Podcast: You Must Remember This (LS 79 · TOP 0.01% what is this?)
Episode: 2: Frank Sinatra in Outer Space
Pub date: 2014-04-16

Notes from The Listener:

In 1979, Frank Sinatra made an extraordinary three part album called Trilogy. The first section was called “Past” and featured many of his old hits; the second was “Present” and contained covers from the rock and roll music that had by this time largely supplanted his crooning; and the third was “Future”, a 40 minute original composition about death, regret and visiting outer space. This episode is a magnificent introduction to that final section, which is now mostly forgotten by music history, but at the time was a labour of love for Sinatra

Welcome to the second episode of You Must Remember This, the podcast devoted to exploring the secret and or/forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century. Today, we look back to 1979, when — while the music world was full of punk and post-disco coke rock, and the movie world was making the transition from the “New Hollywood” of the ’70s into the blockbuster age — Frank Sinatra recorded Trilogy: Past, Present and Future, a triple album with one disc each devoted to big band standards (“The Past”); covers from “the rock era” including Billy Joel and Beatles songs and also “Theme from New York, New York” (“The Present”); and, most amazingly, a 40 minute song cycle about life, love, death and visiting outer space (“The Future”). We’ll take a look at how and why “The Future” was made, and theorize as to why it’s fallen into the dustbin of pop cultural history.

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