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 is drawn exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1060.
THE CATHOLIC GIRLS: Someone New
I saw the video for The Catholic Girls' early '80s single "Boys Can Cry" on MTV, probably just once; I didn't have cable at the time, and just happened to catch it when I was staying at my parents' house for a visit. I liked the song, but it was my only exposure to the group until many years later.
Some time in (I think) the '90s, I picked up a used copy of Catholic Girls, the LP that gave the world "Boys Can Cry," and discovered that I liked its lead-off track "Someone New" even more than I liked "Boys Can Cry." I don't remember if I got the album in time to play a track on any of the pre-This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Dana & Carl radio shows 1992-95 or so. But The Catholic Girls certainly became a presence on TIRnRR. I began corresponding with the group's guitarist Gail Petersen around 1999 (when that debut album was reissued on CD), and we ran with it, and with their sublime 21st century recordings, too. They even let us use "Should Have Been Mine" (from their 2005 album Meet The Catholic Girls) on our 2013 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 3. Heaven, here we come!
And now, The Catholic Girls have a new two-CD archival set, Rock N' Roll School For Girls, which tethers together one disc of demos and alternate takes with a disc of The Best Of The Catholic Girls. Bless us. We played the demo version of "Someone New" on this week's show.
THE COASTERS: Yakety Yak
Is "Yakety Yak" by The Coasters the single best-ever song about the generation gap? Yes. Unequivocally. You can argue on behalf of The Who's "My Generation," but that track falls short of The Coasters' wiseass pinnacle. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" is a very close second, but even You can't use the car 'cause you didn't work a lick can't quite match Tell your hoodlum friends outside you ain't got time to take no ride. "Yakety Yak." Don't talk back.
(And, in a minor bit of pop culture serendipity, this week's playlist was settled and the show recorded prior to the Friday premiere of the new Marvel Comics TV show WandaVision on Disney+. The first episode of WandaVision makes specific and effective use of "Yakety Yak," and if we were doing live shows instead of prerecorded remote shows, the song's appearance on WandaVision would have probably influenced me to include it on our show, too. Happy coincidence.)
THE FLASHCUBES: No Promise
In January of 1978--43 years ago this month--The Flashcubes for the first time. Guitarists Paul Armstrong and Arty Lenin, bassist Gary Frenay, and drummer Tommy Allen created a Wall Of Noise that captured my attention at first pummel. They've been one of my all-time favorite groups ever since. My eventual book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) includes a chapter about The Flashcubes' most extraordinary shoulda-been-a-hit gem, "No Promise:"
The Flashcubes. Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse. I saw my first Flashcubes show in January of 1978. That night ranks with seeing The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night at the drive-in in 1964 and the first time I heard The Ramones' "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" in 1977 to form my Holy Trinity of rock 'n' roll epiphanies.Just like The Flashcubes are stars to me...
I grew up in a time when TV theme songs routinely entered the public consciousness. The catchy ditties that opened shows like Gilligan's Island, F Troop, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Patty Duke Show, and Car 54, Where Are You? weren't hit records in the usual sense, but within our shared pop culture they were nonetheless as big as any 45 spinning on the radio.
Many theme songs were sufficiently hook-laden to prompt release as a single, sometimes by the original artist and sometimes in cover versions, and sometimes to chart success. The Cowsills' swell cover of "Love American Style" wasn't a hit, but it should have been, and it remains a staple of their live act. The Ventures, Perry Como, Henry Mancini, and Johnny Rivers all made the Top 40 with their respective renditions of themes from Hawaii Five-0, Here Come The Brides, Peter Gunn, and Secret Agent Man. Television tunes continued to maintain a radio presence throughout the '70s and '80s. In June of 1995, The Rembrandts' "I'll Be There For You," the theme from the NBC sitcom Friends, was the # 1 song on radio the week my daughter was born. I thought that was appropriate, and pretty cool.
The campy 1966 Batman TV series had a seismic effect on me when I was six. No other television program could ever equal Batman's lasting impact on impressionable li'l me, creating a life-long interest in comic books and superheroes in general, and in the Caped Crusader specifically. I didn't understand that the show kinda poked fun at the character, because actor Adam West played the title role straight, and to perfection. As West said decades later in a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory: "I never had to say 'I'M BATMAN!' When I showed up, people knew who the hell I was...."
One evening in 2016, when I was chatting with actor/comic/voice artist/singer/swell person Tom Kenny, he told me about the time he introduced Neil Hefti to the great voice actor Gary Owens, which is a tough story to top in casual conversation. Best I could manage was, "I once got a phone call from Joey Ramone!" It's the only item on my standing-next-to-greatness resumé, so Tom politely let me have the imaginary win. Like I said: swell person.
THE KINKS: All Day And All Of The Night
It's important to note the significance of "All Day And All Of The Night" in the story of how I became a fan of The Kinks. "Lola" was the first Kinks song I ever knew. My sister's copy of The Live Kinks was the first Kinks album I ever saw. But "All Day And All Of The Night" was the first Kinks track I ever owned, contained on the 2-LP compilation History Of British Rock Vol. 2 I received as a Christmas present in 1976, less than a month prior to my 17th birthday. Essential. And loud! The track was also on my first Kinks LP, Kinks-Size, purchased early in '77. I've accumulated a few more Kinks tracks since then.
PAUL McCARTNEY: Another Day
A previous post about my all-time top 25 favorite post-Beatles Paul McCartney songs included "Another Day" in its roll of honor:
When your first band is the greatest rock 'n' roll group of all time...man, how do you follow that? Paul McCartney was about 28 years old when The Beatles rolled up their Long And Winding Road and filed it away. What now? 28 is an awfully early age to start your twilight years, to just do nothing, no matter how much money you've made. So McCartney re-invented himself. It wasn't a radical re-invention; he was still the Cute One who'd sung "Blackbird" and "Yesterday," the pop balladeer with a wink and a smile. But he was also the keen songwriter who'd chronicled a disintegrating love affair with such devastating precision in "For No One" on Revolver. The 1971 non-LP single "Another Day" is a spiritual descendant of "For No One," similarly telling a sad, so sad story of a lonely life yearning for meaning and connection.
MELANIE AND THE EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS: Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)
Why am I suddenly obsessed with this song? Part of the answer is its newly-minted availability to me: it was on a CD-R I received in December from Radio Deer Camp host Rich Firestone, and a spin of that rekindled my interest in a song I always loved. It also reminded me that I had a little crush on Melanie when I was a pre-teen, and it immersed me in a belated realization of how friggin' transcendent The Edwin Hawkins Singers are as they back up Ms. Safka on a simply incredible, transcendent recording. There's a great YouTube clip of them performing the song together on a TV show in The Netherlands, I will not deny my obsession, and the track is gonna be in my GREM! book. Lay down already.
POP CO-OP: You Don't Love Me Anymore
We love Pop Co-Op, as evidenced by how much airplay we eagerly gave to their two albums (so far), 2017's Four State Solution and 2020's Factory Settings. I have a lot of Pop Co-Op fave raves, but it occurs to me that "You Don't Love Me Anymore" is my fave among faves. The lads gave us use of the track for 2017's This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, and there's something about it that resonates. I know I'm generally an uptempo rockin' pop guy, but I'm also a sucker for songs of regret, songs that effectively convey the ache of love slipping away, chances slipping away. The Factory Settings track "Persistence Of Memory" has that ache in spades, and so does "You Don't Love Me Anymore." It's like Chad and Jeremy playing with The Smithereens, and--as another versatile pop group noted elsewhere--you know that can't be bad.
KID GULLIVER: Forget About Him
Wednesday at Noon Eastern. At long last.
STEVIE WONDER: Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours
That's this Wednesday at Noon. Time to make America good again.
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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
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.
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