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 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
- Thou shalt play both sides of the record in their entirety
- Thou shalt drink one can of Fosters or its alcohol equivalent per song
- Thou shalt record ramblings as they occur to thee for the duration of the running time
- Thou shalt edit out the swearing the next day
- Thou shalt not suffer a Blueberry user to live
- 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
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
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
SIDE ONE
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
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!
Location:Rendezvous also rhymes with Timbuktu County Down , New York , London
Town
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
ISLE OF CAPRI
Location: Capri ,
Italy
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.
Location: Vermont
the sixth least extensive and 2nd least populous state of the USA 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
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.
Location: A Pagoda, Burma ,
Rangoon and Suez
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
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
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 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.
Location: London Waterloo
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?
Location: Brazil ,
old Brazil
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.
Location: Paris , London and Rome – but
mainly home – then Madison Avenue, The Hudson River and a camel trip to Iraq
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
So we think
we will travel to Rio. It’s only a whimsical notion, but there you go.
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