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 # 1231. This show is available as a podcast.
DAVID WOODARD: I Used To Be Cool
"I Used To Be Cool?" Yeah, plainly not a song about me. As a practicing and devout square peg, I can't look back at any time in my history when I was ever anything resembling cool.
David Woodard used to be cool, and he has a new song that says so. And based on the evidence of his new album Get It Good, man, David remains pretty damned cool in the present day. And the album's on the mighty Kool Kat Musik label, so...EXTRA cool! We're playing this one again on our next show.
It seems like the cool thing to do.
THE ARMOIRES: We Absolutely Mean It
Sincerity is also a cool thing. Last week's exciting edition of 10 Songs extolled this merit, specifically as expressed in the Armoires' current single "We Absolutely Mean It." And we repeat our appreciation and admiration of what Armoires Rex Broome and Christina Bulbenko do for our beloved rockin' pop scene with their own cool record label Big Stir Records.
We mean it times two. The luxury of an indie radio show is that we play what we want to play, without any other concerns. Maybe that's cool? Ah, maybe it's just stubborn. But our statement of intent mirrors the Armoires: We absolutely mean it. Such a sincerely cool track.
DONNA SUMMER: Hot Stuff
Oooo. "Hot Stuff" is also cool--paradox be damned--especially when it's Donna Summer. Hot Summer! From a previous 10 Songs:
"Donna Summer was already the Queen of Disco in 1979, and she wanted to record a rock song. She succeeded, but everyone still thought of it as a disco song. Really, 'Hot Stuff' was both, a dance number with a Big Rock posture, an AOR re-imagining of life under the flashing lights. Former New York Dolls singer David Johansen covered the song in a live medley with the Dolls' 'Personality Crisis,' and it suited him (and those of us in the audience) just fine. No offense intended to my album-rock brethren, but I'd much rather see and hear Donna Summer yearning for hot stuff than listen to Foreigner brag about being hot-blooded. Your mileage may vary."
THE VINTAGE YELL: She Loves You
Beatlemania as Americana. The Vintage Yell reimagine the familiar yeah-yeah-yeah Fabness of "She Loves You" as homegrown advice to the lovelorn. On our next show, we'll hear about a dozen other acts trying on their Beatle wigs, but we'll switch to a new original single for our fresh dose of the Vintage Yell. You know that can't be bad.
LYNDA MANDOLYN: Billet Doux
My command of the French language is...I don't have any command of the French language. The only French phrase I ever (sort of) mastered was Je ne suis Québécois, je suis Américain, which came in pret' damned useful when I was in Montreal in the early '90s, as Quebec separatists peppered random passers-by like moi with requests to sign their petitions. Hell, when I was in France for a couple of hours in 2010, I limited my patter to Bon jour, merci, and Kronenbourg, s'il vous plaît.
So if I say on-air that "Billet Doux" must mean "Separate checks!," it's just me trying to be amusing. Failing, but trying. Lynda Mandolyn's sublime new single "Billet Doux" is très ooh-la-la, a smooth, beguiling, and altogether magnifique (and mostly English language) love song ready-made for pop radio. And it's ready-made for redux, as it will return to TIRnRR airwaves this Sunday night.
And I believe I will have another Kronenbourg. Mercy buttercups!
THE SELECTER: On My Radio
With all deserved respect to the Specials and the English Beat, my # 1 fave rave track from the late '70s/early '80s UK ska revival is always gonna be the Selecter's triumphant 1979 single "On My Radio." Its beat and vibe are infectious, and its chosen subject matter adds irresistible wireless gravitas. From my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"Radio used to be so important, so goddamned vital. Its current neutered state of resolute irrelevance breaks my heart. I remember when radio was everything. I remember when radio fucking mattered.
"Yeah, even when radio played silly love songs. It all mattered, all mixed together, rock and soul and pop and bubblegum, metal, reggae, glam/glitter, country, folk, funk, MOR. Punk. Move the timeline forward, and the mix could include hip-hop. It's all pop music. Gather 'round the wireless. Listen to what matters. Radio delivered the sounds that could make a generation live, love, dance, and party. What in the world would we have been without the radio?
"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.
"Radio was our shared experience, our common window into a world of music and discovery. It is such a damned shame that had to change...."
And it's not changing back. Dana and I, like our fellow true believers doing their own cool indie radio shindigs across the country and around the globe, keep the flame on behalf of a conviction that radio should matter.
It sure as hell matters to all of us.
Decades ago, I first heard the Selecter on my radio. Now, we play it on our radio show. As it oughta be. The same old show? No. It's only the same in its virtues, its vision, its passion.
You know. The parts that matter.
THE MONKEES: The Door Into Summer
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE FLASHCUBES: Make Something Happen
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I'm still in the pre-work work stages of starting my book Make Something Happen! The DIY Story Of A Power Pop Band Called THE FLASHCUBES. Much of this is just preliminary grunt stuff; I've chosen a method to digitally transcribe interviews, and I'm experimenting with ways to record said interviews on my iPhone. I've written the book's one-sheet blurb (basically an expanded re-wording of the blog post linked above), and I'll likely share it here next week. It's about time to start doing the interviews themselves.
(I've also been sketching in tentative ideas for a separate but related project. It's too soon to talk about that now.)
"Make something happen." I will be repeating that mantra a zillion times. Summer 2025. Smile everybody! It's the Flashcubes.
THE RAMONES: Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
Destination: Glue. Exactly my reaction when I saw the sales figures for my book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones. NO! I KID! I'm a kidder.
KISS: Shout It Out Loud
But here's the thing: Love of music is its own reward. Enthusiasm is its own reward. All of us who do anything at all within this broad category of indie pop music--performers, players, singers, producers, songwriters, promoters, record label go-getters, DJs, pop journalists, bloggers, even naive mooks who write books about the Ramones--do whatever the hell it is we do because we feel a compelling desire to do it. We'd like some financial reward--I would, anyway--but chasing the dollar isn't our primary motivation. We love the music. We love the experience of music. We love the sheer sense of life within the grooves of the music we love so much.
Maybe KISS isn't the most appropriate band to attach to a stated embrace of music without mercenary goals. But "Shout It Loud" is the perfect song. It's cool. It's hot! It's sincere, it matters, and it's about making something happen.
We absolutely mean it. We wouldn't be shouting out loud if it weren't the motherlovin' truth.
We cool?
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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.
Oh you’re cool, Carl, especially cause you don’t think you are.
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