10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. The lists are usually dominated by songs played on the previous Sunday 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 # 1107.
THE KINKS: Days
As many of you know, I lost my Mom a week ago today. It was not unexpected, which doesn't make it any less sad. She was still with us when we prerecorded Sunday's show, but the certainty of her imminent passing influenced several of the song selections.
When my Dad died in 2012, I included lyrics from the Kinks' song "Days" as part of the eulogy I gave at his funeral. It's one of my favorite songs, but the shift in its specific meaning for me has made me reluctant to listen to it much over the last...jeez, almost a decade. Yeah, time is the enemy.
But as I prepared to say goodbye to Mom, it felt imperative to open this week's show with "Days." Because we are grateful for what we've had: those endless days, those sacred days. We bless the light. Thank you for the days.
THE BEATLES: Two Of Us
Let It Be was one of the first Beatles LPs I ever owned, a Christmas gift from my parents in...1975? Yeah, that should be right. It was bundled in its giftwrap with Introducing The Beatles, unintentionally presenting their own Beatles Alpha-Omega, with the first U.S. album and the last U.S. album. I was 15, about three weeks shy of my 16th birthday, and although I was absolutely enthralled by the Beatles, I was still early in the process of learning much of their music. The only songs I knew on Let It Be were the title track, "The Long And Winding Road," and "Get Back." Y'know...the hits. I don't think I even knew "Across The Universe" yet.
I've heard quite a bit more of the Beatles' music since then. I saw the Let It Be film not long thereafter, on a double bill with Magical Mystery Tour at the Hollywood Theater in Mattydale, NY. More recently, I've begun watching the fascinating three-part Get Back series on Disney +, but I've only found time to see Part 1 so far. On this week's show, Dana selected "Two Of Us" to follow my opening spin of "Days," and it seemed to fit my own mix of melancholy and acceptance. We're on our way home.
LIBRARIANS WITH HICKEYS: Listen, The Snow Is Falling
In a way, I feel bad that we've so gravitated toward Librarians With Hickeys' sublimely inviting cover of Yoko Ono's "Listen, The Snow Is Falling." It is, after all, just a B-side, the virtual flip of the group's new holiday digital single "Jingle Jangle Heart." The A-side's very good; we oughtta be playing that. But we keep coming back to the beautiful ache of "Listen, The Snow Is Falling." Beautiful ache? Yeah. The soundtrack to beautiful ache. Listen.
THE MONKEES: The Door Into Summer
On Friday, my wife and I were at my sister's house in North Syracuse--the house of my childhood, the house that used to belong to Mom and Dad--sitting in the kitchen with my sister and my daughter. I picked up my phone, and let out a gasp as I learned that Michael Nesmith had died. Mortality is really, really overrated. Under normal circumstances, I would have grieved the loss of yet another of my rockin' pop heroes; as it was, my brain could only spare just enough bandwidth to acknowledge the grief before returning to the matter of Mom's funeral plans.
The Monkees' appearance on this week's show was a coincidence; we play the Monkees pretty frequently on TIRnRR. "The Door Into Summer" has long been among my favorite Monkees tracks, and I'm glad we did have a Nesmith lead vocal airing as the world mourned losing him. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio will attempt a proper tribute to Michael Nesmith when regular programming resumes in January.
THE RAMONES: I Don't Want To Grow Up
Nope. I don't see the point in doing that.
CHUCK BERRY: Promised Land
Mom was from Southwest Missouri, a child in the rural Midwest during the Great Depression. In my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), a chapter on Chuck Berry dovetails a discussion of his song "Promised Land" with the Westward movement of the fictional Tom Joad in The Grapes Of Wrath and with the similar California-bound trek of some of my own kin in that time frame:
"In John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath--perhaps the great American novel--the Joad family leaves its home in Oklahoma during the ruinous Dust Bowl devastation of the Great Depression, seeking a better life in California. Some of my mother's family, living in Southwest Missouri during that economic calamity, took a similar dusty blue road west, and encountered much of the same bitter resistance that the fictional Joads suffered. The folks from Oklahoma were described derisively as Okies; the Williamses and Stouts of Missouri were called Pukes, and God damn any self-righteous mutha who ever dared to refer to my family that way. The beleaguered persisted, hell-bent on reaching the promised land...
"...Swing low chariot, come down easy, taxi to the terminal zone. The road still leads to an everlasting somewhere. For the Okies. For the Pukes. For Tom Joad and for my kin, for the brown-eyed handsome men and the ladies who love them, the American dreamers, the poor boys, and the poor girls, too. Chuck Berry wrote a song for you. Chuck Berry wrote a song for all of us."
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE: Everybody Is A Star
If we are lucky, we will have the support of family who believes in us, parents who encourage us to achieve whatever measure of greatness the heavens allow. Everybody is a star. I was lucky to have parents who believed.
EYTAN MIRSKY: This Year's Gonna Be Our Year
It's not ironic. It's not snarky or self-deprecating, it's not too-cool-for-school, nor any other nonsense that could detract from the purity of its message. Eytan Mirsky's "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" is the audio equivalent of getting up in the morning, grabbing our coffee, and facing the day. Frequently, the day--the year--is gonna kick the livin' chicklets out of us. But we keep going. And we say to ourselves, "This year." We believe it in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and someday it may even be true. The year is what happens while we're busy making other plans. My Mom was proud of me. I intend to keep right on trying to justify that pride, in my own mind, year after year. Testify, Brother Eytan. Testify.
THE SPONGETONES: Carol Of The Guitars
THE MONKEES: Riu Chiu
Finally, postproduction this week allowed us to insert a quick word that "This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio remembers Michael Nesmith" before "The Door Into Summer" played, and to add the Monkees'"Riu Chiu" at the very, very end of the show. SPOILER ALERT: we'll hear this song again next week, on the Christmas show. It has not been a great month. But still, we look to the skies. We wish. And we believe.
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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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