Cal Tjader Several Shades of Jade/Breeze From The East (Verve 537 083) Exotic jazz?!? You betcha! Tjader's the man when it comes to blending the fine bop sensibilities of Verve with the exotic feel of Denny and Lyman. This isn't exotica...it's that dreaded jazz kids! Before you run in fear (or disgust), take a minute to listen. Cal Tjader is perhaps one of the most under appreciated jazz master, and certainly overlooked in the Denny/Lyman/Baxter school of exotica. Strange thing is...these two albums (on one CD!) sound like a Denny album (if Denny had used the Verve stable of musicians). Where the lands of exotica and bop meet, you'll find Cal Tjader stading guard at the border patrol. Dimitri From Paris "Dirty Larry" (Yellow 18408) The smoothest man in Paris, DJ Dimitri, swings back with five mixes on the ultra hip tribute to Shifrin "Dirty Larry." Coming from the Sacrebleu album of 1996, "Dirty Larry" is a spy jazz theme for the now generation. Sexy and funky, these mixes take an already abfab track and propel it into dance floor heaven. Dj's have been spinning these mixes on vinyl for some time now, but those of us with a digital mind set had to wait for this CD single to be able to experience the joy of these tracks. To all those "cold music" nay sayers out there, Vik challenges you NOT to love the nouveaux spy sounds of the man known as Dimitri! Royal Crown Revue "Kings of Gangster Bop" (Big Daddy Records 1) You know these guys...remember The Mask? Remember the swinging dance scene with Jim Carey and Cameron Diaz at the CocoBongo? The song they dance to is "Hey Pachuco" and the band plying it is Royal Crown Revue. It this revival of cocktails and hipsters, another, much less publicized revival has been going on...swing. Big brassy bands playing jump blues while couples dance up a (usually) athletic storm. You won;t write home about the this album. It's a good solid swing album with some stand out tracks (the aforementioned "Hey Pachuco", "Jumpin' in G" and "Swingin' All Day") that'll keep you dancing throughout the night. Not music to change you life or the world...jump music for swinging. And sometimes that's all we really need! Various Artists Martini Lounge (EMI-Capitol Special Markets 19246) So, there Vik was...wandering the streets of Manhattan with his lovely wife Amy Camus and looking at glassware (the lounge could use some new margarita glasses). A delish display of cobalt blue glasses beckoned from a Pottery Barn near Houston and Broadway and in Vik and Amy went. Browsing the many fabulous styles of glassware, they were suddenly delighted to hear Dean Martin's "Ain't That A Kick in the Head" (a fave at Casa Vik). Now, they were used to hearing such things in Urban Outfitters or some of those silly trendy shops in Soho (hey...they just go for the spectacle), but this was the Pottery Barn. Had their worst fears come true...was "lounge" really mainstream? Well, yes. And no further proof is needed than this collection produced by EMI-Capitol Special Markets for The Pottery Barn and available only at The Pottery Barn. Twelve tracks mostly from the Captiol vaults (with ComEd, Morphine and Esquivel thrown in for god only knows what reason), absolutely no surprises and nothing not available on dozen's of other releases. What fascinates Vik about this is the relation to those old "buy a stereo - get an album" concept of the early hi-fi days. Now, you can buy the pricey barware and get the music to play with it (for $12 a CD). Nothing to rush out and buy, but a nice nod to the almost forgotten (at least in the music biz) concept of cross promotion.