Sonic Youth Gossip - Exotica/Space Age Pop/ Outsider Music/Cocktail etc

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- - Exotica/Space Age Pop/ Outsider Music/Cocktail etc (http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/showthread.php?t=20963)

Exotica/Space Age Pop/ Outsider Music/Cocktail etc

You know the drift. You can include artists that mainly work visually too, if you like. I imagine some early electronic music gurus fit the bill. It is, after all, not a genre but more an aesthetical attitude in regards of certain ways of producing and appreciating music/ visual arts.

Joe Meek
Martin Denny
Irving Fields
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy
Lucia Pamela
Enoch Light
Dick Hyman
Mort Garson
Perez Prado
Jack Costanzo
Hoyt Curtin
Bruce Haack
Si Zentner

Somehow I can't see this being a super-popular thread. One of the best things that I have heard is Mort Garson's recordings of the signs of the zodiac. Some incredible music on there.

I went through a big phase with this stuff in the early 1990s, but haven't spent much time with it since.

I like:
Yma Sumac
Martin Denny
Arthur Lyman
Les Baxter
The Surfmen
Korla Pandit
Esquivel
Kali Bahlu (excellent!)
Enoch Light has a few decent ones, and even the usually-awful Hugo Montenegro did a couple of OK LPs in this vein, but these two are spotty at best (but usually with great cover art)

There are quite a few others; perhaps I will re-visit this section in the collection later today.

For me it started with buying the soundtrack to the 1976's version of ''King Kong'' by John Barry when I was in my teens, and I never looked back. There is something about the way the record sleeves look, the clothes, the instrumentation used and the various approaches to the way music is played and written that presses so many right buttons in me.

I have this one, which is pretty good. This music was still all pretty cheap when I was buying it, and this particular LP is quite the find.

Aside from his studio work with popular artist like Glen Campbell, Dorris Day, Mel Tormé, The Lettermen and many others, Garson was a pioneer to the world of electronic music.From the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s, Garson wrote music for a number of strange theme albums. One of the most popular, and sought after, of these strange records is Cosmic Sounds by The Zodiac, which featured many well known, but unnamed studio artist of the time, and is known as the first recording from the West Coast to use the Moog Synthesizer.

mp3
The Zodiac - Aquarius
Other cult albums included an album to accompany the book The Sensuous Woman, Plantasia, an album to help plants grow, The Wozard of Iz, a psychedelic satire based on The Wizard of Oz, Electronic Hair Pieces, and a series of 12 albums based on signs of the zodiac.
mp3
Wozard Of Iz - I’ve Been Over The Rainbow

Mort Garson is also the composer behind the National Geographic theme song, which you can listen to by clicking here.

http://www.die-monster.com/index.php?paged=3

May he rest in peace.

What IS Space Age Pop?
Attempting to Define an In-Between Genre

This music might be characterized most easily by what it isn't. It's rarely simple enough in structure and instrumentation to be called rock (and certainly retains enough of a sense of humor to be disqualified as art rock). It's not serious or straightforward enough to be called jazz. It's often too esoteric or extreme to be called pop. It's in some middle ground between all of these, which means it's populated with the outcasts from other well-established genres. As a result, Space Age Pop is full of brilliant, bizarre, and exciting sounds, which are particularly striking to ears accustomed to the stereotypes that populate the more familiar genres.
Among these outcasts, though, there are some common features that a simple categorization can help identify. The following list offers some labels for these categories and matches some names against each. I should state up front, though, that my definition of "Space Age Pop" can be summed up as: all of this and more.
Exotica

The strictest definition limits exotica to the imitations of Polynesian, Afro-Caribbean, and Hawaiian music that were produced by Les Baxter and others from the mid-1950s to the very early 1960s. This music blended the elements of Afro-Cuban rhythms, unusual instrumentations, environmental sounds, and lush romantic themes from Hollywood movies, topped off with evocative titles like "Jaguar God," into a cultural hybrid native to no place outside the San Fernando Valley. There were two primary strains of this kind of exotica: Jungle and Tiki. Jungle was definitely a Hollywood creation, with its roots in Tarzan movies (and further back, to W.H. Hudson's novel, Green Mansions. Les Baxter was the king of jungle exotica, and spawned a host of imitators while opening the doors for a few more genuine articles such as Chaino, Thurston Knudson, and Guy Warren. Tiki was introduced with Martin Denny's Waikiki nightclub combo cum jungle noises cover of Baxter's "Quiet Village," although Denny's vibe player, Arthur Lyman, soon became the style's most representative artist. Tiki rode a wave of popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s marked by the entrance of Hawaii as the 50th state in 1959 and the introduction of Tiki hut cocktail bars and restaurants around the continental United States. Tiki exotica is now enjoying a resurgence in popularity, and Tiki mugs and torches that once collected dust in thrift stores are now hot items.

Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music

A phrase coined by Byron Werner to describe the music of Esquivel and others that reveled in dramatic contrasts of dynamics, instrumentation and vocal effects, and wild movements of sound from left channel to right and back again and seemed aimed squarely for the generation of white American males that came of age with Playboy magazine and high fidelity stereo equipment. "Imagine George Jetson as a bachelor: 'Hubba-Hubba!'"
Space Age Bachelor Pad Music, also called Space Age Pop or shortened to SABPM in this acronym-friendly age, actually spans pre-stereo "high fidelity" recordings introduced in the mid-1950s to the brief and unsuccessful attempt to push quadrophonic recordings in the early 1970s. It encompasses a huge range of music, but is best characterized by the recordings from a few particularly outstanding series:
RCA's Stereo Action
Command's Persuasive/Provocative Percussion albums
London's early Phase 4 albums
Mercury's Perfect Presence Sound albums
To this list could be added many more imitations: the Medallion series from Kapp; Directional Sound, which repackaged and altered recordings by Francis Bay and members of his band; Liberty's Premier series; and United Artist's Wall-to-Wall stereo albums, to name a few. These albums also featured distinctive packaging--gatefolds with bold abstract designs or glossy photos or, in the case of RCA's Stereo Action series, sturdy cardboard outer sleeves with die-cut openings revealing rainbow-colored abstract photo images on the inner sleeve. The visual and audio presentations were both intended to set these recordings apart from everything else on the market, and the liner notes went on at eye-glazing length about how the bass saxophone motif would stress your sub-woofers or how the passage where the melody is played by tuned bongos might cause the needles on inferior stereos to skip. Very little space if any was devoted to the quality of the musical interpretation--as the British comic duo Flanders and Swann put it in their song, "The High Fidelity," "But I don't really care for music much--it's the high fidelity!" That quip does the genre injustice, though. The studio musicians playing on many of these recordings were awesomely proficient, the arrangers innovative and irreverent, and the results can still astonish nearly 40 years later.

Jet Set Pop

My name for the (mostly instrumental) music that followed the decline in Space-Age bachelor pad music in the early 1960s. Jet Set Pop enjoyed vastly greater popularity that its predecessor, epitomized by the many Top 40 hits by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass that implanted themselves into the genetic memory of anyone who drew breath back then. Its rise was marked by the introduction of Brazilian bossa nova music in 1962, which added numerous songs that quickly became new exotica standards: "The Girl from Ipanema"; "Summer Samba (So Nice)"; "Desifinado"; and Sergio Mendes' "Mais Que Nada." Herb Alpert added the Tijuana Brass sound in 1963, and Tony Hatch, Petula Clark, Tom Jones, and John Barry's James Bond scores provided British alternatives to the Beatles. Claude Lelouch's film A Man and a Woman provided plenty of grist for the cover mill in Francis Lai's title song, as did Maurice Jarre's "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago. Even Germany enjoyed one of its few moments of success on the pop scene with Bert Kaempfert's many hits, including his theme to the the film A Man Could Get Killed, a number one hit for Frank Sinatra when done as "Strangers in the Night," and Horst Jankowski's equally successful "A Walk in the Black Forest." In the U.S., Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick quickly crossed over from soul to pop pulled in some of the decade's biggest hits. And perhaps the biggest hit--certainly the most covered--was "More" from Riz Ortolani's score for the bizarre documentary, Mondo Cane.

Incredibly Strange Music

Introduced explicitly as the title of two 1993 volumes by Re/Search, an avant-garde publication based in San Francisco. As covered in these books, this label includes everything from Exotica as described above to sound effects, serious and comic and unintentionally comic spoken word, and stag party records, to Moog synthesizers, to outrageous foreign covers of U.S. pop hits. The two ISM volumes helped spark current interest in exotica, though, with interviews that brought the names of Martin Denny, Korla Pandit, and Yma Sumac to a new generation, and led to release of two CD compilations of music mentioned in the book.

Outsider Music

Championed by Irwin Chusid in his excellent book, Songs in the Key of Z, Outsider music includes anything that might be considered to fall outside the mainstream of popular musical. And here the mainstream applies on a global scale, so what's termed "World Music" doesn't pass the test in most cases because it's usually just mainstream pop music from somewhere else on the planet. Although the Outsider Music Mailing List page claims that lounge/exotica music does not qualify, I would beg to differ. Certainly many of the fans of one enjoy and collect the other. But more importantly, there is the fact that so much of the music and musicians covered on this site have been overlooked by the two primary indicators of historical memory: reference books and reissued recordings. Yes, there was a time when Ray Conniff was just a turn of the radio dial away, but now his music is relegated to die-hard fans and those who roam the beaches on which the detritus of the music marketplace washes up. Somewhere My Love is just as much a cast-off or exile from the mainstream as something by Shooby Taylor. No one can ever expect to collect all the music that has been carried away on the tides of the marketplace, but the act of remembering the forgotten is a fundamental refusal to surrender the future to entropy.

The rest is on here: http://www.spaceagepop.com/whatis.htm

I cannot stand any of this shit. I hate the whole "exotica' revival that occurred after the ska revival (the 4th or 5th one) died down. Boring music for old farts.

Yma Sumac is a peruvian singer and sang tons of stuff, not just what white people have labeled "exotica/tiki/whatever"

Esquivel sez MUCHA MUCHACHA

fucking horrid shit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

Boring music for old farts.

I think The Smiths and Dinosaur Jr. could be lumped into this category by this point as well.
Yes, the revivalist stuff was sketchy at best, but that can be said of most revivalists of any genre.

All of you frighten me

My basic list would mostly just repeat everyone elses. I actually listen to this type of stuff a fair amount though, and once had a dj gig at Happy Hour playing just this stuff. Arthur Lyman is ahead of Baxter and Denny on my list. Yma Sumac is amazing. The 101 Strings psych album "Space Out" is really great in a cheesy manner. Sergio Mendez and Brasil '66 and '77 have done tons I really enjoy (their covers of "Day Tripper" and "Easy to be Hard" among the top).

My favorite lesser know is Stu Goldman his Orchestra and Chorus who I can't even find on Google to link. Basically instrumental musaky versions of pop standards ("Downtown", "I Think I'm Goin' Out of My Head", etc.), but with chorus vocals on only the key words, making it incredibly ethereal and weird.

Most of these have already been said but:
Martin Denny
Henry Mancini
Esquivel
Les Baxter
Enoch Light
Morton Gould
Yma Sumac
Cal Tjader (some of his mambo w/ vibes stuff)
Bobby Montez (Jungle Fantastique)
Walter Wanderley

I can understand how some may not like this movement of music. But to me the cover art for a lot of theses records are excellent in a corny and cliched type of way. The whole fact that people sat around theirwhite picket fenced, formica countertop, vinyl sofa- house and listened to this as escapism music during the 50's and 60's is hilarious, just the contrast I guess between what was apckaged and how the audience acted towards it. All that being said, there is some really cool orchestral pieces amongst the whole ''exotica'' movement and good music is good music.

You guys would like this album I think
http://illegalart.net/bryson/index.html

But I approve of Martin Denny and that kind of stuff.

noone has mentioned wesley willis???

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

All good taste is bad taste, matey!

Do the hustle while listening to this, Rob:

Quote:

Originally Posted by the ikara cult

All of you frighten me

Why?

More good bad art on this wonderful website:http://www.unpopart.org/artworks/artworks2.html

Record sleeve galore on here:http://www.danacountryman.com/danaco...anacovers.html

Yeah, that's superb stuff. Do you know this record?

In 1955, a record entitled, "Harry Revel's Music from Out of Space," arranged and conducted by Stuart Phillips, was released on MGM. It has a magnificent, standout cover, which depicted a mysterious woman with long, floating hair, suspended in space amidst orbiting spheres. The liner notes reference the three previous Revel Theremin albums, and stated that this work was, in some respect, a continuation of those works. In fact, this fine album does have much in common with the previous three. Unfortunately, the Theremin is not present on this album, and it suffers in comparison to the former albums due to that fact. It features a mostly wordless chorus very similar to that on "Music Out of the Moon," but a standard size orchestra replaces the small instrumental group. At times, a concerto-like effect is produced with a piano in the foreground. The orchestra produces a lush sound, which at times is reminiscent of a movie soundtrack from the era. Tempo and mood changes occur often in the pieces, and swing or jazz music touches can sometimes be detected. Overall, outer space is depicted as a slightly strange, but definitely inviting place to visit.

http://www.ele-mental.org/~ecc/exo/e...searticle.html

A Life In The Death Of JOE MEEK

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=393 99873

This was screened in Sheffield last week, I think.

Project Prostitues is alo a great site where you can submit your drawings and paintings of prostitutes:
http://www.projectprostitute.com/index.html

Foreword by Frank M. YoungJoe Meek's story is that of a man who triumphed over obstacles. Whether these obstacles were the repressive, conformist record labels and studios of pre-Beatles Britain, or not being able to sing in key, read music, or play an instrument, the producer/songwriter's apparent motto was "never say never."

As these, er, remarkable songwriting demos show, Meek had a definite ear for a catchy tune. He could also create simple, clever turns of pop-song phrase. Unlike, say, Carole King or Burt Bacharach, Joe couldn't convey his songs in a clean, clear, easy-to-get manner.
He could wail like a banshee, bang on pots and pans, stomp the floorboards and turn up the reverb to 11. Meek did all this, and more, whenever he got the notion to create a new popular song for one of his recording acts.

It was up to his associates with more conventional musical talent--David Adams, Geoff Goddard, arranger Charles Blackwell, and future heavy-metal icon Ritchie Blackmore--to translate Joe's caterwauling into structured, AABA hit material.
Meek can be a winning vocalist, as evinced here by his bouncy-creepy demo of "He's All Mine." His was the talent of just missing the note, sometimes by a hair. What he lacked in accuracy, he made up for--in spades--in over-the-top vocal dramatics. At times, he sounds like a tent-revival preacher about to talk in tongues.

Given Meek's hair-trigger temper, and his increasing tendency to fly into rages, I don't imagine it was any Sunday picnic for Adams, Goddard, et al to be handed off a typical Joe Meek demo. Just getting at what Joe heard in his head, in the first place, would have been a challenge.
Meek was fond of singing along to totally inappropriate backing tracks to other records. Sometimes he'd slow them down, sometimes he'd play them Chipmunk-fast, jamming wrong chord sequences and phrasings over the pre-fab backgrounds he fished out of the chaos at his home studio.
Meek did work with Adams and Goddard, and you can hear him working with Adams on the song "As Time Goes By" here, apparently in a good mood and receptive to his partner's ideas. For every peaceful moment such as this, there may have been 20 Yosemite Sam-esque flipouts. Meek was an unpredictable soul, to say the least.

Though Meek's otherworldly wailings would've never seen release back in the day, to modern ears his vocal stylings are pretty amazing. There is passion in his singing, lots of passion--a hint of madness, a soupcon of pathos and an unmistakable pride and sense of humor.
To enjoy Joe Meek's demos does require a sense of humor, and an appreciation of the absurd. Out of these moans and groans came the likes of "Telstar," a global chart-topper that also made a pre-Beatles hit in the US. A producer of daring, innovation and sometimes surprising grace, Joe Meek the singer was a different beast entirely. To this Mr. Hyde of pop, I respectfully bow my head, tip my hat, and brace myself for the music we are all about to hear. - Frank M. Young

The mp3's are on here: http://www.comfortstand.com/catalog/037/index.html

the tornados.................

April 17, 2008

High School Pierre Schaeffers

Jack Dangers (Tino Corp, Meat Beat Manifesto) just compiled a pretty great CD of assorted electronic music pieces recorded through the years 1968-84 by high school kids. The cover is culled from an LP that seems to be from the Gloucester (Mass.?) Public School's Electronic Music lab from the 1970's, but it's unfortunately lacking any other info besides the names of the kids doing the pieces, and the titles of the tracks. The disc is only available on Meat Beat's tourstops, but will probably be available in limited form thereafter. Check out a few:

Randy Kaplan "Emission-Embossment" (MP3)
David Brown "Willy Reverb" (MP3)
Kenneth Ranales "Mind Clash" (MP3)
Beth Bolton/Mag Johnson "Vietnam-Love It Or Leave It" (MP3)

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/mp3s/index.html

Oh, nice thread.

I have mama!milk to offer, a Japanese duo who describe their music as 'cinema for the ears'.

http://www.myspace.com/mamamilkkyoto

Thanks Danny, I'll check that out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bytor Peltor

So how does one download these? When I click on one of the links, the track starts playing in my Quick Time player and doesn't give me the option to download......any suggestions?

Right-click on the title of the track in yellow and ''save target''.

Another fantastic piece of music:

Here's an experimental record from 1980, featuring the side long "Formal and Informal Music." It's performed by three musicians and led by the electronics guy Tom Hamilton. I can best describe it as an oscillating electronic bee-hive with beautiful woodwind solo's by J.D. Parran and percussion by Rich O'Donnell. Especially the flute segment is amazing, as is the percussion solo with what sounds like gongs and gamelan. Strangely exotic. I recorded four bids that are the highlights of the track.

http://waxidermy.com/images/formal&informalmusic.jpg

Audio: 1 formal & informal music
Although it's experimental, I find it to be very relaxing.

keith fullerton whitman on October 2nd, 2006 @ 12:22 am
tom hamilton is nothing short of amazing. seek out the first somnath lp “pieces for kohn” for an amazing solo modular synth freakout of little compare… -k

http://waxidermy.com/2006/10/01/form...nformal-music/

messer chups are cool...as far as retro b-movie ufo aliens and/or zombie invasion sci fi soundtrack/50s horror movie surf garage bands (from russia) go

or perhaps some real space music? http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/

That space audio website is way cool.

Tape findings:

Welcome to Tape Findings. This site is an archive of one of a kind cassette tape recordings and other odd sounds that I have discovered throughout my years searching thrift stores and garage sales. I hope you find them as fascinating as I do. Enjoy!
http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/

without going uber-retro, have any of you heard gotan project? it's sort of chillout tango left-wing electronica. pretty good on occasion. just bought one of their CDs

http://www.gotanproject.com/

^^ listen a bit.

i also do like what was my local band

http://www.thieverycorporation.com/

these guys lived mere blocks away from me. always pleasant lounge music.

but maybe i'm off topic.

No, you're not off topic. Yes, I've heard of gotan project before.

Outsider Music?

maybe...

http://www.conelrad.com/greene/janetgreene_songbook.php

"Be careful of the Commie lies, swallow them and freedom dies: The USA must realize that she's the biggest prize."

Marc Ribot Y Los Cubanos Postizos

Some great pro-shot live videos;
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WT0j8-h55TA "Aqui Como Alla"
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zLM0z0SdMX8 "Jaguey"

"An Open Letter To My Teenage Son"

MP3 audio, 1.75 Mb

Victor was a spokesman for the Libertarian party, and as this line portrait from the back of the album shows, he was one of the more attractive members of that party, as well.

Sort of a low-rent Victor Lundberg (if such a thing can exist), John Salisbury was a Portland, OR radio personality who put out his "messages for America" album in the mid-60s, after a book of his messages did well. He also includes a message to his children, but it runs more along the lines of "come to your mother and me if you have any problems," rather than Lundberg's "I have no son" rhetoric.

http://bad-music.empty-handed.com/ga...ive/000238.php

Quote:

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

They are very sexy live.

Some more names worth keeping an ear out:

Bernard Estardy
Eric Siday (particularly his ''Musique Electronique'')
Oronzo De Filippi
Puccio Roelens
Felice Fugazza

I bought Las Tandas De Juan Garcia Esquivel the other day, it's great music to cook to. His follow-up, To Love Again, is even further out there. What a nutter.