Programming note: Join Mark on Wednesday for a New Year edition of our Clubland Q&A. It airs right here at SteynOnline at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm in Western Europe.
~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 seasonal Sinatra bonanza here, and our Café Continental special here.
Today we're offering a sampler from our Café Imperial, where the patrons favour songs from our great Commonwealth family. So herewith a cavalcade of delights from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Samoa, and even Scotland. They're performed by big-name stars from Les Paul and Mary Ford to Bing Crosby and the Seekers but also by singers and musicians of more localised celebrity. And, while weekly aficionados of On the Town might recall a couple of segments, a big chunk of the show will be entirely new to many listeners. To listen, simply click above.
If you're not a Mark Steyn Club member and you like what you hear in the course of the hour, 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 friend 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. "One of the great highlights of Christmas," says English Steyn Clubber Martyn Cox. "Just lovely. Thank you, Mark."
~Café Imperial 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.
