Higher-Than-Fi

In the 50s, mix suburban boredom, postwar affluence, and stereo technology and you get lounge music for the "jet set." Nobody went anywhere listening to the exotica of Martin Denny or the Latin version of "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads," except for maybe passed out drunk on the couch. In a certain sense, it was like the couch itself: a music that formed the background environment, along with the tiki ashtray . . . a latter-day version of Satie's "furniture music." A genre to think about when considering the multifarious shades of art intersecting with the everyday. My friend Glen has a show of on Mondays, which you can listen to any day of the week here. And I would make it homework, if I could, but listening to "EZ and sleazy music" might encourage your delinquency. (He also includes "juvenile delinquent music" so I would encourage you to listen with the utmost anthopological detachment, of the type you reserve for dérives in the Country Village.)