Welcome! This is a site dedicated to the soundtracks that accompanying the beautiful things in our lives. Like listening to a grand orchestra by the palm fringed seaside…or daydreaming on the balcony while taking in the sunset over the hills…It is for those who appreciate the genres of music known as EASY LISTENING, BEAUTIFUL MUSIC, MOOD MUSIC OF THE 1960s AND 1970s and LIGHT JAZZ. Sit back, relax, read, reminisce and hopefully you could supply your own Hi-Fi music to accompany these pages.
I hope also to share reviews of the ever-mounting numbers of LP releases on CD coming out from the Dutton Vocalion company based in Britain. Moreover, I strongly encourage visitors to this site to email me or directly post their review of other CDs from Vocalion’s range of ‘Easy, Light and Latin’ so that all easy listening fans worldwide can benefit from a growing database of reviews concerning a common hobby. The usual disclaimer applies: I am NOT affiliated with Dutton Vocalion in any financial or corporate manner. I am just reviewing their relentless offerings of easy listening LP records, remastered for CD, that I have missed while growing up back in the Seventies and Eighties. I hope you will return again, and again, to enjoy this site and please, do share information if you have, about this much misunderstood aural art form.
I will start reviews of CDs which I have either once owned or have heard on easy listening radio in the Seventies and Eighties and categorize the information threads appropriately, either by orchestral arrangers – Paul Mauriat, Caravelli, Bert Kaempfert, Franck Pourcel etc. – or by sub-themes such as music labels (e.g. DECCA/London Records, Castle Communications etc.). I will also devote a section titled ‘Jazz Lite’ for those who have taken a liking to ‘jazz crossovers’ since the late 1990s.
As an extra, I will also start a thread of sharing about Hi Fi equipment that some of us might care to share without too much techno-speak. This is all in the spirit of appreciating the art of instrumental easy. There’s nothing quite like enjoying easy listening on the best channels of high fidelity technology!
To start you off, here are some reflections from Joseph Lanza’s informative book ELEVATOR MUSIC: A SURREAL HISTORY OF MUZAK, EASY LISTENING AND OTHER MOODSONG (London: Quartet Books, 1994), p.5:
Muzak and mood music are, in many respects, aesthetically superior to all other musical forms: they emit music the way the twentieth century is equipped to receive it. They have so successfully blended genres and redefined music appreciation that they have become the music world’s Esperanto.
Enjoy!
ALAN
[This website started in May 2012]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Disclaimers and Gentle Guides to Using this Site:
This is a site for uplifting moods J. Therefore, kindly avoid any vile language. Reviews and comments can disagree with one another, without being disagreeable in tone J. I will also try my best to upload posts and respond to correspondence twice a week – Wednesdays and Sundays – since I still hold a day job, as so many of us probably do. If there are any copyright issues which I am unaware of, kindly write in to me and I will remove the album picture or quotation in question.
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