I think Julee Cruise was (via the Lynch association) more a beneficiary of the post-No Wave/artfag fetishism of Esquivel, Martin Denny and Les Baxter that yer Stereolabs were also briefly connected with
Julee Cruise's music was mostly a product of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. At least her work from around Twin Peaks era was all composed by those two. But this feeds into what some of you guys are saying - both Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks were about taking that 50/60s nostalgia and feeding it through a warped lens, and the music had a similar approach. Badalamenti's scores also had a lounge vibe going on.
Since this thread is about EL, and EL really makes my hambone slip, I will parlay.
In addition to my previous comment, EL is very much about Hi-Fi, stereophonic, and state-of-the-art recording techniques. As an analog guy, I enjoy how the sound was produced. Conniff strings had marvelous stereo, Lyman recorded in the geo-dome, and the technical specification starting showing up on record covers. Telefunken u-47's and western electric 633a's were common and the high quality resulted in more people tuning in and for longer times. The label command used 35mm, Ultra Audio 1/2 inch.
To make a long story short when Miserlou was made to order sound shifted into pure entertainment through and through.
Looking through this thread, I???m surprised that I haven???t seen the words Balearic or Ibiza mentioned at all. As far as I???m aware, a lot of 90s easy listening particularly of the Caf?? Del Mar variety was driven by the soundscapes synthesised on the Spanish holiday isles in the 1980s.
Pattrick: Pre-95 lounge/EZ interest in the US was mostly underground; any mainstream coverage of it was largely to clown on how uncool it was. Besides the people in cinema that have been mentioned like Waters and Lynch (I'll have to note here that Badalamenti was an easy listening veteran, and Vinnie Bell played on the Twin Peaks soundtrack), the first rumblings I remember were early ???80s industrial titans like Throbbing Gristle and NON cooing about the charms of Martin Denny and tiki culture.
Then later in the '80s came the Subgenius crowd, as entrenched as they were in the embrace and ridicule of post-war culture. This would include folks like Brother Cleve (who shepherded the return of Esquivel), Irwin Chusid, and L.A. artist Byron Werner, whose EZ mix tapes spread far and wide and were incredibly influential.
Then came the catalogs of Paul Major and Greg Breth, who started selling exotica records to psych collectors, and then the L.A. misanthropes (Adam Parfrey, Amok), and RE/Search books.
There wasn't any one thing that created the scene in the mid-'90s, it's more like the mainstream finally caught up with what the underground had been into for years (always the case, right?).
We had this discussion on Waxidermy a few years, back, check it out:
I would also suggest the 90s appreciation of the genres here in N America birthed the irony/ironic hell we are slowly coming out of today. Co-workers at my first record store job would put on Walter Wanderly as a big joke, Daniel Clowes' Ghostworld and remember William Shatner sings Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? There was a whole CD of lounge/easy listening covers.
Looking through this thread, I???m surprised that I haven???t seen the words Balearic or Ibiza mentioned at all. As far as I???m aware, a lot of 90s easy listening particularly of the Caf?? Del Mar variety was driven by the soundscapes synthesised on the Spanish holiday isles in the 1980s.
I wouldn't label this as Easy Listening though. I would label it as Chillout. Perhaps Loungecore if the instrumentation strays towards the 60s/70s musings of James Last and dem. But mostly I see it marked as Chillout.
HarveyCanal"a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
This is a real interesting thread. I don't know that I have a lot to add, but would mention, Pattrick, that the opening chapter of Geoffrey O'Brien's excellent Sonata For Jukebox is all about the late-90s Bacharach revival, and might be worth a quick skim. It's probably a little late-model for the exact phenomenon that you're talking about, but it's got some interesting stuff on how and why the easy-listening vein gets mined in the modern age.
Thanks for this book recommendation and thanks everyone else here for thoughts / musings / links.
Beginning to interview some significant characters from this scene and there are some great stories.
Really appreciate the generous assistance.
No problem. We've already decided to present this as a series of articles, so this first one is broad strokes to fill the canvas before we get the detail brushes out.
Apologies if it all reads a little simple / Ladybird book to regular forum members; our target audience is college students who weren't around when it happened. It would be a shame if they thought the 90s was only about Hip Hop / Grunge / Britpop / Chill-Out / Rave and the birth of EDM / glossy clubland Rn'B and that has dragged on ad infinitum ever since.
It's tough getting my head around 1993 being 20 years ago.
If anyone else has any more thoughts or theories on the roots of the 90s easy revival we'd love to hear them, though folks here have given us a wealth of different avenues to explore already and we're really grateful for that. Thanks Plantweed, for that Waxi link (ace!) and Skel if you have had any thoughts? They'd be most appreciated.
Getting the US angle on all this: the swing revival > Buster Poindexter > 80s retro films (thanks for that Bassie, great contribution) > Swingers > Paul Major and other heads being into exotica....etc etc is a little harder as we're UK - based but we're going to do our best to pursue all avenues that lead to easy suddenly going overground in the mid-90s. We think (at the moment) the US and European lead ups were sufficiently different to deal with them separately.
No problem. We've already decided to present this as a series of articles, so this first one is broad strokes to fill the canvas before we get the detail brushes out.
Apologies if it all reads a little simple / Ladybird book to regular forum members; our target audience is college students who weren't around when it happened. It would be a shame if they thought the 90s was only about Hip Hop / Grunge / Britpop / Chill-Out / Rave and the birth of EDM / glossy clubland Rn'B and that has dragged on ad infinitum ever since.
It's tough getting my head around 1993 being 20 years ago.
If anyone else has any more thoughts or theories on the roots of the 90s easy revival we'd love to hear them, though folks here have given us a wealth of different avenues to explore already and we're really grateful for that. Thanks Plantweed, for that Waxi link (ace!) and Skel if you have had any thoughts? They'd be most appreciated.
Getting the US angle on all this: the swing revival > Buster Poindexter > 80s retro films (thanks for that Bassie, great contribution) > Swingers > Paul Major and other heads being into exotica....etc etc is a little harder as we're UK - based but we're going to do our best to pursue all avenues that lead to easy suddenly going overground in the mid-90s. We think (at the moment) the US and European lead ups were sufficiently different to deal with them separately.
I'm going to read later so forgive me if you do deal with it, but how about the lives those Saint Etienne type guys were living who were so slavish in their devotion to a period - everything from their phones to their vests had to be authentic - that their music taste had to encompass the obscure tepids too, and not the obvious artists of yesteryear
Comments
Yeah, this was before i understood what the specific request was. I was thinking overall Easy Listening/Smooth Jazz/Adult Comp.
And yeah Doc and I think US/UK looks will be different.
Kid Creole was already mashing thangs up by the time Buster Poindexter emerged.
Buster had that high profile SNL band gig to push that look/style.
And where does the Rockabilly resurgence factor into this?
Julee Cruise's music was mostly a product of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. At least her work from around Twin Peaks era was all composed by those two. But this feeds into what some of you guys are saying - both Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks were about taking that 50/60s nostalgia and feeding it through a warped lens, and the music had a similar approach. Badalamenti's scores also had a lounge vibe going on.
In addition to my previous comment, EL is very much about Hi-Fi, stereophonic, and state-of-the-art recording techniques. As an analog guy, I enjoy how the sound was produced. Conniff strings had marvelous stereo, Lyman recorded in the geo-dome, and the technical specification starting showing up on record covers. Telefunken u-47's and western electric 633a's were common and the high quality resulted in more people tuning in and for longer times. The label command used 35mm, Ultra Audio 1/2 inch.
To make a long story short when Miserlou was made to order sound shifted into pure entertainment through and through.
Test pressing is an excellent resource for these sounds and I think there are a few interviews and articles on there that you might find interesting.
http://testpressing.org/2011/01/the-balearicist???s-guide-to-the-revolution-what-is-balearic/
http://testpressing.org/2012/02/what???s-it-all-about-balearic-beat-in-2012-2/
Also visit DJ history
http://www.djhistory.com/interviews/jose-padilla
http://www.djhistory.com/interviews/dj-pippi
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/feb/08/electronicmusic
Regarding the 80s roots, here???s some of my picks:
Then later in the '80s came the Subgenius crowd, as entrenched as they were in the embrace and ridicule of post-war culture. This would include folks like Brother Cleve (who shepherded the return of Esquivel), Irwin Chusid, and L.A. artist Byron Werner, whose EZ mix tapes spread far and wide and were incredibly influential.
Then came the catalogs of Paul Major and Greg Breth, who started selling exotica records to psych collectors, and then the L.A. misanthropes (Adam Parfrey, Amok), and RE/Search books.
There wasn't any one thing that created the scene in the mid-'90s, it's more like the mainstream finally caught up with what the underground had been into for years (always the case, right?).
We had this discussion on Waxidermy a few years, back, check it out:
http://waxidermy.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16490
Some of that MFP cheese was pretty good, though.
I wouldn't label this as Easy Listening though. I would label it as Chillout. Perhaps Loungecore if the instrumentation strays towards the 60s/70s musings of James Last and dem. But mostly I see it marked as Chillout.
Beginning to interview some significant characters from this scene and there are some great stories.
Really appreciate the generous assistance.
http://www.forumusic.co.uk/90s_easy_listening_compilations.html
Apologies if it all reads a little simple / Ladybird book to regular forum members; our target audience is college students who weren't around when it happened. It would be a shame if they thought the 90s was only about Hip Hop / Grunge / Britpop / Chill-Out / Rave and the birth of EDM / glossy clubland Rn'B and that has dragged on ad infinitum ever since.
It's tough getting my head around 1993 being 20 years ago.
If anyone else has any more thoughts or theories on the roots of the 90s easy revival we'd love to hear them, though folks here have given us a wealth of different avenues to explore already and we're really grateful for that. Thanks Plantweed, for that Waxi link (ace!) and Skel if you have had any thoughts? They'd be most appreciated.
Getting the US angle on all this: the swing revival > Buster Poindexter > 80s retro films (thanks for that Bassie, great contribution) > Swingers > Paul Major and other heads being into exotica....etc etc is a little harder as we're UK - based but we're going to do our best to pursue all avenues that lead to easy suddenly going overground in the mid-90s. We think (at the moment) the US and European lead ups were sufficiently different to deal with them separately.
I'm going to read later so forgive me if you do deal with it, but how about the lives those Saint Etienne type guys were living who were so slavish in their devotion to a period - everything from their phones to their vests had to be authentic - that their music taste had to encompass the obscure tepids too, and not the obvious artists of yesteryear