S is for FRANK SINATRA in COME FLY WITH ME!

S

FRANK SINATRA

COME FLY WITH ME

If YOU could USE some EXOTIC booze…

You’ve come to the RIGHT place!

This week we take as our text some wise words from Old Blue Eyes Himself, the one and only Frank Sinatra as we disinter one of his old vinyls and hold up to the light one last time before we throw it into the Memory Hole.

Frank Sinatra – founder of the movement known as BobbySoxers, a hell raiser, a lover, a liver, a giver of happiness, a man synonymous with cool!

And yes, Frank,  we could certainly do with some exotic booze but one look in the beer fridge and it’s all common or garden ale. Common or garden, that’s a phrase you don’t hear much anymore. So it’s off down the SuperMarket for us. But before we go – an apology.

We have been away for quite some time, quite some time.

But what a time! Time of a thousand times and we wouldn’t say this lightly – We’ve had:

The Euros

The Olympics

The Return of Football on the Telly

And some other stuff we can’t be arsed to mention. But why has it been so long? And are we BACK FOR GOOD – in the wise words of that song by Take That what all DJs play to get the punters clinching, puckering up, shoving their hands down shirts and feeling around for bra straps, sticking their tongues in each other’s ear in the belief that it’s an erogenous zone and thus believing they’ve had a grand time – so it goes:

‘I guess it’s time, it’s very good time, I see your stains on my pants, the coffee cup and bedsheets, but I can’t be bothered to wash them, I want you back, I want you back, I want you back to rinse them.’

IS HE ACTUALLY PLAYING THAT GUITAR?  Yes you, Mark Owen.

But why and where and who have we been with? Well, because…erm…It’s a busy time of the year for us and we have to watch:

The Euros

The Olympics

The Return of Football on the Telly

The OLYMPIC OPENING CEREMONY: A COMPLAINT

In our town which is a very very nice town, the Man From Barratt Homes comes flying past in his helicopter grinning and waving, grinning and waving. They say he had an eye for the ladies. And why not? They should have picked Barratt Man to get the Queen from Buckingham Palace for that Olympic Ceremony – we heard he was most put out because he has far more air miles than James Bond and far more helicopter experience. ‘James Bloody Bond!’ he was heard to say, ‘Always James BLOODY Bond! I’m always waiting in line behind Bond and that FUCKER from the Milk Tray Adverts!’ Or so we heard – that may not be actually true as such.

Our Town didn’t win any Olympic Gold medals which is a damn shame because it is a very nice town and we were standing by with the Gold Paint in order to slap it round some post boxes. We would’ve done that. Would make a change from spraying dog turds.

Disco dancing horses: WHAT’S THAT ABOUT, EH?

But never mind, because FOOTBALL IS BACK ON THE TELLY! When it’s not on we sort of hibernate, cry and compose sad, epic poetry, celebrating our forgotten heroes in the classic vein: here’s one we done last week.

MAKE FOOTBALL COME BACK ON OUR TELLY!

Make football come back on our telly

We miss Lampard we really do.

He’s not that smelly,

And we like his finger pointing celebration, fingers two.

And we don’t like chucking welly,

Or snail Olympics.

Or them disco dancing horses

To crappy stupid tunes,

Like Land of Hope and Glory

And the chimes of Big Ben

Disco dancing horses that are

Ridden by posh knobs who

Probably can afford to buy horses

And teach them crap by the Bee Gees.

Saturday Night Fever – it aint.

So make football come back on our telly.

It now appears we COULD use some exotic booze – so let’s press on, Caruthers…press on and let’s get DRUNK to this week’s vinyl by Frank – not Lampard, oh no, not him, but Franky Franky Sinatra! Quite frankly, my dear, Sinatra. Does that work? Does it? We don’t give a damn.

THE BOOMTOWN RATS: A COMPLAINT

Joey’s on the Street Again by The Boomtown Rats. Do they think they’re Bruce Springsteen or what? And who’s got ‘Stay the Same’ by David Essex anyway? We’ve been trying to track that bugger down for years. Answers on a postcard, please.

SO NOW!

YOUR FAVOURITE MOMENT AND OURS

WE REVEAL

OUR SPONSORS TONIGHT!!

COOIEE DOP – WHERE THE REAL FUN BEGINS!

 

It’s a FABULOUS DROP, That’s COOIEDOP!

Could possible contain traces of alcohol, please use responsibly.

S

FRANK SINATRA

COME FLY WITH ME

SETTING UP TIME

For those of you new to our aimless wanderings, Drunken Vinyls is the site where we relive those great VINYLS of yesteryear with you. We’re doing every record in history from A to Zed – or if you’re American, A to Zee – a massive 26 whole records!!

To join in the fun, all YOU need to do is purchase a Bargain Fun Bucket of this week’s guest ale CooeieDop from your local landlord, buy a set of decks and mixing desk, and run along to your local Vinyl Record Retailer and buy this incredibly rare and much sought after LP ‘Come Fly with Me’ by Frank Sinatra for an exorbitantly stupid sum of money and do all of this in the next few minutes.

Once set up, you can play along WITH US!! We drink one guest ale for every track as we review the record whilst marvelling at the incredible sound quality – and getting progressively more drunkenly stupid as we go. We’ll tell you when to put the stylus on the track, drink ale and everything else you’ll need to know! It’s a cinch!

There are rules – well of course there are rules, this is Britain, there are always rules in Britain.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DRUNKEN VINYLS

1. Thou shalt play both sides of the record in their entirety
2. Thou shalt drink one can of Fosters or its alcohol equivalent per song
3. Thou shalt record ramblings as they occur to thee for the duration of the running time
4. Thou shalt edit out the swearing the next day
5. Thou shalt not suffer a Blueberry user to live
6. Dancing disco horses with posh knobs to the Bee Gees or other crap tunes for a Gold Medal – WHAT’S THAT ABOUT, EH?

AND NOW: 

DRUNKEN VINYLS PRESENTS

OUR NEW MONTHLY REGULAR FEATURE

WHERE WE ASK:

THE BURNING QUESTION!

This month’s 'THE BURNING QUESTION':

CAN FOOTBALLERS LEARN FROM THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT?

Well, this is a very good burning question and one which is occupying the minds of the Boffins, Intelligentsia, Politicians and, indeed,  BBC Radio 5 Live Chat Show host Nicky Campbell a great deal, in short the great and the good of our grand Island Nation – but whenever they are asked, no answer is forthcoming except clichéd vagueness. So called experts with their Kindles and Mobile Blackberry Telephone Computers – what’s wrong with them? What’s the big deal? Where’s the beef?

To answer the BURNING QUESTION this month is a perfectly simple task if tried and tested scientific principles are used.

Firstly you should determine what the OLYMPIC SPIRIT actually is through a system of trial and error and mix some of it up in a cocktail jug; then get a composite Premier League Footballer made from various socially undesirable habits or vices then immerse him in IT to see if they improve or learn anything. Anything at all.

WHAT IS THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT COMPRISED OF EXACTLY?

In order to provide the definitive answer to this burning question – ouch -  we scientifically surveyed some people near where we live to determine what they thought was meant by Olympic Spirit and what, if anything should be put in it. Like vodka or something. The answers were astonishing and true reflections of the great pride we now feel, as a nation, post London 2012.

ANSWERS

You should give all football strikers a sword like in Olympic Fencing, then if they was hacked down in the box by a defender they could stab him in the eye. Them defenders would soon – get the point!

I quite like biscuits – there were these biscuits called ‘United’ when I was growing up. With candy crisp. You can’t get THEM no more.

Creative midfield play-makers could learn something from them posh people on horses what dance to the Bee Gees. Money for old rope, that is.

That Pearce is a twat.

Tae Kwondo? That’s kind of dancing around some other person and kicking them in the head a bit. You get a lot of that in football anyway. Peter Cech wears a Tae Kwondo crash hat anyhow.

A Gold Medal can easily be mocked up by getting a large Chocolate Penny off a Christmas tree and attaching it to some red wool you have in the house. Tasty and decorative. Footballers will love that Olympic feeling.

Pearce missed a penalty and got England knocked out of Italia 90, the no mark, soft toy loving, cretin.

Who’s that marathon runner what always enters races then gets a twisted ankle just before the off and sits around complaining and crying? You see her grizzling away every bloody Olympics, the sick note – ‘It’s not fair this, it’s not fair that.’ Imagine if footballers behaved like THAT!

Why can’t all footballers be equipped with two man canoes and play on a football pitch shaped lake or swimming pool without a football? That would be fairer all round, I think.

Whatever happened to Dimitar Berbatov? You don’t see much of him no more. Why wasn’t he in team GB?

Yes, that’s right. I am the bastard that’s going round British towns scraping GOLD PAINT of post boxes with my finger nails so I can have a souvenir of the Olympics!

Van Persil should play up front with his mates Daz, Bold, Aerial and Fairy. They’d make the cleanest strike partners in the Premier League, they would.

Pearce. What a cockmuncher.

They had to import ten thousand condoms for them copulating Olympians. You’d have thought they would be happy with a medal but they have to have some hokey pokey too. Wonder who done it to Usain Bolt?

Did Pearce chuck a boot at Beckham’s head in the changing room?

You should give all strikers boxing gloves like in Olympic Boxing, and then if they was hacked down in the box by a defender they could punch him in the eye. Them defenders would soon be – on the ropes.

So there you have it in a nutshell – THE OLYMPIC SPIRIT. All that remains NOW is to immerse a COMPOSITE FOOTBALLER from today’s PREMIER LEAGUE in a SYNTHESIS of this SPIRIT and to record what he (or she) can learn from the Experience.

Having read and studied Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN very carefully indeed – well we watched the film with Boris Karloff – we hired an extremely dilapidated old gothic ruin near Wales, built a heap of shitty old crap out of some left over wood and lots of electric coils, springs and wires we found in the cellar and included a cheap gauge with DANGER! written on it and erected a gigantic lightning conductor from the roof. Then we wrote extremely polite letters and asked various ‘controversial’ footballers to donate and post bits of themselves to us in order that we could stick them together with ‘No More Nails’ which would be less painful to them than screws, sticky backed pladtic and brackets as recommended by the book. We included pictures of the bits we wanted in case any of the footballers found reading difficult – see below.

However, mysteriously, we didn’t get any footballer portions by return of post. Our legal team are looking into it. It comes as something of a disappointment, especially after all the work we put in, to therefore report that so we were unable to ascertain whether Footballers are capable of learning from ‘The Olympic Spirit’. Or learning anything. Never mind – we mixed up some of the ingredients of the Spirit, stirred it with a sausage and it tasted mighty fine to us.

S

FRANK SINATRA

COME FLY WITH ME

WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THE LP?

Oh, enough of this nonsense; let’s get with the programme; tonight we’re looking forward to this record immensely – a massively influential disc, inspiring as it did all those ProgRock monsters that came afterwards – the likes of Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes and Procul Harum. This vinyl, being as it is, the very FIRST concept LP – and WHAT a CONCEPT – a musical trip around the world with Our Frank, getting pissed in every bar!

But: Who? What? Where? What is Bobbysoxers? In this section we aim to bring you the facts and truth about ‘Old Blue Eyes’.

We turned to 70’s icon Larry Grayson and his sidekick Isla St Clair and asked them to encapsulate the influence Frank Sinatra had on the lives and times of those who had met him. But all we got was some nonsense about Sugar Puffs  and paying the bills so it was a total waste of time.

Next we conducted some extended research on Wikipedia.

Frank Sinatra – it appears - was born some time ago – quite a bit now, with some very blue eyes indeed, extremely blue, so blue they were that Elton John himself wrote a song about them called ‘Blue Eyes’.  Here is an excerpt from that self same tribute to the man himself:

“Blue eyes, baby’s got blue eyes,

Oh Nikita you will never know,

Rocket Man, get a little action in,

The bitch is back.”

Frank was born into the Pinata Family and so his real name was Frank Piñata (and not Sinatra); but this didn’t suit him at all. At school the cruel Spanish children would take great pleasure in hanging him from a ceiling from a string and beating him off with sticks. It was either carry a load of sweets in his blazer pockets and drop them periodically or go for a nom de plume – and so, after consulting the ‘Dangerous Book for Boys’ he came up with ‘Sinatra’ which was on Page 31.

We asked Cesc Fabregas, well known footballer, why he felt it had been necessary to cruelly beat the young Sinatra with sticks but realised our mistake soon afterwards when it transpired that Fabregas was considerably younger than ‘Blue Eyes’, had never been to school with him and that we only knew one Spanish word anyway: ‘Cerveza’.

Frank Sinatra soon learned at the age of 8 that he could sing a bit. He was particularly impressed with a type of music called SWING which was, believe it or not, inspired by the noise made by giant box girder swing bridges as they opened and closed in downtown San Francisco. Sitting atop of the biggest bridge across East River crooning, he was soon attracting the ears and eyes of local impresarios such as Max T Schtickinsect and was signed up to Capitol records. But, like many great artists, his early years were to be somewhat lean.

His first disc ‘Hersham Boys’ was poorly received by the wealthy gamblers, gangsters and their ‘molls’ who frequented in the swinging night clubs and ballrooms of Las Vegas during the prohibition years of the twenties; the ‘flappers’ complained bitterly it was difficult to Charleston to. ‘Hurry Up Harry’ and it’s follow up ‘If The Kids Are United’ faired even more poorly and by the time he cut ‘Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps Please’ the local constabulary arrested him for offences against the ‘Non Promotion of Alcohol and Lewd Behaviour Act 1922’. After a salutary night in the cells, Sinatra was forced to confront his musical direction and have a major rethink.

Sinatra was shanked. On his beams-end. Trashed. His stab at introducing Punk 50 years early had gone down like a fart in a Citreon C5. He remembered when the fire joined with the meat – it had tasted good. He glanced about his cell and all he saw were…rats.

One thing gave Sinatra hope – and a way forward. Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior (who were also in the cells that night for similar reasons) noticed that the enormous amounts of rats scuttling hither and thither were in packs. ‘Yo!’ says Dean Martin ‘I love those mices to pieces! We’ll cut a new disc and call it – the Rat Pack!’ And as so often is the case in musical history, a serendipitous meeting in the police cells was to serve as the launch pad – or in this case the runway – and the careers of these crooners quite literally took off.

They cut the following disk and they now ask YOU to COME FLY WITH ME!

S

FRANK SINATRA

COME FLY WITH ME

This is the big band swing sound, recorded in 1958 with a real orchestra, oft imitated over the years but never bettered, with time signature changes, instrumental breaks and sassy vocals up front; filled with colour, texture and even humour. Originally recorded in stereo but released in mono.

Here we take a trip around the world in the company of immense crooner, Frank. But what, do we, his travelling companions, learn?

Because this is a concept LP we thought some basic Geographical detail may be useful and so in order to help you we’ve provided a guide to all the sultry places we’ll be visiting tonight! Anyway they don’t teach Geography properly in schools any more, it’s all save the whales and dustbin mountains; some of our younger readers would think the Island of Capri is where they make cars.

SIDE ONE

COME FLY WITH ME

Location: an aeroplane, travelling through rarefied atmosphere where you no doubt get *high* takes us to Bombay to get pissed on ‘exotic booze’, thence to Peru or ‘Llama Land’ for some *ahem* flute tooting. Acapulco Bay where you go ‘loco’.

Well here’s an invitation, introduced by that sassy trumpet sound at a high register – ‘Get Down With The Trumpets’ this ain’t – no waving your bras in the air on this one, kids. Good thing too, for Frank detested Rock n Roll – God knows what he would have made of Rizzla Kicks and all that hip hop nonsense we have these days. We’re waiting for a glissando – there you go on ‘Angels’ did you hear the way that glided down the scales. Come fly with us, let’s fly, let’s fly away!

AROUND THE WORLD

Location:Rendezvous also rhymes with Timbuktu – a wasted opportunity there we think. County Down, New York, London Town and bloody Gay Paris. But the song suggests travelling is no longer needed if the traveller can put his love in ‘you’ which is confusing.

A lush string arrangement introduces the second track and we’re into romantic love with ‘looked for you’ cleverly rhymed with ‘rendezvous’ – no doubt the inspiration for ‘Been around the world tonight but I didn’t find my baby’ although we’re not buying that one, Lisa. The strings are counterpointed delightfully with the brass during the interlude. We’re not too sure about ‘County Down’ – a romantic place? You tell us. We’ll tell you something that Frank would have detested – Mork and Mindy with wretched Robin Williams – his whole ‘Patch Adams’ style of playing iconoclastic figures to try to bring down the system from within. We’ve met some of those and they’re pricks to a man, always sticking it to the man by suing the education authority and sitting looking windswept on beaches. Prats to a man.

ISLE OF CAPRI

Location: Capri, Italy. Blue skies overhead – well of course.

We’re swinging now! However the instrumentation isn’t altogether serious and there’s a warmth of humour in the vocals. ‘When summer time is nearly over’, that’s usually a euphemism for things going wrong in love; sure enough she wore a plain golden ring on her finger and it was goodbye. A grand but unusual feature on this track is the comedic interplay between the timpani and brass and the romantic strings – a kind of waltz of love. The moral is nothing to do with fate; here we have a sailor trying to bed a married woman. That is bad karma. We don’t care that a survey has just been published suggesting an affair is good for marriage – what a load of betty swollocks that is – oh the tales of heartbreak and woe we could tell. Swinging – good on records; bad in the bedroom.

MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT

Location: Vermont the sixth least extensive and 2^nd least populous state of the USA. What a claim. Romantic with bent roads. Should twin itself with Paris.

More lush strings raise us up from slumber as Frank croons about Penny in a stream – probably needed a quick bath. We’re cold though – there are ski tracks on the mountains. But it’s a romantic setting and people are hypnotised into warbling about the moonlight. The stings are slightly schmaltzy on this track but Frank offsets this with a low register. This is very romantic – we feel you could light a cigar, sit on the porch in the summer and talk of football, play backgammon and just hold hands.

AUTUMN IN NEW YORK

Location: Well New York, obviously.But you can have lunch at the Ritz.

This is another down tempo ballad with typically attractive low register singing from Sinatra. The strings swell and are counterpointed by the understated brass. This is very similar to the last track but nothing wrong with that; sounds absolutely winsome and buxom – like sailing down the Nile on a barge whilst having your feet stroked by suggestively Ulrika Jonsson.

ON THE ROAD TO MANDALAY

Location: A Pagoda, Burma, Rangoon and Suez – in no particular order.

We’re back in comedy parping brass territory here with hints at a military tempo – big brass swing and them massive cymbals at the beginning of ‘Rank’ films – you know - gongs. ‘Come you back to Mandalay, young man, come you back to Madalay’. Most Carry On Films started with a huge gong. We liked the one about the toilet factory best. They made the secretary try out the new bog seats and there was a budgie that could pick the horses, too. We should think that the factory proprietor was probably called either Mr Bog, Mr Crapper or Mr Turdtaster. But we can’t be sure. This is great by the way. The old flotilla – the paddles are a chugging – you don’t get poetry like that any more.

SIDE TWO

LET’S GET AWAY FROM IT ALL

Location: Bermuda – where people disappear, visiting every state – all forty eight, we go to Niagra twice and the amount of whoopee going on he’ll be buying Viagra from Niagra. A plane to St Paul, a kayak – there’s no end to the ingenuity in this song.

Swing it Frank! This is a paean to love – we tell you something, his companion won’t be sleeping very much on this expedition, we can tell you – he’s travelling around from town to town – we wonder if Viagra – did it really COME from Niagra – well there’s only one letter different, that can’t be a coincidence, surely. After a couple of cheeky ones it does sound like he’s urging us to buy some Viagra. Strange, plenty strange.

APRIL IN PARIS

Location: Another beard scratcher, this one – Paris, Texas, or Paris, France? We can’t be sure, there’s no triangulation in the lyric. Couldn’t he mention the Seine or Champs Elysees? Then we’d know.

Still, it’s the strings of love, chestnuts in blossom, April. We hope, we really hope he don’t start playing conkers though, especially if his sweetheart is with him. Nowadays if you want to play conkers, you have to do it in goggles. Some boys we knew used to soak their conker in vinegar to make it extra hard. One swipe and ours would be decimated. All white and green bits and we were left holding a string looking foolish as it swayed from side to side. They could have Olympic Conkers. That would catch on! No more stupid than Disco dancing horses.

LONDON BY NIGHT

Location: London. It’s night. Not very clever – magic abroad in the air? The streets turn to Gold? Has he actually been there? No – we’re joshing, we love that Waterloo Sunset as much as the next man.

London by night sounds a tiny bit like ‘Springtime For Germany’ out of the Mel Brooks film – but it’s not bad nonetheless – it does, as we hint above, offer a bit of a romanticised picture, though – but again, we’ve heard the same from Madness, The Kinks and Squeeze, so what do we know?

BRAZIL

Location: Brazil, old Brazil mind you..

Big band? Where’s that magical samba sound, though? Now you’re talking – we feel like going to Rio after all the brilliant Olympic Games – fantastic big band on this track – are you enjoying it as much as us?

BLUE HAWAII

Location: Some islands in the Indian Ocean which are very very blue indeed.

Hawaii Five O with Jack Lord. That was a good programme. ‘Book ‘Em Danno’ and ‘Murder One’. Also we remember Elvis did a film there, too – but what of the music, Drunken Vinylers, what of that? It’s those lush strings, soaring up, up and away – the night being heavenly – so presumably no gangsters around needed to be booked for murder one. ‘There should be love’ croons Old Blue Eyes, ‘For the moon is on the sea – the night is young and so are we.’ I wonder what he’s after the smooth silver tongued devil?

IT’S NICE TO GO TRAV’LING

Location: Paris, London and Rome – but mainly home – then Madison Avenue, The Hudson River and a camel trip to Iraq of all places – well these were innocent times. Watch out for those gay muchachas – the man’s obsessed. Light the home fire, get my slippers and burn the passport.

Here we have the moral of the record – it’s so nice to travel, but it’s nice to come home. It’s quite the life to play gypsy but your heart starts singing when you’re home. A wonderfully warm big brass sound and we like the humorous monologue at the end. Light that home fire and put your slippers on, gang!

We’d like to finish by recommending this excellent vinyl. It neatly divides itself into big band swing and lushly produced romantic numbers all held together by that theme or concept of taking a musical trip around the world. And don’t forget that splash of comedy colour! We have had a splendid time tonight – and so must you!

BUT….Have we learnt ANYTHING tonight?

ANYTHING AT ALL?

No not really, nothing about the human condition except the URGE to travel, relax, drink and make whoopee all night long. Maybe some backgammon.

Well it’s nice to go travelling. We think that on reflection, The Olympic Games was a journey that, albeit briefly, lifted this nation from the gloomy times we’ve experienced these last five years. But now it’s gone and the gloom descends like fog over the San Francisco River.

What are we going to do? Did you cry when Andy Murray lifted that Gold Medal? We did. And what of Mo Farah? What of him? Did your local landlady press her bosom against YOU and threaten to spank you? Did she? We feel that in four years time, when all this is over it would be nice to travel to Rio and soak up some of that culture, feel the Gold once again, and drink some exotic booze on the Copacabana.

So we think we will travel to Rio. It’s only a whimsical notion, but there you go.