Programming note: Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll be here with Part Twenty-Four of the twentieth-anniversary audio serialisation of my highly prescient demographic bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
~Happy Valensteyn's Day! On this week's edition of Mark Steyn on the Town, we are in a romantic mood, ably assisted by vocal artistes from Doris Day and Keely Smith to Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan.
To listen to the programme, simply click here and log-in.
~Thank you for all your kind comments on last week's episode. From Miriam, a Steyn Clubber a little ways south of me in the Connecticut River valley:
Can't say enough about how much I enjoy your Serenade Radio show.
The music is my vintage and invokes such nostalgia and longing for those good old days. Your musical knowledge and experience in the musical world are so impressive. Just love it.
From Ohio, Phil is in agreement:
Hi Mark — Julie London then (something something) then Caterina Valente. You had me at hello.
I know of them only through you. Brilliant stuff. Thank you.
Day one - hour one? - member here. I've listened to all of these episodes and look forward to a new one each week. Thought I should finally let you know how much I appreciate your work.
Thank you, Phil - who is indeed a First Hour Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club.
Josh Passell even enjoyed the Rolling Stones' On the Town debut:
Steyn plays The Stones on Serenade boded about as well as Dylan going electric in Manchester, almost sixty years ago. Good call, though. Mick and the boys behaved, at least in the studio.
Love the Classical Corner, but Frank singing Sondheim was as classic as it gets. Shades of Schubert between him and Bill Miller. A Winter's Journey in the autumn of his life. I know I shivered.
Ah, but Steyn Clubber Robert Wilkinson begs to differ:
That intro by Sinatra for Send in the Clowns has me wondering did he ever see A Little Night Music?
Because that is not what the song is about.
I've seen what I think is Sondheim's best work twice in fabulous student productions at the ASU Lyric Opera Theatre (as good as anything I've seen on Broadway
Th song is perfect in Sondheim's musical but it covers a far more complex story than a simple breakup.
Well, I have it on the highest authority that Sinatra did see A Little Night Music - which is why he was the first person to record that song outside the show. As I said on air, it's not good when you have to tell the audience what the number's about. However, it would be even worse to explain what it's about in the context of the drama. Because, if you're desperate for a take-home tune (as Sondheim was in 1973), they're two entirely separate things. Random example: If you hear Jo Stafford or Johnny Mathis singing "They Say That Falling in Love Is Wonderful", it's a great universal love song. But Irving Berlin wrote it for the very particular titular heroine of Annie Get Your Gun, so the line "I can't recall who said it/I know I never read it" is a very specific reference to the fact that Annie is illiterate. You don't need to know that when it comes on the radio - because the song works within its dramatic context and without it.
Peter, a First Week Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, felt the Stones moment could have gone worse:
The Stones on Serenade Radio.. well at least it was not 'Angie'!
Like Phil Spector, Barry Manilow knew how to arrange records to kick through AM speakers. You need his plush wall of sound to push 'I Write the Songs' through, which Frank's version lacks. (At least Barry has no murder rap on him yet..). Kudos to Mark for finding that pastiche Manilow song - almost sounds like something from an awards show. With Mark's new Classical Corner, we may hear from Barry again, as he transformed one of Chopin's piano etudes into a hit single...
Jake, a Steyn Clubber from the English West Country, enjoyed prowling through the Sinatra wreckage:
Really enjoyed this week's show, Mark. Everything was of interest.
The wreckage of Sinatra's I Sing the Songs was fascinating. Never have I heard him so unenthused. His pitch on 'My home...' is all over the place. That the most famous singer on the planet couldn't find the greatest songs being written at that time seems ludicrous to me.
Drinking Again may not be a major song but it's a perfect recording; vocal, arrangement and lyric - "After the kicks/ it's little old mixed/-up me."
Might Caterina Valente have been a sassier, sexier Julie Andrews had Hollywood come calling? Perhaps she was too wise and wary to go anywhere near that snake pit. I've only seen her in the three-minute one-note samba on YT but boy, she's got it in spades.
Well, I encountered Signora Valente half-a-dozen times over the years - and she was certainly sassy and sexy, and, as I've mentioned from time to time, hilarious company.
On the other hand, Gary Alexander on the West Coast found the show pretty much a dud:
I found a certain sameness, a repetitive gloom (or is it just self-conscious writer's block) about the Inside Baseball tutorials of how "I write the songs," or "I REALLY write the songs...and this is how I do it" or Frank's preamble, "This is what Sondheim meant in that Clown song" or "we had a good thing going, going, gone." Even the Mercer "drinking again" song was more about his own booze habits than ours. Back in our era (I date myself), "You" was the key word -- as in "The Song is You" or All the Things You Are" and countless more. Now, it's "me, me, me" by writers or singers.
"A certain sameness"? "Repetitive gloom"? Oh, my. I only started On the Town because I felt my fin de civilisation stuff had totally degenerated into same-old-same-old repetitive gloom. If the music show is mired in the same slough of despond, it really is time to do as my docs recommend and hang it all up.
~On the Town is my weekly music show on Serenade Radio every Saturday at 5pm Greenwich Mean Time - that's 6pm in western and central Europe or 12 noon North American Eastern. You can listen from almost anywhere in the world by clicking the button at top right here. We also post On the Town at SteynOnline every weekend as a bonus for Mark Steyn Club members. 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, now in its ninth year, see here - and don't forget our special Gift Membership.
Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio at its regular times:
Saturday 5pm London time/12 noon New York
Sunday 5am London time/9pm Los Angeles