10 SONGS: 11/1/2024

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 # 1257.

LIBRARIANS WITH HICKEYS: Listening

We've been looking forward to the new Librarians With Hickeys album How To Make Friends By Telephone since...yeah, since their last album, 2022's Handclaps & Tambourines. The 2022 record gave us two full-on TIRnRR Fave Raves with "I Better Get Home" and "Can't Wait 'Till Summer," and the teaser singles from How To Make Friends By Telephone ("Hello Operator" and "No More Goodbyes") have likewise brightened our airwaves and compelled our volume controls to reach for magnetic North. We are indeed listening. 

And we like what we hear.

THE CYNZ: Woman Child

With this week's spin, "Woman Child" by the Cynz has scored its fourth consecutive appearance on the TIRnRR playlist. It will notch Week # 5 this Sunday. More to come. Let us be your "Woman Child" resource.

CARLA OLSON AND TALL POPPY SYNDROME: Is It True

With this week's spin, Carla Olson and Tall Poppy Syndrome's supergroovy cover of Brenda Lee's irresistible "Is It True" has scored its fourth consecutive appearance on the TIRnRR playlist. It will notch Week # 5 this Sunday. More to come? That's probably true. The Cynz, Carla Olson and Tall Poppy Syndrome, and all of the stars of our little Play-Tone galaxy. We play the hits.

SPANKY AND OUR GANG: Sunday Will Never Be The Same

It's hard to believe, but Spanky and Our Gang didn't make their TIRnRR debut until...wait, is this right? Last week?!  We've been running this rock 'n' roll radio dog and pony show since the end of 1998, which means it took us almost twenty-six years to get around to programming Spanky and Our Gang. It's a damned good thing we have tenure.

Now, the merry Spanksters notch up two weeks in a row on this little mutant radio show. Up and coming band! After spinning the group's cover of the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing" last week, we move to one of their own hits this week: "Sunday Will Never Be The Same." I do remember playing the track on our old early '90s show We're You're Friends For Now (the precursor of whatever the hell it is we do on TIRnRR), and I woulda swore we played it here as well...

...but I woulda been wrong. Now we have played it on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. Better late than never! Sundays will chart their own independent path from here on out.

THE BINGS: Don't Stop Dancing

I am constantly amazed to discover great decades-old rockin' pop music I never knew about. The Bings are a case in point. I first heard of the Bings when the group's singer and guitarist David Chrenko left this comment on my exhaustive history of power pop:

"Excellent article. Greg Shaw would be proud. I was a staff member of Bomp! Records and Bomp! magazine in the late '70s. The Hollywood scene of which Bomp! was a mover 'n' shaker was not unlike Liverpool in 1962-64. I took all I'd learned from Greg and Suzy Shaw and in 1980 formed the Bings. We took the best music of the club scenes in London, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and combined it with our own originals (what is now known as Power Pop) and unleashed it on the Southern California suburbs. In March 2024 Bachelor Records released a vinyl album of our studio and live recordings, which is getting airplay in America, Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, and Asia - 40 years after the Bings packed it in! ...Hope you can still POGO to it!"

The album is called Power Pop Planet (The Lost Tapes), and man, where has this record been all my life? Any record you ain't heard is a new record, and I'm dead chuffed to hear this now. Power Pop Planet has TIRnRR written all over it. Channeling my inner Bruce Brodeen: EXTREMELY highly recommended!

THE COWSILLS: She Said To Me

My favorite album of the 1990s remains the Cowsills' wonderful 1998 release Global. The record never got anywhere near the acclaim it deserves, and it's been difficult (and pricey) for those who missed it at the time to catch up with what they missed. I'm delighted that Omnivore Recordings will be remedying that situation in one week, with a deluxe reissue of Global due out on November 8th. If you're a rockin' pop fan, you've gotta get this. I've had (and loved!) the CD for decades, but I'm buying the reissue for its bonus tracks, and because I like buying Cowsills albums. A world with more Cowsills albums is a better world. (And I would very much like to see the Cowsills record a new album with Christian Nesmith producing; that would be a match made in Heaven.)

The Global track "She Said To Me" has been a frequent fixture on TIRnRR playlists, and the group allowed us to use the song on our 2006 compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2. My book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) includes a chapter about "She Said To Me." I've heard that Bob Cowsill was tickled that "She Said To Me" was given the GREM! treatment, but man, this song absolutely deserves it. Global: My favorite album of the 1990s. And "She Said To Me" is a large part of the reason why that's so.

THE ARCHIES: Get On The Line

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

And I most certainly did get on the line: I voted

THE RAMONES: I Wanna Be Sedated

Given my anxiety about the election, yeah, sedation sounds GREAT, thanks

THE MONKEES: Terrifying

Will there ever be a deluxe edition of Good Times!, the superb 2016 album by the Monkees? The original album (subject of the only record review I've written since deciding I didn't want to write those things anymore) was accompanied by four scattered bonus tracks which have never been available in one package. "A Better World" was only issued on the FYE-exclusive version of Good Times!, "Love's What I Want" was on the Japanese release, and "Terrifying" and "Me & Magdalena [Version 2]" were digital-only. The four tracks were gathered on a Record Store Day vinyl edition, but have not yet appeared together as part of any legit issue of Good Times! "Love's What I Want" and "A Better World" aren't even available for streaming.

I don't buy or play vinyl. I have a CD-R of the whole thing, but I really want an official CD release that presents the entirety of the Good Times! experience, perhaps adding unreleased bonus material if any such thing exists.

Note to Rhino Records: Take my money, awready.

LESLEY GORE: You Don't Own Me

A sneak peek at our next show. Enough with chipping away at the glass ceiling. Let's breach that sucker.

Let's breach that sucker now. We're not going back.

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My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

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.