In the pre-Beatle days of the hi-fi era, when the average haircut stayed at a marked distance from the average collar, the slightly squarer bachelor had seemingly limited options while attempting to create enough ambience to woo his Laura Petri look a like. Enter Juan Garcia Esquivel and a slew of other less widely known arranger/composers to dilate the boundaries of pop instrumental music. They created a vanilla lounge sound that incorporated rhythms and sounds that were soon to evaporate from the pop arena. Latin rhumba flavours done up with cheesy Wurlitzer organ flourishes, twangy surf guitars blended into melodies with perky vibraphones and blaring trumpet salvos. It was a soul-free, faux jazz aesthetic that eventually culminated into making the Pink Panther theme a hip, mainstream platter du jour.
Eventually, however, the one two combination of the folk craze and the Fab Four, caused this sort of sound to hibernate in the vaults of the big labels and the handful of companies that used it as the blueprint for musak. But now that we've seen musical trends like punk and new wave (which have yet to acquire full blown rigor mortis yet) unearthed and packaged neatly already, space age lounge music was bound to see it's second coming shortly. Bands like Love Jones musically espouse it's crushed velvet aura, while Urge Overkill are busy bringing it's martini toting fashions to life visually. The kicker to all this comes in a recent Rolling Stone, which features a 20 question go 'round with the big daddy lounge Lord himself, 78 year old Mexican arranger Juan Garcia Esquivel.
Now three volumes worth of most genres might be a little difficult going down, and there's certainly a fair amount of fat in RCA's collection. The trio works however if you can find the space age groove and mentally gloss over the deep musak like moves of things like Volume One's "Roller Coaster" by Henri Rene & His Orchestra and Chorus and move straight into the high life cocktail hour swing of pieces like "Why Wait" by Perez Prado or Volume Two's "Caravan" by The Three Suns. For overall content, the nod probably goes to Volume Three ("The Stereo Action Dimension"), with it's quintessential moments like "Crazy Rhythm" by Guitars Unlimited Plus 7.
The Four Rooms Soundtrack plays differently in that it's a sincere approximation of the original and on occasion shows it's higher-fi and lower cheese factors. Combustible Edison (along with a few genuine Esquivel moments tossed in), a New England five piece normally under the Sub Pop banner, do the masters justice and the shorter pieces actually maintain your interest afloat slipping in and out of one another fairly seamlessly. Twenty nine tracks from start to finish isn't a bad deal considering you get the honest vibe without having to endure the celluloid that it accompanies in the theatres.
Without a room full of already turned on devotees, you might question the ability of this stuff to transcend even momentarily all the rest that modern music has given us since it's hey day and garner any sort of appreciation for it. But should you find yourself in an out of the way motel room where the decor has yet to be updated in the last few decades (as I did recently), you'll be sure to the witness the space age validity of these discs as they light up the deep olive coloured and slightly angular furnishings that may surround you.
