Esquivel

Juan Garcia Esquivel is the undisputed world champion of space age bachelor pop. He is so much of an icon in the genre that, like Madonna or Elvis (or, to a lesser degree, Cher or Sade), he is known throughout the world by only one name: Esquivel.

Space age bachelor music is a curious hybrid of styles that flourished in the 1960s. After WW II, many American servicemen came back from their duty in the Pacific Theatre (war as entertainment has a long linguistic tradition) with a fondness for the local tropical and Polynesian cultures. The idyllic lifestyle that island life represented was recreated (well, created really) in backyards and rec room all across the country. Prosperity led to an emphasis on leisure pursuits and suddenly everything was coming up tiki. Swinging singles needed a new soundtrack to their ultra-modern space age lifestyles, and what has recently come to be known as “lounge” or, space age bachelor pop was born. Combining traditional big band orchestrations with “exotic” elements and stretching the new high fidelity of stereophonic recording techniques to the maximum, this alternating coolly seductive and wildly flamboyant music was a must on the turntable of any bachelor trying to bed some birds. And nobody’s music was more wildly flamboyant than Esquivel’s.

Although his greatly exaggerated style supposedly represents the whole swinging '60s scene with its sophistication and recently loosened sexuality, I can’t imagine anybody actually getting laid to Esquivel. His music is far too demanding and distracting for that. Of course, I can’t really imagine anybody getting laid to any music period. Trying to have sex with the stereo on is almost impossible for me, as I can never quite shut off my ears, and suddenly find myself wondering how a particular guitar sound was made or what the chord structure of a particular piece is. This is a common sentiment among musicians, and I’ve heard repeated from sources as diverse as Mojo Nixon and Burt Bacharach (together at last!). Absolute ambient music, the barest of all sounds, is the only thing that won’t pull me away from my mission at hand (and mouth and, well, you get the idea), but Esquivel is the antithesis of ambient music in that he demands absolute attention. Everything about the music is incredibly exaggerated, almost cartoonish. The instrumentation is so unorthodox as to be psychotic and the sudden dynamic shifts could give you a nosebleed. He also favors the kind of zippy nonsensical vocal noises that were popular at the time and a lot of his tunes are crammed with “doops” and “zings”, which only makes it all seem more like a cartoon.

Whatchamacallit is a perfect example of Esquivellian excess. From the mysterious timbre of the opening (just what is that instrument anyway?), to the “doops” and sudden squirts of brass to the insane dynamic shifts and dizzying stereophonic imagery, all laid over a latinesque percussion bed.

Although he released a lot of records in the '60s, I really have no idea how popular he was at the time. He was the king of a kind of music that was almost immediately buried by rock ‘n’ roll. Lounge music was unbearably square to the kids of these '50s cool cats and, because it represented their parent’s peak of hipness, the flower children and garage rockers wasted no time in distancing themselves as far as possible from it. The Beatles and the Stones blew this complicated, sophisticated and, dare I say, elite music completely out of the water, and most of these records were forgotten in dusty attics and given to thrift stores.

Which is where my generation found them. Hipness twice removed, and seen through the forgiving lens of irony, can easily become hip again, and that’s exactly what happened with lounge music. The Ironic Generation X discovered these sonic excesses in their parent’s (or grandparent’s) attics or at the Salvation Army at 10 cents apiece. For whatever reason, underground comix artists were some of its early champions, and a lot of tapes crossed the country as new nuggets were unearthed and passed around. I used to get my fix of lounge at the local public library (virtually any local public library in any city), which could always be counted on to have a large collection of music from the late '60s and early '70s, when the library acquisition budgets were biggest. Anything cooler than this music generally got damaged or stolen pretty quickly, but there usually wasn’t such a demand for Perrey & Kingsley or for George Burns doing the Beatles. I discovered Esquivel through the comic artist Wayno, a friend of an acquaintance, who graciously gave me three of my most prized cassettes – cassettes full of space age bachelor pop and forgotten thrift store classics, and featuring plenty of Esquivel. Soon after this, an Esquivel compilation was released on CD and then the floodgates opened and now the lounge market is glutted. But for a moment there in the late '80s and early '90s, I was still ahead of the curve, perhaps for the very last time.

The other note of interest regarding Esquivel is that, in addition to his musical accomplishments and swinging lifestyle (Sinatra reportedly used to see his show in Vegas pretty regularly), he also apparently won the Mexican national lottery. Twice.