10 SONGS: 2/10/2023

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 # 1167. This show is available as a podcast.

TELEVISION: Marquee Moon

Much of this week's playlist was programmed in reaction to the death of Television's Tom Verlaine. When I was 17 in 1977, Television's debut album Marquee Moon was an integral part of my enthusiastic assimilation into punk and what would later be called new wave. That impact was immense, and it's still with me.

So both Dana and I wanted to play a few tracks from relevant acts of that era, culminating in a closing set of NYC artists. Over the course of the show, we figured we needed to play four songs by Television, and we supplemented those with a bunch of others we felt were also part of this general discussion of '70s punk and its periphery: Blondie, Gang of Four, the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, Tom Robinson Band, Talking Heads, Lou Reed, the Shirts, Public Image Ltd., Richard Hell and the VoidOids, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Flashcubes, Graham Parker and the Rumour, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Johnny Thunders (with the other Heartbreakers), the Dictators, and the late Robert Gordon with Tuff Darts. The acts are too varied to be lumped together within one genre. But trust me: at the time, each of them was part of our full-tilt embrace of NEW MUSIC! When I was a young punk, all of these acts were part of the punk conversation.

Our little mutant radio show is named after a spoken line in a Ramones song, and a show-specific edit of "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" serves as our usual opening theme. This week, Dana suggested replacing the regular theme song with the ten-minute title track from Television's Marquee Moon. I thought that was a superb idea, and we went with it.

I don't want to exaggerate how important Marquee Moon was to me...but I don't wish to understate it either. I bought my copy of Marquee Moon before I owned Ramones, probably before I got My Aim Is True, maybe before Blank Generation, definitely before Blondie or Go Girl Crazy or Talking Heads 77, maybe just before or just after my girlfriend gave me Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. I played Marquee Moon in my dorm room, and I most especially played its track "Elevation" over and over and over. But I listened to all of its tracks, including the long one that gave the album its title:

I remember

How the darkness doubled

I recall

Lightning struck itself

I was listening

Listening to the rain

I was hearing

Hearing something else

At the age of 17, "something else" was what I needed to hear. I heard it in Television.

BLONDIE: Little Girl Lies

When I got to college in the fall of '77, one of my first and most pressing bits of business was getting the campus radio station at Brockport to play me some of the punk and associated records I'd read about in Phonograph Record Magazine. 

Blondie's "X-Offender" was near the top of my list of requests. The prurient 'n' pulchritudinous appeal of singer Debbie Harry was irresistible to this teen, and I was reeled in hook, line, and more hooks by PRM writer Mark Shipper's description of Blondie as looking like Marilyn Monroe backed by the Dave Clark Five. See, THAT'S playing directly into the CC demographic.

My first Blondie record purchase was the "Rip Her To Shreds" 12" single, acquired specifically as a budget approach to owning "X-Offender" without springing for the cost of the whole LP. Efficient! I did hear more of the eponymous debut album as well, either on the radio station or at the on-campus bar the Rat. That exposure included tracks "You Look Good In Blue" and "Little Girl Lies."

When I finally did buy a copy of Blondie's first album in the summer of '79, I was staying at my girlfriend's apartment and gave my newly-acquired record a spin on her turntable. One of the other girls living there heard "Little Girl Lies," and declared it the worst excuse for music she had ever experienced.

Heh. And you thought Blondie wasn't punk?

28 IF: Hold Tight

Our friend Ray Paul's group 28IF is prepping release of their new single, a cover of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich's fabulous "Hold Tight." We played it on the radio, because that's where ya play stuff. And if you'd like to hear 28IF perform the song live, proximity to Rochester, NY this weekend will give you a chance to realize that dream. 28IF are playing a show at Lovin' Cup in Rochester on Saturday February 11th, celebrating the 59th anniversary of the British Invasion. Their music is just, well, their music. We say thee FAB!

STYX: Kiss Your Ass Goodbye

THE WEEKLINGS: I've Just Seen A Face

We've been playing the Weeklings' ace new cover of the Beatles' "I've Just Seen A Face;" SPOILER ALERT: we're playing it again next week, at a deliberately climactic part of the program. Showmanship. We're all about the showmanship. 

Last week, we received a note from Weekling Glen Burtnik--I can never remember if Glen is the Shy One, the Smart One, the Cute One, or the Endowed-With-Powers-And-Abilities-Far-Beyond-Those-Of-Mortal-Men One--acknowledging the airplay on TIRnRR.

We were gonna play "I've Just Seen A Face" again this week anyway, but hearing from Glen also inspired us to dig out Styx's "Kiss Your Ass Goodbye," an incredible, incredible song Glen wrote a few years back. Glen was (briefly) a member of Styx at the time, and he also recorded the song as a solo track. But we knew it from Styx, and we were blown away by how an act that was, frankly, one of my designated bands to hate when I was a young punk and power popper, could be capable of such a flat-out great and explosive number.

Styx absolutely was not and should never be considered a power pop group. But if their version of "Kiss Your Ass Goodbye" isn't power pop, there ain't no such thing as power pop.

MAJOR LANCE: You Don't Want Me No More

Dana's been on a major Major Lance kick lately, and that interest is resulting in some terrific additions to the ol' TIRnRR playlists. I remember Lance's 1964 hit "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" from when I was a kid--someone in the family circle had the 45 on Okeh Records--and I eventually knew his previous hit "The Monkey Time," but never did any kind of deeper dive into the Major Lance songbook. Now, Dana's playing different Major Lance gems, and I'm lovin' each and every one of 'em. More, Dana! MORE!!

THE FLASHCUBES: You Really Got Me

The Flashcubes' unreleased live cover of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" comes from a show at the Jabberwocky in Syracuse in early March of 1978, a little more than a month after my first Flashcubes show. The Flashcubes' prowess as an exciting live rock 'n' roll group and their ability to craft killer original power pop tunes are a large reason why they became my all-time favorite act not named the Beatles or the Ramones. 

And when it comes to executing cover versions of essential ditties written and previously recorded by someone else, the Flashcubes' super powers are also nearly nonpareil. It's evident on this live Kinks cover, and it's equally evident in the superfine series of covers they've done recently as digital singles for the mighty Big Stir Records.  There's more to come in that category. I've heard them, and I do believe you're gonna love them.

TELEVISION: Elevation

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

THE RAMONES: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker

The record that changed my life. It's not an exaggeration. This radio show, my blog, the book I have coming out the spring--man, none of it happens for me if not for my first spin of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" in late '77. Music matters. Musicians matter. A record can change your life. I'll testify to that under oath.

SYD STRAW: CBGB's

I regret that I never once set foot inside CBGB's. I think I walked by the club once, Spring '79, heading to or from a Flashcubes show at Gildersleeve's. That 'Cubes gig is the only NYC club show I ever saw; like Arty Lenin said in the Flashcubes' "Angry Young Man," I'm a million miles away from all the clubs I wanna play.

(Dana says that on his first visit to CBGB's, he was met at the door by a bum stumbling out, who then promptly puked on Dana's shoes. Ah, concert memories....)

Syd Straw made it to CBGB's. And there's a song about it on her 1996 album War And Peace, an album she did with members of the amazing Springfield, Missouri band the Skeletons. This week, we offer that song as a toast to a place I never knew first-hand, but which impacted me in ways beyond measure. In memory of Tom Verlain. In memory of Robert Gordon. In memory of the Ramones, and in recognition of sounds that still play in our heads, inspirations that live on eternally. 

At CBGB's. And everywhere else, too.

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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.