10 SONGS: 3/10/2023

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 # 1171. This show is available as a podcast.

LULU: To Sir, With Love [Museum Outings Montage]

CAROLE KING: Where You Lead

THE MONKEES: Oh My My

Knowing that this week's show would air on my lovely wife Brenda's birthday, I wanted to open with a 1-2-3! half-set of songs for her. Happy Birthday, darlin'!

If Lulu's classic "To Sir, With Love" isn't Brenda's all-time # 1 pick hit, it's pretty damned close. Hell, Brenda used to use it as her ringtone. For TIRnRR purposes, we opted for the out-of-print Museum Outings Montage version from the To Sir, With Love soundtrack, drawn in by that track's additional verse and simpler arrangement. Irresistible! The well-known hit single take is likewise terrific; couldn't go wrong either way.

Carole King is absolutely Brenda's # 1 performer. Young Brenda fell hard for the Tapestry LP in the '70s, and has retained her cherished bond with the feel of the earth moving under her feet. We were able to see Carole King in concert in the '90s, a sublime show and a dream come true for Brenda. For this week's TIRnRR, I wanted a Tapestry track we hadn't played before, and picked "Where You Lead." The song is more familiar to me via King's 2000 remake with her daughter Louise Goffin, a version which served as the opening theme for the TV series Gilmore Girls. As listener Mike Browning said Sunday night while the Tapestry original played, "Lorelei and Rory are smiling."

Both Brenda and I discovered the Monkees' 1970 non-hit single "Oh My My" about a decade after the fact, via a well 'n' truly beat-up copy of the Monkees' sayonara LP Changes. "Oh My My" offers a great lead vocal performance by Micky Dolenz, and I wish the record were much better-known than it is. As I wrote in a piece celebrating my 25 favorite Monkees tracks, "My lovely wife Brenda's favorite Monkees song, a criminally-underrated failed single from 1970 that should have been a massive AM radio smash. Micky's vocal is so soulful, seething with desire as guitars stomp and churn. 'Oh My My' does not get its just due as one of the Monkees' greatest singles." 

THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS: In The Midnight Hour

Sensurround soul! The Chambers Brothers' epic rendition of Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour" is five and a half minutes of solid, seismic groove from the group's 1967 debut album The Time Has Come. It shares the monolithic everything-everywhere-at-once ambiance of their big hit "Time Has Come Today" (itself heard as an eleven-minute epic on this same album), applied to an already-nonpareil Southern sweat nugget and moving its needle into the redder'n red zone. Soulquake. Talk about feeling the earth moving under your feet.

CHRIS CHURCH: I Think I Think I Like You

Much of this week's playlist served as our thank-you note to some friends of TIRnRR who recently stepped up with a secret fundraiser for our community radio station. Lemme tell ya, we have the best friends. Our on-air parade o' gratitude kicked off with minty-fresh music from the mighty Chris Church, represented by this superfine selection from Chris' forthcoming new Big Stir Records release Radio Transient. "I Think I Think I Love You" translates its titular tongue-tied infatuation into pure love, pure pop, and a pure delight to hear on the radio. 

THE DECIBELS: Why Bother With Us

NEW MUSIC FROM THE DECIBELS! We've earned our keep by hipping you to this one. The Decibels' music is built of hooks and adrenaline, ready-made for rockin' pop radio. Their new album When Red Lights Flash is out TODAY from the visionary Kool Kat Musik label, and it well and truly merits all the decibels our mortal forces can muster. "Why bother with us?" Um...cuz it's GREAT! NEW MUSIC FROM THE DECIBELS!!!

THE SPONGETONES: (My Girl) Maryanne

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

THE BANGLES: The Real World

Our above-cited parade o' gratitude continued throughout this week's playlist, with spins of music by our generous and talented pals Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Eytan Mirsky, the Click Beetles, Allan Kaplon, Steve Stoeckel, Dolph Chaney, the Phenomenal Cats, Mr. Encrypto and the Ciphers, and that little old Gilmore Girls and Carole King fan Mike Browning. We also served up dedications to more friends and supporters, accomplished with we-know-you're-gonna-dig-this! selections by the Spongetones, Marshall Crenshaw, Arrogance, and Screen Test. 

For true-believer Michael McCartney (of the fabulous radio program The Time Machine on Maui's Mana'o Radio), the power of second-guessing suggests we maybe shoulda played Dear Stella's "Time Machine," an exuberantly triumphant gem that conjures a world where Olivia Newton-John made Xanadu with Cheap Trick. But that's hindsight, and we're good with our decision to dedicate the Bangles' "The Real World" to our Michael. Michael has expressed his fondness of the Bangles, and I know he appreciated this dedicated blast of Vicki, Debbi, Susanna, and Annette in his honor.

(As for Dear Stella's "Time Machine," that stellar Stella cut is way, way overdue to be heard again on the TIRnRR playlists. Next week's playlist will be devoted in its entirety to special countdown show, but Dear Stella will return to the Syracuse airwaves in the very near future.)

MR. ENCRYPTO AND THE CYPHERS: Home On The Radio

This track from This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 will be part of next week's special countdown show. Hope you can join us back here, right where we belong: home on the radio.

THE RAMONES: Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is, of course, named after a line in the Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" Most weeks, Dana's unique TIRnRR edit of that track serves as our show's opening theme song, the "Where You Lead" to our Stars Hollow. This week, as part of the parade o' gratitude, we turned the lead-in spot over to Steve Stoeckel's "This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Thank You." That left us free to close the show with "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?," specifically a live version from the Ramones' 1996 Greatest Hits Live! If memory serves, this was the final Ramones album released prior to the band hangin' up the ol' leather jackets for good. (We're Outta Here!, a document of their very last show, was released after the Ramones' individual roads to ruin diverged.)

The Ramones. The American Beatles. The greatest American rock 'n' roll band of all time. This is my year of the Ramones, like all other years, but more so. 

We need change and we need it fast

Before rock's just part of the past

'Cause lately it all sounds the same to me

Rock 'n' roll radio. Let's go. The Ramones did their part. We're doing ours, thanks in large measure to support from our friends. 

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. Stay tuned for more rock 'n' roll.

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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available for preorder, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!!

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