OUR STORY SO FAR: As Syracuse Community Radio prepared to kill its webcast in December of 2006, fans and friends of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio donated thousands of dollars to save the show. This was sufficient scratch to fund a divorce from SCR, and to begin an independent webcast as Westcott Radio in 2007.
Eventually.
Music has power. It doesn't have unlimited power; it can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, and it can't heal the sick or balance your checkbook. It can't mend broken bones or broken hearts, and it can't persuade a soon-to-be-former soulmate to please, please give us one more chance. It can't buy us love. It can't even buy us lunch.
But music does have power. It can offer comfort, validation, inspiration. Catharsis. Companionship of a sort. Maybe it can't dry our tears, but it can grant us the freedom to weep without shame, to dance away the heartache, to twist and shout, to do the freakin' Freddie when only the Freddie will do. Music is there for us when we need it. I can't imagine a time when we don't need it.
The need to play music--to share music--lives and breathes at the core of any pop (or soul, or rock, or country, or jazz, or classical) radio show programmed by any music fan. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is but one of thousands of shows that have embraced that ideal. We are legion, even if each of us feels like a lone voice wailing Turn it UP! The power of music connects us. The beat goes on.
It took some time for TIRnRR to renew that beat after our split from Syracuse Community Radio. More than two months passed between our farewell to SCR on 1/7/2007 and our first Westcott Radio show on March 25th. We opened the Westcott Radio phase of our tenure with a spin of "Saying Goodbye" by The Muffs, offered as a bitter kiss-off to our former organization. Yeah, we were still pissed.
For all that, there was always a long-term goal of reconciling with SCR. We all shared the goal of bringing community radio to the Central New York broadcast airwaves, and there was an understanding that programming on Westcott Radio would some day migrate back to SCR once a viable FM signal was in place. But we needed to keep going in the mean time. Westcott Radio was the only way to do that.
2007 sucked. Continued technical issues and ever-present cash-flow woes often conspired to disable the webcast. We were radio-silent for nearly the entire month of September, coinciding with the time of my emergency back surgery, which took me out of commission for months. But Dana only had the chance to do a few shows without me before Westcott Radio was forced to go on another extended hiatus in late October. Those problems were not resolved until January. Other than whatever holiday music I played on my iPod, there was no Ninth Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show.
Westcott Radio and TIRnRR returned in January of 2008, and we all soldiered on to the best of our limited ability. This was our wilderness period, lasting until at least 2010. We were stuck in a rut, unable to expand our audience, barely able to hang in there at all. We were too stubborn to give up. And the power of the music wouldn't let us go.
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| A positive moment from June 11, 2009, L-R: John Wicks, Carl, Paul Collins, Dana |
And we wanted to do another TIRnRR compilation CD.
Jeremy Morris, whose JAM Recordings label had released the first two TIRnRR CDs in 2005 and 2006, had already declined to participate in any further sequels. It was a very amicable split, and we remain grateful for all Jeremy's done for the show, before, during, and after those CDs. Jeremy was an integral player in our fundraising, and we can't thank him enough.
That still left us in search of another label. Through whatever sequence of thingamabobs, we wound up talking with Ray Gianchetti at Kool Kat Musik, probably in 2011, maybe as late as 2012. And a deal was struck for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 3.
Ray had a hands-off approach, so this was the first collection compiled solely and entirely by Dana & Carl. Over the years since Volume 2, always holding out hope we'd get to do another one someday, we had quietly secured tracks from a number of artists, including Hawaii Mud Bombers, The Richards, and The Tearjerkers (with their classic "Syracuse Summer"). We contacted more friends to get all-time TIRnRR Fave Rave tracks by Mannix and Anny Celsi, plus assorted goodies from Eytan Mirsky, Blotto, Lisa Mychols, Michael Carpenter, Gary Frenay, and more. We prevailed upon The Catholic Girls (left off of Volume 2) to give us another chance. The collection was mastered at Sub Cat Studios in Syracuse--my first-ever visit to a recording studio!--and released by Kool Kat in 2013. My liner notes reflected on our journey so far, and I felt like we'd accomplished our best compilation to date.
I honestly didn't think we could ever top Volume 3, so I put aside thoughts of ever doing another one. But Ray Gianchetti thought the time was right for Volume 4, which Kool Kat released in 2017. Volume 4 was...God, it was magic. I've told its tale in great detail elsewhere, and there are also liner notes, of course. But the bottom line was that this was just something special, a rockin' pop compilation that flows like a great album. I am humbled to have been a part of it. If we never do anything else, I'm satisfied and proud that we did this.
We kissed and made up with Syracuse Community Radio a long time ago. We're still on the web, now at sparksyracuse.org, and also back on the air. ON THE AIR! And you can actually hear us in Syracuse, at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM. At our request, the first song ever played on WSPJ was "Sound Of The Radio" by Screen Test, the same song that had kicked off TIRnRR's first webcast in 2000. Continuity. We still have tech problems. We still have money problems. Both Dana and I have suffered the devastating loss of loved ones, and Dana is now a cancer survivor. But God damn it, 1000 shows later and counting, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl is somehow still here. And we're still The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet.
Is that the power of music? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's also the power of friendship, the power of belief, the power of radio. The joy of radio. In 2019, a number of performers who support whatever the hell it is we do grew frustrated with the unreliable frizziness of our hiccuping signal, and decided to do a TIRnRR benefit compilation, Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. We were touched beyond our ability to articulate. After all of these years--decades--This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio still has the best fans a little mutant radio show could ever want.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Music can be absolute, but its power doesn't corrupt; it redeems. It can be a shared experience, a solitary experience, something as unique or as universal as our needs dictate. The power is sublime. The power is ours.
And Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, we get to call on that power, and make it shine. Sight gags on the radio. The Greatest Record Ever Made. The American Beatles, Her Majesty's Ramones, our designated House Band The Kinks, and some unfamiliar but irresistible reminder that radio's job is to sell records. All of it, and more. Feel the power; it belongs to you, too.
And if we've told you once, we've told you a thousand times: this is what rock 'n' roll radio sounds like on a Sunday night in Syracuse each week. We're glad to have you with us. Together, we're boppin' the whole friggin' planet.
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| In the palatial TIRnRR studio with our pals Rich and Kathy Firestone |
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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.
(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)
Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).
(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)
Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).
See (hear) you Sunday!
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