10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. The lists are usually dominated by songs played on the previous Sunday night's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. The idea was inspired by Don Valentine of the essential blog I Don't Hear A Single.
This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1272: THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO celebrates BLACK HISTORY MONTH.
ARTHUR CONLEY: Sweet Soul Music
As a confederacy of dunces seek to disavow the long-held tradition of recognizing February as Black History Month, I hereby declare this and every month from now on will be National Ridicule The Federal Confederacy Of Dunces Month. This will remain in effect until sanity returns and we consign the odious dunces to go bathing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Meanwhile, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio celebrates Black History Month right here, and for our opening theme we call on the services of Arthur Conley. Do you like good music? You're in the right place.
BIG MAMA THORNTON: Hound Dog
We open the show proper with a long-distance dedication, going out to a not-so-special someone. No names are necessary. Big Mama Thornton knows who you are...and she knows what you are.
DERRICK ANDERSON: Send Me Down A Sign
I think Derrick Anderson is best known as bassist for the Bangles, but he first entered this little mutant radio show's airspace with TIRnRR Fave Raves the Andersons! Yeah, we were playing the Andersons! from the get-go, and that's an absolutely hilarious in-joke. Trust me! It is!
We've also been big fans of Derrick's 2017 solo album A World Of My Own, and its breakout track "When I Was Your Man" accrued significant Dana & Carl spinnage. This week, we figured we'd dig a little deeper into the album for "Send Me Down A Sign," a track I don't think we've ever played previously. I tell ya, this world of Derrick Anderson's own sounds like a mighty fine place to be.
JOAN ARMATRADING: Eating The Bear
From a previous post:
Some days the bear will eat you. Some days you eat the bear. All due respect to the incredible Ms. Joan Armatrading, but there are days when I believe this even-handed ratio to be overly optimistic regarding our collective and individual odds of surviving wholesale consumption by ravenous ursines. I don't think the Ranger's gonna like this, Yogi.
"Eating The Bear" was (I think) the first Joan Armatrading track I knew, a cut from her 1981 album Walk Under Ladders. It's not the best-known track on that record; both "I'm Lucky" and "When I Get It Right" wound up on her Greatest Hits collection, while "Eating The Bear" remained native to the original album only. I was exposed to all three of those tracks in the same time frame, so I can't say for sure which one I heard first. But, whichever one was first to cross into my sovereign airspace, "Eating The Bear" was the one that had impact. Its impact came via the radio. Of course.
In 1981, I was a recent college graduate (State University College at Brockport Class of 1980), living in an apartment with my girlfriend (who was still completing her undergrad studies at Brockport), working at McDonald's, drinking beer, listening to my music. Brockport is a small village on the Erie Canal. It's located in Western New York, about 19 miles west of Rochester, and the city of Buffalo sprawls another 64 miles or so farther away. We could usually get radio stations from Buffalo and even from Toronto. Buffalo had a generic album-rock station called 97 Rock, a bland AOR outlet that usually wasn't of much interest to me. Sunday nights were the exception. That's when this cookie-cutter rock station transformed itself temporarily into something greater: A weekly showcase called 97 Power Rock.
97 Power Rock claimed a more adventurous format, programming new wave rock and other fare that was presumably edgier than the station's prerequisite diet of Loverboy and Journey. 97 Power Rock played the likes of The Teardrop Explodes, U2, Psychedelic Furs, Viva Beat, Joy Division, Spandau Ballet, the Vibrators, Mission of Burma, old school rock by Andy Fairweather Low, even reggae by Dillinger. It was sufficiently eclectic and vibrant to secure my loyalty.
Joan Armatrading's music was part of that. Walk Under Ladders had a little bit of a post-punk vibe, partially attributable to Steve Lillywhite's production plus Thomas Dolby's synthesizer work on the album. That perceived level of cool opened 97 Power Rock's playlist for entry, and Armatrading's own songs, singing, playing, and pure presence did the rest. Man, this sounded fantastic on the radio. It didn't quite move me to buy the album--I was still a few years away from grasping Armatrading's brilliance--but it got my attention. I heard the songs, and a radio ad for the album, all of which prompted me to scrawl Walk Under Ladders in my spiral notebook, on the long, long list of LPs I wanted to buy once I'd accumulated enough burger-flippin' cash to buy all of the albums I wanted.
"Eating The Bear" was the Armatrading track for me. In 1981, I'd never heard the phrase Some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you, so I had no idea whatsoever of the song's subject matter, no proper understanding of its stubborn fatalism, its determined swig from a half-empty glass that we'll refill if we survive, and smash in the face of any critter that says we won't. I just thought it sounded great, and it still sounds great.
For years, Armatrading's Greatest Hits was her sole representation in my music collection, and "Me Myself I" is discussed in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). "Eating The Bear" subsequently popped into my head again, and I snagged a CD of Walk Under Ladders, a wonderful album that I wish had made the transition from my notebook list to my record shelf forty-odd years ago.
Better late than never. Sometimes it takes a while, but radio gets the job done eventually. Bear necessities. Mind your manners there, Yogi. I ain't a-gonna be in no pic-a-nic basket. I'll keep you off my menu if you keep me off yours.
THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS: Time Has Come Today
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
RIHANNA: Shut Up And Drive
I remember hearing Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" in 2007, and not being especially taken with it. In 2008, the updated version of her Good Girl Gone Bad (Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded) landed into my consciousness via my then-teen daughter, whose interest in "Take A Bow" and "Disturbia" brought those songs to my attention as well. I was a little surprised to discover I liked them (especially "Disturbia"), but I did indeed like them.
I missed out on the track "Shut Up And Drive." I've heard it, but I never noticed it until a random search for playlist ideas brought me to it earlier this month. It was like a brand new song to me, and I loved it.
(How did I know I loved it? The fact that I played it on obsessive repeat would be a pretty clear clue to that.)
Wikipedia describes "Shut Up And Drive" as a new wave song--no, really!--based on "Blue Monday" by New Order. No offense to the mopey British guys, but I prefer it the way Rihanna did it.
RAY CHARLES: Hit The Road Jack
Yep. I direct this sentiment at the precise dunces to whom you would think I'd direct it.
GRANDMASTER AND MELLE MEL: White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)
From my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"...New Music Radio [WBNY-FM in Buffalo, a station to which I was religiously devoted in the '80s] included hip hop. Like Herman's Hermits, rap was part of the atmosphere, part of the flavor of WBNY. WBNY was my introduction to Run DMC (with 'Rockbox'), and it was my introduction to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. 'The Message.' Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge. Music journalists told us 'The Message' was the first big hip-hop track to ignore party-time bragging to focus instead on social commentary, to chronicle inner-city living in disadvantaged black neighborhoods. It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under. We didn't need to be told how powerful it sounded on the radio.
"The importance and impact of 'The Message' notwithstanding, 'White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)' meant more to me, then and now. It's more pop than 'The Message,' with its seductive rang-dang-diggety-dang-de-dang melody, propulsive bass, and Melle Mel's cry of 'BASS!,' the latter sucker-punching you when you realize it's meant as a deceptive homophone for 'base,' as in freebase cocaine...
"...'White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)' is a Melle Mel record; former cohorts Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel had parted company prior to 'White Lines,' but the record was credited to Grandmaster and Melle Mel in an attempt to capitalize on the familiar name and the previous success of 'The Message.' It is often referred to as a Grandmaster Flash record, and that's what I thought it was when I heard it on WBNY. Whatever and whomever, I couldn't hear it enough...."
CEELO GREEN: Forget You
Maybe not the first specific "F YOU!" that comes to mind in these troubling times. Though, come to think of it, it wasn't the first "F YOU!" that came to CeeLo Green's mind either. One of the marks of how great this is as a pure pop song is that the original "Fuck You" is incidental; it works just as well in FCC-friendly format. "Forget You" is perfectly radio-ready without the potty mouth, and perfectly pissed-off in any incarnation.
JAMES BROWN: Say It Loud--I'm Black And I'm Proud [Pt. 1]
There is much reason for pride. We celebrate it throughout the year. And we circle it on our calendar every February for Black History Month. Say it loud.
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My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.
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