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| The pop noir genius of Todd Alcott |
As my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) careens toward its scheduled publication on July 10th, it's time for an update on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio's weekly GREM! feature.
Two things to note before we get to the update. First, with the book's publication nigh, some of the GREM! pieces linked below have been removed from this blog for the time being; I'm told it's because of something about free milk and a cow, but I don't understand dairy farming. Second, this coming Sunday night's show, June 30th, won't have a GREM! feature, because the whole show is devoted to tracks discussed in the book.
Here's the weekly GREM! story so far:
In 2022, we started doing The Greatest Record Ever Made! as a (nearly) weekly feature on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. Here's an updated list of the weekly GREM!s so far. More to come. Some of these will (I hope) appear someday in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), some will not, and one--the Ramones' "I Don't Want To Grow Up"--appears RIGHT NOW in my book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones.
Each update gives me another chance to share some of Todd Alcott's brilliant images of classic rock 'n' roll songs reimagined as pulp paperbacks. I need to devote a full post to Alcott's work one of these days (or nights). Meanwhile, you can visit his site and buy some stuff.
And here's a reprise of what I previously wrote about TIRnRR's weekly GREM! series:
An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns.
In 2022, with an eye toward mining the vast resource of material prepared for my ongoing concept The Greatest Record Ever Made!, we started doing a weekly GREM! feature on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl.
Part of the motivation here was, frankly, an effort to cut a tiny little corner in writing my weekly 10 Songs column. See, laziness is the mother of invention. Deciding that one 10 Songs entry each week could be a link to a previously-written Greatest Record Ever Made! piece meant that I only hadda write about nine songs. FREEDOM!
But a weekly feature also enhances the show itself. Prior to this, it had been a very long time since we had any specific weekly feature on TIRnRR. There used to be a weekly Forgotten Original!, there was a weekly Mystery 45! (where Dana grabbed a single from his collection and played it without previewing it), there was a very brief flirtation with Unsafe At Any Speed! (playing a record back at something other than its intended rpm), and I think we even may have had a weekly GREM! feature at some point. Maybe not. Maybe.
But these were all many years ago. The tentative beginning of our current weekly GREM! feature was in February of 2022, when we played Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You" on our February 6th show, and then followed with "Thank You, Girl" by the Beatles the next week. Then, in typical fashion, I completely forgot about the idea for a few weeks.
Pretty quick work, right?
GREM! resumed as a weekly thingie at the end of March in 2022, and continued thereafter. It skips a week every so often...but not very often. Anyway, here's a list of all of 'em so far. I think the only one we repeated was "That Thing You Do!" by teen sensations the Wonders. Please be aware that I am not under oath.
But we played them all on the radio. It's our own ongoing contribution to the infinite.
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
THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! The Weekly TIRnRR Featured Songs [updated list]
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 The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will be published in July. 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
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