This was intended as a chapter in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume1), but is not a part of the book's current plan., That could change, but in the mean time....
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
Produced by Emitt Rhodes and Harvey Bruce
Single from the album Emitt Rhodes, ABC-Dunhill Records, 1970
In the early '90s, I put together a proposal for a book I wanted to write about power pop. I had a little bit of name recognition in pop circles at the time, but the project never had much of a chance of becoming real, and my prospective publisher told me to go all the way...home.
One evening, when the book project was still a potential thing, I was chatting with Flashcubes bassist Gary Frenay between sets at an acoustic gig in Skaneateles, NY. In the conversation, Gary mentioned Emitt Rhodes; I replied that I didn't recognize that name. Gary looked at me silently for a beat, and then said, "And you want to write a book about power pop...?"
Point taken.
But then Gary mentioned Rhodes' former group the Merry-Go-Round, and I was a bit more familiar with them (which probably saved me from being exiled from Flashcubes fandom right then and there). I knew two Merry-Go-Round tracks--"Live" (which I knew first via an ace cover by the Bangles) and "You're A Very Lovely Woman"--from their inclusion on various-artists '60s compilations in Rhino Records' Nuggets series in the '80s. Still, I had never heard any of Rhodes' solo work.
I had to fix that.
I don't recall the order in which I assembled my belated Emitt Rhodes library. If memory serves, I picked up The American Dream, Mirror, and Farewell To Paradise at various used record shops over the next year or two. I'm not sure if I ever owned a vinyl copy of the 1970 eponymous debut album, though I eventually picked up a CD reissue. I definitely bought one of my Rhodes LP acquisitions at a store in Virginia Beach, during the same idyllic vacation when I first heard Material Issue's "Kim The Waitress" on the radio. By the end of the decade, I had assembled a decent Emitt Rhodes stash, including a beat-up vinyl Merry-Go-Round best-of and Varese Sarabande's Emitt Rhodes career anthology CD Listen, Listen. And by then, I certainly understood why Gary Frenay would question the credentials of a pop pundit who didn't know Emitt Rhodes.
But there are still a lot of people who don't know this music. Rhodes never breached the boundary of Billboard's Top 40; the Merry-Go-Round's "Live" died at # 63, and Rhodes' classic "Fresh As A Daisy" only made it as high as # 54. Both should be well-known, well-loved staples of American radio. They should not be obscurities relegated to the left of the dial and the fringes of the internet. One wishes the world at large had followed Gary Frenay's lead in appreciating Emitt Rhodes. Emitt Rhodes left us in 2020, and the world seems not as fresh as it should be.
In 1997, Rhino Records hired me to write the liner notes for the 1990s volume in its Power Pop Classics anthology series Poptopia! I saw the list of tracks the label wanted to license for each of Poptopia!'s three decade-specific volumes, and I know the Rhino folks wanted "Fresh As A Daisy" for the 1970s disc.
It was not to be.
Well if you come from Heaven
You know that that's okay
Just as long as you're here to help me
It doesn't matter how long you stay
We wish you could have stayed a little longer, Emitt.
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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.
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 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio: CD or download
I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.
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