The Time: Early 1990s
The Place: Somewhere in
the U.S.
A group of extremely
bored teenagers--as the story
goes--were rummaging through their parents'
junky old record albums one day. They were laughing at the names of the
records and laughing even harder at the covers. They decided it would be a
"hoot" to play some of them on the old console stereo.
Much to their surprise, they found the music to be rather
"hip." One thing led to another and soon a couple of Esquivel
CDs were released and, lo and behold, they sold a whole bunch of copies.
In fact, they sold enough to make some record executives take notice and
before too long, most of the major companies had put out a couple of
projects of some kind.
Of course, it wasn't "cool" to portray the music as either "easy" or "beautiful," so the marketing geniuses came up with monikers such as "ultra lounge," "bachelor pad," "space age pop" and the like. Not only was the music selling, but soon a few nightclubs had sprung up with live deejays playing the music of Ronnie Aldrich, Les Reed, Nelson Riddle and others to enthralled patrons. The only downside was that the record company gurus who controlled the releases were convinced that only the weird stuff would sell, so many of the releases were, shall we say, more esoteric than musical. But it did force a resurgence of interest in easy listening instrumental music and hyped up the collector market of used vinyl. It also spawned a re-interest in the talented artists who had performed the classics of yesteryear.
