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 # 1161: OUR PRAYER: Love, Hope, And Holding On. This show is available as a podcast.
THE BEACH BOYS: Our Prayer
When I was teenaged college student and early twenty-something college graduate in the late '70s and early '80s, I wasn't much of a Beach Boys fan. That opinion evolved, in large part due to the influence of Bill Yerger, owner of Main Street Records in my college town of Brockport, NY. "Carl," Bill said, "we're gonna make a Beach Boys fan out of you yet." It took a while, and it didn't really click until a few years later, but I don't know how or when it would have happened without the positive influence of Bill and his wife Carol Yerger. I was so lucky to know them.
I was seventeen when I went off to college at Brockport in August of '77. Endless Summer was the sum total of my Beach Boys music library, and all I was ever likely to need (missing only "Good Vibrations" from what I would have thought a complete collection of essential Beach Boys tracks). I did add Pet Sounds to the ol' CC archives before the end of my freshman year, purchased from Bill when he was managing The Record Grove, a year before he opened his own store.
I remained in Brockport for a couple of years after graduating in 1980. That's when the Yergers began to work on me. applying their own set of good vibrations. A pair of two-fer double-LP sets from Main Street's used bin brought Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20 into my collection. That was the first time I heard "Our Prayer."
It would be inaccurate to say my introduction to "Our Prayer" was some immediate revelation; as noted, it wasn't until years later that I realized my folly in delaying my full-on embrace of Hawthorne's Finest. When we settled on the theme for this week's special show, I knew we had to call it OUR PRAYER, and that we needed to open the show with the Beach Boys.
Our prayer is for love, for hope, and for the ability to hold on. Our prayer is for friends, and our prayer is for music. Sometimes, our prayer is answered. Thank you, Bill and Carol.
THE RASCALS: People Got To Be Free
I had the good fortune to see the Rascals at a club show sometime around the close of the '80s. It was 3/4 of the original Rascals line-up, with Felix Cavaliere, Gene Cornish, and Dino Danelli present and accounted for, missing only Eddie Brigati. All four Rascals eventually played a show at Syracuse's Landmark Theater in this bright 'n' shiny new millennium, but another commitment prevented me from attending. I wished I coulda made it, but it wasn't in the cards.
Dino Danelli passed away two weeks ago. He was an extraordinarily talented drummer; even though the Rascals are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I'm not sure the group gets all the credit they deserve, and I don't think Danelli's name comes up often enough in discussions of the great rock 'n' roll drummers.
Some time back, I started writing a celebration of the Rascals' (or the Young Rascals') "Good Lovin'" for my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I never completed the entry, and it's not part of the book's current plan, but its opening paragraph is worth noting here:
"Little Steven says garage rock is 'white kids trying to play black rhythm and blues and failing--gloriously.' Fair enough. So what do we call it when a white group tries to play soul music, and succeeds? We could call that the Young Rascals."
What a great, great group. Rest in peace, Dino.
ARETHA FRANKLIN: I Say A Little Prayer
If you're gonna bill a radio show as OUR PRAYER: Love, Hope, And Holding On, you had best give Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin her due chance to testify. Doesn't even matter if her testimony in this case happens to secular; a prayer's a prayer, man.
MELANIE WITH THE EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS: Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
MARYKATE O'NEIL: I'm Ready For My Luck To Turn Around
In this sublime gem that opens Marykate O'Neil's 2006 album 1-800-Bankruptcy, O'Neil and co-writer Jill Sobule declare readiness for luck to finally turn around. At some point in our lives, we all relate to that wish. Here's a bit of what I wrote about the song for The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1);
"...I'm ready for my luck to turn around.
GREAT BUILDINGS: Hold On To Something
Recommended if you like [your Fave Rave here].
RIYLs can help us find new favorites. But they can also create a false and unfair expectation. In 1981, I read somewhere (possibly in CREEM, maybe in Trouser Press) that Great Buildings were like a male counterpart to the Go-Go's. I believe it was meant as a compliment, and since Beauty And The Beat was my top album that year, the comparison provided sufficient push for me to purchase Great Buildings' Apart From The Crowd LP before I had ever heard a note of the group's music.
And I was disappointed. It didn't sound anything at all like the Go-Go's. I filed it away.
I came back to it, though. Freed of the misconception that it would sound like boys singin' original tunes that channeled "We Got The Beat," I grew to appreciate the LP on its own sterling merit. Opening track "Hold On To Something" freaking knocked me out, once I gave it its proper opportunity.
Great Buildings' Danny Wilde and Ian Ainsworth had been in the Quick, whose quirky 1976 cover of the Beatles' "It Won't Be Long" got some airplay on Utica's WOUR-FM when I was in high school. After Great Buildings closed up shop, Wilde went solo, and eventually reconnected with Great Buildings guitarist Phil Solem to form the Rembrandts. The Rembrandts scored a Top 20 hit with "Just The Way It Is, Baby," and achieved pop culture immortality with "I'll Be There For You," the theme from Friends. Maybe you're sick of that song--dig what you dig--but it was the number one song on the radio the week my daughter was born, and I will always, always cherish that memory.
Comparing Great Buildings to the Go-Go's was a fake-out, and the disparity between what was teased and what was delivered turned me off. Initially. But without that PSYCH! moment, would I have even gotten around to hearing Great Buildings at the time? No harm, no foul. The apparent dead end of that RIYL still led me to "Hold On To Something," a magnificent track that has now been in my all-time Hot 200 for four decades. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Baby, baby, baby, hold on.
POPDUDES: Share The Land
Going into the planning session for this week's show, our list of potential tracks included three songs associated with the Guess Who: the group's own fabulous rendition of "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature," the Halfcubes' ace (but currently unreleased) cover of "Hand Me Down World," and this capable take on "Share The Land," courtesy of Popdudes. The Popdudes track made it into the show, and it comes to us from the terrific various-artists set We All Shine On: Celebrating The Music Of 1970. We All Shine On scored some significantTIRnRR airplay this year--we'll hear one of its other tracks in our countdown show this Sunday--and "Share The Land" is certainly among the album's many highlights.
THE RAMONES: Do You Wanna Dance
A new year looms. I'm going to be mentioning the Ramones a lot in 2023. Wanna dance? I sure hope so.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Girls In Their Summer Clothes
Bruce Springsteen's "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" was going to occupy this week's Greatest Record Ever Made! spot (because it is, after all, The Greatest Record Ever Made!). Figuring the paradox of fragile durability expressed in "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" provided an appropriate note to conclude our theme, we moved Melanie into the GREM! slot and switched Bruce into the finale. Bruce, in turn, set up Eytan for the encore.
(And yeah, Eytan Mirsky's "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" is also The Greatest Record Ever Made! An infinite number, my friends, as long as they take turns.)
EYTAN MIRSKY: This Year's Gonna Be Our Year
That's our prayer. Every year. Every day. This year? Why the hell not?
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| Like Eytan Mirsky, Spider-Man is also from Forest Hills |
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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.
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