In his acclaimed book Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak,
Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong, author Joseph Lanza explored the
forbidden beauty and social importance of an otherwise shunned musical
category. Now, in Easy-Listening Acid Trip, he pushes the boundaries
further by taking his subject into altered states, showing how
psychedelic pop (as opposed to the ear-grinding jams of "acid rock")
offered other worlds and strange sounds that took listeners through a
mind-bending time travel back to vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, British
Music Hall, and the melodic traditions that made songs hits before your
grandmother was born. These influences, in turn, inspired many
easy-listening arrangers and conductors to reinterpret the songs into
instrumental wonders that were often just as (if not more) surreal.
Easy-Listening Acid Trip takes readers on a journey that includes the
Hollyridge Strings' haunting version of the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields
Forever," Paul Mauriat's lush treatment of Scott McKenzie's "San
Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," and Mariano and the
Unbelievables' baroque-pop tribute to the Lemon Pipers "Green
Tambourine. The book also provides numerous anecdotes, such as how
quickly after the Strawberry Alarm Clock released their 1967 hit
"Incense and Peppermints," Muzak recorded an instrumental version by
Charles Grean and His Orchestra that kept the electric guitar but
re-contoured the tune with harps, horns, flutes, a tambourine, and other
effects for offices, restaurants, supermarkets, and of course,
elevators.
Delving into the songs along with the international roster of composers,
arrangers, and conductors who recorded them, Easy-Listening Acid Trip
celebrates the trippy paradox linking psychedelia to easy-listening: a
netherworld where the Beatles meet The Percy Faith Strings, where
Donovan meets David Rose and His Orchestra, and where other
flower-power-pop favorites meld with the likes of Ferrante and Teicher,
Lawrence Welk, and the Mystic Moods Orchestra.
