Sunday, November 7, 2010

Elvis Costello and Frank Sinatra

I enjoy On Point because the producers bring in so much diverse content, which is split between current, mainstream events and niche topics have great appeal to the average person.  The most recent shows have focused on U.S. elections and the economy, but have still managed to include these really interesting shows on Elvis Costello (interviewed live) and the younger years of Frank Sinatra.  I've only linked the two because they're both about musicians, and while I liked the shows I can't offer an opinion on them because they're weren't issue-related.  So I'll just recap the two and encourage others to have a listen.

Elvis Costello is married to Diana Krall, and they live in our district of West Vancouver.  Krall is known for walking with their small children around the seawall on the Pacific, and probably because she's not as famous as Costello and feels more comfortable doing so.  She's also a Vanouver Island native and likely just wants the kids to enjoy the things she grew up with.  We think the same way, and my wife regularly takes our 4-year old down to Eagle Harbour beach to see what the ocean washed up and to look for wildlife like eagles and sea lions.  You can see my pics of us going crab fishing, which brings us right into contact with the same and lets our son actually hold and touch animals like Dungenness crabs and star fish that climb into our trap. 

I've never seen Costello hanging out in our village, but I've heard that when he does he's a little aloof.  I guess that when you've had people grabbing at you since the late 1970s you become conditioned to appreciate your independence. An Aussie friend of mine from Hong Kong spent the evening with Costello in a Wan Chai bar and didn't even know who he was at first. He said Costello was chatting to him around midnight, ordered up Champagne until morning, during which my friend clued in that he was with a huge star.  He was a great, regular guy and that's how I like to imagine him in real life.

Costello's new album (a "double LP" as he said) is targeted at Wall Street, its bankers and its misdeeds.  The show featured some clips, as well as Costello live with his guitar in the studio for an entire song.  They spoke of the current events which Costello is interested in, but it was mostly an hour with an unassuming rock/folk star who was happy to talk about a range of personal topics.  I'll buy the "double LP" now and fully expect that Costello's angst is holding up well.  I remember his famous SNL appearance from 1977 very well, for which he was banned by Lorne Michaels, who ultimately relented. I Googled this and found an interesting article on all celebrities banned from SNL.

The show on Sinatra was different in that it focused on his earliest years and not the later period of which we are all too familiar.  Author James Kaplan was interviewed to discuss his latest work entitled "Frank: The Voice" which details his boyhood in New Jersey up to his Oscar win in "From Here To Eternity." I'm a Sinatra fan, but not an enthusiast, because I grew up in Wisconsin and as a teen of the 1970s we were mainly fed a classic rock diet. I became aware of Sinatra as a university student in Madison and through the years have come into contact with his music.  He was already an icon when I was a kid and my knowledge is limited to the Vegas era and the stereotyped version of Sinatra most famously played on SNL by (Canadian from my and Gretzky's hometown of Brantford, Ontario) Phil Hartman

Many of us forget how insanely famous Sinatra was back in the late 1930s and 1940s prior to his crash and rebirth in the 1950s.  In his early days he was as ubiquitous as Mick Jagger, Elvis and Bono, and was about as controversial as a star could be back then.  I hadn't know any of this prior to the show, and it was a great 40 minutes as I pedalled in the dark along the Pacific on Marine Drive.  I'll check the local library for the book because it sounds to be a page turner.