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 # 1176. This show is available as a podcast.
THE RAMONES: Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?
Throughout the month of April, TIRnRR is celebrating the Ramones by playing my # 1 favorite track from each of the Ramones' fourteen studio albums, covering four albums per week. As this week's Ramones celebration turns to the group's second quartet of LPs--End Of The Century, Pleasant Dreams, Subterranean Jungle, and Too Tough To Die, all originally released on Sire Records--the passing of Sire's co-founder and former president Seymour Stein made us want to program a big ol' bunch of Sire stuff in addition to our previously-planned Ramones spins. More than half of the selections on this week's playlist were Sire releases. And all of the prizes in this week's edition of 10 Songs are songs that first entered my collection with the Sire logo in place.
"Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" is the obvious choice from End Of The Century. Our little mutant radio show steals its name from a line in that song, and it's the very first track discussed in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). In the interviews for my current book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones, Joey Ramone told me the song "was about disenchantment with the state of radio. Ya know, growin’ up on radio and it being really important, it turned you on to all the great artists. And then radio, it became big business. It seemed like it was just happening in America, but it was really happening all over the world."
Well, Joey, TIRnRR is doing its fair share to fight that. Rock 'n' roll radio. Let's go.
SOFT CELL: Tainted Love
By the end of the summer of 1981, I owned a lot of Sire releases. I had the six studio LPs the Ramones had released by that point (including Pleasant Dreams, which came out that July), their 2-LP in-concert import It's Alive!, their Rock 'n' Roll High School soundtrack album, and three Ramones 45s, all on Sire. I had a few Sire archival collections (single-artist and various artists), and Sire LPs and/or 45s by Talking Heads, Radio Birdman, Plastic Bertrand, the Dead Boys, the Pretenders, Johnny Thunders, Tuff Darts, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Undertones, Gruppo Sportivo, M, possibly the Saints and DMZ, and still more Sire beyond those.
But that summer, my 45 of Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" may have accrued more turntable time than all of my other Sire records combined.
Now, I liked this Soft Cell record. I still do. Love it, in fact. But it was my girlfriend Brenda who played the 45, over and over and over again. That may seem like a complaint, but it's not. I love the song, and I love Brenda; we've been married since 1984. Hearing the song conjures a fond memory. Nothing tainted about that.
THE KINKS: All Day And All Of The Night
My very first Sire Record was the 2-LP various-artists collection History Of British Rock Vol. 2, a Christmas gift in 1976. Among this compilation's many essentials by the Dave Clark Five, the Hollies, Dusty Springfield, Badfinger, Chad and Jeremy, and others, its greatest lasting contribution to me was simply this: History Of British Rock Vol. 2 introduced the music of the Kinks into my record library.
"All Day And All Of The Night." I was mere weeks away from my 17th birthday. I only knew the Kinks from "Lola," a track I'd adored on AM radio years before, but which didn't prepare me at all for the welcome sonic assault of "All Day And All Of The Night." From there, my sister pointed me toward the even more primal "You Really Got Me," WOUR-FM's Friday night oldies show hooked me on "Tired Of Waiting For You," and I was a Kinks fan.
My secret origin as a Kinks fan was told in greater detail here. Technically, my Kinks story began with "Lola," but it really got me going with "All Day And All Of The Night" on History Of British Rock Vol. 2. On Sire Records. At the time, I had no idea how important Sire would be to me.
THE RAMONES: All's Quiet On The Eastern Front
As noted in a few recent editions of 10 Songs, I've been reevaluating the Ramones' 1981 album Pleasant Dreams, and while I still don't think it's on the level of da brudders' classic first four albums, it is a much, much better record than I fully appreciated at the time (or for a long time thereafter). For my book, Marky Ramone told me, "I happen to like that album a lot. A lot of people don’t like it because it’s our pop album. John doesn’t like it. Me and Joey like it. I don’t know whether Dee Dee liked it or not. I’m not sure. But I really liked it a lot."
(And Marky was right when he said Johnny Ramone didn't like it: "Yeah, this is the low point of our career here.")
Even when I underrated Pleasant Dreams, "All's Quiet On The Eastern Front" stood out. From a forthcoming piece about my 25 favorite Ramones tracks:
"...'All's Quiet On The Eastern Front' was my immediate favorite when I bought the album in '81, and it has remained so. It's the sprightliest song ever done about a serial killer, stalking the street 'til the break of day, a track delivered with decidedly un-Ramoneslike percussion, and with backing vocals from Dee Dee Ramone asking that musical question, Can't you think my movements talk? Hey, you unsuspecting soon-to-be victims: Pleasant dreams!"
THE SEARCHERS: Hearts In Her Eyes
God, what a magnificent track. In 1979, Seymour Stein had the taste and vision to sign British Invasion stars the Searchers to Sire. The Searchers' 1964 hit "Love Potion No. 9" was also on History Of British Rock Vol. 2, and "Needles And Pins" was on that series' first volume, but after their '60s hitmakin' heyday the group had fallen well under the general public's radar.
The Searchers did two brilliant albums for Sire, 1979's The Searchers and 1981's Love's Melodies. The highlight was the '79 single "Hearts In Her Eyes," written by John Wicks and Will Birch from the great UK pop combo the Records. From the even-more-theoretical The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 2):
"...Punk would seem to be an unlikely savior of the Searchers' fortunes. As the Sex Pistols sang of no future and the Clash yearned for a riot of their own, some within this new wave of rock 'n' roll eagerly acknowledged and embraced the rockin' pop sounds of the past.
"The Ramones covered 'Needles And Pins.' Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers--a group then widely considered at least a tangent to new wave--channeled the Searchers' sound in an original song called 'Listen To Her Heart.' The less nihilistic, more pop-minded acts within this broad not-really-a-movement admired and emulated the music of the British Invasion. The Searchers weren't among the most influence-checked bands--those accolades belonged to the Kinks and the Who--but nor were they without honor, without appreciation. More than a decade after needles, pins, and number 9 love potions brought them to fame and acclaim, the Searchers were part of the conversation of what was cool. Seymour Stein must have understood...
THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: Shake Some Action
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE 13th FLOOR ELEVATORS: You're Gonna Miss Me
Lenny Kaye's seminal '60s garage/punk/psychedelic compilation Nuggets was originally issued by Elektra Records in 1972. It was subsequently reissued by Sire, and in 1979 I grabbed a cutout of the Sire version from the discount bin at Main Street Records in Brockport, NY. I had no familiarity with Nuggets before that, though I knew a few of its tracks, including "Dirty Water" by the Standells. I bought it specifically to get "Lies" by the Knickerbockers and "Liar, Liar" by the Castaways.
I had never heard of the 13th Floor Elevators. My first spin of Nuggets was my first spin of "You're Gonna Miss Me."
It was a HOLY SHIT! moment. Once again from the annals of The Greatest Record Ever Made!:
"...'You're Gonna Miss Me' is acid made punk, as hallucinatory as Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, as badass as...anything, ever. It's the embodiment of the rock-critic concept of 1960s garage-built psychedelia, while sounding not quite like any of its peers.
"It could only have come from Texas. It profoundly influenced at least one son of the Lone Star State: Billy Gibbons, later to find fame slingin' his sharp-dressed six-string with ZZ Top. Contemporary to the Elevators, Gibbons played with a group called the Moving Sidewalks, whose own awesome single '99th Floor' couldn't have popped into being without 'You're Gonna Miss Me' providing a blueprint. 'You're Gonna Miss Me' has continued to glow in the dark for all subsequent generations seeking the sound of electric guitars crossed with electric sugar cubes...
Confession: while many Ramones fans (and Johnny Ramone himself) regarded 1984's Too Tough To Die as their return to greatness following a series of lackluster albums preceding it, I've never been all that fond of it. I can't say it's my least favorite Ramones album--that would be 1986's Animal Boy--but much of Too Tough To Die is too...I dunno, anonymous for my taste.
It's not without highlights. The ultrashort instrumental "Durango 95" is a righteous kick anna half, and "Daytime Dilemma (Dangers Of Love)" is peppy 'n' poppin' to the extent that it could have fit in on one of the Ramones' 1970s albums.
Our month of Ramones continues next week, with my favorite tracks from Animal Boy--even on my least favorite Ramones album, I had a coin toss between two favorite tracks--Halfway To Sanity, Brain Drain, and Mondo Bizarro.
Brain Drain was the Ramones' last studio album for Sire. With Mondo Bizarro in 1992, the Ramones moved to their manager Gary Kurfirst's label Radioactive Records, where they would remain for the rest of their career.
But we wouldn't have been rewarded with the thrill of the Ramones' music if Seymour Stein's Sire Records hadn't given us the opportunity to experience it. The Sire 45 of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" will always be the record that changed my life. Sire Records was an important label, and a vital resource in the development of both of this radio show's impressionable hosts decades ago.
Rest in peace, Seymour.
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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.
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