Bent, Down On The Lounge

Bent, Down On The Lounge

It may sound like gay media sour grapes, but I have to be honest. I don’t bloody get Bent Magazine. I don’t get who they put on the covers. I don’t get the articles. I don’t get if I’m the target audience or, if I’m not, who the target audience is. I don’t get why they say Life. From your angle. With a full stop after life on the cover. I basically don’t get anything about it. When I heard the boys at Bent had put out a CD, my initial reaction was kind of a mix of disinterest and scepticism. As usual, my first reaction was completely wrong. Confusion would have been a more appropriate mental state. The songs on this compilation are both excellent and unexpected. But why is Bent putting out a collection of 30s to 70s mainstream-ish jazz and easy listening classics? And why are they calling it lounge music? Lounge is one of those music words that has ended up meaning everything and nothing, and it must be stopped. Apparently, this is lounge because it is music from Las Vegas hotel lounges, which is a bit rich given some of the inclusions -“ like, it’s hard to imagine someone performing the theme song from The Avengers in some Las Vegan hotel foyer. Yawn. Anyway, about the music. Bent’s Down On The Lounge is positively jam-packed with fabulous classics sung by fantastic people -“ from Nina Simone’s My Baby Just Cares For Me to Dinah Washington’s Mad About the Boy. From Billie Holiday singing Let’s Do It to Dusty Springfield with I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself. It’s not flawless -“ Perry Como’s A You’re Adorable pretty much sucks and Doris Day’s Secret Love seems like it’s just included to please the gays, as it were. These are minor criticisms though -“ everyone should own most of these songs.

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