Although 10 Songs for 3/24/2020 already drew from what was then a fake playlist for a TIRnRR Isolation Edition, the fact that we've now actually done that show for real means it's time to dive back into that original selection o' tunes for 9 more songs (plus one repeat) from TIRnRR # 1019.NEIL DIAMOND: Solitary Man
When I was in my mid twenties, managing a record store in Buffalo, people would occasionally tell me that I looked like Neil Diamond. I never saw the resemblance at all. But my hair was long, parted just so, and I guess that was enough to persuade a few mostly older customers (and, believe it or not, my mother) that I reminded them a little bit of the guy who sang those boring love songs on the radio.
It was not a cool comparison for a rock 'n' roller to hear in 1985 or '86.
I don't remember whether or not I had any real appreciation of Neil Diamond at the time. I detested his '80s fare, "Love On The Rocks" and "Hello Again," "America," "Heartlight." I was an avowed pop fan, but I didn't view that stuff as pop like I envisioned pop; this was strictly middle-of-the-road, mellow. It was old people's music. I still don't have any affection for it. But some of Diamond's older records, from the '60s into the early '70s, were flippin' fantastic. If I didn't realize it when people were saying I looked like a Diamond, an understanding and embrace of classic Neil Diamond would come to me before long.
I mean, I definitely knew and adored the songs Diamond wrote for The Monkees, the hits "I'm A Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," the cherished LP track "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)," and--my favorite--the then-obscure rarity "Love To Love." I must have known and dug at least some of Diamond's uptempo solo hits, like "Cherry, Cherry." But I don't remember for sure. By the end of the '80s, though, an offhand remark by my Goldmine editor Jeff Tamarkin drew my attention to Diamond's first solo hit, "Solitary Man" from 1966.
It was an incongruous connection. Jeff reviewed a record by an Australian group called Ups And Downs, whose 1986 album Sleepless included a cover of "Solitary Man." Jeff's review mentioned that Ups And Downs' cover of that song should make the then-reunited Monkees wish they'd thought of doing their own cover. And somehow, that reference clicked in my mind. I bought Sleepless, agreed that it was pretty good, but now really wanted to hear Micky Dolenz sing it instead. I am so suggestible....
Still, that weird progression was enough to turn me into a huge fan of Neil Diamond's original rendition of "Solitary Man," which has retained its permanent berth on my All-Time Hot 100 ever since. My book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will include a Neil Diamond chapter, though its focus will be on "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" instead of "Solitary Man," because--let's face it!--I'm fickle, and anyway, an infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" may be the greatest, but "Solitary Man" is still my favorite.
And I swear: I looked nothing like Neil Diamond. People were weird in the '80s.
PAUL McCARTNEY: Hope Of Deliverance
My friend Rich Firestone recently mentioned this Paul McCartney track as a record that didn't mean much to him when it was released, but which now seems relevant and revelatory. If memory serves, I think I did like this okay at the time, even if I never thought it was a rival to, like, "Maybe I'm Amazed," nor even to "My Brave Face." I now consider it one of my 25 favorite post-Beatles McCartney tracks:
"Much of McCartney's best work is buoyed by optimism. When it will be right, I don't know/What it will be like, I don't know/We live in hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us. This track from 1993's Off The Ground delivers that promise, that hope, as well as anything you can conjure."
MR. ENCRYPTO: The Last Time [a cappella]
An important track in This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio's history, and in the history of the group Pop Co-Op. We had been playing tracks off the debut Mr. Encrypto CD Hero And Villain, and we'd been corresponding with Bruce Gordon. Who is Bruce Gordon? Well, let's just say that, like Clark Kent and Superman, you'll never see both Mr. Encrypto and Bruce Gordon in the same place at the same time. Anyway. In 2003 or thereabouts, Bruce sent Dana a mix of the Hero And Villain track "The Last Time" with just the vocals, effectively an a cappella version. A tease of that mix actually closes Hero And Villain. Dana played this mix on the show, and my jaw dropped. It was so great! And then I cursed, because I had just sent the master tracks for what would become our first This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation CD off to Jeremy Morris at JAM Recordings; I would have added "The Last Time [a cappella]" to This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 1 right then and there, but it was too late to make that kind of change. We did wind up using the track on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2 in 2006, and it's one of the defining tracks in this show's long, mutant saga.
We love this track. We play this track. Somewhere in subsequent years, intrepid TIRnRR listener Joel Tinnel told Spongetones bassist Steve Stoeckel, "Steve. Listen to this," and played him this vocals-only mix of "The Last Time." Joel and Steve had started working together. Before long, they would also be working with Bruce. The addition of drummer Stacy Carson completed the line-up of this new group, Pop Co-Op. The Last Time? No. It led to The First Time, and all that's followed since.
JOHNNY NASH: I Can See Clearly Now
This is an edited excerpt from the Johnny Nash chapter in my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
In eighth grade, I came as close as I ever would to rejoining the mainstream. Sixth grade was awful. Seventh grade was worse. But eighth grade...! Eighth grade was an opportunity. I could see it so clearly...
...The radio was my truest friend. The radio played pop music both old and new, The Beatles and The Raspberries, Chuck Berry and Slade, Stealers Wheel, The O'Jays, The Hollies, The Kinks, Elton John, The Temptations, Sweet. Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" seemed the song most emblematic of my hopes, my cautious optimism, my musical equivalent of an eye on the prize. The prize was elusive; I could indeed see all obstacles in my way, and all of the bad feelings didn't disappear, in spite of the song's promise. But I still believed in its blue skies. A bright sunshiny day? Why the hell not? Begone, dark clouds; I'm looking straight ahead.
I'm still hoping you'll be able to read that entire chapter, and the book itself, someday. When? That answer's not clear.
MARYKATE O'NEIL: I'm Ready For My Luck To Turn Around
My current theme song. Not in any real oh-woe-is-me! sense--I'm as okay as anyone right now, given all that's going on around us--but in a more general sense of...restlessness? This feeling predates the COVID-19 crisis, and is of far less importance or urgency; it's my disappointment that my Greatest Record Ever Made! book hasn't gotten anywhere yet. I quip (to myself) that the book isn't dead, it's in a coma. It may yet recover, find a home, and thrive. Or it may die. Until then, it's in limbo. I'm ready for that to turn around.
PINK FLOYD: Wish You Were Here
Amidst all the free time we supposedly have on our hands during this period of sequestration and self-quarantine, I'm somehow getting less writing done than I managed when I was working. You would think I would have at least finished off a first complete draft of my book by now, but I haven't even worked on it much. The Pink Floyd chapter is one of several in need of full attention, and I just haven't been able to focus on getting it done. I will. For all the doubts I've expressed, I very much believe in this book, and I'm still convinced that The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is a worthwhile endeavor, and potentially one hell of a good book. It's on me to see it through to the extent that I can, and to determine a path forward from that point.
I was not a Pink Floyd fan, ever. As a punk and power popper in the late '70s and early '80s, the Floyd was as much The Enemy as anything out there, as much as The Eagles, and more than disco. I would not open my mind to even the possibility of me ever developing any interest in the drug-addled twaddle of Pink Floyd. I made an exception for some early Syd Barrett-era Floyd as I became aware of it, but otherwise? An emphatic no. I didn't need no education. When some friends dropped a needle on "Comfortably Numb" at a party, I felt like clawing my freakin' skin off rather than listen to it for the seeming eternity of its more than six-minute running time. SIX MINUTES...?! That's like FOUR Ramones songs...!
I'm not sure when or why this changed. I think it started when Barrett passed in 2006, and Dana and I decided to spotlight our Syd on that week's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. The spotlight included your usual early Floyd go-to tracks like "See Emily Play" and "Arnold Layne," and some solo Syd, but also two later Floyd tracks that were directly inspired by Barrett: "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" and "Wish You Were Here."
I was suddenly swept away by both of these. For the first time in my life, I was interested in this brooding, self-aware head music, stuff I had previously rejected as humorless, pompous. I didn't become a fan immediately, and I'm still enough of a Pink Floyd dilettante that a single best-of CD is all the Floyd I'm ever likely to need. But I do need it. Even "Another Brick In The Wall." Even "Comfortably Numb." And especially "Wish You Were Here."
THE SMITHEREENS: Cigarette
The sheer ache of this song gets me every time. "Cigarette" is a track from The Smithereens' 1986 album Especially For You, and it's among the saddest break-up songs I've ever heard. Except that it's not even really a break-up song; it's a song about a parting of the ways, as a love that should have lasted years instead burns to gray ash way like one last lonely cigarette.
Cigarette, cigarette
Burning up time
Cigarette, cigarette
Watch the smoke climb
Cigarette, cigarette
Wasting away
Just like this cigarette
Our time is running down
Only one hour til you're leaving this town
The heartbreak within "Cigarette" borders on existential. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, maybe I'm feeling more than the song means to convey, but man, I just sense this...sadness at the periphery of my consciousness whenever it plays. It reminds me of life’s endless labyrinth of choices made, options declined, tears deciding which way they should flow, romance and happiness turning to smoke, turning to memory. It's a story I've seen, a story I've heard, at least second-hand, at least in imagination. In movies. In pop songs. One heart wants one thing. Another heart wants something else entirely.
Went to the corner store
Bought us another pack
Held my arm around you as we headed back
I tried to change your mind
Didn't want you to go
I want you more, it seems, than you could ever know
Devastating. Love and cigarettes. That stuff will kill you.
Smoked my last cigarette
Sat in bed for a while
Thought of your face and it brought me a smile
TALKING HEADS: Life During Wartime
In 1977, "punk rock" was considered a broad category of outside-the-box rock 'n' roll, and its expansive parameters embraced not just the angry clatter of The Sex Pistols and The Damned, but also the varied sounds of Blondie, Television, and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. It included Talking Heads.
A band that I did not like at the time. I bought their "Uh-Oh, Love Comes To Town" 45 blind, because in '77 sometimes the only way to discover new music was to take the leap, buy a damned record, and hope for the best. I would not have described this particular result as "the best." I hated the record, which reminded me more of KC and the Sunshine Band than it recalled anything remotely Ramones-like. Pfui. I liked "Psycho Killer" a little better, but it didn't prevent me from slagging Talkingb Heads in my first-published rock journalism piece, "Groovin' (Like The Hip Folks Do)." Man, that title sounds close to something else I know....
My opinion evolved. "Love Goes To Building On Fire" was the first Talking Heads track that I ever loved, as my expectation and understanding shifted away from a preconceived notion of punk's lines of demarcation. With Talking Heads' 1979 album Fear Of Music, the lyrics This ain't no party/This ain't no disco/This ain't no foolin' around/This ain't no Mudd Club/No CBGB's/I ain't got time for that now drew me to the song "Life During Wartime." 1980's "Once In A Lifetime" sealed the deal, and I enjoyed most of the group's popular favorites throughout the '80s.
TRANSLATOR: Everywhere That I'm Not
Yep, also from The Greatest Record Ever Made (Volume 1):
Remembrance of things past can spin within the grooves of pop songs both consoling and cautionary, unfading pictures of a heart not quite gone, mourning tributes to a cherished someone no longer present. By choice? By fate? Distance or mortality? Any of these, all of these? A shrug, a nod, a teardrop falling by itself. Moving on does not yet seem to be an option. Our own desperation to reclaim what's lost carries an inherent danger of reducing us to ash in a scorched place where love used to grow...
...The record is haunting, a visceral reminder of that awful sensation, that scornful laugh we think we hear as happiness evades us. But its thrill, its splendor is...well, maybe not quite cathartic, but almost. It's oddly reassuring, comforting in a way that seems unlikely but nonetheless...is. And still it remains a punch in the goddamned gut. You're in New York, but I'm not. You're in Tokyo, but I'm not. You're in Nova Scotia, but I'm not. I thought I felt your touch, in my car, but no such luck. Impossible. Yet something makes us remember and believe, if only for a moment.
On American radio in the early '80s, UB40's hit pop-reggae cover of Neil Diamond's "Red Red Wine" started out at the left of the dial. The single was released in 1983, and it made its way to alternative stations like Buffalo's great WBNY-FM, which was where I first heard it, and first fell in love with it. The members of UB40 have said that they didn't even know it was a Neil Diamond song, since they knew it from a previous reggae cover by Tony Tribe.
As the single entered the Billboard Hot 100 at the beginning of 1984, it migrated from college radio stations to CHR, rubbing its formerly-alternative shoulders with the likes of Kenny Loggins and Phil Collins. Still a great record, in any context. Another round? Cheers, then.
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| For dramatic purposes, the role of a woman drinking a glass of red red wine shall be played by actress Jennifer Connelly |
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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.
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