FRANK, GIL, and FRIENDS: November 2023

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Friday, November 3, 2023

30th Anniversary Plans for "Frank, Gil, and Friends"

WFCS-FM’s Frank, Gil, & Friends Celebrates 30 Years On the Air

Sinatra-themed radio show continues to serve central Connecticut after three decades

Frank, Gil, & Friends, the weekly Frank Sinatra-themed radio show on Central Connecticut State University’s WFCS 107.7 The Edge, will commemorate 30 years on the air on Tuesday, December 12. During the show’s 8-10 a.m. slot, show founder and host Professor Gil Gigliotti (the titular “Gil”) of the English and World Languages Departments will give away custom anniversary buttons and celebrate with a cake in the Student Center.

The show debuted on December 17, 1993, and has been a station fixture in its current time slot since September 1999. Billing it as “not your father’s Sinatra radio program,” Gigliotti conceived Frank, Gil, & Friends during his second year at Central. With “The Edge” being an alternative radio station, he envisioned an alternative Sinatra show that eschewed oversaturated hits like “My Way” and “New York, New York” in favor of the less-played bits of the singer’s vast catalog. And he has gone to great lengths to play the many tribute albums, as well as songs of any genre that reference Sinatra—from country to heavy metal to hip-hop.

Aside from a six-month shutdown in 2020 due to campus closures at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program—whose tagline is “Quite frankly why you have ears”—has aired consistently. The December 12 episode will be its 1,333rd.

Guests to call in to or appear on the show over the years have included Frank Sinatra, Jr.; Michele Monro, daughter of Sinatra’s British counterpart Matt Monro; Will Friedwald, eminent Sinatra scholar; New York-based cabaret singers Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock; and Connecticut-based singer Rob Zappulla. Listeners tune in from 17 states as well as countries including India, Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the UK.

The cake-and-buttons celebration on the 12th is only one in a series of events honoring the milestone. From Tuesday, November 21, through December, Central’s Elihu Burritt Library will exhibit highlights from Gigliotti’s collection of Sinatra memorabilia. On December 7, Gigliotti will give a tour of the exhibit before dinner and a Sinatra lecture as part of the university’s Scholars for Life series. The official 30th-anniversary Frank, Gil, & Friends logo (featured on the buttons) will be revealed on December 5.

“I frequently say that Frank is everywhere,” says Gigliotti, a scholar and collector who has published three books on Sinatra-related subjects, regularly gives lectures on Sinatra, and has hosted film series featuring Sinatra and his contemporaries. “The goal of the show has always been to demonstrate why he still matters. WFCS is a great home for it, as it has been for all sorts of shows. Let’s do another 30.”

FRANK, GIL, and FRIENDS