"Quiet Village" Martin Denny-The Exotic Sounds of Martin Denny

This type of lounge music takes me to old Julius Shulman photographs of William and Lautner homes in Palm Springs and the San Fernando Valley where maybe after a round at La Quinta or a long cruise up Mullholland Drive you relax in an Eames Chair, put the Tom Collins down on the Saarinen coffee table, grab the misses by the waist and pull her down on top of you to mess up that Bouffant that has just came into fashion followed by a long nude dip in the pool the escape the dry California air. Those amazing early 60's styles of modernism. Think the sets in "2001", the Lever Building on Park Avenue. Think about a time that has now been popularized and obsessed over by the show "Mad Men". When men were still in charge and women didn't mind them having it, when Connery was still Bond, when we where going to the moon and the horizon was truly endless. An amazing time to live and an era that we will probably never see again.

But those days are long gone, if my I grab my secretary's ass I'll go to jail...or actually since he'll probably be a man he might like it. A three martini lunch will have me meeting with the HR director and some courses on alcoholism and sensitivity training. Smoking draws stares and disgusted faces and when I fly my motivation to flirt with stewardess, um flight attendants, is simply not there.

In turn I throw on Martin Denny when I am lounging around my bachelor pad and dream about long afternoons and late nights of martial infidelity that is accepted as common place, of garters being worn for function still as I unstrap each one while cigarette smoke wafts through the air. Present day ideals such as Political Correctness and Diversity disappear from my person canon and I slip back to shag carpeting and cars made of steel.

Was it a better world? Well there was no AIDS but there also wasn't any internet. There was no Islamic Terrorism but then again there was the Soviet Union and while there was no such thing HD TV and a few hundred sports channels there was old Yankee Stadium. I guess I just answered my question.


The house you see pictured was Frank Sinatra's in Palm Springs designed by E Stewart Williams and it can be rented for $2600 a night at the link below. I'll see you by the pool.

http://beaumondevillas.com/california/palm-springs/twin-palms/index.html

"Stormy Weather" Etta James-At Last!

The title track of this album is probably one of the most overplayed wedding songs of all time, maybe even the most overplayed love song of all time. Period. However I ran across this gem of a song, believe it or not, quite recently when I sat down to watch Tom Ford's A Single Man. A story about a gay man who is haunted by his lover's death of which he cannot openly grieve over, can't attend the funeral, can't do anything but attempt to deal with the passing days minute by minute. Julianne Moore plays his confidant who deals with her own personal problems by swilling heavy doses of booze and overdressing.

And while at times the film was a little, well, not really of interest to me the style of it was perfect and the acting was superb. The scene in which this song is played is in the home of Charley (Julianne Moore). George (Colin Firth) is fixing a drink and Charley throws on the record player. They break out in slow dance across the living room, the camera focused on mostly their faces. The pain in each of their countenance captured on celluloid and regurgitated on vinyl.

It is perfect. I often think that a song cannot exist without a scene to place it in, I would be surprised to meet a person who can't explain a scene for every song that runs around their head on a daily basis. If they exist I feel for them, if they don't grab what I am saying then maybe this can set the example.