This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1029.
BILL BERRY: 1-800-Colonoscopy
Yeah, songs about unpleasant and/or invasive medical procedures are rarely as catchy as this. (Though, to be fair, I might prefer to undergo a colonoscopy rather than listen to, say, "Never Been To Me" by Charlene.) From the splendid John Wicks tribute album For The Record, Bill Berry's take on "1-800-Colonoscopy" just might be my favorite new track of 2020, which is fitting for a year that's been such a massive pain in the ass so far.
SHAUN CASSIDY: Hey Deanie
Teen idolatry is part of pop music, as it should be. The Beatles were as much teen idols as Bobby Sherman was a bit later on, or as any subsequent poster lads from The Bay City Rollers through whatever contemporary pretty face I'm too old to know about.
Shaun Cassidy should be held in higher regard among power pop fans. Like his half-brother David Cassidy, our Shaun could sing; the fact that both Cassidys became 16 magazine boy scout pinups via TV exposure (in The Partridge Family and The Hardy Boys respectively) doesn't change the fact of their God-given talent. Shaun himself wrote a terrific teen idol anthem called "Teen Dream," a delightful ditty basically thrown away as the B-side of his hit (but less interesting) cover of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe In Magic." And Shaun had a way with Eric Carmen songs, as evidenced by his renditions of Carmen's "That's Rock 'n' Roll" and "Hey Deanie." Carmen's own versions of these songs were fine, better than fine. But Cassidy brought them both closer to a power pop ideal than Carmen was interested in doing at the time.
Yeah, songs about unpleasant and/or invasive medical procedures are rarely as catchy as this. (Though, to be fair, I might prefer to undergo a colonoscopy rather than listen to, say, "Never Been To Me" by Charlene.) From the splendid John Wicks tribute album For The Record, Bill Berry's take on "1-800-Colonoscopy" just might be my favorite new track of 2020, which is fitting for a year that's been such a massive pain in the ass so far.
SHAUN CASSIDY: Hey Deanie
Teen idolatry is part of pop music, as it should be. The Beatles were as much teen idols as Bobby Sherman was a bit later on, or as any subsequent poster lads from The Bay City Rollers through whatever contemporary pretty face I'm too old to know about.
Shaun Cassidy should be held in higher regard among power pop fans. Like his half-brother David Cassidy, our Shaun could sing; the fact that both Cassidys became 16 magazine boy scout pinups via TV exposure (in The Partridge Family and The Hardy Boys respectively) doesn't change the fact of their God-given talent. Shaun himself wrote a terrific teen idol anthem called "Teen Dream," a delightful ditty basically thrown away as the B-side of his hit (but less interesting) cover of The Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe In Magic." And Shaun had a way with Eric Carmen songs, as evidenced by his renditions of Carmen's "That's Rock 'n' Roll" and "Hey Deanie." Carmen's own versions of these songs were fine, better than fine. But Cassidy brought them both closer to a power pop ideal than Carmen was interested in doing at the time.
THE CLICK BEETLES: If Not Now Then When?
Okay, the fix is in here. The Click Beetles' auteur Dan Pavelich operates Pop-A-Looza, the pop culture website that runs one of my Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) posts every Friday. Dan and I have been online pals for years, so of course I'm going to plug his latest project.
BUT! The thing is, my taste in friends is pretty damned good. I can't sing or play, so I surround myself with those who can, and I tell everyone else about how great they are. I didn't become a pundit or a radio show host to promote mediocrity; I wanna spread the Gospel of what's cool.
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio listeners heard "If Not Now Then When?" last year, when it was a fan-favorite track on the essential compilation Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. The song was a hit, and one of our most-played tracks in 2019. Now, it joins a fistful of other minty-fresh Click Beetles treasures on the combo's brand-new album Pop Fossil. Yep, we're gonna play it. Yeah, we're gonna hype it. For sure, we're gonna say you oughtta buy it already. Radio's job is to sell records. That's what friends are for.
BUT! The thing is, my taste in friends is pretty damned good. I can't sing or play, so I surround myself with those who can, and I tell everyone else about how great they are. I didn't become a pundit or a radio show host to promote mediocrity; I wanna spread the Gospel of what's cool.
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio listeners heard "If Not Now Then When?" last year, when it was a fan-favorite track on the essential compilation Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. The song was a hit, and one of our most-played tracks in 2019. Now, it joins a fistful of other minty-fresh Click Beetles treasures on the combo's brand-new album Pop Fossil. Yep, we're gonna play it. Yeah, we're gonna hype it. For sure, we're gonna say you oughtta buy it already. Radio's job is to sell records. That's what friends are for.
DEEP PURPLE: Highway Star
I associate Deep Purple with my cousin Mark. Mark's about a year younger than me, and he grew up on the opposite coast. But most summers during the '60s and '70s, we met in the middle, at our grandparents' house in Southwest Missouri. We were like brothers, young co-conspirators in the pursuit of spark. We read comic books, went fishing, watched TV, collaborated on comedy bits. And, in the mid '70s, we listened to music.
The music in question was all Mark's. I loved music as much as he did, but my music was mostly on the radio, from Badfinger to various former Beatles. Mark, on the other hand, had cassettes, and a cassette player. We listened to Mark's Deep Purple cassettes, Burn and Machine Head.
This was...1974, maybe? That sounds right. I was 14, Mark was 13. That would have been the year of the Wonder Woman TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby, and Melvin Purvis: G-Man with Dale Robertson, both of which we saw in reruns that summer. We also saw Billy Jack, either at the local movie theater in Aurora or at the mall in Springfield. We had begun the summer visiting our other mutual cousins in Pensacola, then traveled with our combined families to Aurora from there. We stopped to spend the night at a Ramada Inn in Memphis the same night that the FBI was also there, pouncing on a suspect. Mark and I went to get Coca-Colas out of the vending machine shortly before those law enforcement hijinks ensued, and we were trailed back to our rooms by a federale.
Good times.
The only Deep Purple song I knew was "Smoke On The Water." I may have also known the earlier, Beatley hit "Hush," and it's possible "Woman From Tokyo" had crossed into my sovereign airspace via Syracuse's WOLF-AM. But I got a crash course in the Purple for the remainder of Mark's stay in Missouri in '74, hooking me on tracks like "What's Goin' On Here," "Might Just Take Your Life," "'A' 200," and the title song from Burn, and "Smoke On The Water" and "Highway Star" from Machine Head. We rocked. ROCKED, I say!
"Highway Star" remains the one song I most associate with that summer. We also used that cassette machine to make our own comedy tape, a simulated broadcast of an imaginary radio station called KLOD. Mark's idea, but I approved of it immediately. Teen co-conspirators. Cousins. Brothers. Friends.
Yeah, it's a wild hurricane
All right
Hold tight
I'm a highway star!
I associate Deep Purple with my cousin Mark. Mark's about a year younger than me, and he grew up on the opposite coast. But most summers during the '60s and '70s, we met in the middle, at our grandparents' house in Southwest Missouri. We were like brothers, young co-conspirators in the pursuit of spark. We read comic books, went fishing, watched TV, collaborated on comedy bits. And, in the mid '70s, we listened to music.
The music in question was all Mark's. I loved music as much as he did, but my music was mostly on the radio, from Badfinger to various former Beatles. Mark, on the other hand, had cassettes, and a cassette player. We listened to Mark's Deep Purple cassettes, Burn and Machine Head.
This was...1974, maybe? That sounds right. I was 14, Mark was 13. That would have been the year of the Wonder Woman TV movie starring Cathy Lee Crosby, and Melvin Purvis: G-Man with Dale Robertson, both of which we saw in reruns that summer. We also saw Billy Jack, either at the local movie theater in Aurora or at the mall in Springfield. We had begun the summer visiting our other mutual cousins in Pensacola, then traveled with our combined families to Aurora from there. We stopped to spend the night at a Ramada Inn in Memphis the same night that the FBI was also there, pouncing on a suspect. Mark and I went to get Coca-Colas out of the vending machine shortly before those law enforcement hijinks ensued, and we were trailed back to our rooms by a federale.
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| For dramatic purposes, the FBI agent at the Memphis Ramada is played by Cathy Lee Crosby. |
The only Deep Purple song I knew was "Smoke On The Water." I may have also known the earlier, Beatley hit "Hush," and it's possible "Woman From Tokyo" had crossed into my sovereign airspace via Syracuse's WOLF-AM. But I got a crash course in the Purple for the remainder of Mark's stay in Missouri in '74, hooking me on tracks like "What's Goin' On Here," "Might Just Take Your Life," "'A' 200," and the title song from Burn, and "Smoke On The Water" and "Highway Star" from Machine Head. We rocked. ROCKED, I say!
"Highway Star" remains the one song I most associate with that summer. We also used that cassette machine to make our own comedy tape, a simulated broadcast of an imaginary radio station called KLOD. Mark's idea, but I approved of it immediately. Teen co-conspirators. Cousins. Brothers. Friends.
Yeah, it's a wild hurricane
All right
Hold tight
I'm a highway star!
THE KATYDIDS: The Boy Who's Never Found
Remembering that Nick Lowe produced the British group The Katydids for their eponymous debut album in 1990, I mistakenly credited ol' Basher with likewise tending to the ceremonial twiddling of the knobs on their second and final album, 1991's Shangri-La. But no! Shangri-La was produced by Ray Shulman, and it includes my very favorite Katydids track, the atmospherically wallopin' "The Boy Who's Never Found." Sorry, Basher!
PRINCE: When Doves Cry
By the time 2016 sealed its sinister reputation by taking Prince away from us in April, we'd already been playing "When Doves Cry" with some frequency, and it probably would have made our year-end countdown of TIRnRR's most-played tracks in '16 even without the additional reflexive airplay that comes when we mourn another of our musical heroes. "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man" really became my go-to Prince track for the remainder of that year, but "When Doves Cry" was the one already getting significant burn in the happier days when Prince was still one of our greatest living rock stars.
I became a Prince fan right about the same time as much of the rest of the pop world did, with "Little Red Corvette" and "1999." The 1999 album was released in late '82, but the "Little Red Corvette" single turned the world purple in '83. I saw the video for "Little Red Corvette" on MTV, and wished I could look as cool as Prince. I loved Purple Rain, and managed to see Prince & the Revolution with guest Sheila E on that tour in '84. I thought Prince's "4 The Tears In Your Eyes" was the most interesting track on the We Are The World charity compilation (though I also liked Bruce Springsteen's "Trapped" on that album; the rest, not so much).
My Prince fandom was casual after that, but I recognized the talent, and I was in awe of his Super Bowl Half-Time performance in 2007. When I eventually delved into his back catalog, "When You Were Mine" ultimately emerged as my top Prince track. But it's like The Beatles, or The Rolling Stones, Ramones, et al. You don't have to stick with just one.
DIANA ROSS & THE SUPREMES: Love Child
Although The Supremes' chapter in my eventual book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) deals with "You Keep Me Hangin' On" rather than "Love Child, the entry's introductory paragraph applies here as well:
The Supremes are among the most popular recording acts of all time. They were certainly among the biggest of the '60s, and possibly the biggest on Motown at the time, which was a pretty big deal itself. The Supremes were stars....
I'm not sure if my favorite Supremes track is "Stop! In The Name Of Love," "Love Child," or "You Keep Me Hangin' On," but they're all contenders. A love Supreme.
SHOES: Tomorrow Night
I don't think that this fantastic song was my introduction the music of Shoes--I think I succumbed to raves in the pop press and bought the Black Vinyl Shoes LP before I'd actually heard anything by Shoes--but "Tomorrow Night" is my favorite. It's a permanent fixture on my all-time Hot 100 for decades, and it earns a berth in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
In the late '70s, power pop was a niche genre that did not wish to be a niche genre. It wanted fame, fortune. It wanted action. It for damned sure wanted the girl, right now. If not tonight, then tomorrow night...
..."Tomorrow Night" is nearly textbook power pop, a pretty ditty that combines yearning and lust, its façade suggesting an equal measure of the two, but really looking for a steamy tomorrow-night stand. What the track lacks in explosiveness á la The Who or Raspberries is more than compensated by its confidence and posture, the music leaning forward with single-minded precision. It's catchy and aggressive, its dreamy, breathy vocals piloting a rockin' sound with one Beatle boot perched in the British Invasion and one ragged Converse stepping on a back-breakin' crack in the New Wave of post-punk rock 'n' roll....
I favor the original Bomp! Records single version, though Shoes' subsequent (and also excellent) re-recording of the song for their 1979 Present Tense album was the first version I heard. And I heard it on the radio, where it belongs.
THE STONE PONEYS: Different Drum
It tickles me how I still occasionally run into folks who are amazed or amused that Michael Nesmith of The Monkees wrote "Different Drum," the 1967 Stone Poneys hit that introduced that group's lead singer Linda Ronstadt to the world at large. On the "Two Many Girls" episode of The Monkees' TV series, Nesmith even performs a brief version of the song as a parody of a bumbling folk singer, Billy Roy Hodstetter. (That particular episode is otherwise notable for TV censors' decision to blur actress Kelly Jean Peters' cleavage, lest American youth be, I dunno, too busy gawking to put anybody down.)
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| Cheer up, Kelly Jean! Oh what can censors mean to an unblurred believer...? |
Ronstadt herself is dismissive of "Different Drum," associating the song with her memory of its recording and her unhappiness with the process. But it's a wonderful, wonderful pop song, and no one has yet matched her rendition of it. No, not even Billy Roy Hodstetter. And not even Nesmith, whose own version was rootsier and perhaps more authentic in its approach, but not as striking. Nesmith wrote it; he wrote a lot of great songs, and performed the definitive versions of many of them. But "Different Drum?" Linda Ronstadt owns that one.
THE VOGUES: Five O'Clock World
Best rockin' pop yodel ever. You can have your Focus and their "Hocus Pocus" if ya gotta, but I'm stickin' with The Vogues and "Five O'Clock World."
"Five O'Clock World" was released in 1965, pop music's greatest year, but I don't recall hearing it until one afternoon in late 1977. I was in my dorm room, early in the first semester of my freshman year at college, listening to the Brockport campus radio station WBSU. It was a particularly revelatory radio-listening session, as it introduced me not only to The Vogues, but also to The Flamin' Groovies, The Jam, and "Lies" by The Knickerbockers. It's no wonder I love radio so much. And I hold radio to that standard, still demanding sounds that will turn me on like the sound of The Vogues, Groovies, Jam, and Knickerbockers got me going more than forty years ago. Too much to ask for? No. No, it is not. Radio could do it if it tried.
"Five O'Clock World" has remained one of my favorite songs. It does not have a chapter in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Because I want the book to reflect a larger dynamic than just my fave raves, I am deliberately omitting coverage of some all-time personal Tops O' The Pops like "Five O'Clock World," The Animals' "It's My Life," The Plimsouls' "A Million Miles Away," and The Yardbirds' "Heart Full Of Soul" (among others) just to make that point. Doesn't mean I love those songs any less. Our pop obsessions are infinite. A book can't cover 'em all.
But radio should.
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| Radio to the rescue! |
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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.
Volume 1: download
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
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio: CD or download
Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 134 essays about 134 tracks, 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).
Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 134 essays about 134 tracks, 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).
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