This week's Mark Steyn on the Town is a semi-Easterish/semi-Shakespeare edition as Mark looks beyond the weekend to the Bard's birthday. We have Easter hits from the Commonwealth, and post-Easter hits from Scandinavia - plus a cavalcade of Number Ones down the decades, and Sinatra sings Shakespeare (with a bit of encouragement from Orson Welles).
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~Thank you for your kind comments about last week's edition. Gary Alexander, the West Coast music maven of The Mark Steyn Club, is still grappling with the spaced-out Sinatra:
Thanks for forcing me to try to understand Frank's Trilogy: Future segment 'one more once,' sir. Someday, maybe next Tuesday, on Venus, I'll finally 'get it.' I trusted Gordon Jenkins in Seven Dreams and September of My Years and was richly rewarded. I'll give Frank high mark for hitting those random near-atonal note choices Gordon gives him, but to what end? Give me Basie's and Quincy's moonshot anthem any day of the week, even Tuesday.
'What time does the next miracle END?' Ten minutes and 44 seconds from now, sir. Same as always.
Indeed, Gary. Vinnie Falcone, Sinatra's musical director at the time, told me that Frank spent more time rehearsing those "random near-atonal note choices" than anything he'd ever done. I recall WNEW's long-time and violently anti-Jenkins disc-jockey Jonathan Schwartz said Sinatra should have eschewed Gordy and gone to Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner, which I reckon would have been just as pretentious but with better "note choices".
At any rate, Michael Smith, a Maryland Steyn Clubber, needed a stiff drink:
Frank's space travel disc drove me to Jack Daniel's and Tang.
There's a restaurateur in my corner of the North Country who persists in "inventing" ill-advised cocktails: that sounds right up his alley. (All the best cocktails were invented by the 1920s.)
On the other hand, from First Weekend Founding Member Fran Lavery:
Very much enjoyed the 'spacey' Frank Sinatra song maybe because it was fresh and new to my ears. I'm very sorry for your loss of the good friend you had in your colleague, Dick Fisher. May he rest in peace.
Thank you for that, Fran. I shall miss him.
One more, from one of our Slovene Steyn Clubbers, Paulo Jardim:
Hi Mark,
I loved the Josephine Baker tribute on your latest Serenate Radio show. I would like to to point out though that the 'pays' she refers to in 'J'ai Deux Amours' is certainly not France (nor the US, where she was born in 1906), but her hometown of St Louis, MO.
Although 'pays' may also be translated as 'country', the word is frequently used as a synonym of 'village' or 'local', like in 'vin du pays'.
That's a fair criticism, Paulo, of a rather careless translation by me. I think of "pays" in that sense as closer to "terroir": "vin du pays", "cuisine du terroir". But I got knocked off track by Gilles Vigneault's "Mon Pays", which is generally taken as a not so subtle anthem for la république du Québec.
Thanks for all your comments - including the critical ones. On the Town is my weekly music show on Serenade Radio every Saturday at 5pm British Summer Time - that's 6pm in western and central Europe or 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here.
As you know, I'm a great believer in old-school appointment listening, and love the way Serenade's Saturday schedule flows through the day. However, we appreciate that many potential listeners are, at the appointed hour, shampooing the cat. So, as a bonus for Steyn Club members, we post On the Town at SteynOnline every weekend. You can find all our previous shows here.
We do enjoy your comments on our weekend programming. Steyn Clubbers are welcome to leave them below. For more on The Mark Steyn Club, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio back at its regular times next weekend:
Saturday 5pm London time/12 noon New York
Sunday 5am London time/9pm Los Angeles