90s Easy Listening Scene: 80s Roots? Any suggestions?

phatmoneysack said:Looking through this thread, I???m surprised that I haven???t seen the words Balearic or Ibiza mentioned at all. As far as I???m aware, a lot of 90s easy listening particularly of the Caf?? Del Mar variety was driven by the soundscapes synthesised on the Spanish holiday isles in the 1980s.




I wouldn't label this as Easy Listening though. I would label it as Chillout. Perhaps Loungecore if the instrumentation strays towards the 60s/70s musings of James Last and dem. But mostly I see it marked as Chillout.
 
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james said:batmon said:Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band Late 70's

This is a real interesting thread. I don't know that I have a lot to add, but would mention, Pattrick, that the opening chapter of Geoffrey O'Brien's excellent Sonata For Jukebox is all about the late-90s Bacharach revival, and might be worth a quick skim. It's probably a little late-model for the exact phenomenon that you're talking about, but it's got some interesting stuff on how and why the easy-listening vein gets mined in the modern age.

Thanks for this book recommendation and thanks everyone else here for thoughts / musings / links.


Beginning to interview some significant characters from this scene and there are some great stories.


Really appreciate the generous assistance.
 
Plantweed said:Please let us know when your article is complete.

No problem. We've already decided to present this as a series of articles, so this first one is broad strokes to fill the canvas before we get the detail brushes out.





http://www.forumusic.co.uk/90s_easy_listening_compilations.html





Apologies if it all reads a little simple / Ladybird book to regular forum members; our target audience is college students who weren't around when it happened. It would be a shame if they thought the 90s was only about Hip Hop / Grunge / Britpop / Chill-Out / Rave and the birth of EDM / glossy clubland Rn'B and that has dragged on ad infinitum ever since.





It's tough getting my head around 1993 being 20 years ago.





If anyone else has any more thoughts or theories on the roots of the 90s easy revival we'd love to hear them, though folks here have given us a wealth of different avenues to explore already and we're really grateful for that. Thanks Plantweed, for that Waxi link (ace!) and Skel if you have had any thoughts? They'd be most appreciated.





Getting the US angle on all this: the swing revival > Buster Poindexter > 80s retro films (thanks for that Bassie, great contribution) > Swingers > Paul Major and other heads being into exotica....etc etc is a little harder as we're UK - based but we're going to do our best to pursue all avenues that lead to easy suddenly going overground in the mid-90s. We think (at the moment) the US and European lead ups were sufficiently different to deal with them separately.
 
Pattrick said:Plantweed said:Please let us know when your article is complete.

No problem. We've already decided to present this as a series of articles, so this first one is broad strokes to fill the canvas before we get the detail brushes out.





http://www.forumusic.co.uk/90s_easy_listening_compilations.html





Apologies if it all reads a little simple / Ladybird book to regular forum members; our target audience is college students who weren't around when it happened. It would be a shame if they thought the 90s was only about Hip Hop / Grunge / Britpop / Chill-Out / Rave and the birth of EDM / glossy clubland Rn'B and that has dragged on ad infinitum ever since.





It's tough getting my head around 1993 being 20 years ago.





If anyone else has any more thoughts or theories on the roots of the 90s easy revival we'd love to hear them, though folks here have given us a wealth of different avenues to explore already and we're really grateful for that. Thanks Plantweed, for that Waxi link (ace!) and Skel if you have had any thoughts? They'd be most appreciated.





Getting the US angle on all this: the swing revival > Buster Poindexter > 80s retro films (thanks for that Bassie, great contribution) > Swingers > Paul Major and other heads being into exotica....etc etc is a little harder as we're UK - based but we're going to do our best to pursue all avenues that lead to easy suddenly going overground in the mid-90s. We think (at the moment) the US and European lead ups were sufficiently different to deal with them separately.




I'm going to read later so forgive me if you do deal with it, but how about the lives those Saint Etienne type guys were living who were so slavish in their devotion to a period - everything from their phones to their vests had to be authentic - that their music taste had to encompass the obscure tepids too, and not the obvious artists of yesteryear
 
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