I have a love/hate relationship with the lounge/space age bachelor pad music genre. Even before Irwin Chisud began doing CD comps of this sort of thing, I was a huge fan of "Percussion", "Sweet Music" and "Easy Listening", the three genre categories that were shoved together under the "lounge" label. I'd scour flea markets looking for records and would try to learn everything I could about the musicians to see if I could root out more titles.
When the CDs started coming out, I was very happy. But that quickly faded, because the people choosing the titles on the CDs seem to have atrocious taste. They invariably pick just the goofy "ping pong stereo" track off a record and skip the meat of it. These albums were carefully paced like a movie. There were contrasts of mood and tempo to make listening to the album like taking a journey. The selection of tracks on the CDs make it sound like one big noisy mess.
If you really like this music, go for the vinyl. There are records by Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Al Caiola, Enoch Light, The Three Suns, Xavier Cugat, etc. etc. etc. that are a million times better than the CD comps. You should be able to find this stuff at junk stores and record swap meets for very little money. Join the exotica mailing list and get in on the record trading scene there.
That's the advice of a long time fan of this music.
See ya
Steve
