10 SONGS: 5/11/2024

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 # 1232. This show is available as a podcast.

PAUL COLLINS: Tell Me

King of power pop Paul Collins brings us this sublime first tease of Jem Records Celebrates Jagger & Richards, the latest in the label's series of various-artists salutes to classic rock songwriters. This radio show has been all in for Jem's previous celebrations of John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Pete Townshend, and Ray Davies, and we've for damned sure been all in for Paul Collins' recent Jem work. For us, Paul Collins covering the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me" is a match made at our Satanic Majesties' request. We'll have the Midnight Callers' contribution to Jem Records Celebrates Jagger & Richards on our next show.

(And, while we presume future Jem Records Celebrates volumes will get to Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and/or Bob Dylan anon, consider this an early request for Jem Records Celebrates Michael Nesmith. It doesn't seem immediately likely, I guess. But it just might be the one...?)

THE FOUR TOPS: I'm A Believer

Speaking of Michael Nesmith and his prime mates the Monkees....

The Four Tops are my favorite Motown act, but I confess I mostly know their incomparable singles and not so much their album tracks. Time for a deeper dive! 

This cover of the Monkees' Neil Diamond-penned hit "I'm A Believer" is one of two Monkees covers on the Four Tops' Reach Out. Maybe we'll get around to spinning Levi Stubbs wailing "Last Train To Clarksville" on some near-future show. The idea of the Four Tops covering the Monkees seems odd to me, not because it doesn't work--I'm a big fan of Monkees songs, and I'm a believer that the Four Tops could pull off just about any material they wanted to do--but because I find it weird to a hear big hit act covering another big hit act's contemporaneous material. It comes across as filler, but it wasn't uncommon in the '60s, especially for entities viewed as primarily singles acts. And in the hands of the Four Tops, it's compelling filler. Yeah, a deeper dive into the Four Tops' LP tracks is way overdue.

THE SHIRTS: Tell Me Your Plans

I wanna repeat some previous blog comments about this track. Consider this the prologue for our next selection by Rome 56: 

My enthusiastic immersion in punk, new wave, and other assorted rock 'n' roll labels in the late '70s did not include the music of the Shirts. It wasn't a rejection of the Shirts; I just wasn't exposed to their recordings until many years later. Lack of opportunity? I guess. The only thing I remember hearing from them at the time was a track on the various-artists LP Live At CBGB's, wherein singer and actress Annie Golden's greeting to the Bowery audience was something like, We're the Shoits, from Brooklyn. She exaggerated the accent deliberately...

 Nice shoit, Annie

...Still, I didn't really hear the Shirts until a very long time after the fact. I snapped up a used CD reissue of their 1979 eponymous album in, I dunno, the early '00s?  I was immediately and overwhelmingly taken by that album's opening track "Reduced To A Whisper," hypnotized by a guitar sound that reminded me of the Shirts' CBGB's contemporaries Television. 

As a whole, the Shirts didn't really sound at all like Television; the comparison was based almost entirely on a similarly serpentine six-string thrum and the two groups' shared stomping grounds. The Shirts were...well, I don't wanna call them more mainstream than Television, 'cause that ain't exactly it either. But there were hints of connection to some things beyond the Bowery, to, say, the progressive-folk mix aura of Renaissance, or maybe even post-Woodstock FM radio, but at least a little more aggressive. It all still felt like part of Television's world, the Ramones' world, the world of Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Max's Kansas City. CBGB's. New York City really has it all.

From that first album, the track "Tell Me Your Plans" just clicked with me recently. Its simmering blend of regret, resignation, yearning, and unmeasured dollops of uncertainty suggests a love affair approaching a crossroads without benefit of a map. Or a plan. There is, at best, a bumpy road ahead. There may not even be a road at all.

What's the plan, then? It's hard to tell.

ROME 56: The Man Behind The Man With The Gun

The immediate plan is to start playing Rome 56. The connection to the Shirts track extolled above is Rome 56 guitarist and "Tell Me Your Plans" author Arthur Lamonica, who was himself one of the Shirts. See, I love it when a plan comes together. From Rome 56's uberswell current album Paradise Is Free, "The Man Behind The Man With The Gun" is an absolutely ace slice of pop noir, like a Gold Medal paperback translated into irresistible, radio-ready rockin' pop music. Hardboiled radio-ready rockin' pop music. Perfect crime. And we'll return to the fascinating scene of that crime on our next show.

Sounds like a plan.

ELENA ROGERS: Goodbye Neighbor

It has become TIRnRR's unofficial policy to play each new Elena Rogers single as it's released, and we will often continue playing it until Elena releases a newer single. Works for us! We gave Elena last week off, and this week sees the debut of latest Elena Rogers single "Goodbye Neighbor." "Goodbye Neighbor" usurps the playlist spot that had been occupied by her previous single "Queen," which itself elbowed her previous previous single "I Feel Alive" out of its way. It's a song-eat-song world out there. 

"I Feel Alive" has already locked up a berth on TIRnRR's year-end countdown show. And this coming Sunday night's shindig will include TWO Elena Rogers songs: Another spin of "Goodbye Neighbor," and a new cover of an older Elena Rogers track, the latter courtesy of Mike Browning. See, this policy benefits all of us.

BONEY M: My Friend Jack

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

CIRCE LINK AND CHRISTIAN NESMITH: Satellite

The nonpareil combined forces of Circe Link and Christian Nesmith are working on a new progressive rock album called Arcana. It's a follow up to the duo's 2021 prog album Cosmologica, and donations/preorders for Arcana can be placed here. Meanwhile, Dana's spin of a Curved Air track inspired me to follow with "Satellite," a past favorite from Cosmologica that we haven't played in a while. "Satellite" reminds me a bit of both Renaissance and Yes, at least in the sense that I could imagine it as performed by the early '70s incarnation of either of those bands. Progressive as we wanna be!

THE SPEED OF SOUND: Question Time

The physical release of the Speed Of Sound's new album A Cornucopia: Minerva is cornucopia indeed: A three-CD or three-LP set, supplementing the main record with two additional full-length albums. A big, big wall of sound delivered at the speed of sound!

 "Question Time" is the last track on the first platter, and it provides its own authoritative answer, a lovely statement of indie-bred UK pop, raised in the underground with an eye on the sky and an ear to the airwaves. Cornucopia! We live in a time of plenty. 

THE BEATLES: I've Just Seen A Face

The Beatles, with the opening track from their classic album Rubber Soul.

Don't even try telling me it's from a different Beatles album instead. I know. But this is how I heard it, as the beginning of the American version of Rubber Soul rather than an LP track on the UK Help! And that has meant far too much for me to let go of it easily. 

THE MARTINI KINGS: Take Five

Vermouth, forsooth. The subtitle for the new Martini Kings retrospective Enchanted Lovers says it all: "Celebrating 40 years of intoxicating sounds in jazz, exotica, tiki, and lounge." I'll drink to that! And we bellow LAST CALL! for this week's extravaganza with the Martini Kings' demonstrating olive supreme with their confident take on the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five." Grab the designated drivers. It's time to see ourselves home.

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 book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is 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