Musichound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide to Martini Music and Easy Listening with CD (Audio) [Paperback]

Steve Knopper (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2000

Providing an extended overview of the "easy listening" genre with a buyer's guide to all the big name singers and groups. MusicHound Lounge includes imately 500 artists such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Ella Fitzgerald. you'll also find comprehensive covereage of the new wave of lounge performers like Man' or Astroman? and the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 590 pages
• Publisher: Musichound (July 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0825672546
• ISBN-13: 978-0825672545
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,687,283 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretentious, but informative..., August 10, 2001

By 

DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Musichound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide to Martini Music and Easy Listening with CD (Audio) (Paperback)

Despite the years-old bust in the lounge music boom, this is a fun and informative volume. My instincts tell me to check all critical thinking at the door, but I just can't help myself. Written by many of the same folks who valiantly strove to make easy listening a "thing," this book is pretty footloose and fancy free with what it chooses to call lounge ("... whatever sounds good when you're drinking a martini...") Latin dance music is sampled (Perez Prado, Desi Arnez, Mario Bauza) as are some relatively haphazard additions from the world of soul music (Isaac Hayes? sure, I guess... but Erykah Badu??). Of course, anything croony or well-known from the big band era is up for grabs (but why no Glen Gray, Ruth Etting or Paul Whiteman, if you're going to include all those other old-timers?)... There are all sorts of questionable entries form the world of rock ("... but why Morrissey, the Beautiful South, Pizzicato Five and the Beach Boys and not so-and-so... ???") -- and practically *nothing* by John Zorn or the Boredoms (what's up with that???). Despite the perversity of presentation, this book is pretty groovy: who else is going to steer you towards Blossom Dearie or Dinah Washington these days? The companion CD is one of the better freebies in the MusicHound series, a sampler of the last six volumes in Capitol's exhaustive Ultra-Lounge series, and one of the very few such MusicHound discs to include an adequate number of tracks. Recommended for the kitsch-conscious reader.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Hodge Podge collection at best, June 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Musichound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide to Martini Music and Easy Listening with CD (Audio) (Paperback)

While I enjoyed renewing my memory of several of the albums and artists listed here, the criteria for inclusion is insanely schizophrenic. How do Ellington, Goodman, Prima and Woody Herman all make the grade while Count Basie does not? Morrissey over Van Morrison? Al Jarreau over Mark Murphey? ABBA and the Carpenters but no Turtles?

Stil, if this volume points anyone in the direction of Julie London it can't be a bad thing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Uninteresting Reference Source, February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Musichound Lounge: The Essential Album Guide to Martini Music and Easy Listening (Paperback)

While many like myself will have a definite need for a book of this genre, I found it most dissapointing. It is badly researched and wildly inaccurate, and therefore self-defeating. There is more Fantasy than fact which is not a good thing for a reference source.