This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1020.
THE BANDWAGON: Breakin' Down The Walls Of Heartache
Although an American act, soul group Johnny Johnson & the Bandwagon never scored a hit record in the U.S. But they had three Top Ten singles in England from 1968 to 1970, with "Breakin' Down The Walls Of Heartache," "Sweet Inspiration," and the bubblesoul classic "(Blame It) On The Pony Express." Their debut single "Breakin' Down The Walls Of Heartache" was credited to just The Bandwagon, and it rates its own chapter in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
Any record you ain't heard yet is a new record. And if you like it, you don't care if it's old or new, a cover or an original, performed by a tyro or a veteran, and you don't give a damn if it's rock or soul or power pop or country or whatever label a pundit like me affixes to it. You like it. You dig what you wanna dig. And you have a new record to love...
..."Breakin' Down The Walls Of Heartache" was The Bandwagon's first single, a bouncy slice of soulful pop, roughly contemporary (and comparable) to the irresistible sway of The Foundations' classic hits hits "Baby, Now That I've Found You" and "Build Me Up, Buttercup." Johnson's lead vocals promise deliverance for the broken and forsaken, a vow from a self-described "carpenter of love and affection" strong enough to rescue and redeem the most battered of hearts. The song was a hit in England; I can't understand why it didn't break down the walls of radio playlists to become an international smash.
As much as I dislike modern country music (and modern country radio), there was a time in the first half of the '90s when I was more open to some of it. Well, not to country radio--let's not get crazy. But I was a regular viewer of Crossroads, a Saturday night video showcase on CMT. This series was not the same as the still-running CMT Crossroads, which pairs a country act with a non-country act for joint performances. Crossroads was dedicated to an intersection between rock and country, and I liked a lot of what I saw and heard on that show: Sky Kings, Rosie Flores, Nanci Griffith (backed by The Crickets for a cover of Buddy Holly's "Well...All Right"), The Mavericks, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, and definitely "Bigger Than The Beatles" by Joe Diffie.
"Bigger Than The Beatles" was kinda hokey, a gawky little ditty about a bar-band rocker and a nightclub waitress in love, their love bigger than The Beatles, wild and free like The Rolling Stones, takes 'em higher than The Eagles, yeah yeah yeah. I liked it anyway. Diffie recently succumbed to complications from COVID-19 at the age of 61.
(Incidentally, a cursory search via the great 'n' powerful Google failed to net me any information on this Crossroads TV show that I'm positive I used to watch. Am I misremembering its title? Does anyone remember the show I'm talking about here?)
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: Stacy's Mom
The sudden passing of producer, performer, and songwriter Adam Schlesinger was a shock. I was never quite as much of a Fountains Of Wayne fan as most of my pop peers were, but I did like them and I certainly respected them. The group earned the devotion of their fanbase, and they deserved even wider fame and acclaim. "Stacy's Mom" was their only big hit, a Cars-influenced ode to horny teendom that wasn't necessarily their very best track, but it was indeed a great track nonetheless.
IVY: Edge Of The Ocean
The band Ivy--Dominique Durand, Andy Chase, and Adam Schlesinger--somehow flew completely under my radar. Wikipedia tells me that this dreamy track "Edge Of The Ocean" was used in the film Shallow Hal and the TV series Veronica Mars, but I have no real recollection of it before grabbing a couple of Ivy tracks last week in preparation for TIRnRR's Adam Schlesinger tribute. A fuller investigation of Ivy's work is now in order. This one's from Ivy's 2000 album Long Distance.
JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS: I Love Rock 'n' Roll
Joan Jett is about my age, and of course I had a crush on her. Duh. When The Runaways split at the end of the '70s, Jett seemed the one former member most likely to make some interesting new music; Lita Ford was more suited to hard rock, Sandy West, Jackie Fox, and Fox's replacement Vickie Blue didn't appear to be headed to solo careers, and although Cherie Currie (with her sister Marie Currie) did an appealingly basic cover of Rainbow's "Since You've Been Gone," none of them quite had Jett's potential. But Joan herself? Joan loved rock 'n' roll.
So she made rock 'n' roll. She kicked the bad habits that could have ended her career and her life, she kept playing, she kept recording, and she kept playing some more. Her eponymous 1980 debut album (later reissued as Bad Reputation) was one of my favorite records in that period. She had done some recording with former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, some of which appeared on that first album. But the B-side of her U.K. single cover of Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" remained non-LP. I confess I was a little disappointed with the Gore cover, but I played that B-side a lot. That was "I Love Rock 'n' Roll."
I had never heard the song before. It turned out that it was also a cover, a song written by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker, and previously a B-side for their group The Arrows. Man, I loved Jett's version. When she redid the song again as a single in 1982, I was initially disappointed in its comparative slickness, feeling it lacked the oomph of her Pistols-backed B-side. I came to embrace it in short order, and was positively thrilled when it topped the chart. Yep. A runaway success.
While (forgive the redundancy) I love "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," I've never felt it was Joan Jett's very best track. I'd put "Love Is Pain," "Bad Reputation" (and nearly all of that debut album), her take on Bruce Springsteen's "Light Of Day," "This Means War," "Eye To Eye," and several others above it. Similarly, when the Coronavirus claimed the song's co-author Alan Merrill last month, I recalled that it wasn't quite my favorite among his own catalog either.
ALAN MERRILL: Everyday All Night Stand
This is such a fantastic rockin' pop number. Merrill will always be remembered for "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," but "Everyday All Night Stand" is my top Merrill pick. Recorded in 1971 but originally unreleased, the track is contained on a 2012 collection called Snakes And Ladders.
THE MONKEES: The Door Into Summer
In the mid '70s, when I was starting to realize that there were more Monkees songs out there than the mere handful contained on my brother's copies of The Monkees and More Of The Monkees, one of the mystery tracks that specifically tantalized me was this beguiling wisp and its lyrics about echoes of a penny-whistle band and laughter from a distant caravan, seen and heard on reruns of the group's TV show. In 1977, I discovered it was called "The Door Into Summer," from a fabulous 1967 album called Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. Pisces remains one of my all-time Top 10 albums.
Davy Jones passed away in 2012, and we lost Peter Tork in 2019. Surviving Monkees Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz have a new live album, The Mike & Micky Show, and their in-concert rendition of "The Door Into Summer" is timeless, evocative, and irresistible. I really hope this band decides to make a new studio album.
SCREEN TEST: Just Like Me
There aren't a lot of upsides to sheltering in place. I mean, I have caught up on that huge stack of comic books that were waiting to be read--Lois Lane and Batman Universe were particularly kickass, by the way--but the only other good result is some artists having more time to create. Syracuse's preeminent pop trio Screen Test--Gary Frenay, Arty Lenin, and Tommy Allen--have put self-quarantine to use, working on a number of fab new recordings. "Just Like Me" dates back to the '80s, and it's one of my many favorite Frenay songs, but it's never been given a proper recording. It has now, it's wonderful, and it's available as a digital single from whatever familiar resource you employ to purchase your digital singles. I'm informed that more new Screen Test recordings are forthcoming. (And I put in a request for "The Boy From Shaker Heights," another fave rave that's never been given its due. Yet.)
TINTED WINDOWS: We Got Something
Here's your supergroup: the 2009 gathering of Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne, James Iha from Smashing Pumpkins, Bun E. Carlos from Cheap Trick, and Taylor Hanson from Hanson, their forces combined as Tinted Windows. Fountains Of Wayne, Smashing Pumpkins, Cheap Trick, and Hanson; it probably says something about my lack of indie cred that Smashing Pumpkins is the only act among these four that leave me cold. Tinted Windows' one self-titled album was loaded with shoulda-been hits that...er, didn't become hits. But they shoulda.
THE WONDERS: That Thing You Do!
The Greatest Record Ever Made! That's all I can say about that.
TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!
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, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.
The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:
Volume 1: download
Volume 3: download
Mahalo for sharing. :-)
ReplyDelete