LOVE LETTER TO RADIO Companion CD

On April 8th of this year, I hosted A Love Letter To Radio, a special edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio dedicated to songs that were introduced to me via radio. You can read the playlist and commentary, you can download the show itself, and you can even look behind the scenes at the many tracks I considered playing. Radio was important to me, and it was a pure delight to celebrate the joy of radio.

In prepping that show, I compiled a companion CD-R of tracks to supplement what I had packed in my CD case. These were mostly tracks I only had readily available as digital files; once that need was satisfied, I added some familiar tracks at the end to fill the disc out, five tracks which were integral parts of my life as a radio listener.

The resulting Love Letter To Radio CD-R made a very decent compilation for the car. My car is currently in the shop for some body work; the loaner vehicle doesn't have satellite radio, and I don't feel like bothering with my iPod. Instead, I've been going between SPARK! WSPJ-LP and Love Letter To Radio for the soundtrack of my commute. My little radio tribute CD-R holds up pretty well, so I thought I'd share its track listing here. These are the tracks I thought necessary to fortify the supply of other essential radio revelations (music by The Kinks, The Sex Pistols, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Shoes, Slade, The O'Jays, Material Issue, 5th Dimension, Alice Cooper, The Jackson Five, The Monkees, The Hollies, Cocktail Slippers, The Beatles, etc.) already packed in my trusty CD case:



GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE: White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)
R. DEAN TAYLOR: Indiana Wants Me
HÜSKER DÜ: Eight Miles High
RUFUS: Tell Me Something Good
SPANDAU BALLET: To Cut A Long Story Short
JOHNNY NASH: I Can See Clearly Now
THE ISLEY BROTHERS: Fight The Power, Pt. 1
THE DEAN BROTHERS: Sell My Misery
HARRY NILSSON: Daybreak
LET'S ACTIVE: Blue Line
THE SAINTS: Big Hits (On The Underground)
JUDY COLLINS: Both Sides Now
THE FOUR TOPS: Are You Man Enough?
FREDA PAYNE: Band Of Gold
OLIVIA NEWTON JOHN: If Not For You
TRIO: Da Da Da I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Aha Aha
DIRTY LOOKS: Let Go
THE GREG KIHN BAND: Roadrunner
MFSB: TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia)
THE SPORTS: Who Listens To The Radio
THE BAY CITY ROLLERS: Rock And Roll Love Letter
BADFINGER: Baby Blue
THE RAMONES: I Wanna Be Sedated
KISS: Shout It Out Loud



"White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" was one of the first (and one of the relatively few) hip-hop tracks I ever loved. I thought it was catchy as hell, and I further embraced it as (I thought) an anti-cocaine anthem. I have never used cocaine. There were certainly opportunities to ride the white-line highway; I wasn't interested. I didn't trust coke, at all, and I have never regretted abstaining from it. It took me years to realize that the deliberate double negative of this song's title might call into question its status as anti-drug.

"Indiana Wants Me" was an AM radio favorite, its cautionary tale of a life on the run ending in a police dragnet conjuring the stuff of pulp noir and soap opera alike. My interpretation of the story may differ from yours. In my head, the lyrics If a man ever needed dying, he did/No one had the right to say what he said about you dovetail with the subsequent line If just once more I could see you, our home, and our little baby and suggest that the killer's victim claimed to have had an affair with the fugitive singer's hinge-heeled wife; our doomed, singin' murderer is not the father of that little baby.



Given my preference for melody and general disdain for sludge, my This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio co-host Dana Bonn has expressed surprise that I like Hüsker Dü's noisy cover of The Byrds' "Eight Miles High," but their grungy remake soars, man. Even before I knew who Chaka Khan was, I thought her sultry vocals with Rufus on "Tell Me Something Good" were the sexiest thing on the radio in 1974, when I was 14. Spandau Ballet is best known in America for the lite-pop hit "True" (which I did like hearing on the radio of my '69 Impala in 1983), but it is nothing compared to the monster, spastic bop of "To Cut A Long Story Short."

Johnny Nash's sublime "I Can See Clearly Now" would likely make any short list of my all-time top AM radio songs. The radio edit of The Isley Brothers' "Fight The Power, Pt. 1" is the version I heard on WOLF-AM when I was in high school, and Harry Nilsson's "Daybreak," The Four Tops' Shaft In Africa soundtrack single "Are You Man Enough?," Olivia Newton John's winsome 'n' cute reading of Bashful Bob Dylan's "If Not For You," and MFSB's "TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia" were all likewise staples of my period of proud allegiance to WOLF. Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" dates back a little farther, but was still something I learned to love because radio taught me to love it.

WOLF also played local music, right alongside your Bee Gees and your Elton John. The sweet harmonies and easy-going country pop sound of The Dean Brothers' "Sell My Misery" combined to be as much a part of my happy radio experience as Paul McCartney & Wings or Sweet. If you didn't have the good fortune to be a teenage pop fan in Syracuse in the '70s, I wish your local radio hitmeister had played The Dean Brothers for you anyway. (I also wish WOLF's commitment to local groups had extended to the late '70s era of The Flashcubes, but disco had driven me away from The Big 15 by that time, so I guess it doesn't matter.)

By contrast, the freer form of FM radio found a way to give me more pop music, including "Blue Line" by Let's Active, "Big Hits (On The Underground)" by Australian punk progenitors The Saints, the nonsensical but irresistible "Da Da Da I Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Aha Aha Aha" by the German group Trio, and the transcendent statement of rockin' pop intent "Let Go" by Staten Island's phenomenal pop combo Dirty Looks. I was already listening to Jonathan Richman's AM radio anthem "Roadrunner" by the late '70s (courtesy of a swell import compilation LP called Geef Voor New Wave), but airplay of The Greg Kihn Band's raucous cover on Syracuse's then-new 95X made it one of my key go-to songs in the summer of '79. 



As much as AM radio always meant, there were songs I heard that didn't resonate fully for me until years later. Freda Payne's "Band Of Gold" was just another song on the radio to me in 1970--perfectly fine, I guess, but nothing that I would specifically hold on to, either. It was different when I heard it on the radio on July 1, 1979. One of my best friends had killed himself that morning; Freda's song has nothing to do with that. But my emotions were raw, I was angry, depressed, inconsolable. My friend Jay and I were traveling to Pulaski to drink a lot of beer and to see and hear The Flashcubes play really, really loud, to channel the sins of the world into something worth embracing. The radio played light fare from earlier in the decade, oldies not yet old enough to seem classic. One was "Only Yesterday" by The Carpenters, a square act my punk world had deemed uncool; another was "Band Of Gold." In my tears, in my vulnerability, in my teetering on an edge I couldn't fathom or describe, The Carpenters sounded good, sounded great. Freda Payne sounded amazing. I have loved both tracks ever since that evening, loved them without silly notions of guilty pleasures (a concept which does not and should not exist in pop music). My mind rewrote one of the lines: Now that you're gone, all that's left is a band. Save me, pop music. Save me, Flashcubes. Save me, radio.



The five songs that close the CD-R were the handful of emblematic radio songs I had to include just to make the compilation become the love letter to radio I needed it to be: The Sports asking "Who Listens To The Radio;" The Ramones expressing the need to be numbed in "I Wanna Be Sedated;" KISS declaring party time in "Shout It Out Loud;" The Bay City Rollers shrugging off empty teen idolatry to deliver a "Rock And Roll Love Letter." The finest of all of my beloved radio treasures remains "Baby Blue" by Badfinger. "Baby Blue" was the first song ever discussed in my ongoing series The Greatest Record Ever Made, and I'm dead certain that I will always regard it as the greatest single gift I ever received from the radio. I guess I got what I deserved. Here's to ya, radio. I loved you then; I love you still.



TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here. A digital download version (minus The Smithereens' track) is also available from Futureman Records.