10 SONGS: 2/24/2024

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 # 1221. This show is available as a podcast.

RICH ARITHMETIC: When You Want Somebody (To Make Love To)

Rich Arithmetic is the nom de bop of Rich Horton, and somehow our stats indicate that this week's spin of "When You Want Somebody (To Make Love To)" is only the fifth time a Rich Arithmetic track has ever graced a TIRnRR playlist. Man, where the hell have we been? This fine tune comes to us from the brand-new Rich Arithmetic album Pushbutton Romance, it's flippin' fantastic, and it's back on the radio again in our next show. We may be slow. But we ain't stupid.

THE CYNZ: Little Miss Lost

Singles. Tribute album offerings. Since the Cynz aligned with the mighty Jem Records, we've been getting little teases of new Cynz recordings, whettin' the ol' appetite for more. Now, at long last, that promised MORE! is nearly at hand.

March 29th is the official street date for Little Miss Lost, the brand new album from the Cynz. We can't wait. Meanwhile, the album's title tune has been released as an advance single. We played it on the radio this week, and we're playin' it again this Sunday night. Tease leads to promise. Promise leads to reward. Don't let this be a lost opportunity: Get with the music of the Cynz.

ELENA ROGERS: I Feel Alive

This is so good. Elena Rogers first entered TIRnRR's sovereign air space on a recommendation from pop giant Jamie Hoover. Jamie's been working with the young singer for a few years, he's clearly (and understandably) knocked out by her talent and musical prowess, and he would kindly like the world at large to wake the hell up and get hip to Elena Rogers awready. 

Elena's new single "I Feel Alive" is her best track yet, ambitious and audacious in its approach while remaining absolutely, unerringly pop. During Jamie's 2023 appearance on the way-swell Only Three Lads podcast, our esteemed Mr. Hoover promised a new Elena Rogers album in '24. That album will be called Prelude To Whatever, and "I Feel Alive" ratchets up the anticipation.

Can you feel it? 

LEATHER CATSUIT: Can't Get You Off My Mind

A couple of week's back, in the exciting 2/9/2024 edition of 10 Songs, I referred to both Paul Collins' "I'm The Only One For You" and Leather Catsuit's "Can't Get You Off My Mind" as welcome earworms. Well, the fact that we're still delighting in that act of programming 'em indicates their Welcome, Earworm! status remains unchallenged. Hell, the Leather Catsuit track is in my head pretty much all day, every day. Yep: I can't get it off my mind.

Don't wanna get it off my mind. And I am perfectly fine with that.

THE CYRKLE: We Can Find It

We've been playing most of the advance single sides from '60s sunshine pop combo the Cyrkle's new album Revival, and the arrival of the entire album gives us a chance to air what seems to be its best track. "We Can Find It" is less overtly nostalgic than the album's (still pretty nifty) first single "We Thought We Could Fly" and the attendant (solid) remakes of the Cyrkle's hits "Red Rubber Ball" and "Turn Down Day," but equally a product of the group's legacy. Endearing in its own right. 

THE RAMONES: Swallow My Pride

"Swallow My Pride" is one of my favorite tracks by one of my all-time favorite groups, the Ramones. The American Beatles! The greatest American rock 'n' roll group of all time! I like 'em so much I wrote a book about them. And I also wrote an appreciation of my 25 favorite Ramones tracks, which included this celebration of "Swallow My Pride:"

We should have seen this as a sign: If "Swallow My Pride" couldn't become a smash hit single, any top-of-the-pops aspirations the Ramones harbored were doomed from the start. Looking just at the Ramones' American singles, we can say maybe U.S. radio wasn't quite ready for "Blitzkrieg Bop" in '76, that "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" was pretty but not smooth enough for American airwaves, and maybe "I Remember You" didn't have the prerequisite oomph to be radio-ready.

But "Swallow My Pride" was perfect. Perfect. It's pure pop, drawing inspiration from the best '60s influences, and it doesn't even have any specific punk or glue-sniffing aspect to put an asterisk on its commercial sheen. It's a revved-up counterpart to the Bay City Rollers' "Rock And Roll Love Letter" or KISS' "Shout It Out Loud."

Perhaps "Swallow My Pride" was too good for Top 40 in 1977, and I guess progressive FM might have thought it too pop (or whatever other excuse they could concoct to dismiss something so obviously beneath their smug carcasses). The Ramones' next three singles--"Sheena Is A Punk Rocker," "Rockaway Beach," and "Do You Wanna Dance"--maintained a similarly irresistible spark, and even managed to breach the Billboard Hot 100. No subsequent Ramones single even came close.

The Ramones deserved a string of hit records. "Swallow My Pride" should have been one of 'em.

THE MONKEES: For Pete's Sake

When we programmed this spin of the Monkees' shoulda-been-a-single track "For Pete's Sake," we weren't thinking about the fact that this week also marked five years since the world lost Peter Tork. We played it simply because we wanted to play it. In this generation, in this lovin' time. 

THE SPINNERS: I'll Be Around

In the perhaps unlikely event my long-threatened (and long-ago-completed) book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) ever finds its path to publication, it will include a chapter about the Spinners' 1972 soul classic "I'll Be Around."

"I'll Be Around" was one of the many integral components of my own golden age of AM Top 40, the days and nights when my adolescent and teen ears were surgically tethered to Syracuse's WOLF-AM and WNDR-AM. My experience of just being in utter thrall to pop radio in the early '70s is the biggest reason why I grew up [sic] wanting to participate in the process. Make no mistake: My part of making TIRnRR is a direct result of my prevailing wish to be able to create something that can match and expand upon the sound and sense AM radio sparked within my hook-starved noggin.

From an early draft of the long-threatened thing:

The Spinners' string of Atlantic hits commenced in 1972, with the # 3 smash "I'll Be Around." Its resigned sigh offers little clue to the exuberance yet to come; thematically, its tale of love lost has more in common with "It's A Shame" and "My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)" than it shares with the presumed happiness within the love stories sung in "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," "One Of A Kind Love Affair," and "Then Came You." You've made a choice, and now it's up to me to bow out gracefully. It's pop music performed with a lump in the throat, yet it eschews melodrama with...well, not quite a shrug, but with the wisdom to realize causing a scene won't do any damned bit of good. I'm sorry, my friend; this affair is over, man.

But whenever you call me
I'll be there

That devotion won't change, even as the singer bids farewell to a house he'd prefer to still call his home, to a heart he aches with a desire to still call his, to a present and a future he's desperate to believe could still be, though he knows with dull certainty that it can't. His love is too strong to allow him to wish his lover anything but the best, even though he's shattered by the fact that "the best" emphatically does not include him. She's made a choice. As he leaves, she's going to close the door behind him. 

He doesn't give up hope. Whenever she calls him....

HOLLY GOLIGHTLY: Time Will Tell

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

WONDERBOY: Girl Songs

It's an important subject, and we thank our friends Wonderboy for starting the conversation. We introduced TIRnRR to the concept last week. We re-visited it this week. We'll return to it yet again on our next show. Let's hear it for the girls.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. 

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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl