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.
For this week's epic July 4th blowout, we presented a countdown of TIRnRR's 55 all-time most played artists, with each artist's all-time # 1 most-played track. Thanks again to the mighty Fritz Van Leaven for programming the countdown. And in the spirit of the countdown, we'll have three editions of 10 Songs this week, celebrating our 30 most-played acts with their most-played songs. As befits a greatest-hits revue, most of the individual song entries have been seen before on this blog, with maybe a couple of previously-unreleased selections as needed.
You can read the first and second parts of this trilogy here and here respectively. This third and final of this week's three celebratory 10 Songs presents TIRnRR's 10 all-time most-played artists.
10. THE BEACH BOYS: Don't Worry Baby
When I was a teenager, I never would have predicted that the Beach Boys could ever become one of my favorite bands. Although I liked some of their '60s hits even then--"Good Vibrations," "Help Me Rhonda," "I Get Around," "Fun, Fun, Fun"--I could not or would not reconcile my perception of them as dorky and uncool with my own pursuit of hip. Although I would never actually be hip at any point in my life--let's not get crazy--I also couldn't accept the preposterous idea of the Beach Boys being anything other than fully four-cornered. Go be true to your own school, ya hopeless squares!
I was wrong. Totally, totally wrong. I learned in time. I got Endless Summer when I was still in high school. I got Pet Sounds in college, drawn in by "Sloop John B." If my embrace of punk and power pop--that's power pop, dig?--made me reluctant to accept the Beach Boys, I was also aware of their influence on my beloved Ramones. The owner of Main Street Records in my college town of Brockport vowed that he would make a Beach Boys fans out of me, just as I have said that I remain intent on making TIRnRR listeners into Flashcubes fans. That is one of the most consistently rewarding experiences we can have with the music we love: our ability to share that music with our friends.
Friends. 20/20. Smiley Smile. Wild Honey. I built my Beach Boys library in brief bursts of expanded interest, not quite there yet, but surfing in the right direction. In the late '80s, a library loan of the two-fer The Beach Boys Today!/Summer Days (And Summer Nights!) CD got through to me in a big way, and I went about scarfing up all of those Capitol Records two-fer reissues. When Pet Sounds came out on CD, I finally, belatedly realized its greatness. Many years later, I had an opportunity to witness Brian Wilson and his band perform Pet Sounds live.
In December of 1998, on the very first edition of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Dana played "Don't Worry Baby," and I followed it with "'Til I Die" from Surf's Up. I was about three weeks shy of my 39th birthday. My teen self wouldn't have recognized me. The Beatles. the Beach Boys. The Ramones and the Flashcubes, the Monkees and the Kinks and the Who, and more. The Bevis Frond. Big Star. Eytan Mirsky. So much music out there, so much to discover and embrace, from Stax to Not Lame, Motown, Futureman, Rhino, all around the world, all over the place. The countdown continues. The beat goes on.
Surf's up.
9. THE BEVIS FROND: Lights Are Changing
The Bevis Frond's "He'd Be A Diamond" is simply one of the sharpest, most affecting post-breakup chronicles you will ever find in a pop song. As an observer of the human condition, Nick Saloman (the Bevis himself) writes and sings with wry, weary understanding of this guy we all know (and have occasionally been), the schmuck who fell from grace because he screwed up, screwed around, or otherwise just thwarted his own best interests in scorched-earth fashion. No woman in her right mind would take that guy back again.
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| Dream on, schmuck--it ain't happening. |
The Who's Pete Townshend coined the phrase "power pop" in an interview in 1967, and Bomp!'s '78 power pop issue certainly regarded the Who as the definitive power pop band. During the early '70s, my primary exposure to the Who was via Tommy and Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy, the former getting AM radio airplay with "Pinball Wizard" and "See Me Feel Me," the latter an LP that my sister owned. I'm sure I heard at least the truncated single version of "Won't Get Fooled Again" from Who's Next, and the (to me) less interesting "Squeeze Box" a little later. I liked some of it, but I could not have been described as an active resident of Whoville. Hell, in 1975, I preferred Elton John's "Pinball Wizard" to the Who's, and I was mystified by the fact that some of my peers liked the Who (or worse, Led Zeppelin!) more than they liked the Beatles.
How did singer, songwriter, and dashing man about town Eytan Mirsky first learn about This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl? Damned if I remember. But somehow he did hear about us, thought we might be interested in playing his stuff on the radio, and then sent us a copy of his second album, 1999's Get Ready For Eytan! We've been playing him ever since.
We've had a number of Eytan favorites over the years, but there is something just remarkable and special about "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year," a track from Eytan's 2012 album Year Of The Mouse. Like Big Star's "The Ballad Of El Goodo" and the Zombies' "This Will Be Our Year," even the Beatles' "Getting Better," it evokes an optimism that may not have any discernible grounding in the real world, but which still feels palpable and immediate. Eytan's song is considerably less starry-eyed than these other worthies, but its determined sense of one-foot-forward, what-the-hell ultimately makes it more plausible. The song knows we're gonna get kicked in the teeth again, that our individual Lucys are gonna pull the freakin' football away from us gullible Charlie Browns again, that the house has the deck stacked against us again and again and again...and it knows we're gonna keep hitting back for as long as our fists can form. Maybe this year? Well...why the hell not?
As a true zealot, I keep mentioning my concept of The Greatest Record Ever Made! An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. When I first began to seriously contemplate trying to turn this concept into a book, I knew a chapter on Eytan Mirsky's "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" had to be in the book, and that it had to be employed in climactic fashion, something almost like a closing argument. In my eyes, the book would not make sense without that chapter near the end.
My book has been stuck in development, and COVID-19 has not helped its status. But I still believe in the project, and Eytan Mirsky's song is still at its core. This year? Next year? The year after that? I'll have my year yet. One foot forward. What the hell.
6. BIG STAR: September Gurls
I had never heard of Big Star prior to Bomp! magazine's epic power pop issue in 1978. To put my power pop timeline into perspective, lemme point out that this issue was published in between my first Flashcubes show and my first Ramones show, and it built upon my already-intense interest in the British Invasion and the Raspberries, linking it to the Ramones and (by inference) the Flashcubes, and hanging a convenient label upon it. Power pop? Awright. Where do I sign up?
"With that phrase, Alex Chilton turned even our seeming helplessness into art. A teenaged hitmaker with the Box Tops, a cult-pop legend with Big Star, and a fiercely (and frustratingly) independent solo artist, Alex Chilton was dismissive of his own legacy. But he was a brilliant songwriter, responsible in whole or in part for a handful of what I believe to be among the most affecting, beautiful pop songs ever done. With his Big Star partner Chris Bell, Chilton co-wrote 'The Ballad Of El Goodo,' the single most transcendent expression of triumphant hope that I am ever likely to hear; their song 'Thirteen' found the elusive words to articulate adolescence as no other song before or since. And Chilton's 'September Gurls,' perhaps the greatest record ever made, is with me every day of my life, its haunting mix of longing and possibility providing a constant reminder of the heart's struggle to speak its mind, and of the artist's ability to turn the struggle itself into unforgettable, eloquent elegance."
5. THE FLASHCUBES: No Promise
Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse. I am not fibbin' when I say that I have three favorite bands: the Beatles, the Ramones, and the Flashcubes. When I saw my first Flashcubes show in January of 1978, I knew that I had found something that would have a pervasive meaning to me throughout my life. I had just turned 18. But I knew. I knew.
4. THE KINKS: You Really Got Me
The Kinks have come to be known as TIRnRR's house band, perhaps for no real reason other than we all think it's cool to celebrate the splendor of the Kinks whenever possible. The Kinks remain the only act to ever take over an entire episode of our radio show; in fact, we've done two all-Kinks shows. God save the house band!
And, although I knew the Kinks from hearing "Lola" on the radio in the early '70s, my appreciation of Muswell Hill's finest manifested during my senior year in high school.
The American Beatles, the greatest American band of all time. And the Ramones are second only to the Beatles in terms of the sheer magnitude of impact their music had upon me. I read about them in Phonograph Record Magazine as a high school senior in 1977, and I was simultaneously frightened and intrigued by them well before hearing a note of their loud and fast sound. When I finally heard it later that year, my life changed. It's no coincidence that this radio show is named after a line in a Ramones song. If not for the Ramones' influence on us as young men and beardless youth, I doubt that Dana or I would have ever gotten around to a serious notion of being rockin' pop DJs.
Wait. "Serious?" Us...?! Well...yeah, to the extent that we are. I mean, we show up (whether in person or now virtually) every Sunday to do the show. Barring things that physically prevent us from carrying out our duties as The Best Three Hours Of Radio On the Whole Friggin' Planet, we rarely miss a week's show; if one of us ain't there, the other represents. That's a working play ethic derived from the piledriving example of the Ramones, who played, toured, recorded, fought, won, lost, suffered, died, transcended, and did. The Ramones just did. No time for second guesses. 1-2-3-4! Song. 1-2-3-4! Song. 1-2-3-4! Song. 1-2-3-4!So I pestered the jocks at my campus radio station for more punk (in its broader circa '77 parameters). Blondie. Television. The Dictators. Talking Heads. The Runaways. And--oh God, yes!!--the Ramones.
Hey-ho, let's go!
In '77, I was unashamed to like the Bay City Rollers--I'm still unashamed to like the Bay City Rollers--but I didn't pick up on the intentional similarity between the Rollers' familiar S! A! T-U-R! D-A-Y! NIGHT!! chant and the Ramones' own leather-clad call to arms until it was spelled out for me much later. Beneath the implied violence of the band's sonic assault, the Ramones' pop sense was steadfast and undeniable. I was about to become a fan. I had no idea just how much of a fan I was about to become.
1. THE BEATLES: Revolution
As pop fans, as rock 'n' roll fans, as fans of the joy of radio and all that it can be, Dana and I owe everything to the Beatles. There are, of course, many other essential influences, from both before and after John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr took that all-important left turn at Greenland. But none of it happens for us, not with any sort of similar intensity, without the moptopped music of the Beatles first prompting us to chant in enthusiastic accord, Yeah Yeah YEAH!
Sass, pizazz, and razzmatazz. Hooks and Harmony. A sense of deeper meaning, whether it's lodged in a simple love song about wanting to hold her hand, in a plea to help us if you can we're filling down, or in some tantalizing glimpse across the universe. I read the news today, oh boy. The connection may be illusory, but...no, it's not. It's one-sided--the artist creates, we absorb--yet no less palpable and vital than the sensory experience of everything around us: the sights, the sounds, the seasons, the warmth, the cold, the rain, the sun, the affection for people and things that went before. Nothing is real. That's real, too.
Imagine. What can be imagined can be experienced. That's why we have art. That's why we have dreams. That's why the dream isn't over.
I was born in 1960. I'm old enough to remember Beatlemania, even though I was only four years old in '64. For those of us who still can recall the contemporaneous spark of the Beatles, the British Invasion, the American reaction, the impact on everything going forward (including punk in the '70s), an impact extending well beyond music, there is only one word that adequately describes the legacy of the Beatles:
Revolution.
And you can count me in.
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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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