Frank Sinatra
"The Capitol Years"
(1990)

By LAURA MILLER Sinatra captured a place in my heart just as rock and roll suffered a precipitous -- and permanent -- fall from that perch. A friend popped a quarter into the jukebox in a Mexican restaurant, punched in "Witchcraft" and it was all over. Although Sinatra has enjoyed a recent hipster vogue due to the kitsch-crazed retro-lounge trend, people still ask me, "How can you like that guy? He's an obnoxious, boorish mafioso." I say, "Yup. I don't like him." They look puzzled. I don't have a crush on Sinatra. I wouldn't want to have dinner with him, or sit next to him on an airplane, or even stand in line with him at the DMV. He probably is a Bad Person, but I don't care. I don't have to. That's the difference between Sinatra and rock and roll, a difference I relish. Rock music is so tiresomely overdetermined, to use an academic buzzword. In the early punk scene where I cut my musical teeth -- and in most rock cultures -- the bands you like and albums you own are statements about you, your integrity, your status in the pecking order of cool. Endless and utterly inane debates -- about who's legitimately "alternative," who's sold out, what different artists "stand for" by virtue of their outfits or lyrics or publicity photos or relationships to their record companies -- rage on with the fury that can only be generated by the deeply trivial. Sometimes just buying a record takes on the import of signing a manifesto. For all the rebellious attitude they cop, rock people, to my jaundiced eye, still define their identities like the most docile of capitalism's drones: by niceties of consumption. But to me, Sinatra is not an icon, not an ideology, not a way of life -- he's just a voice. And what a voice: golden and soaring with a species of old-fashioned, breezy self-assurance that makes me laugh and cheers me up no matter how glum my mood. I prefer the Capitol years and the Nelson Riddle arrangements. Never one for the compulsive collecting of some record buffs, I find that this CD set -- three delectable silver slices of pure pop nirvana -- is all I need to own. The songs, written by the likes of Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart, never pretend to be more than what they are: floating soap bubbles of delight. Try to grab hold of them and they disappear in a perfumed mist. Rock and roll is supposed to be about liberation, but however much I might like some of it as music, it still comes with too much baggage. It was Sinatra I played at top volume as I drove 98 across the floor of Death Valley last year, hollering along tunelessly and finally, blissfully, free. SALON | June 6, 1996

Download a clip (627k) of "Come Fly With Me"
from "The Capitol Years"

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