10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. Given my intention to usually write these on Mondays, the lists are often dominated by songs played on the previous night's edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. The idea was inspired by Don Valentine of the essential blog I Don't Hear A Single.
This week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1061.
THE CRYSTALS: Then He Kissed Me
The death of Phil Spector prompted us to place a few of his productions throughout this week's show, including The Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me" and songs by The Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, The Beatles, George Harrison, John Lennon, and The Ramones. As I wrote in this week's playlist commentary, I'm ambivalent (at best) about honoring Spector; his work is legendary, and justifiably so, but his failings as a human being are difficult to ignore. And it's really tough to reconcile the joy of these perfect pop records with the fact that Spector was a convicted murderer.
A couple of The Crystals' hits--"He's A Rebel" and "He's Sure The Boy I Love," both in 1962--were actually recorded by The Blossoms (with their amazing lead singer Darlene Love) but credited to The Crystals because that was already a recognized brand name with two previous Top 20 hits ("There's No Other [Like My Baby]" and "Uptown"). The Crystals' LaLa Brooks sang lead on the 1963 hit "Then He Kissed Me."
KISS: Then She Kissed Me
Yes, of course The Crystals' original version of "Then She Kissed Me" remains definitive. It's a shining, shimmering prime example of producer Spector's fabled Wall Of Sound, and none of the many subsequent covers have matched it, nor even come close.
Yet I also retain my affection for this delicate, kinda clunky, but not-quite-bludgeoning take by KISS. It was an album track on the group's Love Gun in 1977, and a favorite of mine during my freshman year in college. It may or may not have been the first version of "Then She Kissed Me" I knew, but it was definitely the first version that mattered to me; my interest in Spector didn't really develop until a little bit later.
The members of KISS have been dismissive of this track, and I guess ya can't blame 'em. It's not terribly imaginative, it borders on the perfunctory, and it's certainly not The Crystals. I like it anyway. It has a unique and unexpected pop zip to it, elevating it in my mind nearly to the level of giddy, gaudy exuberance displayed in my favorite KISS track, "Shout It Out Loud."
THE NEW YORK DOLLS: Personality Crisis
With the recent death of guitarist Sylvain Sylvain, singer David Johansen is the last surviving member of the seminal (and great) '70s proto-punk combo The New York Dolls. Original drummer Billy Murcia died in 1972, before the group even got around to recording its debut album in '73. Guitarist Johnny Thunders, bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane, and drummer Jerry Nolan have already gone off in search of that great big Babylon in the sky.
Although I came late to the music of the Dolls, I became a big fan in short order. From my proposed (and possibly imaginary) book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), here are some excerpts from a chapter about The New York Dolls' enduring classic "Personality Crisis:"
"Blame The New York Dolls for KISS. Blame The New York Dolls for The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and all of '70s punk and whatever it led to. I guess we should blame the Dolls for '80s hair metal, and probably for Guns N' Roses, too. The New York Dolls bear at least a share of the responsibility for all of that.
God bless 'em. Maybe not for the hair metal, nor really for Guns N' Roses, and one's mileage may vary in the subject of KISS. But The Ramones? Pistols? Punk itself? Oh yeah. God bless The New York Dolls.
As a rockin' pop fan in the early-to-mid '70s, when I was in middle school and high school, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a lot of great stuff on AM radio in Syracuse. Sure, WOLF-AM and WNDR-AM played a lot of the same fantastic records that other stations were playing across the country, from Badfinger to The Isley Brothers to Alice Cooper, and many more. But a lot of records that didn't gain much traction elsewhere were AM hits in Syracuse, records like Slade's "Gudbuy T' Jane," Sweet's "Blockbuster," The Raspberries' "Tonight," and "Hoochie Koochie Lady" by Elf (with regional hero Ronnie James Dio). I didn't start listening to FM radio at all until around '76 and '77, when Utica's WOUR-FM started turning me on to Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, The Greg Kihn Band, The Rubinoos, and even The Sex Pistols. I had opportunities to hear some terrific records on the radio, where terrific records belong.
And The New York Dolls completely escaped my notice...
...'Personality Crisis' remains The New York Dolls' signature tune. It's trashy and messy, a puff of smeared mascara and loud guitars, a six-string catfight on high heels and just plain high, Eddie Cochran with lipstick, the British Invasion in fishnets, The Pretty Things, only prettier. Jerry Nolan pounds, Killer Kane plonks, Sylvain Sylvain plugs in and plays, while David Johansen preens and pouts, a prima ballerina on a spring afternoon. Johnny Thunders? God knows where his head was or what it was doing--one suspects he may not have known where his head was or what it was doing--but the result is riveting, out-of-body, a noise that couldn't possibly have been made anywhere amidst the green or gravel of Planet Earth. It's almost a parody of the strut of '70s rock, but it's either too self-aware to be accidental or too oblivious to be premeditated. In truth, it is both. Lookin' fine on television! A personality crisis indeed."
GEOFF PALMER AND LUCY ELLIS: I'll Never Fall In Love Again
I'm a sucker for a good cover. We've previously played Geoff Palmer and Lucy Ellis's cover of Kirsty MacColl/Tracey Ullman's "They Don't Know," and the duo returns to the playlist with this gorgeous take on Dionne Warwick's "I'll Never Fall In Love Again." Both tracks come from their 2020 release Your Face Is Weird, which also includes covers of John Prine's "In Spite Of Ourselves" and Sam Cooke's "Having A Party" alongside four originals. I remember hearing someone sing the Bacharach-David "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" on TV's The Art Linkletter Show when I was a kid in the '60s, and I remember Ms. Warwick. Right now, I like Geoff 'n' Lucy's version best.
SUZI QUATRO: Tear Me Apart
Singer and badass bassist Suzi Quatro was my top teen crush in the '70s. "Tear Me Apart" is my favorite Suzi Q song.
THE RAMONES: Rock 'n' Roll High School
From my book's chapter about The Ronettes' "Be My Baby:"
"Before his murder conviction, before pulling a gun on Dee Dee Ramone during the making of The Ramones' End Of The Century album, before producing John Lennon and Leonard Cohen, before overproducing The Beatles' Let It Be, before flying into a fury when Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep Mountain High" failed to become the massive hit it deserved to be...well, before any of that, Phil Spector was already a prick...."
The work lives on in spite of that. Of course. I'm sure I'll always enjoy playing these wonderful records. But it's important to acknowledge Spector's crime, and to continue acknowledging the fact that crime occurred. Jesus, his victim at least deserves that much.
With few exceptions, each episode of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl opens with snatches of a Spector production, The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" When I interviewed guitarist Johnny Ramone in 1994, Johnny recalled the torture of working with Phil Spector, and a key quote about that experience stays with me:
"He'd be nice to us, but he'd be so horrible to everyone around. And I don't care if he's being nice to me. I'm sure [Joey Ramone] is gonna feel different, he's like their idol, Joey and [Marky Ramone]. But if the person isn't a nice guy, I don't care if I liked his work. It doesn't mean anything. And if he's being nice to me but horrible to everybody else, still he's not a nice guy."
This week is the first time TIRnRR has ever played the Spector-produced version of The Ramones' "Rock 'n' Roll High School;" I prefer the Ed Stasium-produced version (which was also remixed by Spector for the Rock 'n' Roll High School soundtrack LP), and the Stasium version is what we've played on the show in the past. The Spector remake on End Of The Century is cluttered and too busy for my taste, but it's still great, too. This passage about End Of The Century appears in the GREM! book's chapter discussing "Do You Remember Rock 'n Roll Radio?":
"...By this point, legendary record producer Phil Spector viewed himself as The Ramones' anointed savior, and he wanted the chance to prove it. 'Do you want to make a good record,' he asked them, 'or do you wanna make a great one?' His resumé of 45 rpm success was impressive, his early '60s Wall of Sound production responsible for the Ronettes and Crystals hits that were integral parts of the AM pop world during the formative years of the young Ramones-to-be. A perfect match?
No. It was not a perfect match.
Sure, the Spector-produced End Of The Century would be The Ramones' highest-charting album (albeit still with no radio hits), but his painstaking, glossy technique diluted The Ramones' power rather than enhancing it. Joey and Phil got along well--it's been said that Spector really wanted to produce a Joey Ramone solo LP--while Johnny despised Spector, and Spector pulled a gun on Dee Dee during the making of the album. End Of The Century has its moments, but it is nowhere near the equal of the four Ramones albums that preceded it. Spector delivered the opposite of what he'd promised: with Spector at the helm, The Ramones had made a good album rather than a great one...."
THE RONETTES: Be My Baby
Also from The Ronettes' chapter in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"Was the late Hal Blaine pop music's all-time greatest drummer? Very possibly so. And the accolade doesn't come just because of the sheer volume of his body of work, though that certainly doesn't hurt his case; in our lives as pop fans, we've probably heard Blaine more often than we heard Ringo and Bernard Purdie combined. That's not exaggeration; that's just how much work Hal Blaine did on so many records we all know. [Furthermore,] Hal Blaine is responsible for the single most iconic drum intro in rockin' pop history, the majestic boom-boomboom-chuk-boom-boomboom-chuk of 'Be My Baby' by The Ronettes...
...'Be My Baby' didn't just have that iconic Hal Blaine intro. It had iconic vocals, iconic production, the iconic wall of sound. While pundits tend to overuse the word "iconic," if we can't call 'Be My Baby' iconic, what other song could possibly qualify instead?
It's too bad that Phil Spector, the man responsible for this iconic sound, was such an asshole...."
KELLEY RYAN: The Church Of Laundry
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio has been happily aboard the Kelley Ryan bandwagon since 2001, when Kelley (then recording under the boppin' dba astroPuppees) placed a track on Shoe Fetish, a fabulous tribute to the pop group Shoes. We began to correspond with Kelley, and astroPuppees' first TIRnRR spin was from Shoe Fetish, a cover of Shoes' "The Tube." Soon thereafter, we started playing a song called "Don't Be" (from astroPuppees' 1996 album You Win The Bride), which I recalled hearing in the 1997 TV movie Friends 'Til The End. Friends 'Til The End was a movie I originally wanted to see because our pals Cockeyed Ghost made a don't-BLINK! cameo appearance. And in the film, actress Shannen Doherty lip-syncs to a made-for-TV cover of astroPuppees' "Don't Be."
We've gone on to play many, many more astroPuppees and Kelley Ryan tracks many, many times over the course of these last two decades. We're pleased to continue playing Kelley's music, and we're delighted to serve up her new single "The Church Of Laundry" on this week's show. We're friends 'til the end.
AMII STEWART: Knock On Wood
I heard Ammi Stewart's 1979 hit "Knock On Wood" long before I heard Eddie Floyd's 1966 original, long before I even realized that Stewart's percolatin' disco hit was a cover of an older song. I would eventually come to love Floyd's durable soul nugget, but Stewart's "Knock On Wood" was among the first disco songs I was actively okay with hearing on the radio in '79.
IKE AND TINA TURNER: River Deep Mountain High
Phil Spector's tour de force. It should have been a chart-topper upon its release in 1966; some point to its disappointing sales in the U.S. (where it peaked at--choke!--a mere # 88 in Billboard's Hot 100) as the direct impetus for Spector's personal decline. I'm not necessarily convinced we can pin that all on a record underperforming expectations, even if it's a fantastic record like "River Deep Mountain High."
But maybe? I dunno. Forgetting about all of that for a second, "River Deep Mountain High" was certainly deserving of much greater immediate hit status. It's my favorite Ike and Tina Turner track--I was disappointed that Tina Turner didn't include it in her live set when I saw her in the late '80s--and it's one of my favorite Spector tracks. I love a lot of Phil Spector tracks, from The Teddy Bears' "To Known Him Is To Love Him" through "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?," The Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," Darlene Love's "Wait Til My Bobby Gets Home," more Crystals hits like "He's A Rebel," "Uptown," "Da Doo Ron Ron," and "He's Sure The Boy I Love," The Modern Folk Quartet, John, George, The Beatles, and hell yeah, A Christmas Gift For You.
Charles Manson was a frustrated musician and songwriter. O.J. Simpson was a celebrated athlete. The late Harlan Ellison pointed out that Hitler painted roses. Joe Meek. Gary Glitter. Michael Jackson. Bill Cosby. It's a long list of the famous and infamous. We celebrate the art. The artist may disappoint us.
Or worse.
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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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Volume 3: download
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Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 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). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.
