the needle onto this record and wait for the build-up — you know that delicious anticipation. Out of the crackling silence comes a faint beeping, a pulsing communication from space. Suddenly it turns rhythmic, supporting a small-but-mighty battery of toms that have entered the mix, suggesting that this beeping might be transmitting from a jungle out there in space. In comes an electronic, sci-fi flick melody that could have easily been produced on a theremin, and the band’s chic alien singer Fred Schneider begins sing-speaking about the mysterious origins of the girl in question, a woman so bizarre she comes from her own planet, a wacky place straight out of the cardboard-saucer black-and-white films. The guitarist props up the whole song with an instantly recognizable riff — copped from Mancini’s "Peter Gunn."
When this song trickled out of Athens, Ga. in 1979, Mancini was far from kitsch status and the country’s lounge scene was a pit of sexual irresponsibility and low class. The B-52s, though, began boldly presenting their zany art-rock agenda. Theirs was a musical barrage armed with the trappings of the lounge and exotica era — not only the multi-colored beehive hairdos of singers Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson (or Schneider’s occasional fez) but the group’s taste for old musical sounds that still sounded like transmissions from future Mars colonies and their determination to look absolutely smashing in every circumstance.
The group returned from a brief hiatus in 1998 sounding fresher than ever. They remain the ultimate party band, and their return had more to do with mere ’80s nostalgia. The lounge revival had exploded a few years earlier, and though the lounge craze hasn’t conquered the mainstream in its second life — much to the joy of the protective scenesters — it had made enough waves and influenced enough mainstream rock acts to open America’s ears to wowee sounds. In fact, with hardcore acts employing theremins and pop acts rediscovering the vibraphone, America in the late ’90s may be more receptive to lounge and surf sounds than when the B-52s started in 1979. We’re in search of something to play at parties again (because we’re having parties again!), and Alice in Chains just kills a room.
The aforementioned legions unimpressed by grunge’s distorted revolution are of greater numbers than you might think, and not all of us turned to the retreaded oldies coming out of the new Nashville. Instead, we tuned into the strains that scored our urban existences. By the mid-’90s, the polarity made for a striking subculture, as well as an easy explanation for the revival of the old music and fashions. Dean Miller, a Los Angeles lounge DJ at Mr. Phat’s Royal Martini Club in actor Johnny Depp’s ultra-hip Viper Room, summed up the lounge revival in The Lust for Lounge by Robert A, Lindquist, saying, “I see this as the ultimate backlash against grunge. These people have simply come to the realization that it's a whole lot better dressing up, sipping cocktails and smoking cigars, than not showering, wearing ripped up jeans and not getting their hair cut. This harkens back to a time when things were a whole lot classier. The men are cool and sharp, and the women aren't afraid to dress and act like women.”
Indeed, despite what most mope-rock wailers will tell you, the human race — particularly in America — is extroverted at heart. We desire the company of others when celebrating and relieving stress, and we desire the consumption of tasty, often alcoholic beverages whilst doing so. While in the company of others, we wish to shine, to be noticed, to be adored. Perhaps that’s why the parties I attended where the Stone Roses’ house-music classic “I Wanna Be Adored” was blasting on the hi-fi were loads more fun than any gatherings where “Smells Like Teen Spirit” provided the soundtrack. The former had people smiling, hoisting colored drinks and dancing because the spirit demanded it; the latter was a collage of furrowed brows, insecure small talk and way too much air guitar.
The family connection between that Manchester house scene and the swinging lounge era probably is made in fewer steps than you might think. The impulses were the same, anyway. It, too, was a pre-emptive reaction against grunge rock. Later, the resistance would polarize the American club scene. If grunge was going to be about dressing down, we were going to dress up. If grunge was going to be about catharsis, we were going to be about control. If grunge was going to frown, we were going to smile. No, more than that — hell, Lesley Gore could smile — we were going to cast devilish glances and possibly even leer, be that on a contemporary dance floor or in a retro-kitsch nightclub.
It’s no coincidence that electronica and the revived exotica grew simultaneously. The constant search by DJs for more old records to sample turned the world’s decommissioned vinyl records into gold. As new hipsters flipped through the endless bins of mid-century LPs, they couldn’t help but raise eyebrows at some of the worn covers. These were young, mostly male hipsters doing the hunting, so the alluring sex kittens sprawled across some jackets caught a few eyes. The now-quaint technological bragging (Stereo Action: The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, Spectra-Sonic Sound — The Ultimate in High Fidelity) raised a chuckle in CD-reared fan-boys. Also, bawdy titles like Nice Girls Don’t Stay for Breakfast (Julie London) or Seymour Gibbons Plays With Himself had to cause a few DJs to slap a lounge platter on the turntable, saying, “What in the world is this?”
What they found in their amusement turned out to be kinda cool, it stayed on the turntable and a seemingly fresh, welcome scene was born.
Commercial considerations also helped reignite those tiki torches. First, the industry’s elimination of the vinyl LP as a productive recording medium only enhanced its mystique. If mom and dad say you can’t have it, you’re going to go get it, right? That’s the attitude that has kept vinyl thoroughly respectable and available in the punk community, as well as the DJ market swiping up LPs from all genres to use in their mixes. Plus, a lot of aging boomers refused to surrender their turntables and — being traditionally anti-authoritarian — were actually inspired by the decommissioning of vinyl to beef up their collections and start hunting it again. The used record stores were filling with cross-generational enthusiasts, not just nostalgia nerds, and they were rifling through the same bins that held Dean Elliott, Alvino Rey and the Three Suns, all waiting to be rediscovered.
The victory of the compact disc over the vinyl LP worked the other way, too. The record labels realized that fans would want to update their collection to include their favorite titles on the new medium, CDs (some would argue that the labels engineered the change-over in dominant mediums just to seed reissues). They began scouring their catalogs for worthy old albums to reissue on the crisp, new medium. Easy listening titles — Ray Conniff, Mancini, the 101 Strings — once sold in huge figures, so they were ready candidates for digital rebirth. Also, since the labels were going to the trouble of reissuing old titles for existing fans, it was only cost-effective for them to aim their marketing machines at new audiences. Once they got wind of the exotic breezes wafting through clubland, they quickly responded with phenomenal series like Capitol’s monolithic Ultra-Lounge set, RCA’s definitive Space-Age Pop trio and Rhino’s potent Cocktail Mix. The cash, as always, was a catalyst.
Once the bandwagon was rolling, hipsters and hipster wanna-bes began jumping aboard from all sides. The reissues of old lounge standards and albums began pouring forth, whether inspired mostly by the retro fashions or its pockets. Some clubs and even a few radio stations — somehow nowadays the last bastions of change — shoved aside their alt-rock schedulings for lounge parties. New “rock” bands cropped up either completely disposed to the retro music or determined to mix the best of old and new sounds without losing the overriding lounge aesthetic.
In fact, certain circles within the rock idiom wholeheartedly embraced lounge music’s spunk, sounds and control, not to mention its simultaneous class and underhanded sexuality. Those rockers who weren’t in it solely for the catharsis and extended adolescence began tinkering with stereophonics and instrumentation inspired by the newly unearthed easy listening and exotica records.
Here is a quick look at lounge music’s occasional brushes with modern-day rock ’n’ roll:
The Revivalists
• San Francisco’s Action Plus pulls off the modern-retro balancing act with ease. The group’s self-titled and self-released ’96 CD blends dangerous, espionage guitars with South American rhythms and Ray Conniff-like wordless cooing. It’s a lean lounge machine.
• If punk and lounge can live side-by-side, so can ska and lounge. Joe Altruda’s outfit usually starts with a ska rhythm, but before you know it the song is a swingin’ cha-cha or a bossa nova or a mambo. Noted for his appearance on the Swingers soundtrack, Altruda doubles his billing as both the loungey Joey Altruda and the Cocktail Crew and the more traditionally ska Jump With Joey. Recommended: on Will Records, Cocktails With Joey and Kingston Cocktail.
• The Coctails enjoyed a swingin’ ride on the lounge revival wave they helped to launch with their debut record, Hip Hip Hooray, in 1990 — a year before grunge was the word. This bunch of Kansas City natives recorded four albums for their Hi-Ball label before relocating to Chicago and Carrot Top Records. Their eponymous CD has sold well, but the lounge-jazz group played its last show on New Year’s Eve 1995. Leader Archer Prewitt now records solo and with the subtle rock group The Sea and Cake.
• Dmitri From Paris was a bedroom DJ struggling to reconcile his love for old lounge records and new house music. Thank heavens some clubs started letting him spin; otherwise, we might never have been graced with the genius hybrid of old and new sounds that is his debut, Sacre Bleu on Atlantic. Fusing the subtle camp, airy instrumentation and a few samples from lounge’s golden era to light club beats and extended mixes, Dmitri brings together the end sof the rainbow. Magnifique!
• One ’60s album from experimental San Francisco troupe Fifty-Foot Hose is worth a listen to new lounge junkies. Cauldron — an impossible-to-find LP from 1968 that actually found CD release from Weasel Disc in ’95 — melds avant-garde rock with the era’s best examples of electronic experimentation, including intriguing handling of stereo separation and an orbital take on “God Bless the Child.” The music aims for bluesy psychedelia but falls short — and into a slightly funky space-age bachelor pad.
• Lounge was yanked into the mainstream for an instant when the Mike Flowers Pops turned its sly, swank, parodic gaze on the Oasis hit “Wonderwall,” turning the Britpop ballad into the kind of bopping lounge music Austin Powers would dig, baby. Flowers’ full-length disc, A Groovy Place on London-PolyGram, is full of such treatments — a Vegas-style Velvet Underground medley and a swingin’ reading of Prince’s “1999” — making him the “Weird Al” Yankovic of lounge.
• The Friends of Dean Martinez are a loose collective featuring past and current members of Giant Sand and Naked Prey. The group’s debut, The Shadow of Your Smile (Sub Pop, 1995), and follow-up, Retrograde (Sub Pop, 1997), are retro sets of guitar instrumentals with a lounge and surf feel. It’s more homage than revivalist, but the pieces are infused with enough wit and irony to evoke the twinkle in a hipster’s eye.
• If man’s future in space sounds like the Gentle People, let’s blast off, baby! This multinational ambient conglomerate swirls together a stew of influences, from highballs and tiki torches to rocket ships and computer bliss. Wired magazine described them, saying, “It’s as if Brigitte Bardot, the Aphex Twin and Jason King have all put on multi-colored fun-furs and jetted on to your patio for a fondue party.” A few discs on the Rephlex label: Emotion Heater, Journey, Soundtracks for Living and Mix Gently.
• Oy, what’s an ethnic lounge li-zahd going to do? Anything, according to the four wacky Midwesterners who formed the Kabalas, the world’s only polka-klezmer-cocktail-surf-jazz band. Live shows aren’t to be missed, nor the CDs, Martinis and Bagels (Dionysus, 1996) and Eye of Zohar (Dionysus, 1997), featuring such snappy originals as “The Traci Lords Polka,” “Death Takes an Ibuprofen,” and the cataclysmic showstopper “Hey! Lordy Mambo.”
• With a name like the Lounge Lizards, it’s got to be good, right? Well, the music’s good, but it’s not quite what we refer to as “lounge.” These prototype hepcats were retro before retro was cool, dressing like swingers and covering “Harlem Nocturne” with a more avant-garde and bop flair. The first, self-titled album (1982) is the best.
• Verrill Keene is a Now new find on Del-Fi Records. His light and lovely 1996 debut, An Afternoon Affair, features a divine retelling of “Norwegian Wood” alongside several dreamy originals. A Show Town Records ad described him thusly: “The pretty people are Verrill Keene’s people. His any-hour music makes everybody feel just a little bit lovelier.”
• If you’ve got the lineage, flaunt it. Matt Brubeck — of the Brubecks — leads the zany San Francisco outfit known as the Oranj Symphonette. The group’s one disc, The Oranj Symphonette Plays Mancini (Hi Fi-Gramavision, 1996), mixes up the jazz combo formula with zither, bird calls and slide whistles. It won’t be an easy album for Mancini fans to digest; the tribute is respectful but sometimes chaotic. These are, after all, players fresh from sessions with Tom Waits, PJ Harvey and the like.
• Japan runneth over with retro acts, as if our kitschy lounge recordings from decades ago have just reached those rocky shores. Pizzicato Five led the charge with their warm, revivalist reconstructions of American pop and easy listening. Their sound collages include bits from every genre of music, notably exotica, lounge and spy scores. The duo had numerous albums in Japan before coming stateside on Matador. 1995’s The Sound of Music is a good start.
• Of all the modern rock innovators that helped legitimize fringe musical forms — like lounge, bossa nova and space-age pop, among many others — Stereolab leads the pack. This group significantly expands the Cocteau Twins’ start-with-rhythm-add-melody formula. They dabble in all the retro recording technology their name implies without ever getting campy. Side projects include a billing as the Groop for Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music. Early records are the loungiest.
• And don’t forget the swing kids. The revival of hot swing in the ’90s has rippled the mainstream more, and many clubs tend to cater to both swing and lounge crowds. Notable new swing bands are Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (another bunch of hepcats that owes its life and royalties to the film Swingers), Indigo Swing (more modern-day swingers on All Aboard), the Royal Crown Revue (the high-steppers playing for Jim Carrey in “The Mask,” with a swingin’ debut called Mugzy’s Move), the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (named for a bit of sexual slang, they started the Zoot Suit Riot via Mojo Records in ’98) and the Brian Setzer Orchestra (former Stray Cats leader started touring with his 16-piece band and monogrammed music stands the year grunge broke; it took a while for us to realize how great his new swing was, and he broke in 1998 when his Louis Prima cover from The Dirty Boogie scored a Gap commercial).
The Impressionable
• The Cardigans have made some of the most pleasant pop of the ’90s, due to their lounge music fascinations and their heavy metal backgrounds. Using old recording and instrument technologies, they scored hits from their slightly retro-sounding pop record Life — full of vibes, music box chimes and a recognizable lounge sensibility, thanks in no small part to the cooing vocals of Nina Persson.
• Combustible Edison wound up being the godfathers of the lounge revival — a delicious irony considering they were signed to Seattle’s Sub Pop label, which broke Nirvana’s “Nevermind.” This New England-based bunch of neo-swingers grew from the ashes of a modern rock band called Christmas. They mix up crooning ballads and spy music with traditional lounge and exotica. They enjoyed middling success with their CDs I, Swinger and Schizophonic before providing the fabulous soundtrack to the awful film Four Rooms.
• When electro-pop practitioners Devo ducked into easy listening, it wasn’t much of a stretch. The seminal new wave band’s 1987 release, E-Z Listening Disc, finds them retooling 19 of their own tracks — including “Girl U Want” and “Whip It”" — for the electro-schmaltzy instrumental ouevre. It’s meant to be amusing, but it often misses that mark.
• Talk about switching gears. Legendary punk guitarist East Bay Ray emerged from the ashes of the Dead Kennedys to turn about and launch Frenchy, a swinging lounge band. Lead singer Carla followed a similarly surprising connection: she was inspired to lounge music after watching the Circle Jerks’ appearance as a lounge act in the cult film “Repo Man.” Together, the two created a band in which they could still play Black Flag songs — only now they play the scorching solos on marimbas. Two discs on Dionysus, Bumps and Grinds and Che’s Lounge.
• Love Jones would be one schmaltzy rock band if the lounge revival hadn’t been around to help define them. This bleary Hollywood-by-way-of-Louisville-Ky. collective was formed by two former rockers (like ex-Lemonheads drummer Ben Daughtrey) and now plays everything from bossa nova to crooning and doo-wop. Two releases on Zoo, 1994’s Here’s to the Losers and 1995’s Powerful Pain Relief.
• After the dissolution of San Francisco’s legendary power pop band Jellyfish, Roger Manning went onto his deeper retro pursuits in a duo called the Moog Cookbook. On two releases — self-titled and Ye Olde Space Band Plays Classic Rock Hits, both on Restless — and in some dynamic, space-suited live shows, the pair retool old pop and rock standards on Moogs to alternately trying and hilarious effect.
• David Johansen really just went from one glam outfit to another. Long after his seminal flashy punk band the New York Dolls dissolved, Johansen began appearing in nightclubs as a semi-comic, semi-spicy lounge act called Buster Poindexter. The gigs landed him another contract, which produced a few albums and a hit with the soca favorite “Hot Hot Hot.”
• Van Halen lost its spark when David Lee Roth left — because how do you replace a showman like this? Before completely sliding into self-parody, Roth’s first solo effort — an EP called Crazy From the Heat (Warner Bros., 1985) — features several choice and chunky lounge moments, from his hit tribute to Louis Prima in “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” to the high kicks of “Coconut Grove.”
• Lounge lizards down South aren’t afraid of the low-brow connotations in listening to Southern Culture on the Skids. The leering trio plays rocka-hillbilly with a delightful wit and often delves into lounge territory, from breezy tracks like “Make Mayan a Hawaiian” from Dirt Track Date (Geffen, 1996) to their 1997 remake of “House of Bamboo.”
• Lounge aficianados gave each other looks when Us3’s “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” became a pop hit in 1994. The jazzy rap single sampled Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island,” which Pucho and the Latin Soul Brothers made into a fluid lounge hit in the ’60s.
The Dabblers
• David Bowie joined Bing Crosby for a 1977 television-special duet of “Little Drummer Boy.” That single has been overlicensed to numerous Christmas compilations. His other connection to lounge music is a lesser-known but infinitely more fascinating tale, recently told in Q magazine. In ’68, a young Bowie wrote a lyric for a French chanson called “Comme d'habitude.” Bowie's song, “Even a Fool Learns to Love,” was packed with dreamy images of lonely parties and melancholy clowns, but no one picked it up. Instead, the same French tune was used for some lyrics by Paul Anka, who pitched the song to Sinatra – “My Way.” According to Q, “Bowie sulked for some years, writing ‘Life on Mars’ as a mocking pastiche.” A similarly styled French tune-to-Bowie's words song, “Pancho,” turns up on a recent compilation from RCA, Another Crazy Cocktail Party!
• You might not expect ex-banker Harry Nilsson — singer-songwriter, rock-era hitmaker (“Without You”) and John Lennon drinkin’ bud — to show up in a lounge-music book, but A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (RCA #APL1-0097, 1973) fits the bill, and more. It’s a collection of standards, from “Makin’ Whoopee” to the minor hit “As Time Goes By,” each one taken at a pace that would have to speed up to crawl, with Harry delivering the words as though he had the weight of the world, or at least a brace of martinis, on his shoulders. Sinatra cohort Gordon Jenkins arranged and conducted.
• Robert Palmer — that stoney-faced, sharply dressed bloke who enjoys an unusual rock career mostly of covers — adds a surprisingly snazzy reading of “(Love Is) The Tender Trap” to the overlooked soundtrack to True Romance, a Tony Scott film scripted by Quentin Tarrantino (who’s own musical tastes and resulting soundtracks did a lot to turn more heads toward the gone-but-not-forgotten). Palmer had tried standards before on his 1992 outing, Ridin’ High, almost a simply irresistible collection of adult music, like a sprightly take on "Witchcraft" and the big-band brass of "Hard Head."
• She deserves the blame for bring the Eagles together, but at least she tried to spread her wings later in her career. Linda Ronstadt eschewed her country-rock roots in the ’80s to tackle several sets of standards with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra. Each of these albums — What’s New, Lush Life and For Sentimental Reasons — is tame, tepid and not exactly suited to Ronstadt’s leathery pipes, but they were commercially successful and brought a touch of elegance to mid-’80s pop radio, which really, really needed it.
• Occasional genius Todd Rundgren tried to capitalize on the lounge revival in 1997 on With a Twist, an album of his own previously recorded songs retooled as acoustic lounge numbers. Knowing Rundgren’s production flair, it sounds like a promising and fun project, but “Hello, It’s Me” and “It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference” simply don’t translate from FM to orthophonic high fidelity. Would have been a great EP, but the well-meaning humor fizzles midway through this full-length disc.
The Collections
• For a taste of spy music, check out Secret Agent S.O.U.N.D.S. (Mai Tai, 1995), featuring Combustible Edison and numerous other revival-era acts. Not far off that disc’s dangerous mission is Shots in the Dark (Donna-Del-Fi, 1996), a Mancini tribute with his spy music and lush lounge interpreted by the Cramps’ Poison Ivy, the Oranj Symphonette, Freinds of Dean Martinez, Brother Cleve and His Lush Orchestra and many more.
• A decent round-up of rockish lounge lizards is Livin’ Lounge: The Fabulous Sounds of Now! (Continuum, 1995), including Love Jones, Buster Poindexter, the Wonderful World of Joey and more.
• For the more rakish and restless of lounge tastes, sip from Cocktail Companion (Estrus), a compilation focusing on wilder, hillbilly acts like Southern Culture on the Skids and neo-surf bands like Man or Astroman?
• Lounge-a-Palooza (Hollywood, 1997) was a hit-or-miss effort, but when it hits — ooh, baby. It’s an unfocused lounge tribute with chaff like Poe and Fun Lovin’ Criminals, but occasional insight from Edwyn Collins (“Witchcraft”) and the James Taylor Quartet (“Music to Watch Girls By”). The one-two punch, though, is a supergroup — Glen Campbell, Michelle Shocked, Freddy Fender, Sheila E. and the Texas Tornados — doing “Wichita Lineman” and a truly exquisite arrangement of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” sung by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
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