While I am working I have been listening to old vinyls. When
I say old vinyls, these are literally LPs and singles which I got off ebay for
1p. That is 1 hundredth of a Pound. Naturally they are of varying quality – both
in content as well as in physical condition. When I work I like to have either
instrumental music or music that I am
very familiar with in the background. Something that requires actual listening and
concentration impedes my work rather than helps it.
It is with this view that I ended up listening to the Easy
Listening genre which my 1p box was full of.
I am talking James Last, Bert Kaempfert and Mantovani here. The true
heavyweights of elevator music.
I have listened to about twelve to fifteen of these gems
over the past two days and I have to make the following comments:
James Last is very variable. I have a number of his discs,
ranging from the 60s to the 70s. The
best ones are those where he leads a big band ala Glenn Miller style. A lot of
the arrangements are quite clever and rely on good orchestral
musicianship. There are also albums
released in the 70s which are basically non stop medleys of the hits of the
day. These are often no more than close
copies of the backing tracks of the original hits, with a trumpet or other
brass instrument as the soloist – taking the vocal line. These are what I would have considered the
original elevator music and I must admit, they do not move me at all.
Bert Kaemfert seems a lot more musical. While his tunes are
also quite brass heavy, they seem to be done within the correct orchestral
context. Even the drums and other
rhythms are closely related to the way things are done. I find it hard not to
at least listen to it – when I should be working. This is normally a sign that
something holds my interest. I think it is in the arrangements that it works.
Also his use of vocalists as part of the orchestra (humming and crooning rather
than singing words) makes for something different, or typical. This depends on your
contextual framework when hearing this type of music.
Mantonvani is of course very string based. This is something
quite lacking in both Kaempfert and Last. While they certainly have strings in
their arrangements, they are not nearly as prominent as in Mantovani’s
work. I guess this really makes
Mantovani the king of elevator music. I always things back to the scene in Dirty
Dancing where Mr Kellerman says that dancing should only be done to
Mantovani – and that the rock/pop/soul music that the dancers were moving to
was obscene. This always stuck in my mind.
Listening to it now though, it is relaxing and not that
bad. I certainly feel I get more diverse
pleasure and notice the music more (even though it is not distracting and
disruptive) than some of the trance or chillout music I have tried to do this
with in the past. It is also a useful
timer using the records. I know that most records have roughly twenty minutes
per side, so this means that my activities are at the worst split up into
twenty minute segments as I have to get up and turn the record around or put it
back in its sleeve and put another one on.
