10 SONGS: 11/23/2022

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 # 1156. This week's show is available as a podcast.

LIBRARIANS WITH HICKEYS: I Better Get Home

This sublime song (and current single) from Librarians With Hickeys' recent album Handclaps & Tambourines has already established itself as a TIRnRR Fave Rave. There's a new video to go with it, and we endorse the video, the song, and the album with all the celebratory HEY!s we can muster.

We are broken. You can see that graffiti scrawled near a heart on a wall, as depicted in the video and in the cover graphic for the single. The group's Ray Carmen sits atop that crumbling wall, looking upon the words, perhaps contemplating the melancholy they express.

It suits the song. Sometimes it suits my mood, too. This Thanksgiving week, it seems a suitable choice to open our show.

HEY! Let's play it again next week! With our best thoughts of home in mind, the holidays won't even know what hit them.

THE TEMPTATIONS: Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are)

While we don't necessarily believe that Little Steven Van Zandt stole TIRnRR's format to create Underground Garage--well, Dana believes it, but I'm not sure--the similarities are certainly there. Given the fact that TIRnRR does predate Underground Garage, I'm not ashamed to admit when we do the turnabout-is-fair-play bit and nick an idea from one of the many fine shows on the SiriusXM Underground Garage channel. I'm a subscriber. More great radio shows mean more great radio.

I wish I'd made specific note of which fab Underground Garage jock played the Temptations' "Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are)" last week. I think it was either Michael Des Barres or Palmyra Delran, but I'm not testifying in either case. Whoever it was, thank you Mr./Ms. DJ! Your airplay of this wonderful Tempts tune prompted me to dig the track out of my own CD library for TIRnRR programming purposes. We are one!

But, uh...make no mistake: Little Steven still owes us a beer.

THE COCKTAIL SLIPPERS: St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Hey, speakin' of Little Steven, and speaking of melancholy, please welcome back to the TIRnRR stage: the Cocktail Slippers! Little Steven himself wrote this one, and it earns a defiantly tear-stained spot in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):

"Van Zandt's lyrics here imply a lovers' drama playing out in rapidly elapsing time. Was it adventure, was it fear, or sanctuary? Modesty Blaze's voice is tinged with both regret and resignation as she sings; behind her and with her, her band of sisters seems hellbent on holding an Irish wake for broken hearts. Across the calendar pages that fly by with cruel indifference--Thanksgiving night, Christmas morning, New Year's Eve--a love that can't even evolve from pencil to ink careens toward its inevitable erasure come the 14th of February. Now even your carrier pigeons have been picked off by the vultures/There's only one thing left for you to confess.... The song flies to its foregone conclusion on a conjugal bed of the most bittersweet la la la la lala las in rock 'n' roll history....

":...After those faux but convincing garage rockers the Twylight Zones performed 'The St. Valentine's Day Massacre' in Not Fade Away, Little Steven hisself recorded the little ditty for the 2017 Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul album Soulfire. Not to slight the song's author, nor to diss a made-for-the-movies band already dealing with the handicap of never actually existing in the first place, the song will always belong to five women from Norway who asked if they were still penciled in on your calendar. I know you're busy directing your life-long documentary/You never mentioned what part you wanted me to do...

"....Who'll be the last lover standing? Whether they liked it or not, the Cocktail Slippers knew the answer to that one. La, la, la, la, lala, la."

POPDUDES: Share The Land

The esteemed John M. Borack--writer, drummer, debonaire man about town--is the mastermind at the helm of We All Shine On: Celebrating The Music Of 1970, a superb various-artists tribute to the sounds of '70. A joint release from the combined forces of SpyderPop Records and Big Stir Records, We All Shine On came out this summer, and I think one or another of its tracks has seen TIRnRR airplay nearly every week since then.

John's group Popdudes contributes this cover of the Guess Who's 1970 smash "Share The Land," with (fittingly!) shared lead vocals from Michael Simmons and Robbie Rist, and it was the first of two covers of 1970 Guess Who hits we played this week (see below). It was also the first part of a Robbie Rist twin-spin, as we followed "Share The Land" with Robbie's own combo Ballzy Tomorrow, singin' a song from our current compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 5. Worth sharing!

THE CYNICS: Girl, You're On My Mind

Dana's been on a little bit of a Cynics kick lately, and we all benefit from that. "Girl, You're On My Mind" is my # 1 top Cynics track, written by Bernard Kugel of Buffalo's phenomenal fuzz combo the Mystic Eyes. I knew Bernie a little when I lived in Buffalo in the '80s, and I was just thrilled when the Cynics' circa 1990 video for "Girl, You're On My Mind" scored a spin on MTV 120 Minutes. The song still gets the ol' blood a-thumpin' and a-pumpin' like Rock 'N' Roll oughtta.

THE FLASHCUBES FEATURING RANDY KLAWON: Get The Message

THE HALFCUBES: Hand Me Down World

In my proud, long-standing (and self-appointed) role as the Flashcubes' most insistent fan, I love their original songs even more than I love their cover tunes. My possession of a pulse means I also love the covers they've recorded. The Flashcubes have always been armed with great taste and great ability to execute. The 'Cubes renditions of various ace gems previously done by the likes of the Move, Chris Spedding, Badfinger, the Bay City Rollers, and Paul Collins' Beat are wonderful, live covers of the Who, the Kinks, Arthur Alexander, Eddie Cochran, Link Wray, the Raspberries, Larry Williams (via the Beatles), and Big Star captured on Flashcubes On Fire are the sonic equivalent of amphetamines, and I think the Flashcubes' version of "Do Anything You Wanna Do" somehow edges beyond Eddie and the Hot Rods' seemingly nonpareil original. I'm biased--I'm a FAN!!--but the evidence is in the grooves. Cubic grooves.

All of the above serves as explanation for why the Flashcubes' current series of digital singles for Big Stir Records has been so compelling: enthusiastic and riveting new versions of rockin' pop classics, usually recorded in partnership with either the original artist or a like-minded performer. Each single has been the percolatin' embodiment of Oh HELL yeah!!

I believe the current single--a collaboration with Ohio '60s pop legend Randy Klawon, covering Cyrus Erie's 'Get The Message" (written in 1968 by Eric Carmen)--is the best one yet. That, my friends, is saying something.

Randy Klawon also joins Flashcubes bassist Gary Frenay and drummer Tommy Allen to form the Halfcubes, alongside Mike Kallet and Nick Frenay. The Halfcubes' cover of the Guess Who's "Hand Me Down World" is unreleased for now, but I betcha we'll be hearing more of it as part of a forthcoming various-artists project. Taste and execution. This part of the pop world is in good hands.

THE KINKS: You Really Got Me

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

TALL POPPY SYNDROME: Come Some Christmas Eve (Or Halloween)

From our absolutely irresistible compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 5, Tall Poppy Syndrome's ace invigmoration of the Bee Gees' "Come Some Christmas Eve (Or Halloween)" isn't really about either one of its titular holidays. So we felt secure in blasting it now, in this time frame smack dab in between visits from the Great Pumpkin and Santa Claus. A fantastic track in any season.

THE RAMONES: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

The record that changed my life. Dana and I had already settled the playlist when I realized that this week also marked the 45th anniversary of the first time I heard "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" by the Ramones. In November of 1977, less than two months shy of my 18th birthday, I was already an enthusiastic rockin' pop addict, a dyed-in-the-wool Beatles, Monkees, Kinks, and Dave Clark Five fanatic, and a burgeoning punk rocker. Listening to that "Sheena" 45 shifted everything--everything--into overdrive. It's not an exaggeration. The first spin of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" changed my life.

Looking at the calendar for November of 1977, I've gotta guess it was either Wednesday the 23rd or Thursday the 24th--Thanksgiving Day--when my ears opened, my eyes widened, and my mind kaleidoscoped as I listened to a 2:45 single over and over for twenty minutes or more. 

I couldn't let that anniversary slide by without commemoration. 45 years! A 45 that changed my life. I'll be speaking about the Ramones a lot in 2023. The manifestation of that ongoing obsession started here: Thanksgiving week, 1977. I remain grateful. Thanksgiving really has it all. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh YEAH...!

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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