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Cocktail Renaissance: The Re-emergence and
Re-invention of the Cocktail Way of Life
by Richard McKewen
The First
Manifesto of the Cocktail Nation:
We, the Citizens of the Cocktail Nation,
do hereby declare our independence from the dessicated horde of mummified
uniformity - our freedom from an existence of abject swinglessness. We
pledge to revolt against the void of dictated sobriety and to cultivate
not riches but richness, swankness, suaveness and strangeness, with
pleasure and boldness for all.
BE FABULOUS.
-- The Millionaire of Combustible Edison
(Glenn 1994:81)
Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, I look out and feel
slightly vertiginous. An infinite sea of starry blackness begins a quarter
of a mile beneath me and extends to the horizon. Drunk on a sense of
power, I tower above the New York City skyline, and I claim it as my own;
I am its absolute ruler for just a moment, a vodka gimlet scepter in my
hand. I wonder what the skyline must have looked like in more glamorous
days. Did the glow of the city have the same outline back around 1960
when it belonged to the likes of Holly Golightly and J. Pierrepont Finch?
Or even back in the 1920s when it belonged to the mob (so they say) but
was still the playground of Jay Gatsby and Nick and Nora Charles? After a
moment's reflection I come to the determination that, no, it hasn't
changed substantially. I conclude that, other than a few new skyscrapers
mere garnishes and some cosmetic changes here and there, the
substance of NYC's night skyline has remained the same. My friend Jeff
then taps me on the shoulder, bringing me out of my reverie. "Do you want
another drink?" Sure, I reply. Vodka gimlet, straight up. And with that I
return to the reality of the "Strato-Lounge."
It's a Wednesday night at The Greatest Bar on Earth on the
107th floor of the World Trade Center. This one night a week,
the bar transforms itself into "Strato-Lounge," a shrine to a mythic past
in which the cocktail is the source and symbol of all things, all meaning.
Like most of the other patrons, Jeff and I have dressed for the occasion:
I wear an olive green and cream-colored rayon shirt which hangs
languorously on my frame, off-white twill pants, and camel-brown leather
oxfords. Jeff has slicked his hair back and wears a midnight-blue velvet
jacket over a vermillion and white psychedelic-swirled shirt. His black
denim trousers and combat boots may at first seem somewhat anomalous, but
verisimilitude is not his (nor anyone's) goal. Indeed, the DJ
occasionally manages to overlay a contemporary disco track onto something
like a Henry Mancini tune. Make no mistake: This is not a historic
re-enactment. It is the cocktail lounge of the 1990s.
In recent years, the cocktail lounge has re-emerged on the cultural map
as a popular site for socializing and spending an evening out,
particularly among urban trendsetters in their twenties and thirties.
Concomitantly, a whole cocktail lounge culture has arisen, complete with
lounge fashion and style, lounge music, and an entire lounge aesthetic;
transformed into an adjective, "lounge" has become a philosophy for many
(like The Millionaire quoted above). More than just a place to drink, the
cocktail lounge is practically revered by this lounge culture as a house
of worship. And just as in a "real" church, worshipers in this house of
religion are expected to dress appropriately, behave in a certain manner,
listen only to suitable music, participate in communion, and, perhaps most
importantly, take away with them something of this experience. Now a
popular "scene" and coopted by market forces, "lounge" has managed to make
its way into numerous other realms: the Internet (lounge-sites abound on
the web), the music industry, publishing, film and television, cuisine,
fashion, etc.
In this essay I would like to explore and analyze the rise of the
contemporary cocktail lounge culture. But in order to understand what this
lounge culture is all about, one must first look at the cocktail, for
fundamental to the ontology of the cocktail lounge is the cocktail itself.
What is a cocktail? Or, more importantly, what symbolic value does
it have? If, as will be argued, the cocktail is imbued with an excess of
meaning, how does that meaning then get circulated? While a documented
history of the cocktail would no doubt prove interesting, such a history
would not necessarily help us answer these questions. The approach adopted
by scholars such as Joseph Lanza and Lowell Edmunds has proved much more
illuminating. These authors have uncovered the ways in which the cocktail
has entered cultural currency through popular forms such as film,
television, and literature. Using their work as a starting point, I would
like to read the cocktail into the space of the lounge. How did one come
become embodied in the other?
In the second part of this paper I will focus on contemporary cocktail
lounge culture. First, in order to uncover the meaning of "lounge" as
adjective, I will try to unpack the meaning of "lounge" as noun, drawing
on contemporary and historical examples. Then, I will turn my focus
towards the present lounge revival. What is the "Cocktail Nation"
mentioned in the epigraph on the first page? What are its manifestations?
How does its philosophy get played out? Is there a politics of the
Cocktail Nation? I will try to address these and other questions in the
final part of this essay. However, clear-cut and definitive responses to
any query prove difficult vis à vis the Cocktail Nation. According
to The Millionaire, "the uptightanic hegemony of sticklers and
punctiliocrats" must be rejected in favor of "artfulness, exaggeration,
preposturizing, dissumulation, extravagant fraudulence, and fabulism of
all kinds" (Glenn 1994: 88). More important than any answers I could offer
is the way in which they are delivered.
The cult of the cocktail is a
successful religious ceremony transformed into a secular rite. The
bartender is the high priest, the drink is the sacramental cup, and the
cocktail lounge is akin to a temple or cathedral that uses lights, music,
and even ceiling fixtures to reinforce moods of comfort and
inspiration.
(Lanza 1997: 74)
From Cocktail to Lounge
In the early part of this century, H.L. Mencken wrote that the cocktail
qualifies as "the greatest of all contributions of the American way of
life to the salvation of humanity" (quoted in Moore 1980: 337). While the
hyperbole in Mencken's claim is debatable, the fact that the cocktail has
had an indelible influence on the American (if not the world's) collective
psyche is undeniable. When Jimmy Carter denounced the three-martini lunch,
the press and the American public could instantly plumb the layers of
meaning embedded in his description. Likewise, when Ella Fitzgerald
plaintively sang "One More for the Road," everyone listening knew that she
was not merely thirsty. And when Ian Fleming had James Bond order a vodka
martini "shaken, not stirred," he was cultivating Bond's image as a suave
sophisticate marked with just a tinge of danger and radicality.(1) Thus the cocktail is never merely a drink. As
The Millionaire has remarked, the cocktail "is one of those elegant
symbols where the very sight of it means something, and the more you think
about it, the more aspects you discover that relate to everything . . .
the balance of ingredients, the pursuit of the perfect mixture. It's like
the Kabbalah or something" (Glenn 1994: 86). Packed with potentialities
of meaning, the cocktail can simultaneously represent the excesses of the
exploitative upper classes (Carter), a modicum of comfort for the lovelorn
(Fitzgerald), and the flair and sophistication of the jet-set (Bond). It
need not even contain alcohol; a Shirley Temple or a Roy Rogers can convey
a whole individual series of meanings. It is this surfeit of decipherable
meaning which attests to the cocktail's symbolic power.
As much as clear meaning, the cocktail also embodies contradiction. In
his cultural history of the martini, Lowell Edmunds draws primarily on
advertisements and literary sources to demonstrate the ambiguous and
contradictory meanings attributable to the martini (1981). The martini can
be simultaneously "civilized" and "uncivilized" (7), "classic" and
"individual" (45), or "sensitive" and "tough" (51), depending on how it is
prepared, who is doing the drinking, with whom, and where. Edmunds shows
that the martini does not so much create meaning as amplify it, while
simultaneously focusing and distilling it. Most, if not all of these
contradictory qualities Edmunds ascribes to the martini can be extended to
cocktails in general. Joseph Lanza does just that in his book The
Cocktail (1995). While Edmunds relies most heavily on literary
sources, Lanza cites primarily examples from film and popular culture.
Edmunds also writes in an authoritative, scholarly style (with footnotes
and substantial documentation), while Lanza tends to wax lovingly poetic
and fails to cite or document all of his sources.(2) But they both come to similar conclusions: The
cocktail, a mixture of often radically disparate ingredients, embodies
contradiction both in meaning and substance. Yet, its meaning often seems
lucidly clear (as in the Carter, Fitzgerald, and Bond cases mentioned
above).
Equally ambiguous is the cocktail's history, its origins lost somewhere
in the past. Lanza (1995), Edmunds (1981), and Moore (1980) all agree that
we simply do not know who invented the "first" cocktail, nor even the
etymology of the word itself. Anecdotes and spurious claims abound as to
the origin of the drink. One thing appears for certain: The cocktail was
an American invention. The word first appears in the U.S. in the early
nineteenth century, and not in Europe until almost the end of the century.
The earliest known use of the word "cocktail" in print was in the Hudson,
NY, publication Balance and Columbian Repository on 13 May 1806:
Cocktail is a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind,
sugar, water, and bitters -- it is vulgarly called a bittered sling and is
supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, inasmuch as it renders
the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is
said, also to be of great use to a Democratic candidate: because, a person
having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow anything else. (quoted
in Lanza 1995: 7, see also Moore 1980: 338 and Edmunds 1981: 66) From
this earliest citation, we can see how the cocktail is already imbued with
excess and contradictory meaning. The power implied in "potion" is at once
magical and excessive, and the cocktail, while good for the constitution
is also bad for the spirit.
The simultaneously tonic and harmful nature of cocktails has long been
attributed to alcoholic beverages in general (cf. the Doorman's speech in
Macbeth). The cocktail, despite its hazy origins (or perhaps
because of?), is unique in its "magical" ability to convey more meaning
than, say, beer or wine. Lanza attributes this mystical investment in the
cocktail to the whole ritualized process through which the cocktail is
prepared and consumed: Despite the warring claims as to its origins,
the cocktail has always represented more than just a drink. It became a
ritual occasion, depending not just on its mind-altering properties but on
the shape of the glass in which it was served, the ceremonial antics of
the bartender serving it, and the occasion for its consumption. Whoever
indulged in rickey's fizzes, juleps, cobblers, daisies, shrubs, flips, and
toddies joined a regal tableau of dedicated fashion followers. Just
holding a cocktail conferred monetary, intellectual, even spiritual
status. (1995: 8) This ritualized process has its parallel in the
manufacturing process. As Lanza notes, "the Industrial Revolution vaunted
the art of combining separate components on an assembly line and calling
it a product" (1995: 12). Just as the manufacturing process was
controlled and owned by the ruling elite, the cocktail process was also
the domain of the upper classes.(3)
Among the working and lower classes, the beverages of choice were beer,
wine, and straight drinks such as whiskey or bourbon. According to Moore,
the cocktail was in vogue at the most fashionable clubs and hotel bars in
America and Europe by the turn of the century, but rejected in saloons and
pubs. Cocktails were for "sissies and limp-wrist types" and "'hen-parties'
given by well-to-do matrons and their debutante daughters" (1980: 339).
The cocktail would not gain widespread acceptance until Prohibition.
In 1925, in a New York State Supreme Courtroom, Justice John Ford grew
angry and publicly castigated an attorney for equating cocktails with
adultery. The justice announced from the bench that everyone, including
his daughter and other "nice people," were both going to and giving
cocktail parties. Said Ford, "Everybody knows it, but won't admit it"
(Moore 1980: 341). Ford's confession in the middle of Prohibition makes
one wonder: How did the cocktail come to gain such widespread acceptance
in the midst of its interdiction? Perhaps we can draw a parallel to the
present. Our latter-day "war on drugs" has resulted not only in the rise
of criminal syndicates, but in the proliferation of new "exotic" and
"designer" drugs. Where marijuana and LSD were the staples of the 1960s
and 1970s, drug enthusiasts now have a veritable pharmacopeia from which
to choose: cocaine, crystal meth, crack, heroin, MDMA, ecstasy, K, etc.
Despite the "war on drugs," levels of drug use continue to rise, even
among "nice people." Furthermore, headshops have proliferated; one can buy
drug paraphernalia at any number of locations.
In the 1920s, the cocktail and its equipage proved no different.
According to Moore, in a New York department store in 1928 one could
purchase thirty-five different kinds of cocktail glasses, fourteen kinds
of shakers, and eighteen varieties of hip flasks (not to mention the
numerous sizes and shapes of wine glasses available). The year before, a
Manhattan emporium had raffled off an entire bar set plated in gold and
valued at $4,000 (1981: 341). Moore also reasons that cocktails grew in
popularity because of the fact much of the alcohol of the period was of
poor quality (the infamous "bath-tub gin"). Something had to be done
to disguise both taste and color, a task which fruit juice, ginger, soda
water, mint leaves, olives, oranges and lemon slices, and similar garbage
performed admirably. (1981: 339) He also credits women for the rise
of the cocktail. Bars and pubs, he notes, had always been male
establishments. Prohibition forced the consumption of alcohol into homes
and private clubs, spaces readily accessible to women (many private clubs
had begun to admit women as a result of the suffragist and womens'
movements). As women entered these spaces, so did their "sissy" drinks.
Furthermore, private drinking clubs not only broke down sexual boundaries,
but class ones as well. Cocktails were no longer only for the rich.
Collectively forced underground to drink alcohol, members of disparate
classes came together to imbibe.
Lanza takes a less materialist approach in his analysis. For him, the
cocktail achieved its apotheosis by means of its newly illicit status:
The dawn of Prohibition witnessed the miraculous obfuscation of sacred
and profane. The legal censure turned cocktails into a ritual of
indulgence and absolution combined. Substances once considered vile were
soon gussied up in fancy glasses with ornate combinations of ingredients
and tides. They got more mystifying and appealing as their legal standing
grew more illicit and their manufacture and sale more tawdry. (1995:
23) The contraband status of the cocktail endowed it with a ritual
allure which gave birth to an entirely new culture one of
nightclubs, speakeasies, café societies, and organized crime.
According to Lanza, alcohol consumption during Prohibition engendered
within the popular imagination a carefree life of glamor and celebrity.
But as Justice Ford reminds us, even a "nice person" (presumably
non-glamorous and non-celebrity) like his daughter enjoyed the cocktail
life. Thus the cocktail came to represent simultaneously criminality and
class, vice and virtue, excess and restraint.
With the demise of Prohibition, the cocktail lost some of its luster.
Indeed, the years of restraint and shortages resulting from the Depression
and World War II helped temper the American psyche. Cocktails became an
extravagant luxury, enjoyed by only the wealthiest classes. The
conservative political climate which produced McCarthyism and a Republican
presidency in the early 1950s further tarnished the cocktail's reputation.
But as the decade progressed, the cocktail did recover some ground. The
cultural milieu which produced the stultifying conformity of Levittown,
the anomie of the Organization Man, and the gastronomical wasteland of the
TV dinner, desperately needed an escape. The very wealthy could run off to
Europe. The moderately wealthy might venture to the newly-developed oasis
of Las Vegas. Most people could afford neither. Many could, however,
escape to a local cocktail lounge.
If the beginning of Prohibition marked the dawn of the cocktail's
glory, 1960 marks the beginning of the golden age of the cocktail lounge.
John F. Kennedy became America's first Roman Catholic president,
overturning a protestant-influenced smugness which had governed the White
House for almost two centuries. Under JFK, the presidency became "an arena
of sin, momentary redemption, flashy pageantry, antipapist conspiracy
theories, and dashy cocktail parties at both the White House and
Hyannisport" (Lanza 1995: 109). The son of a ex-whiskey smuggler, JFK
exuded a glamor tinged with a seductive criminality. The First Lady became
known throughout the country as a beautiful and ideal hostess, giving a
nationally telecast tour of the White House. As the country received an
intimate vision of the high-life beamed into their living rooms, people
everywhere began to desire a small piece of the glamour pie. At the same
time cocktail lounges began to dot the urban and suburban
landscape.(4) While most Americans could
never achieve the high-life of a Kennedy, they could escape to a cocktail
lounge and lead an imagined glamorous, even libertine, lifestyle, if only
for a couple of hours. The advent of the commuter and the rise in
automobile use meant that one no longer needed to drink in the
neighborhood tavern (where one would be under the prying eyes of
neighbors). Cocktail lounges became not only an escape, but an anonymous
one as well. In popular culture, movies, advertisements, etc., cocktails
became explicitly linked to sex.(5) What
had always lingered just below the conscious threshold of the cocktail was
now out in the open.
As a result, the cocktail lounge thrived. The middle classes, burdened
with a culturally enforced sense of stability and security, found in the
cocktail lounge an outlet for their repressed desires. During the day, at
work or at home, a uniform front was required to stand up against the
threats posed by communism, racial unrest, and the burgeoning conflict in
southeast Asia. At night, in the anonymity of the lounge, one could let
his or her guard down.(6) The strictures of
the "real world" could be lost, disregarded even, within the smoky realm
of the lounge. While this golden age of the cocktail lounge would come to
an end with the upheavals of Vietnam and the "sexual revolution," its
traces would once again become visible some twenty years later.
It was a time when hedonism was
acceptable . . . That's an amazing concept these days. What happened to
that world of pleasure? There's way too much guilt going around . . . [We
are] trying to bring back a sense of fun, and we want to look good doing
it.
-- Ben Daughtrey of Love Jones (Crisafulli
1994: 54)
From Lounge to Cocktail (Nation)
In the late 1980s, Joshua Glenn ventured into Boston's Paradise Club to
experience something called the "Tiki Wonder Hour." On this one night, the
normally unremarkable nightclub had been gussied up with replicas of
Easter Island stone faces, palm fronds, and fish nets. Televisions stacked
on top of each other became totem poles, each screen silently showing
Sinatra (Frank or Nancy), or Dean Martin, or Wayne Newton, etc. The
band on stage was dressed like something out of a Vegas act: white
polyester tuxedos with wide lapels, frilled shirts, gold chains. They
played music that lingered somewhere between jazz and Muzak. The night's
theme did not appear to be mere kitsch, however. The band, Combustible
Edison, was too good, too slick. The members seemed to be taking
everything very seriously, down to the proclamation of their "manifesto"
(see opening epigram). Or were they?
Around the same time (circa 1989) in Louisville, a trendy nightclub
called Tewligan's hosted a up-and-coming local band called Love Jones.
>From their first moment on stage, I was mesmerized by one anachronism
after another. They wore matching dark polyester suits. The music was
addictive if baffling: it was as if someone had taken elevator music,
shook it with a dash of punk and soul, and strained it over ice. Their
songs featured lines about cocktails, barflies, and little black books.
The vocalist did not sing he crooned. Bongos and organ provided a
sound rarely heard anymore outside of Vegas and Atlantic City. The
college-age crowd loved it, despite the fact that the music sounded
precariously like something their parents (or in some cases grandparents!)
would have listened to decades previously. Lounge was making a comeback.
So what is lounge? To answer this question, we must first ask, what is
a lounge? In the following pages I shall attempt to describe "a
lounge." I realize that there is no set formula, no standard by which a
lounge may be measured. Every lounge is different, and every lounge
creates its own sense of lounge-ness. And lounges have certainly changed
from 1960 to the present. Yet, many lounges do share similar traits. And I
firmly believe that within our cultural imaginary, there is lurking
somewhere a quintessential lounge. In the descriptions that follow, I draw
on my and others' perception of actual lounges, as well as the one
Platonic lounge which exists only via the shadow it casts in my
imagination.
Before we address what a lounge is, let's look at what it is not. It is
not simply a bar. In his sociological study on cocktail lounges, Kavadlo
makes a useful distinction between bars and lounges: "Compared to the bar
the lounge occupies a unique setting because it promotes its form of
escape by utilizing a combination of virtually all of the sensations and
emotions" (1988: 4). Bars are for drinking and socializing. While lounges
provide a site for similar activities, they are more concerned with the
realm of the experiential, i.e. the entire sensorium.
What, then, does a lounge look like? Lounges are typically decorated
according to a theme. Escape from the "real world" is often an overriding
motif. Common themes are Polynesian (à la Trader Vic's) or an
interplanetary one (à la innumerable Stardust Lounges(7)). Or a cocktail lounge may simply be a nice
place with chandeliers, luxuriant banquettes, and pretensions to class.
What matters is that the lounge is somehow perceived to be beyond the
banality of a quotidien, hum-drum, middle-class existence.
Designers manipulate lighting in lounges to foster an
other-worldliness. Lounges rarely have windows to the outside world. If
they do, they are typically heavily shaded during the day. Robert
Venturi's architectural study of the Las Vegas casino seems relevant here.
Venturi argues that the casino, since its low ceiling never connects with
outside light or outside space, disorients the occupant in space and time:
He [sic] loses track of where he is and when it is. Time is limitless,
because the light of noon and midnight are exactly the same. Space is
limitless because the artificial light obscures rather than defines its
boundaries. Light is not used to define space. Walls and ceilings do not
serve as reflective surfaces for light but are made absorbent and dark.
Space is enclosed but limitless, because its edges are dark. Light
sources, chandeliers, and the glowing jukeboxlike gambling machines
themselves are independent of walls and ceilings. The lighting is
antiarchitectural. (Venturi 1972: 44) Often the only "natural" light
in a lounge comes from candles. Individual flickering anachronisms in the
modern age, candles also contribute to the other-worldly glow. The haze of
cigarette and cigar smoke casts a veil over the visual field, diffusing
already diffuse light. In the World Trade Center's Windows on the World,
large modernist light towers protrude and glow independently from the
floor (much like the slot machines described by Venturi). In New York's
Litchi Lounge, light fixtures were uniquely made, but based on a Chinese
lantern design. Internal spheres revolved around the light source in order
to animate an otherwise relatively static space with a dramatic, throbbing
glow. According to Bonnie Schwartz of Interiors magazine, the
dramatic lighting was designed to compliment the flamboyant drinks
offered, some up to six feet tall and featuring elaborate garnishes such
as feathers, balloons, fresh flowers, fanciful swizzle sticks, and
"exotic" straws (1992: 22).
What does one drink and eat in a lounge? As cocktail lounges became
keyed to a desire to escape, cocktails definitely started to became more
exotic. Martinis and juleps gave way to newly-invented cocktails with
names which bring to mind far-away places. Drinkers discovered mai-tais,
Singapore slings, and Cuba libres. With the recent revival of "lounge,"
even more new cocktails have been invented whose names reflect the
consumer's desire to partake in a mythic past. I've enjoyed many Jackie O.
martinis(8) at Stingy Lulu's in the East
Village, and I've even had an Apollo 13 martini(9) at a swank establishment called First (at 87
First Ave.). Food consumed in cocktail lounges does not usually take the
form of a "meal" as Mary Douglas has defined it.(10) Rather, cocktail food consists of tiny
snacks, canapés, nuts, etc. Furthermore, unlike in most other
settings, in the cocktail lounge it is considered appropriate to eat with
your fingers yet another chance to break the confines of the "real
world."
What does one feel in the cocktail lounge? What role does touch play?
Besides touching food, lounge-goers are usually surrounded by a variety of
pleasurable textures. Los Angeles's Shark Club utilizes huge undulating
velvet drapes and heaps of silken pillows (Henderson 1992: 78). New York's
Temple Bar's dark velvet walls and seat coverings, and The Greatest Bar on
Earth's puffy, sofa-like velour seating achieve a similar effect.
Related to the idea of touch is the relation of one body to another.
How do bodies touch and move? A good lounge is a crowded (though not
too crowded) lounge.(11) At "G," a
lounge in Chelsea with a predominantly gay clientele, the space been
designed to promote sociability and movement. In the seating areas, chairs
have no backs which allows a person to turn easily and engage other
patrons in conversation. The entire establishment is designed around a
ovoid-shaped see-and-be-seen bar which also facilitates movement. Writing
in Interior Design, Henry Urbach notes that "circulation has been
planned to offer a continuous circuit of movement without dead ends or
dark corners that might slow the social whirl" (1997: 147). Despite
Urbach's claim, I noticed during my visit to "G" that the social whirl did
in fact come to a halt at times: "G" is a lounge; moreover, it is a
queer lounge it affords its clientele a degree of sexual
promise unavailable in the "real world." Occasional libidinal pauses in
"G"'s social whirl would seem inevitable. However, the use of curves
instead of strong angles can facilitate movement, as well as create a more
relaxed and comforting atmosphere.(12)
Curving bars, sloping floors, and circular architecture characterize
countless lounge spaces. The Greatest Bar on Earth does it in a
particularly stylish way with serpentine brass railings, mosaics and
swirling patterns on the floor, kidney-shaped rare-wood bars, and ceiling
fixtures that appear as textured waves. The centerpiece of the Union Bar
(on Union Square) is the curved bar itself, originally from Time Square's
Astor Hotel, made from a sixty feet long serpentine swath of mahogany.
Steel lighting fixtures suspended from the high ceiling form a illuminated
halo around the bar. The furniture is vintage "think cocktail
lounge of the '40s," says Edie Cohen in Interior Design (1996:
176). Architect and designer Jordan Mozer's creations profiled in the
October 1992 issue of Interiors exhibit a similar "curve"
aesthetic. His "Surf 'n Turf," a lounge and restaurant in Japan, brings
the oblique lines and curves of cartoon fantasy to life. The outer space
theme (cf. Stardust above) is revisited in his project "Stars," a bar and
restaurant with an 1950s and 1960s space race theme. The light fixtures
are abstractions of asteroids and stars, and the furnishings are inspired
by memorabilia from the period. The distorted projections in Mozer's
renderings of "Stars" emphasize the curves and waves of his designs. His
nightclub in Houston, "The Tempest," perhaps serves as his best example of
this "curve" aesthetic. Conceived after Shakespeare's play of the same
name, the interior seems to be caught in a cyclone. A circular center area
is surrounded by booths and banquettes on an upper, peripheral area. The
light fixtures consist of blown glass shaped into waving squiggles and
paper lanterns with straight edges forced into curves to follow the
circular movement of the architecture. All of the furnishings appear to be
wind-blown, trapped in the cyclone which is "The Tempest."
Fundamental to the lounge, almost as important as the cocktail itself,
is sound, i.e., music. What does one hear in a cocktail lounge? According
to Kavadlo, music is what truly sets the lounge apart from other drinking
establishments. It is also the most powerful of the sensorial experiences:
"In particular, it is the total musical ambiance that serves as a
spectacular agency for evoking a eudaemonistic spirit" (1988: 1). Later he
argues that lounge music opens up the greatest possibilities for
satisfying desires through "mood" enhancement. The lounge-goer should
desire to "submit" to the music: The lounge experience is defined by
the relationship between the music and the mood it creates among the
patrons. The number of moods is remarkably limited, centering around
romance, love, sex, sentimentality, and jubilation . . . It is in the
subtle shades of moods that lounge patrons find their pleasure, of being
taken effortlessly from one mood to another. The lounge patron wants to
submit to the mood created for him by the lounge and its music.
(1988:76-77) The music in a lounge must be able to transport
effortlessly the lounge-goer from one mood to the next. Indeed, there
is a genre of music known as "mood music." It could be described as
background music, cinematic, non-distracting, or even shading. According
to Lanza, this lyric-less "moodsong" reinforces mounting suspicions that
we live inside a dream" (1994: 3). We don't hear it. We experience
it. We frame ourselves within it. But "mood music" is not necessarily
"lounge." As Kavadlo points out, lounge music makes more demands. It must
be able to deliver us effortlessly from one pleasure to the next.
"Mood music" (as Lanza defines it) can take us into a dream-like
existence, but it is only one sort of dream. What if your dream is to get
up and do the rhumba? Elsewhere Lanza writes that cocktail music, like
fine alcohols, is best when clarified and distilled: After filtering
out excessive passion, ethnic posturing, and other raw grains, we are left
with a sonic tonic that is immaculate yet potent enough to sooth the
friskiest of moods . . . Cocktail music's blend of pianos, vibraphones,
guitars, and sultry ballroom orchestras is fashioned precisely to allay
the nightclub's potential bedlam of bristling egos, inebriated banter, and
clinking crystal.(13) (1995:45)
Lanza's description of cocktail music encompasses more than just mood
music, but it still falls short of Kavadlo's pleasure transportation
requirements.
The David Driver Quartet, Cocktails with Joey (two NYC-based lounge
groups), Combustible Edison, and Love Jones all started out as (or contain
several former members of) punk bands. They all abandoned punk because it
failed to transport them to pleasure. At the beginning of this section,
Ben Daughtrey of Love Jones asks, What happened to that world of
pleasure? . . . I just think too many people at clubs don't even have the
word fun in their vocabulary anymore. You're supposed to be cool by being
dull and depressed. We live in an era of non-romance and non-beauty, and
I'm nostalgic for the aesthetic and romantic quality that the lounge era
offered . . . Even when I was a punk rocker who just wanted to get hit by
a truck, I'd come home and calm down by listening to my parents' records.
(Crisafulli 1994: 54, 52). The Millionaire feels the lounge provides
a much broader vocabulary than rock or pop music does. "[Rock music]
communicates the id well -- I'm hungry, I'm horny, I'm angry. But lounge
has more color. It covers a wider spectrum" (Crisafulli 1994: 54).
Jonathan Palmer of Love Jones says that their conversion to lounge from
punk was "a reaction to these bands that stare at their shoes and sing
about their emotional problems" (Schoemer 1994: 59). In a recent
interview, Joey Altruda (of Cocktails with Joey) expressed his belief that
most contemporary music fails to deliver: "I think there's a certain
amount of people who want melody. They want something they can hum"
(Sobel: 1998:30).
So, what is lounge music? As Joshua Glenn notes, it is much easier to
say what lounge isn't than what it is. It certainly is not rock
music. And while it may possess some sort of "exotic" element (ostensibly
"African," "Indian," or "Polynesian" rhythms), it is essentially
white-bread music. Or as The Millionaire describes it, "roots music for
[white] people from Connecticut and Manhattan." (Glenn 1994: 85). And
while jazz can certainly be heard in a lounge, it's not really lounge
music -- it is too grounded in reality. Furthermore, as Glenn notes,
"while you probably wouldn't blink" if you heard a Combustible Edison
tune in an elevator, it's not Muzak, either. Glenn intimates that lounge
could be viewed as a subset of easy-listening. I would argue that
point,(14) but I agree with his final
conclusion. Lounge music, "is defined only be what it is not, and by its
special relation to lounges . . . and lounging" (85). Such circular
reasoning ("lounges define lounge music" and "lounge music defines
lounges") is not surprising given the levels of irony one could plumb from
the new Cocktail Nation.
When The Millionaire read his First Manifesto for the Cocktail Nation,
he was harkening back to what Abbie Hoffman had dubbed the "Woodstock
Nation." Hoffman had compared the phenomenon of "Woodstock" to an
American Indian nation, . . . in that neither is circumscribed by
geographical boundaries but is instead bound together by a common goal and
precepts. Hence, a nation within a nation, obeying its own rules and
existing in the gaps of surrounding society. (Glenn 1994: 86) Like
Woodstock Nation, and subsequently Queer Nation, the Cocktail Nation tried
to foster some sense of community. That is what drove Joey Cheezhee to
become a lounge singer and self-proclaimed citizen of the Cocktail Nation.
Resigning from his job as a college chaplain and Jesuit volunteer, he left
the church for the lounge life. Becoming a lounge singer is a natural
progression. I think a good priest and a good lounge singer are trying to
do the same thing, which is to create a sense of community in the room. I
was really influenced by the Jesuits' notion of liberation theology. I've
been calling my act libation theology. (Cherkis 1994: 88) But
what sense of community can a nation based on cocktails engender? Back in
1957, sociologist David Gottlieb noted that while neighborhood taverns and
bars fostered a sense of community and belonging, "the lounge caters to a
transient clientele which does not form a cohesive group" (559). Mary
Douglas commented over twenty years ago we will only eat with people about
whom we care, but we'll drink with anyone ([1975] 1997: 42). Fashion
writer Glenn O'Brien sums up the dilemma succinctly: "The whole ethic, the
whole belief system implied in the cocktail party is: You never know.
Anything is possible. What the hell? Why not? What was your name again?"
(1995: 48). While the Cocktail Nation may have many things to offer,
intimate and lasting social bonds would not appear to be one of them.
But is the forging of true social bonds really a goal of the Cocktail
Nation? According to the Second Manifesto of the Cocktail Nation (again,
penned by The Millionaire), the "Doctrine of Inauthenticity" states
clearly that inauthenticity is the "active principle of the exalted state
of fabulousness . . . That a thing is the original is no guarantee that it
is the best. That a thing is not 'real' does not mean that it is 'false'"
(Glenn 1994: 88). Fabulousness, then, requires a distancing, because even
if there is a "real" somewhere (and that would no doubt be debatable), it
should not be privileged over the "false." Thus when it comes to forging
community, a "false" relationship is still a relationship, and an equally
valid one at that.
While such a philosophy can be liberating, it can also be subjected to
critiques on both the artistic and political level. Many (if not most)
music critics are formalists at heart. For them, an essential component of
any "good" work is originality. A review of the Cocktail Nation
(Combustible Edison in particular) appeared in the "alternative" music
magazine Option in 1994. In the article, Jason Cherkis accuses the
latter-day loungers of nothing but an unoriginal, recycled use of kitsch.
Unlike 1970s fright-rockers Kiss (!?), the Cocktail Nation, he says, has
yet to do anything meaningful, good, or original with kitsch. Besides, he
sneeringly reports, "How big is this Cocktail Nation really? I've seen a
few magazine blurbs, but I don't hear teenagers passing by in their trucks
listening to Combustible Edison" (64).
A more valid critique of the Cocktail Nation philosophy can be made on
a political level. Taking a Susan Sontag-esque position on the campiness
of their act, Aaron Oppenheimer (of Combustible Edison) claims that they
(and presumably the entire Cocktail Nation) are apolitical: "A lot
of modern alternative rock is very negative -- 'things suck and I'm
unhappy about it.' I can only take so much of that. We don't mix politics
with our music" (Rothenberg 1997: 78). At first glance, the two manifesti
would appear to bear this out. But do they? By favoring the "inauthentic"
over the "real" and by admonishing people to revolt against "the void of
dictated society," aren't Cocktail Nationalists posing a threat to the
capitalistic bourgeois order which demands conformity and productivity
(least of all fabulousness) and which is necessarily founded on the
valuation of an "original"? Perhaps. Such a claim assumes that the
manifesti are actual calls to action. But are they? Or are they simply
examples of more ironic distancing and posturing? Indeed that is what
makes Combustible Edison's use of kitsch so compelling. They do not seem
to be making fun of kitsch so much as adoring it with an ironic
insincerity. As Glenn notes, Combustible Edison has mastered the art of
"the winkless wink" (1994: 88). Trying to fathom the levels of irony may
very well give one a headache.
A more serious critique of the Cocktail Nation can be made on the
historical plane. The entire lounge movement is unabashedly a-historical.
As Chris Napolitano writing for Playboy notes, "The real beauty of
lounge is that while there's plenty of history to draw from, no one is
keeping track" (1996: 198). As a result, when lounge afficionados recycle
the music of Les Baxter and Martin Denny, they usually do so uncritically
and without thinking of the racist and orientalist overtones of albums
such as "Rituals of the Savage," "Afro-desia," and "Jungle Jazz." Worse
yet, right-wing critics such as John McDonough of the Wall Street
Journal can praise the lounge movement for effecting the re-release of
music which "rises heroically above its own harmless artifice to offend
diversity consultants everywhere, proving that the best offense against
bad politics may be bad taste" (1997: 13). McDonough's glee is precisely
what worries Milo Miles of the on-line magazine Salon: "Given the
current yearning for a past that never happened, Ultra-Lounge [the same
collection reviewed by McDonough] may deserve another name: Republican
ambient." He continues later in the article: Maya Angelou assesses
her own calypso work as "singing clever little songs only moderately
well." No argument here. Her career as a hotcha entertainer should never
be suppressed. One only worries that in the Ultra-Lounge universe, that's
all she could be. (1998) Miles's worries and critique is well-placed.
How would the Cocktail Nation respond?
In another article for Salon, Carina Chocano offers a response.
She admits that "retro" has little going for it. The 1940s through the
1960s is a historical period in which bigotry, sexism, and an almost
fascist persecution of the mildest (or imagined) forms of dissent were the
norm. But the "cheerful irrelevance and vapidity" of the current lounge
movement marks the first time in over twenty years that "unabashed
frivolity is in." And it's not just any old frivolity that's been
revived, either; it's one that swung (as in swinger) in the face of
institutionalized bigotry, virulent xenophobia, and an almost certain
atomic death. (1998) Chocano seems to think that since people in the
past actually could manage to have a good time in the face of
social evils, such "frivolity" should not necessarily be viewed as
irresponsible. But irresponsibility is precisely what the lounge
revival is all about.
It would appears that this bind is inescapable. If we look again at the
"Doctrine of Inauthenticity," we may have a means of escape. The lounge
movement (in theory, at least) does not privilege any sort of "original."
Nor does it privilege any particular "past." It is a creation of our own
historical moment. While it may borrow the trappings of the past, it is
grounded in (indeed, was created in reaction to) our current
existence. And despite denials by those on the Right, we still have
institutionalized bigotry and virulent xenophobia. (At least the certain
atomic death threat appears to have been nullified.) Unlike the 1950s and
1960s lounge scene, the current one is certainly more inclusive. In a
recent commentary in the 'zine Lounge(15) the editors write,
When Love Jones, Esquivel, and Combustible Edison blipped on the pop
culture thermometer a few years back it was primarily to an audience
composed of the hip white middle-class . . . Cocktail culture has not only
permeated every social strata, but we are finally breaking the color
lines. Lounge influenced acts like Toledo, Ozomatli, and Count Indigo are
breaking color boundaries. Once the bastion of urban coastal cities like
Los Angeles and New York, "lounge" can be found both nationally and
internationally. (Wick et al N.D.: 5) While the unbridled optimism of
the editors is a bit much, there is some truth to what they write. Count
Indigo was featured on the cover of Billboard (27 April 1996) as an
up-and-coming lounge artist, and the lounge-scene in New York is no less
monochromatic than most of downtown Manhattan nightlife (which is,
unfortunately, still not very diverse). A feminist critique of lounge
can be made as well. Writing in Esquire (of all places!), Robert
Rothenburg cites the work of cinema theorist Frank Krutnick when he claims
that lounge may represent the restoration of a phallic order in a society
in which sexual roles have been disrupted by cataclysmic change. When
Rothenburg cites "feminism" along with AIDS and world war as "cataclysmic
change," I know not to ascribe much validity to his opinions.
Nevertheless, it is possible to make a feminist critique. And maybe
it is possible to "excuse" these shortcomings as well as part of
some postmodern "irony." But as Count Indigo notes, "You can only go so
far with irony. You have to have a genuine love for this music, otherwise,
you couldn't listen to it" (Pride 1996: 91). As Lanza notes, "the cocktail
lounge offers a combination fun house and minefield" (1995: 65). Maybe
love is precisely the thing that will let us navigate our way through the
minefield safely.
NOTES
1. The classic martini is made with gin, not vodka.
Furthermore, the myth still persists that shaking instead of stirring a
martini somehow "bruises" the gin. While the martini marks Bond as having
the tastes and sensibilities of a rigid upper class, the fact that he
prefers it in such a "radical" way endows his character with a certain
flair and licentiousness, not unlike the license reflected in his double-O
appellation (license to kill).
2. These differences in style, methodology, etc.,
between Edmunds and Lanza no doubt reflect the exalted position which the
martini has been afforded within the cocktail mythos.
3. Around this time (the late nineteenth century)
the first cocktail manuals appeared. According to Edmunds, they were all
published with professionals (bar staff) in mind, and not laypersons. "Men
[sic] did not know how to mix drinks" (1981: 27). If true, this claim only
lends more of an air of mystery and magic to the cocktail process.
4. Many of the spaces profiled in Kavadlo's
sociological study (1988) of the cocktail lounge date from this period.
These lounges have been in continuous use since their opening more than
thirty years ago.
5. See Guarnaccia and Sloan (1997) for an amazing
collection of advertisements and memorabilia from the period. See Lanza
(1995) for several examples from the cinema.
6. Indeed, the CIA knew this and in the early 1960s
designed a surveillance device (i.e., a "bug") in the shape of a
pimiento-stuffed olive which could be discreetly left in a martini glass
(see Lanza 1995: 106).
7. I've been in at least two that I can recall: one
in Phoenix, and one at a resort in the Catskills (not to mention the
Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas).
8. Actually a vodka gimlet with a splash of
cranberry.
9. A dry martini mixed with Tang, served in a glass
with Tang powder on the rim. It sounds disgusting, but it is actually
quite tasty.
10. "Each meal is a structured event which
structures others in its own image." ([1975] 1997: 44). For Douglas, in
order to qualify as a "meal," any food prepared and served must be
analogous in its presentational structure to other accepted "meals," e.g.,
soup first, dessert last, with a balanced main course in-between. Cocktail
food rarely takes such a highly structured form.
11. Lanza cites William Maclean's (dubious?) 1959
study "On the Acoustics of Cocktail Parties" which calculated each
interaction between human and libation according to reverberation time,
room dimensions, and signal-to-noise ratio. All it takes is one guest too
many to throw the entire party off-balance. "The significant thing is that
the party doesn't get progressively louder. It suddenly goes from quiet to
loud when there is one guest too many, or as they say in nuclear physics,
when it 'goes critical'" (1995: 106).
12. I can recall being chastised for a "lack of
curves" in an undergraduate design for theatre class. The professor found
my floor plan and rendering for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are
Dead too angular. "It's a comedy!" he barked at me. "You need more
curves."
13. According to Glenn, "the clinking of martini
glasses and the sophisticated murmur of appreciative listeners is
considered to be almost another musical instrument by lounge afficionados"
(1994: 86). Not long ago I was at a soirée/recording session of
the David Driver Quartet which took place in a loft on the Bowery. David
encouraged the guests to chat (quietly) and to "clink crystal" in order to
add ambience to his recording.
14. While Yma Sumac singing "Taki Rari" is
quintessentially lounge, her music could hardly be considered easy
listening.
15. The 'zine is undated, but given the internal
references and other articles in the issue (labeled vol. 4 no. 1), I would
date it sometime late in 1996.
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