It all started with the familiar opening notes of “Take Five”. It was a lazy day off in 2012 and I was doodling at my art table with the sounds of Cocktail Nation with Koop Kooper in the background. Because the room reverb was slightly flat in the recording, I knew this version of “Take Five” wasn’t The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s original. And I was...
Lounge Revivalists dream of romantic mystery. It’s why we buy all those Exotica and Space Age Pop records. We dream of idyllic unexplored islands or far-flung planets away from problematic modern lives. It doesn’t matter that those places couldn’t possibly exist. We need them to exist. And, with a dream and a good stereo, we hope to will them into existence. Korla Pandit was the...
In the Atomic Age retro scene, there have always been folk with a taste for the gothic. You can thank The Cramps. One of the first punk acts to use the word “gothic” to promote themselves in the 1970s, The Cramps went on to influence what would eventually become the post-punk Goth scene. However, unlike Siouxsie and The Banshees, Bauhaus, and other Goth scene progenitors,...
Exotica jazz is no longer well-known to the average joe. It’s a genre of jazz that is based on exotic locales and sounds that emerged after WWII, predominately within the span of the 1950s to mid-1960s. The music was influenced heavily by Asian, tropical islands, South American, and African sounds, whether native beats or sounds of nature. Many men and women musicians emerged after the...
People still dig vinyl records. Of course, you, as a swinging Lounge Revivalist, knew that already. A big deal was made this year when Jack White cut a live version of the title track to his album Lazaretto, rushed it to press, and had the vinyl in-store for sale the same day. And fans, and a lot of the media, acted like they’d never heard...
From the Sydney Penthouse the Lounge Lothario has been working overtime putting in the long distance calls across the globe to find you the craziest cats of the retro scene along with the legends who cohabit the swank universe that is the Cocktail Nation. In this edition the Lounge Leader talks magazines with Tiki Magazine founding father Nick Camara, art with El Gato Gomez and,...
With the 50th Anniversary of the British invasion of America via the Beatles upon us, I thought it apropos to take a walk down Memory Lane, remembering the highlights of Beatlemania in my own life. When the Beatles hit the Mainland in 1964, I had just turned six years old and my whole world was getting through 1st grade without getting my knuckles rapped by...
