Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish listeners. Happy Boxing Day to our Commonwealth listeners. Happy St Stephen's Day to our European listeners. And, to our American listeners, Happy Thursday.
I think that about covers it. No matter the contrasting designations of officialdom, it is the second day of Christmastide. Laura Rosen Cohen will be here later with her regular helping of Laura's Links. And no doubt we will be back to the glum stuff from the hell of the headlines soon enough.
For our On the Town specials this holiday season, we've been offering extended editions of some of the show's weekly features. You can hear our special seasonal Sinatra bonanza here. Today we're offering a sampler from our Café Continental, where the patrons like their music with a soupçon of European sophistication. So herewith a cavalcade of songs in French, Italian, Swedish, German - and occasionally even in English. Bigtime Continental stars such as Domenico Modugno, Caterina Valente and Agnetha from Abba are on hand, but so too are Petula Clark and Chet Baker. And, while weekly listeners to On the Town might recall a couple of segments, a big chunk of the show has never been broadcast before. If you're not a Mark Steyn Club member and you like what you hear, well, you can enjoy it every week simply by signing up here.
We hope you had a good Christmas. There's still time to catch up with our seasonal offerings at SteynOnline, including an all too topical airing of my Tale for Our Time, Plum Duff, and our friends Siân Phillips reading a more traditional favourite. Our Christmas Day cornucopia can be found here, and as always our marquee presentation was our annual Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols, with ancient scripture and brand new performances by Patsy Gallant, Randy Bachman, Peter Noone and many other members of the Steyn Show musical family.
~Café Continental is a special production for The Mark Steyn Club. For more on the Steyn Club, see here.
There's a whole cavalcade of musical delights over on our Netflix-style music home page, where you'll find easy-to-access live performances by everyone from Herman's Hermits to Liza Minnelli; Mark's interviews with Chuck Berry, Leonard Bernstein and Bananarama (just to riffle through the Bs); and audio documentaries on P G Wodehouse's songs, Simon after Garfunkel, and much more. We'll be adding to the archive in the months ahead, but, even as it is, we hope you'll find the SteynOnline music home page a welcome respite from the woes of the world.
