If you enjoy Steyn's Song of the Week at SteynOnline, please note that there will be a live stage edition during April's Mark Steyn Cruise - along with many other favourite features from SteynOnline and The Mark Steyn Show. More details here.
~If you missed today's Serenade Radio broadcast, here's a chance to catch up via this SteynOnline premiere of one of our audio Songs of the Week. In this show I tell the story of one of the most recorded of all compositions, with the aid of a cavalcade of performers from Coleman Hawkins to Amy Winehouse to the composer himself.
Click above to listen.
~This airing of our Serenade Radio Song of the Week is a special presentation of The Mark Steyn Club.Re our last audio edition, "We'll Gather Lilacs", Bill Holcomb, an Alabama member of the Club, enjoyed the finale:
You have a genius for saving the best for last. Allowing Clare Teal's version of 'We'll Gather Lilacs' to close the show brought tears, even after just having heard the song in several iterations over 27 minutes. What a powerful enduring song - and what a show! Magic moments like that are why I will remain a Steyn Clubber until one us bites the dust.
Bill's fellow Clubber Chris also appreciated Miss Teal:
Mark being a bit whimsical today. Katherine Jenkins cut short, Bing Crosby cut short but then Mark unleashes that melody and I sit there saying 'Does Mark ever get tired of being right?' Being a lyric guy generally (go Ira!) I was transfixed with that beautiful melody by Novello. And the hits keep coming with the Duke of Edinburgh singing and Sinatra doing the intro...or vice versa. And somehow Ivor dies at age 51 but Mad Frankie Fraser lives until 2014. Nice voice on that Clare Teal. Thanks for an enlightening, and yet wistful, Song of the Week.
Greg Belz, a Steyn Clubber from Tennessee, proposes a solution to the evolving pronunciation of "again":
Perhaps the sadly 'updated' pronunciation of Again would be less jarring if an English Glen were substituted for that Lilac filled Lane in Sir Keir's quickly disappearing England.
I was about to object that glens are more of a Scottish thing but then I remembered Robin Hood riding through the glen with his band of men.
One more from an English member of the Steyn Club, so she may be riding through the glen even as we speak. For Alison, the show was principally useful for its horticultural tips:
This is the first time I have taken advice from Ivor Novello. I am going to plant a dwarf Korean lilac tree (Syringa Palibin) in a patio pot on the strength of this song, partly because it seems cheap but also because it blooms not just once in spring but also again in August. Then one could indeed 'gather lilacs' - not just in spring but in summer too.
Syringa vulgaris (lilac) is widely naturalised in western and northern Europe and completely naturalised in North America. It is the state flower of the state of New Hampshire because it 'is symbolic of that hardy character of the men and women of the Granite State'.
Indeed, Alison. It is a third of a century since I first went to Lisbon - not Lisbon, Portugal, where I'll be next month, but Lisbon, New Hampshire, where I'll be the following month for the annual Lilac Festival. We'll gather lilacs in the spring again, and walk together down a New Hampshire Class VI town highway, at least as far as the washed-out bridge...
We do enjoy your comments on the show. Steyn Club members are welcome to respond to this week's show below. Alternatively, anybody can leave comments over at Serenade Radio, where they love hearing from listeners.
Steyn's Song of the Week airs thrice weekly on Serenade Radio in the UK, one or other of which broadcasts is certain to be convenient for whichever part of the world you're in:
5.30pm Sunday London (12.30pm New York)
5.30am Monday London (3.30pm Sydney)
9pm Thursday London (1pm Vancouver)
Whichever you prefer, you can listen from anywhere on the planet right here.
