Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation

Best info I've found yet on Sonny Lester

I love lounge music in all its many incarnations: space age pop, exotica, spy music, crime jazz, etc. I was hoping this would be a nice companion to the two other books on the genre. Unfortunately, it only half lived up to the promise.It just gets too many facts wrong. Big ones and little ones. The author totally buys into the "myths" of Korla Pandit, Chaino and others without finding their true stories. Biographies of other artists are oddly brief.In addition, the author ignores the music scene in England, France, and South America. How can one write a book about this period of music and not mention the influence of the Brazilian Bossa Nova artists?On the other hand, it does fill in a lot of blanks in the histories of Italian film music composers and offers a very useful catalog of artists and their albums. For that, it's almost worth the money. I wish the author had done the entire book on the Italian music world.

Francesco Adinolfi certainly knows his subject, as "Mondo Exotica" is an exhaustive musicological examination of the history and social aspects of Exotica and Lounge music. This book is not for those with only casual interest in the subject, and it can be quite a challenging read.For those of us who share Adinolfi's obsession with the cocktail generation, however, it offers a lot of pertinent information and analysis. My only complaint is that a for a genre filled with such fascinating visual components the lack of any photographs whatsoever diminishes its appeal somewhat. I would have enjoyed seeing what the Shell club and other lounges looked like as well as some reproductions of Exotica LP covers, but maybe that is an "American" thing. Anyway, you have got to appreciate the fact that Adinolfi has really done his homework and this book is probably the last word on it's unusual subject.

Mondo Exotica is a seminal text in the topic of the lounge music. Very suggested to whom wants deeply know roots and developement of this kind of music.

as above...chosen from my son's wish list...Birthday 16 March so I can only assumethat it will be OK ..He will not receive it until 16 March