Programming note: Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll be here with Part Twenty-Nine of the twentieth-anniversary audio serialisation of my highly prescient bestseller, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
~Ahead of that, welcome to this week's edition of Mark Steyn on the Town. We start in Mississippi and end with a very small finish. Plus: Liza Minnelli and her pals Kander & Ebb tell me about their first Broadway show, and we tip our toes into dancing on radio.
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~Thank you for all your kind comments on last week's show. Stefan Bucek, a California member of The Mark Steyn Club, liked it:
Mark, the Oscar for best episode of "On the Town" goes to....
Episode Ninety-Eight! (Raucous applause) That medley at the end by Sammy and Steve, "Not Even Nominated," was an absolute gem, and the reason why the Oscars telecast used to be appointment television! Sadly, that's not the case anymore, and the expertly done clever musical numbers have been replaced by shrill polemics out of the mouths of awardees who worked on pictures that nobody saw.
Thank you for reminding us of what used to be, and for resurrecting from the Academy vault that fabulous medley. It's why we can never miss an episode of "On the Town," because we never know what you'll have for us on any given Saturday. God bless you, sir!
Nancy, a Montana Steyn Clubber, agrees on that finale:
"The Un-Nominated Songs Medley" was a wow. Great show Mark - many thanks!
So does my fellow Ontarian Nicola:
That medley is amazing because we know all those songs and know a lot of lyrics.
Mr Bradley, a Steyn Club member in Oregon, enjoyed it too.
"Not even nominated....." ---- what a Medley! And Steve and Sammy didn't need any pitch adjusting software or have to resort to lip synching either.
Real pros singing real songs. Live.
What a concept.
For Gary Alexander it killed any desire to check out this year's Oscars:
Wow, the Sinatra six-pack was a big treat filled with 1950s era hits, but you outdid all of that in the 1979 medley, and comments thereafter. In doing so, you gave me one more big reason to skip Sunday's Oscar show -- the famine of music there.
And just think, Steve and Sammy and for over 10 minutes, dozens of songs, and didn't need to pause to comment on Carter's high inflation, the Iran hostage situation or the "affordability" crisis, just intricate interweaving of dozens of true winners that were "not even nominated."
Sunday will certainly be a festival of obscure (and mostly misanthropic) films, glittery gowns on anorexic bodies, and political blather.
Nana Mouskouri's one-woman double-bill at our Café Continental and Café Imperial didn't thrill David Thackray, at least initially:
Nana Mouskouri appeared on the likes of Morecambe & Wise during the 70s and it was usually my cue to get up and make a cup of tea but Mark Steyn on this evening's On the Town played Nana performing a Michel Legrand song and quite simply, I think it's the most beautiful French I've ever heard sung! It was utterly gorgeous. None of the trills and over-egged vibrato that sometimes occurs elsewhere. I must explore further.
Two dynamite Sinatra recordings also featured in Second Time Around and the sensationally-arranged Love Is the Tender Trap. How big would Sinatra have been without the genius of Nelson Riddle? So good also to hear the Sinatra-inflected Steve Lawrence once more!
One more from Jake, a Steyn Clubber in the English West Country:
Nana Mouskouri appeared frequently on BBC TV during the 70s but I always ignored her performances. Had she looked like the delectable Gabrielle Drake currently making occasional appearances on BBC 4 in Call My Bluff - a show made for Mark Steyn - then I'd doubtless know far more of her repertoire. The self-help hypnotist Paul McKenna was once criticised in interview for his love of fast cars and buxom blondes. He replied, "Well, I never said I was deep."
The two Mouskouri tracks were poles apart. One was gorgeous, the other grim. The former was a Michel Legrand song referencing, I think, Jean Marais and the latter was by Bryan Adams. Bryan Adams bought a house in London in the 90s next to a pub and when he didn't like the noise the pub customers made in the evening he bought the hostelry and closed it down. A community hub, a haven for those seeking solace or society shut down just so Adams could sleep better. I've despised the loathsome gobshite ever since.
Sorry, Jake, I didn't hear anything after the words "Gabrielle Drake"...
~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.
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Mark Steyn on the Town can be heard on Serenade Radio at its regular times:
Saturday 5pm London time/1pm New York
Sunday 5am London time/10pm Los Angeles
