Today's post is a tangent to my perhaps-imaginary/perhaps-eventual book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I had no problem filling the proposed GREM! book with what I think and hope are interesting chapters about 135 individual tracks. Tracks were selected and sequenced for the book's narrative flow, and there are a ton of other tracks worthy of equal consideration. The book's oft-repeated slogan applies: An infinitive number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns.
I finished writing the book at the beginning of this year. Since then, I've continued to do proofreads and tightening, and I've made it a little shorter than it was in January.
But even before I reduced the book from 175 songs to 135 songs, I already had a big, big stack of finished GREM! chapters that weren't going to be in Volume 1. Here's a list of songs for which I completed some sort of GREM! entry, but which will not be in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
ARTHUR ALEXANDER: Soldier Of Love
AMERICA: Sister Golden Hair
THE BEVIS FROND: He'd Be A Diamond
SOLOMON BURKE: Everybody Needs Somebody To Love
THE BYRDS: I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better
THE CLASH: Train In Vain
PAUL COLLINS/THE BREAKAWAYS: Walking Out On Love
ARTHUR CONLEY: Sweet Soul Music
THE CONTOURS: Do You Love Me
ALICE COOPER: School's Out
DEEP PURPLE: Highway Star
THE DIXIE CUPS: Iko Iko
THE EVERLY BROTHERS: Gone, Gone, Gone
THE FIVE STAIRSTEPS: O-o-h Child
THE JAM: That's Entertainment
RICK JAMES: Super Freak
THE LOVIN' SPOONFUL: Summer In The City
THE MC5: Kick Out The Jams
THE MUFFS: Saying Goodbye
THE MYNAH BIRDS: I Got You (In My Soul)
THE ONLY ONES: Another Girl, Another Planet
TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS: American Girl
GENE PITNEY: 24 Hours From Tulsa
SUZI QUATRO: I May Be Too Young
THE RUBINOOS: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
RUN DMC: Walk This Way
THE RUNAWAYS: Cherry Bomb
RONNIE SPECTOR AND THE E STREET BAND: Say Goodbye To Hollywood
VAN HALEN: Dance The Night Away
THE VELVELETTES: He Was Really Sayin' Somethin'
Some of these are more finished than others; the less-finished ones (Ray Charles, for example) would have still needed some tweaking before I deemed them acceptable for use in the book. Still, each of these exists in some sort of complete (if not quite final) draft. Many of these pieces were intended for inclusion in the GREM! book at some point, but many were not. One WILL appear in a non-GREM! book in July of 2023, as part of my first book. The GREM! book itself does not yet have an assured path to publication, but I'm working in it.
Some of these lost chapters may yet appear in an even-more-hypothetical This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2; if so, they will appear alongside some other chapters I haven't finished writing.
That's the very nature of the infinite. The story continues.
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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.
I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl
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