Here's a REALLY long preview of my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1): one paragraph apiece from each of its 152 sections. That's 145 song chapters, plus the foreword, afterword, user's guide, a reflection on how the Beatles are underrated, and three interludes, all presented in sequence below. This book is finished, and awaiting word of its fate. If one book leads to another, this will be my next book.
In the mean time, here's a very lengthy taste of the book's narrative threads of love, loss, family, friends, sadness, joy, betrayal, hope, obsession, fear, ambition, setbacks, crushes, lust, depression, resentment, gratitude, tears, laughter, reading, writing, dreaming, comic books, TV, radio, and rockin' pop music.
Each song is more than (harrumph) just a song. An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Line 'em up. Let 'em play....
Man, those of us who really, really love pop music love so many different records, each with passionate fervor. It's not the drinks that make us shout with glee when a beloved tune plays. It's belief, pure and unabashed. If we say the same thing about a different song a few spins later, we weren't lying the first time, and we're not being fickle as we adjust our allegiance. We're living inside the music we love. If there can only be one greatest record ever made, what if that meant there could only be one at a time?
I hope the personal can translate to the universal, at least to some entertaining degree.
Radio was a dream. Sometimes it was a dream come true. The list of songs and the list of artists introduced by radio to my eager ears are twin honor rolls stretching from here to Liverpool, here to Motown, here to there to everywhere. If it sometimes seemed as if the radio was my only friend, I was never radio's only friend. Radio had a lot of friends.
My daughter tells me how much this has changed. Meghan loves music as much as I do, but radio has become irrelevant. It's still on in the car sometimes, when the iPod's not available; but it's background noise, a gray haze of commercials and forgettable music, sometimes punctuated by something decent to listen to. She never listens to radio at home. Why would she? There's nothing for her. There's nothing for me. I can rarely tolerate listening to any commercial radio station for long, and it's not the commercials that drive me away. It's the music.
Into this tinderbox, Chuck Berry brought an electric match: black music that made white kids dance. He wrote in code--most famously, the irresistibly potent brown-skinned handsome man who became (wink) a brown-eyed handsome man--but he crafted and chronicled the American teen-age dream with greater eloquence than anyone else, black or white.
But both pop music and love itself can offer the idea of something sweeter to embrace. Joni Mitchell described the love's illusions she recalled as The dizzy dancing way you feel. Neil Diamond (via Micky Dolenz) saw a face that made him a believer. The Temptations had sunshine on a cloudy day, and so many others have used music to express sacred hopes for new love. Wouldn't it be nice to be together? I've just seen a face, I can't forget the time or place. No matter what you are, I will always be with you. Hey (hey), you (you), I wanna be your boyfriend.
Summer ended. College began at Brockport. I heard more punk rock, courtesy of the campus radio station. I had my classes, and I betcha I may have studied occasionally. Otherwise? Music. Keggers. Attempts at writing. Flirting. Reciprocal flirting, leading to more than flirting. A few really dumbass actions I still cringe to recall. Arguments with my roommate. A growing certainty that I would never truly fit in anywhere, a certainty which proved to be accurate.
The entire world was about to change in an instant. No one knew what was about to happen. If they say they did, they're lyin'.
We pin the launch of the Rock 'n' Roll Era to 1955, when "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets became a # 1 pop hit. That's a logical starting point. But even if Haley was this music's first crossover star, no one believes he and his cohorts invented that sound. Rock 'n' roll doesn't start with Bill Haley and His Comets, nor with that combo's previous billing as Bill Haley's Saddlemen (though it would also be wrong to deny their importance).
What was it like for someone to hear this for the very first time, live or on record? To experience it without knowing at all what was about to hit and keep hitting, harder and harder, slinkier and sluttier, more desperate with desire, finally succumbing to the urge to call out her name? And her name is. And her name is. And her name is.
Stranded in this conformist world of the 1950s, Little Richard was the Georgia Peach, a wild and effeminate black man, flamboyant, a strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. His performances were electrifying, pounding, an irresistible symphony of WOOOOO! A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom. In the late fifties, only Jerry Lee Lewis could match the sheer fervor of Little Richard. Little Richard was as bright a star as this dull world had ever seen.
Faith is infectious. Its specifics can vary from believer to believer, even among those who share a covenant.
A band doesn't have to actually exist to be great. The enduring appeal of pop music is based not on authenticity, but on results. If you love a record, you're not concerned if it was born of the divine inspiration of a brilliant singer-songwriter, bashed out in a basement by teenage tyros, or created in a lab by Dr. Frankenstein; you just wanna turn it up and dance to it.
But you're paying attention now. And whether it's a girl or a song or some other sublime gem, you've fallen in love. What took you so long?
A perfect pop record. There has never been a more exquisitely constructed pop single than "I Can't Let Go" by the Hollies. It aches with longing, apprehension, and anticipation, soars with possibility, teases a promise of redemption, and hints at a hope that maybe--maybe--we might get the girl when all is said and sung. Harmonies. Guitars! Love. A perfect pop record? That's selling it short.
I was eleven years old at the time. And while I may have enjoyed teasing Mom about this song she disliked so much, I didn't have any particular love of it, either.
Although she surged to popularity in the US as a tangent to the youth-driven British Invasion in 1964, Petula Clark was already thirty-two years old when "Downtown" became her first Billboard # 1 hit. Unlike her younger moptopped brethren, Clark had been performing for decades, starting as a child singer during World War II. She'd logged mainstream pop hits in the UK, Australia, Canada, and Europe well before anyone had ever heard of Merseybeat or the Tottenham Sound. But Beatle-driven Britmania helped make her a bigger star.
I grew up in a time when TV theme songs routinely entered the public consciousness. The catchy ditties that opened shows like Gilligan's Island, F Troop, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Patty Duke Show, and Car 54, Where Are You? weren't hit records in the usual sense, but within our shared pop culture they were as big as any 45 spinning on any radio.
But there was only one Arthur Alexander. Lay down your arms, soldier of love. Surrender to Arthur.
John Lennon had been murdered. Contrary to popular opinion, this song is not about that.
In 1963, Lesley Gore seemed an unlikely prospect to become a feminist icon. The seventeen-year-old singer was very much of her time, performing a string of irresistible pop hits showing how a lovesick girl's world revolves around the capricious whims of a boy: crying her eyes out when her boyfriend spurns her in "It's My Party," and eagerly welcoming the same faithless lover back into her arms in "Judy's Turn to Cry." This was the height of the girl-group era, and you can't blame something for not being ahead of its time.
Girl groups were sweet. The Shangri-Las were the bad-girl group, tougher than the rest, hangin' out with bikers, makin' bouncy-bouncy on the beach, and regretting such transgressions a year later while [REMEMBER!] walking in the sand. Beneath their leather beat hearts of gold, more fragile than they would admit. The Shangri-Las' best records were tiny teen dramas writ large for AM radio. Radio was the ideal stage for the Shakespearean spectacle of the Shangri-Las.
Our hearts are fragile things, yet somehow sometimes strong enough when we need them to be. Our collective will can be steadfast, resolute, yet it can still fail us in our weakest moment. We bend. We break. We contemplate the meaning of words unspoken.
That seeming incongruity has never quite resolved itself. In certain circles, one risks immediate scorn for the sin of considering the Ramones a power pop band. But it was never a sin.
But it is as Amy says: the music kept playing, on and on and on and on. It plays still. Amy Rigby understands. The dream of the dance. You know how dreams are.
We make our choices with blind conviction. The lady or the tiger? Well, what if the tiger turns out to be the friendly Kellogg's cereal mascot Tony the Tiger, and the lady is Squeaky Fromme? In the words of Lou Reed: I guess that I just don't know.
It happens. Often. It happens in friendships, professional partnerships, in work, in play. It happens in families, between siblings, between parents and children. It happens in love. It happens a lot in love. In a party of two (or more), each will have to decide if compromise is possible, or desirable. If no compromise can be struck, each must weigh the question of giving in versus moving on.
In 1966, my brother Art had a red Alfa Romeo. I'm told it was a shitty car, and I remember its ignominious final days in his possession: a scarlet husk parked, prone, lying in state beyond the shed at the end of our back yard. Collecting dust, collecting rust. A tow truck came to whisk this luckless scarlet husk to its final reward.
One of the rules of the road is that the driver controls the radio. My brother Art was driving. That meant the radio would be playing country music.
The stage was set in the 1960s. Expanding awareness of racial inequity and progress achieved in the civil rights movement was balanced by action and reaction, peaceful protest met with violent response, a hardening of resolve, a raising of stakes. Malcolm X gone, Martin Luther King, Jr. gone. Nixon in the White House. Hope for equality denied and deferred, as tempers flared and patience evaporated.
And I wondered to myself: who was Buddy Holly?
I know what you did. Or maybe Don McLean knows what you did.
The 1970s began with such promise. Not for everyone, sure, but I was in fourth grade when the calendar's page turned to its first glimpse of 1970. I was nine, soon to be ten years old, and I had already spent a short lifetime as a misfit. I was the weird kid who sang to himself and others, who drew cartoons, who read too much, who didn't play sports, and didn't fit in.
Complicated. But those are the facts.
Do you like good music? You've come to the right place. Oh yeah!
Far from home, with nothing to do. Nothing worth doing, anyway.
Aretha Franklin was a force of nature. Aretha Franklin was a gift from Heaven. The statements conflict, but both are true. She was angel and hurricane, earthquake and blessing, saint and tornado. If she wasn't the greatest singer in the history of pop music, I can’t imagine who could take that crown. The Queen of Soul? Even that's too limiting. Aretha was the queen of it all.
It was over. It was the end. The moneymen knew it. The players did not. The players had no idea how distant the year 1968 was from 1967. The calendar insisted it had been just one year; instead, it may as well have been a lifetime.
Decades later, we look back in befuddlement at the notion of Prince not yet accepted, not yet recognized, not yet celebrated as PRINCE. In 1980, such widespread celebration and recognition was off in a future as far away as The Jetsons or Buck Rogers. But Prince himself? Prince was already Prince.
We are damaged, disturbed, inadequate, unprepared. We don't fit in, couldn't if we tried, wouldn't if we could. We wake up wondering, find ourselves all alone. As the sun greets the dawn. We didn’t realize.
1965 was pop music's best year ever. I was five, and although I was old enough to know a bunch of songs I heard on the radio, I didn't really appreciate the year's bounty until more than a decade later, when I began to discover essential '65 gems by the Kinks, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, Buck Owens, the Yardbirds, the Beau Brummels, the Byrds, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Fontella Bass, the Small Faces, the Dixie Cups, the Vogues, the Who, the Zombies, the Miracles, the Hollies, George Jones, Stevie Wonder, and so, so many more. Whatta year! The best stuff was popular, and the popular stuff was the best.
Wilson Pickett meets the Kinks. That was 1965 for you.
Among the anythings that could happen in 1965 was the notion that an angry rant, running more than six minutes in length, performed by an electrified former folk singer with a voice best described as unconventional for pop radio, could not only get played on the radio, but could become a flat-out radio smash AND a # 2 hit single—a six-minute hit single!—on Billboard’s Hot 100. The parameters of pop music were expanding.
In the hands of the Kingsmen, "Louie, Louie" became even more basic, more ploddingly brilliant. Writer Jeff Tamarkin once said something to the effect that the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie" sounds like it was recorded at a drunken Roman orgy. He meant it as a compliment. I can only shake my fist in firm agreement with that. The Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie" is a raucous frat party well into its third or fourth keg.
Product. It was only supposed to be product, promotion. It was just publicity for a children's TV program.
Most would consider it an insult to describe any creative artifact as the product of an assembly line. But at Motown Records in the 1960s, the pop music assembly line was greater than its description, and it was well capable of achieving artistic heights.
Before the Who went on to rival Led Zeppelin as the embodiment of classic rock, they were already an odd quartet. Drummer Keith Moon was a flamboyant freakin' lunatic, a Beach Boys fanatic who played faster--and louder!--than a speeding bullet. Bassist John Entwistle could have found employment as a statue, a sculpted objet d'art, his deep booms resonating from a somber figure as still as stone, except for the blinding flash of his fingers upon the fretboard of an instrument no one ever convinced him wasn't meant to play lead, not rhythm. Singer Roger Daltrey, eventually to assume the persona of Rock God parading before mere mortals, seemed ready to abandon his mic stand to pick a fight with some punter mid-song, just 'cuz he didn't like the guy's face. And guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend was the squarest of square pegs, a nose emerging from a face topped by straight Mod hair, propped atop a skinny form that should have been incapable of remaining upright under the weight of that head, tossing off a surly bravado to camouflage insecurity, playing power-chord noise to give sheer volume to thought and poetry, smashing things to combine chaos with ambition, combustion with creation, destruction with inspiration. Together, they formed a rhetorical question that served as its own authoritative answer.
Wait, wait! "Anyone who liked pop music?" That's me he was sneering at, damn it! Oh, the humanity...!
In the late seventies, power pop was a niche genre that did not wish to be a niche genre. It wanted fame, fortune. It for damned sure wanted the girl. If not tonight, then tomorrow night.
All politics is local. The same could be said of musical combos, the local rock group down the street that's trying hard to learn their song. In the garages, in the clubs, in practice spaces, school dances, rec hall hops, coffeehouses, open fields, and cellars full of noise, plugged in or unplugged, sparks ignite when someone says Let's put on a show! Aping Chuck Berry or Chuck D, Joan Jett or Joni Mitchell, the Rolling Stones or the Banana Splits, mighty things happen when a musician near you starts to play.
Vertigo.
The Runaways returned. Piss. Vinegar. Maybe a cocktail or two. Cherry Bomb! Joan Jett was having none of it.
Don't let this show convince you. In our sadness, we find salvation. The good Lord above invented AM Top 40 radio for the specific therapeutic purpose of playing records like "The Tears of a Clown."
Ike and Tina Turner's "River Deep--Mountain High" was producer Phil Spector's tour de force. It should have been a chart-topper upon its release in 1966; some point to its disappointing sales in the US (where it peaked at--choke!--a mere # 88 on Billboard's Hot 100) as the direct impetus for Spector's subsequent personal decline.
Was the late Hal Blaine pop music's all-time greatest drummer? Very possibly so. And the accolade isn't just because of the sheer volume of his body of work, though that sure doesn't hurt his case; in our lives as pop fans, we've probably heard Blaine more often than we heard Ringo and Bernard Purdie combined. That's not exaggeration; that's just how much work Hal Blaine did on so many records we all know.
I think I read somewhere that Springsteen was heavily influenced by Brian Wilson--specifically, by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds--while he was making Magic. If that's not true, it should be. Its first two tracks, "Radio Nowhere" and "You'll Be Coming Down," capture that elusive wispy quality of goals just beyond our reach, happiness that escapes our grasp. The result is mesmerizing. It doesn't sound anything at all like the Beach Boys. Yet it's difficult to imagine it existing in a world where Pet Sounds didn't exist first.
Many disagree with the notion of KISS as the best. Hell, I like KISS, but I'd disagree with that notion on most days, too. But they were the definitive 1970s rock act: loud, garish, celebratory, and as infectious as an arena cheer. KISS made some great rock ‘n’ roll records, regardless of whether or not the bassist breathes fire and the whole group presents itself as a Kabuki-masked cartoon. Loud. Garish. Celebratory. Infectious. Rock 'n' roll all night, and party every day.
No one believed that particular bit of hype. I don't recall the phrase "boy band" as part of the pop music lexicon in 1975, but it would have fit the Bay City Rollers like a Tartan glove.
Imitation and inspiration are two very different things. We generally have less regard for the former, but recognize that nothing worthwhile can be sparked without the latter. And some imitations are inspired. Many Beatles fans adore the Rutles, and also Utopia’s Deface the Music, both of which are able and engaging tributes, copying familiar Beatles songs, rewriting them, and reframing them as something almost new. The result is sincere flattery, but compelling sincere flattery.
Somehow, Adam Schlesinger served the best pop legacies of the sixties with greater grace and verve than anyone else you could name. He did it the only way a creative soul knows how to do it: instinctively, intuitively. Artfully. He didn't experience the wonders of the sixties first-hand. But when one of his projects called for it, he could conjure an effective flash of period verisimilitude, untainted by mere nostalgia or bloodless hucksterism. It was just that thing he did.
The rapture of sudden success ignites an eagerness among the jealous and the smug to see you brought back down to their unexceptional level. The Beatles are Number One!, they would say. But for how long? Nonetheless, if you were willing to fight your way to the top, you were damned well willing to fight to stay there. The Beatles were more than willing. And now that they held this gaudy brass ring within their grasp, the Beatles were not about to let it go.
When I think of the British Invasion, I think of the Beatles in 1964, of course; but the first two songs that come to my mind aren't Beatle tunes; they're "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks and "Glad All Over" by the Dave Clark Five. Those two singles sum up rabid, frenzied Fabmania even better than any moptop-shakin' WOOOOO! In '64, the game was accelerating faster and faster, with every Britboom 45 upping the ante for contested spots on the pop charts and notches on the transistor radio's volume control. Rule, Britannia.
James Brown was not about to surrender his sovereign territory to interlopers, foreigners. James Brown would not bow to the insurrectionists in this British Invasion.
This wasn't as outlandish a notion as one might think. After the British Invasion in 1964, it did seem like your prototypical rock 'n' roll performer would have been more likely to have been raised on a diet of tea and crumpets rather than apple pie and Yoo-Hoo. Caught up in Anglomania, one could forget that for every Beatles, there was a Byrds; for every Rolling Stones, a Paul Revere and the Raiders; for every Led Zeppelin, a Grand Funk Railroad.
Can a pastiche touch the divine? Can a copy become more than it is? Can mere imitation transcend its mundane genesis, and live on its own as something great?
I don't remember the precise year, nor am I sure which TV show I was watching. I can't even guarantee I have the right group.
Okeydokey. Tonight's the night. Let's do it!
Betrayal. Its sting is unique, its lingering memory a mocking reminder of false confidence and misguided trust. It is difficult to forgive. It is nearly impossible to forget.
But my embrace of punk made her seem suddenly uncool. Schisms were forming, turfs were declared, and the fact that none of that willful folly of picking sides in pop music made a damned bit of rational sense couldn't stop zealots like me from planting our flags and screeching.
We will fail. That much is inevitable at some point. No matter how hard we try, how good our intentions or efficient our execution, we will eventually fall short of our goals. No feel-good sentiment can mitigate that fact. We will fall. We will fail.
It happens, even among friends, even among best friends. Look at Lennon and McCartney. Hell, look at Clark Kent and Lex Luthor. There was regret on both sides, but no chance of reconciliation. We said goodbye. There may have been tears--there were tears--and we have not seen each other since. Like the song says: we used to be friends, a long time ago.
What became of Sammy Ambrose in the 23-year gap between the release of "Welcome To Dreamsville" and his final discard of this mortal diamond ring in Florida in '88? It's tempting to make up a brighter story on his behalf, a tale of love found and fortunes won, of honor, of adventure, of goals met and vistas expanded. The fact of his death at the young age of 47 makes it difficult to pretend he found his happily-ever-after.
The heart is often incapable of speaking its own mind. Please forgive the mixed metaphor, because it's true: on an emotional level, the thing that is most important to us is the most difficult to articulate. If you were ever a teenager in love, you know this first-hand; and if, at any age, you have watched a love slip away--casually or cruelly, by accident or design, temporarily or irrevocably--then you still remember the ache of your tongue-tied efforts to express the poetry inside you, to give voice to the exact words that, when spoken, will make True Love prevail against unbelievable odds. So many words, so much to say. And all we can do as she walks away is mumble, "I loved you, well...never mind."
It is a uniquely ethereal feeling to drive through deserted, snow-covered suburban streets after midnight while listening to Dave Brubeck on the radio.
At its best, pop music has but one real requirement: you. All of you. Body and soul. It is all for swinging you around.
In 1965, even as the Beatles solidified their hold on international pop culture, much of the adult establishment still viewed them as a silly novelty, a blight, an aberration that would pass none too soon, when the crazy kids would finally stop with all the swooning and the shaggy hair and the loud electrified nonsense, and embrace mainstream, dignified pop sounds like Perry Como or Mantovani. The previous year, no less an embodiment of cool than James Bond, played by Sean Connery in the film Goldfinger, quipped that sipping a too-warm glass of Dom Perignon was "as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs."
Sass, pizazz, and razzmatazz. Hooks and Harmony. A sense of deeper meaning, whether it's lodged in a simple love song about wanting to hold her hand, in a plea to help us if you can we're feeling down, or in some tantalizing glimpse across the universe. I read the news today, oh boy. The connection may be illusory, but...no, it's not. It's one-sided--the artist creates, we absorb--yet no less palpable and vital than the sensory experience of everything around us: the sights, the sounds, the seasons, the warmth, the cold, the rain, the sun, the affection for people and things that went before. Nothing is real. That's real, too.
On December 8th of 1980, a nobody with a gun decided his craving for attention was more important than John Lennon's right to live, Yoko's right to a husband, Sean's right to a father. The killer's name will never be mentioned in anything I write.
In the late seventies, disco and punk were supposed to be at war with each other. As a self-professed punk rocker in that era, I can attest that, yeah, punks didn't like disco, and the bumpin'-n-hustlin' set was appalled by the loud and fast noise my people favored. Hatfields and Capulets, meet McCoys and Montagues. Never mind the fact that the mainstream rock crowd held both punk and disco in nearly equal disdain; this was war!
And really, the immediate, primal appeal of "Tell Me Something Good" can be attributed to one thing above all else: Chaka Khan's miraculous ability to transmit pheromones over the airwaves.
When I was seventeen, I met a girl whose goal was to pose for Playboy. It was a brief and casual platonic meeting, we were not alone at any point (nor would anything noteworthy have been likely to occur anyway), so there's not much more to the story than that. When you're a seventeen-year-old boy, hearing a girl about your age say she wants to remove her clothing for a magazine pictorial tends to get your attention. I don't remember her name, I can't quite remember what she looked like, and I don't think she had quite yet achieved the legal age required for one to appear shirtless for the cameras. She was, I presume, just planning ahead.
For all that, it was really the two other guys in the Nerves--bassist Peter Case and drummer Paul Collins--who've loomed the largest in power pop's janglebuzz history. After the Nerves broke up in '78, Case and Collins hung together for a bit as the Breakaways. Case went on to form the Plimsouls, and later to pursue a solo career as a singin' and guitar-playin' songwriter. Collins ditched his spot at the drum kit to front his own new group, the Beat.
Popular music has always been working class music. The landed and the privileged may also enjoy it, and its practitioners share a fever dream of breaking into the exclusive ranks of the upper crust, with the endless cash resource one needs to possess all of society’s glittery treasure.
Pop music takes flyte.
1968 offered the promise and the threat of a nation and a world ready to burn. But even as everything seemed poised to tumble into the Stygian depths, the Chambers Brothers do not preach of destruction, nor sing the praises of Hell. We already know that the devil has no music to call his own. Not even in 1968. Not even today.
In 1970, I felt like collateral damage in Nixon's war on drugs. I was moving from fourth grade to sixth grade, that abrupt and jarring jump cut from elementary school to middle school mentioned way back in our Johnny Nash chapter. And I was terrified of drugs, scared witless of the tawdry adolescent peer pressure I was sure would soon turn me into a hophead, an acid casualty, a junkie. I was petrified, and the fact that it was a stupid, irrational fear didn't make it any less real.
The song was just...hypnotic. There were so many little elements combining and clashing within that track, bits of the Byrds and Phil Spector, a brooding, booming bass, guitars that seemed to snarl and jangle at the same time, punk swagger, pop yearning, and an insistent instrumental hook that whispered silkily in my ear, You're with us now, son. It was a recipe for cacophony, a surefire roadmap to a sonic mess...except that it wasn't. It was precise. It was perfect.
I associate the song with a memory of an awful day, years after its reign as a hit record; I heard it on the radio less than twenty-four hours after the last time I saw one of my best friends alive. Yet the song is welcome even now, its tangential connection to sadness and grief less important than my recollection of the song making me smile at a time when I needed to remember how to smile.
I staggered from the kitchen, my eyes full, Dad looking on, stunned, trying to find a way to comfort his youngest son. I stumbled into the bedroom, where Brenda had been sleeping, the same room where we'd listened to Joe Jackson sing "Sunday Papers" and Tom had borrowed a paperback just hours before. I broke down, sobbing, inconsolable, crying into Brenda's shoulder, just repeating, He was my friend! He was my friend!
Simon and Garfunkel offered an appealing summary of one of the side benefits of couples living as one: Let us be lovers and marry our fortunes together. My stuff and her stuff, the lines blur, and we wind up with our stuff. When Brenda and I moved in together in 1980, our respective record collections merged into a new and happy family. Rocket To Russia, meet Tapestry. Innervisions and Abraxas? Say hi to your new brothers, Pure Pop For Now People and Singles Going Steady. I think The Kinks' Greatest Hits! and The Kink Kronikles already knew each other.
That's the nature of context in our pop obsessions. It’s not cancel culture; our favorite records don't exist in a vacuum. No disc is an island. We hear the songs, and we think of things we relate to that song. We can't help it, and maybe we shouldn't.
We wish to be many things that we are not. We wish to be in better shape, possessed of quicker wit, smarter and better-looking, wealthier, more stylishly dressed, more adept at the things that seem simple for others but impenetrable for us. I wish I had more hair. Yet for all of our square-pegged nature, a song on the radio in 1969 tells us the one thing we always need to hear: “I love you for who you are, not the one you feel you need to be.”
As a part of LA’s Paisley Underground, the Bangles were one of many acts in the early eighties professing and practicing a devout connection to a scene that came nearly two decades before them. Maybe the general public couldn’t draw a line from 1960s touchstones like Pandora’s Box or Riot On the Sunset Strip to this distaff Fab Four mugging through “Walk Like An Egyptian” on MTV. But the Bangles had more in common with Love or the Electric Prunes than with virtually any of their Reagan-era Top 40 contemporaries.
In 1980, the members of British metal acts Motörhead and Girlschool merged briefly as Headgirl, with their respective frontpersons--bassist Lemmy Kilmister and guitarist Kelly Jackson--trading lead vocals on a single called “Please Don’t Touch.” At the time of its release, I knew Motörhead a little bit, and I was peripherally aware of Girlschool, an all-female group that was part of the then-hyped British New Wave of Heavy Metal, or at least a tangent to it. I guess a tangent is more accurate; their gender prevented them from being considered fairly alongside the boys in Iron Maiden and Def Leppard.
Ska music. They called it bluebeat. That doesn't seem an accurately descriptive phrase. The sound isn't blue; it's happy, bouncy, alive. Nor was it audibly derived from twelve-bar blues (beyond the way that so much pop music is at least indirectly derived from blues). One could call it a part of rhythm and blues, pure pop soul, but accenting blue in its general nom de go-go doesn't seem to fit its infectious effect.
One of the lessons learned in the British Invasion was that English fans sometimes appreciated American music more than Americans did. In the mid-sixties, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, and others listened to Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, et al.--American acts that had lost preeminence on homeland radio and record charts--and sold that sound right back to the States.
Heartbreak, capitulation and acceptance--and that's all apparently taken place before the song's even started. “I’ll Be Around” is the ultimate stiff-upper-lip ditty, as the ex-lover bows out gracefully, but leaves the girl his card...just in case things change.
I don't care that this is supposed to be teenybopper pop music, created as a TV sitcom soundtrack, marketed to a puppy-eyed Tiger Beat demographic of adolescent girls staring with undefined intent at their David Cassidy pinup. I don't care if it was created in a boardroom, a stockholders' meeting, a business planning session, or on the island of Dr. Moreau. I don't care if anyone thinks it's uncool, because anyone who does think that way is wrong, period. This record rocks. That's all I care about.
Teen idolatry--the sort of starry-eyed quasi-romantic longing that conjures adolescent yearning for long walks in the moonlight hand-in-hand with the teen heartthrob du jour--has been part of pop music for as long as there has been pop music. I can't speak for the probability of giggling young girls once makin' ga-ga noises over noted hottie Ludwig von Beethoven, but Frank Sinatra? King Elvis I? Paul McCartney, Mark Lindsay, Bobby Sherman, and the lads in One Direction? Girls swooned over posters and magazines, LP covers and 45 sleeves, and kissed Monkees bubblegum cards with earnest, whispered wishes to one day become Mrs. Davy Jones: I'll be true to you, yes I will.
In this situation, some hubris would be justified. Ruffin had been a proven hitmaker with the Temptations. If Motown was the sound of young America in the sixties, the Temptations were arguably the sound of Motown. Their hits were many, their popularity vast. "My Girl" in particular is immortal, a pervasive classic that is always lying somewhere near the surface of your subconscious, a tune you might not think anyone ever actually wrote, but which must instead have been passed down from generation to generation.
It's not a band's fault when their music gets overplayed. I can't imagine ever getting sick of the Beatles, but I do sort of comprehend the feeling of those who hear "Yeah Yeah Yeah!" and answer "No! No! NO!!!" I don't have much affinity for most of the tracks favored by classic rock radio formats; I wonder if I would have greater appreciation of the music of Led Zeppelin, the Doors, Pink Floyd, or later Rolling Stones (each of whom I do like to some degree) or even Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Eagles (whom I generally do not) if they were all obscurities I discovered in the vinyl underground, rather than ubiquitous fixtures on every stereo except mine.
Listen, man: The Greatest Record Ever Made doesn't have to be deep or meaningful. It can be; pop music is capable of rising above its commercial trappings and money-grubbing origins, able to soar with a sound that thrills, a message that inspires, lyrics that open the mind, atmosphere and artistic accomplishment that touch the eternal soul. It can be art. It can be timeless.
Any record you ain't heard is a new record. And if you like it, whether it’s old or new, a cover or an original, performed by a rookie or a veteran, you don't give a damn if it's rock or soul or country or whatever label a pundit like me affixes to it. You dig it. You have a new record to love.
I'm not here to belabor my long-standing antipathy for the Eagles, nor to denigrate their fans. As a burgeoning teen punk in 1977, I selected the Eagles as my designated band to hate. It may be dumb in retrospect, but I think it was the right thing for me at the time.
"Stand By Me" borders on a religious experience, a timeless ode to the power and strength derived from faith and devotion. Yet it's not a religious song at all; it's a tacit recognition that a feeling of renewal can come not just from the heavens, but also from the genuine loyalty of (and loyalty to) a lover or friend.
And it's irresistible. The guitars combust, the harmonies sail, the beat and the music surge, and the singer expresses his own giddy delight in the rat-a-tat sound of his chatty lover's extended soliloquy. Pop songs that complain about a companion’s chatter are a dime a dozen; in "(My Girl) Maryanne," Maryanne has a lot to say, and not enough minutes in the day. Our hero hangs on each syllable, reveling in the reward of how every word makes him love her more. YES! The word is love. And that love is as pure as the pop music we adore. Keep talking, Maryanne.
Later on, as the know-nothing Disco Sucks movement built its flammable foundation upon a bedrock of racism and homophobia, I began to realize I'd chosen the wrong side. The loudest parties chortling at the notion of smashing mirrored disco balls and stoking a bonfire of Saturday Night Fever soundtrack LPs were often just chuckleheads, the advance guard of reactionaries commencing the implementation of mourning in America.
Is this a disco record? Don't know, don't care. It's got that beat, plus genuine passion, real soul, bred in both the clubs and the church, drawing upon Gospel and dance mix alike. It's the sexual pursuit that played out so often beneath flashing disco lights, yet it seems sincere, earnest. Only your good lovin' can set me free. I look back on those few times I did set foot in discos, only to hightail it outta there at my first opportunity. Maybe I should have stayed and talked to some of those disco girls after all.
In the eighties, Buffalo's WBNY-FM was one of the greatest radio stations I ever heard. It was a college station, beaming its waves from the campus of Buffalo State College on Elmwood Avenue, then just up the road from a Mighty Taco restaurant where I worked and two great record stores where I shopped. The restaurant and both record stores are long gone. WBNY is still there.
I finally scored a scratchy used copy of the group's 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground And Nico, purchased at Main Street Records in Brockport, Spring 1981. I loved it immediately. Fine, I never liked the two noisy tracks at LP's end, but the album as a whole is brilliant. I didn't care about its influence, its importance, its long, sweaty reach into the crucible of punk, new wave, alternative, or trend du jour; I just rejoiced in having a new album to obsess over.
Many of Del Shannon's classic hits are compressed, claustrophobic little jolts of tension, fear, frustration, longing, loneliness, alienation, and even paranoia. Yet they sound so invigorating, so full of life lived against the odds, that it's even more unfortunate that Shannon couldn't achieve the catharsis offered in his own songs.
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....
Most of us are neither Sam nor Dave. I know I'm not. I'm not even Jake or Elwood. But as we listen to this great soul duo reign o'er the musical majesty the Stax studiomen have provided them, their determination...well, it doesn't quite become ours, but we feel it. It's 1967, and all points forward. Certainty. An eye on the prize. Walls are gonna fall, change is gonna come. Comin' to ya, on a dusty road. It ain't braggin' if you can do it. They're not called soul men for nothing.
And, in May of 1978, I was going to see the Kinks.
Armed with an abiding love of three chords and...well, if not the truth, then whatever mix of fact and falsehood she deems appealing in the moment, Holly Golightly is a garage-bred force, incorporating rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and an occasional imported twang of country and western to plan the musical menu for her own midnight snack at Tiffany's. She got her start in the early nineties with Thee Headcoatees, a distaff tangent to UK garagemeisters Thee Headcoats. She's released a ton of records, both as a frontperson and with acts like the Greenhornes and the White Stripes. Originals and covers. Holly does 'em all.
There are myriad ways this dance of beauty and sadness can manifest. In this moment, let us speak of its relationship with a band called the Smithereens, and the fans who found the beauty within their sadness.
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Of course, for all the groups who set out to be the Beatles, success in that particular goal would always be unattainable; there could only be one Beatles. But you know what? There could also only be one Cowsills. The Cowsills created a lot of fine music, well worthy of rediscovery and acclaim. They're still a fantastic live band, and they're still creating fabulous new music, too.
I don't really believe in God. I don't really disbelieve either; I'm not an Atheist, nor is my belief (or lack thereof) formal enough for me to consider myself an Agnostic. I don't question the existence of God so much as I remain unconvinced either way. I don't know. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it: I don't know.
"Reach Out" is no less melodramatic than "Standing in the Shadows of Love" or "It's the Same Old Song" or "Seven Rooms of Gloom." But its sense of heightened emotion is put to a higher purpose: not just lamenting lost love, but planting feet firmly, chin set, and reaching out to help a loved one make a stand when the chips are down. It's pure, it's inspirational, and it's spine-chillingly convincing and uplifting.
If this had been the hit it deserved to be, it would have been covered by everybody, from soul to jazz to country to pure show biz; it would have appeared in TV variety show performances by Raquel Welch and Barbara Eden, Sammy Davis Jr. would have belted it out on Jerry Lewis' Labor Day Telethon, and it woulda been seared into our collective pop consciousness alongside Stevie Wonder's "For Once In My Life" and Blood, Sweat and Tears' "Spinning Wheel."
But "Old Time Rock & Roll" ain't got the same soul. It's empty bravado. Worse, it's smug and reactionary, forced and unconvincing, and it is far, far removed from the genuine excitement of old-time rock 'n' roll, from Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, King Elvis I. It's Pat Boone, albeit at least without the inherent racism. It's fake. It was released in 1979, but it is so perfectly suited for the overwhelmingly artificial, superficial vibe of the eighties. Its subsequent pop-culture ubiquity via Tom Cruise in Risky Business just adds to its toxicity. It is not, and will never be, The Greatest Record Ever Made. Its only redeeming quality is that it's not as horrifyingly tortuous as Seger's "We've Got Tonight."
Maybe you never knew that Bob Seger made a punk record. If you didn't know, it's not your fault; neither music history nor Seger himself has seemed interested in the secret revelation of a dynamic, furious 1968 record called "2 + 2 = ?"
It occurs to me that I've never really been on a first date, at least not in the sense of the first dates we see in pop culture, in movies, on TV, and in radio-ready 45s. I've been on dates with girlfriends, and still go on dates with my wife, but in each case she and I were already together prior to date night. Hands had already been held. Lips had already met. Eyes had already gazed admiringly into pretty eyes that returned the favor. I did things backwards. I got the girl first, and a date would follow some time thereafter.
And with all that said, I still have to express my highest praise for the version less-heard, an elegant statement of love, respect, and appreciation for those who made us better than we were. Thank you, Lulu. Thank you, Sir.
I wait in the darkness of my lonely room. I had seen Brenda that morning, on her way out of town; diverging responsibilities in different locations meant that we were only able to spend weekends together that summer, each weekend followed by a work week of sleeping in separate rooms. I knew I'd see her again the following weekend. We were together when we could be. We were already in love, and we both knew it.
When did we stop thinking of rock 'n' roll as dance music? Was it in the aftermath of the British Invasion? Was it during the Summer of Love in '67? Was it a seventies phenomenon, inflicted by an increasing segregation between R & B and (white) capital-R Rock?
Rock 'n' roll used to have a glass ceiling. It broke for the first time in 1981. It was broken by the Go-Go's.
But, in fact, only one of the three members of the Supremes was really considered a superstar. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Diana Ross. Oh, and the others. Mary Wilson. Florence Ballard. They started out billed as equals. Before long, it was Diana Ross and the Supremes. Then it was just Diana Ross, her former co-stars left behind as the spotlight followed her and faded for the Supremes.
Ambivalence and certainty can sometimes go hand in hand. It's incongruous, a paradox, but it's true in the sublime case of "God Only Knows." The track is emblematic of the classic album that gave it life: Brian Wilson's 1966 masterpiece Pet Sounds.
Radio mattered enough to itself become a popular subject matter in song. Chuck Berry vowed to write a little letter and mail it to his local DJ. Lou Reed told us about a girl who one fine morning turned on that New York City station and couldn't believe what she heard at all. Donna Summer sang of hearing something said really loud on the radio. The Ramones remembered rock 'n' roll radio. Screen Test (an offshoot of the Flashcubes) did "Sound Of The Radio," an incredible track about how great radio was when radio used to play the Kinks.
(And if Tracey Ullman's "They Don't Know" really was my final big AM Top 40 song, then I went out in style. Radio up. Windows down. Let's hit the road and drive.)
There are times when the songs on the radio seem to know us better than we know ourselves. That's why we still need the radio.
A pop song as the clarion call for the free world? Obviously.
Is "Yakety Yak" by the Coasters the single best-ever song about the generation gap? Yes. Unequivocally. You can argue on behalf of the Who's "My Generation," but that track falls short of the Coasters' wiseass pinnacle. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" is a very close second, but even You can't use the car 'cause you didn't work a lick can't quite match Tell your hoodlum friends outside you ain't got time to take no ride. "Yakety Yak." Don't talk back.
In either 1972 or '73, when I was in seventh or eighth grade, I was one of four or five students in my suburban middle school class selected to visit a classroom in one of the Syracuse city schools for an attempted cultural exchange. It was, after all, the 1970s, and the seventies were all about rap sessions and bridging differences, trying to make a connection above the chasms that divide us. Heavy, man. Looking back, it's easy to summon snark about the process. Looking back, I still think it was a good idea.
The ghosts of our past walk beside us. I know I'm not unique in this. The spirits of past missteps and misdeeds are with us every day, sometimes with greater presence than others. No medium or ghostbreaker can dispel these particular poltergeists. It's not every minute of every day; we can apply context and balance, and we can concede that being human--mortal--comes with the certainty of fallibility, the inevitability of imperfection. But we also have to acknowledge the sins and the regrets, the times we were victim or villain, the aggressor or the aggrieved. I hope lessons were learned along the way. The ghosts remind us how much we still have to learn.
David Bowie's death on January 10th of 2016 had way more impact on me than I would have ever thought likely. There were external factors in play; my daughter had just begun a semester in London, and it would be, by far, the longest time I would ever go without seeing her. I felt fragile, mortal. I felt sad, my pride in her accomplishments and delight in her opportunities not quite sufficient to ease the ache inside. Bowie died. I wasn't even all that much of a fan. Yet his passing hit me harder than any celebrity death since losing Joey Ramone on Easter Sunday in 2001.
We've talked about (and dismissed) the idea of rock 'n' roll as the Devil's music. But what about rock's celestial roots? In the wicked, orgiastic consummation of the rock and the roll, Gospel music was a participant no more reserved and no less sweaty than R & B, country, honky tonk, and blues. Now that was a party! Bless us, Lord!
We try to hold on. We try to cling to things we cherish. We can't hold on. We shouldn't. We can't.
I grew up in a home filled with music. My parents loved music, my sister and brothers loved music, and I saw no reason to rebel against that. Of course I love music; how could I not?
Seventies punk grew in part out of a repudiation of the hippie ethos, yet the two opposing notions shared more than either faction would have admitted. The punks cried "Anarchy!," the hippies insisted "Make love, not war," but each professed to reject the rules of societal conformity. Perhaps they created their own conformities along the way. The hippies said, "If it feels good, do it." The punks prized the practice of DIY. And in 1977, a British group swept up in (at least) punk's periphery crafted a rallying cry: Do Anything You Wanna Do.
In real life, there is perhaps no greater super power than the ability to shrug off the disapproval of others. Dig what you dig. Love who you love. Be who you want to be, not whatever some gray they want you to be. Don't give a damn about your reputation.
I've had a complicated relationship with social interaction. Just a few years ago, I told a friend that I tend to feel out of place no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I'm a square peg, and I'm shy. I conceal it pretty well--anyone who has heard me on the radio will attest to that--and sometimes I can continue playing the role of bon vivant for short spells in real life. It's not really me, but it's the me I think I want to be. I think. I guess. Who knows?
Music is love. Love is music. We are finite, but love and music are eternal, and we can touch briefly upon immortality with our openness to these twin glimpses of the divine. Love doesn't always last forever. Sometimes it can't. Sometimes it shouldn't. Our belief that it can, that we can be part of something larger, something greater, something infinite...well, that belief keeps us going. We turn up our music. We hold fast to those we hold dear. We listen. We love. We dream.
Belief feeds hope.
Annus mirabilis. The ideal of the miracle year is intriguing, enticing, yet elusive, and damned near unattainable. We touch it sometimes, briefly. Our favorite sports team exceeds expectations. Our favorite artist delivers a new masterpiece, a film or novel or record that thrills our ever-fannish spirits. We connect with the one we love the most, and our hearts rise to a higher horizon. Something great happens to friends or family, or something great happens directly to us, and we feel the elation of miracle. This year...!
That's it. Sometimes it's just as simple as that.
Before we pay our tab and let our designated drivers scoot us home, we have one more song to play us out of here. An infinite number of great records can be The Greatest Record Ever Made. But if it's gotta be just one, I know the one I'd have to name.
I know--this is not proper form for clickbait. It seems that just about every day you'll see some silly internet post insisting that the Beatles were overrated, or inconsistent, or somehow not all that important. Such claims fall under the general category of bovine dung. The only way the Beatles could be considered overrated is if we fell into the trap of believing they were the only great pop group; fannish worship of all things Beatley has made our lads an inviting target for ornery iconoclasm, and I can't blame Beatle critics for pushing back against that. Hell, I'm a Beatles fan, and even I get annoyed by my fellow fans sometimes.
But the crowning achievement of pop music in 1966 was a B-side, an indispensable throwaway that just might tower over any other record, before or since. Shine! The weather's fine.
Almost six decades later, the music means as much to me now as it meant when I was five, and as when I was three, when I was twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty, fifty, and on down the dark and twisting path ahead of me.
Our favorite records don't live in isolation. Each one has a story to tell. Those stories continue.
Infinitely.
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.
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, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.
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