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 # 1279
JOE GIDDINGS: You're Not Grounded
Joe Giddings is an unheralded rockin' pop treasure. His current album Stories With Guitars is the best thing since sliced amphetamines, and its track "Tonite Tonite" is pret' damned likely to make our year-end countdown show. Jeez Louise, let's herald this guy awready!
Now, the esteemed Mr. Giddings has also turned in a cover of the Flashcubes' "You're Not Grounded," which is his contribution to the forthcoming Flashcubes tribute album Make Something Happen! The song was written by 'Cubes guitarist Arty Lenin, and recorded by Arty 'n' the lads for the Flashcubes' 2003 album Brilliant. Joe Giddings' cover of "You're Not Grounded" achieves the seemingly impossible: It's a Flashcubes cover that I--the world's most insistent Flashcubes fan--consider even better than the great Cubic original. Impossible--but TRUE! And brilliant from the ground up. That's how ya make something happen.
THE ARMOIRES: The Night I Heard A Scream
After kickin' off the proceedings in righteous fashion with Joe Giddings covering the Flashcubes, we threaded a secret series of Easter eggs at select spots throughout this week's playlist. We ain't sayin' what the thread was, nor what was part of it. All will be revealed in due time.
Meanwhile: Enjoy one of our consistent current Fave Raves the Armoires and their cover of a song by power pop legends 20/20. Just 'cuz. Pop music don't need no external justification, man. And don't the Armoires sound fabulous covering a little classic power pop?
THE AIRPORT 77'S: If It's On, I'm In
If it's on, I'm in--sounds like a plan! This latest single from the Airport 77's embraces the prospect and process of a gallivantin' blueprint transitioning from pencil to ink. BOLD ink, even. And fortune favors the bold. What's going on? Whatever it is, we're in.
SUPER 8 FEATURING LISA MYCHOLS: Pop Radio
We played Super 8 Featuring Lisa Mychols' Make Something Happen! cover of the Flashcubes' "When We Close Our Eyes" on last week's show, and it'll be turning up on future playlists as well. Believe me you! But we also need to continue poundin' the ol' console on behalf of their magnificent current single "Pop Radio," a track which serves as manifesto for us and all others who crave the pleasures of hooks 'n' harmonies cascading 'cross the airwaves, where they belong.
THE MOCKERS: Rascals Who Died
High concept! Long-time TIRnRR Fave Raves the Mockers take on the Jim Carroll Band's alt-rock touchstone "People Who Died," but re-write it from a litany of see-yas to underground cronies into a farewell to Spanky and Our Gang. No, not the '60s sunshine pop group--Sunday actually will be the same--but the actors from the original Our Gang comedy short films, which were rerun to death on TV as The Little Rascals. Members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club could not be reached for comment, possibly because they've all passed on anyway. We're playing this one again on our next show. Many happy returns of the day!
CHRIS CHURCH: Life On A Trampoline
"Life On A Trampoline?" It's BOUNCY! And it's a great, great track from Chris Church's great, great new album Obsolete Path. It will bounce its way back onto the radio in Syracuse again this Sunday night. Up in the air? ON the air!
THE STANDELLS: Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
POP CO-OP: Persistence Of Memory
It's been pointed out elsewhere, but it's worthy of repeat play here: no one in the media is paid to say "We don't know." Nor would such an admission inspire confidence, but it's something that should be said more often than it is. We don't know. We don't know.
The last live broadcast of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio occurred on March 15th, 2020. The paragraph seen above was part of the commentary accompanying the posted playlist for that show. At the time, we did not know it would be our final live show. The world shut down the following week. As the next Sunday rolled around without us, we all sheltered in our individual places, trying to understand what was happening, wondering what the hell would happen next.
But the following week, global pandemic be damned, we had a job to do. Before the curtain fell on us and everyone around us, we had planned to devote an episode of TIRnRR to a celebration of Factory Settings, the then-forthcoming new release from our friends Pop Co-Op. That plan seemed in jeopardy since, y'know, we didn't have a radio show anymore.
Enter some wacky, unfamiliar new (or new-to-us) thing called Zoom.
The intrepid Laura Sessions Tinnel set everything up. On Sunday, 3/29/2020, a live Zoom session commenced with Dana and I at our remote locations, connected with Pop Co-Op's Steve Stoeckel, Joel Tinnel, Bruce Gordon, and Stacy Carson chimin' in from their individual Batcaves, plus (if I recall correctly) Futureman Records CEO Keith Klingensmith joining us from somewhere within the palatial Futureman HQ. We talked back and forth, played each of the new album's tracks along with some relevant older material, and collectively reveled in the combined magic of technology and pop music bridging physical distance. Hands across the water, at a time when holding hands was verboten.
This whole experience of our Zoom with Pop Co-Op is a dizzying blur in my memory. It's a good blur nonetheless, and an important flashpoint in this little mutant radio show's long, strange history. It was yet another point where we seemed on the verge of falling silent, but found a way to dig in our heels and resist. A chip on our shoulders and a song in our hearts.
"Persistence Of Memory" is my favorite track on Factory Settings. This week, we played it again, as memory persists and time melts away.
We're still here.
FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE: Better Things
Five years ago today--April 5th, 2020--was the debut of the remote-programmed TIRnRR. It was a few days after we learned that COVID had killed Fountains Of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger, but our tribute to Schlesinger had to wait until the following week. Inspired by Rich Firestone and Michael McCartney, our decision to attempt recording a show at home came late in the week, with no time to program a playlist. Instead, Dana grabbed a model playlist I'd concocted in between the last live show and the Zoom with Pop Co-Op, I barked some back announcements into my iPhone, and Dana performed the process that transmogrified it all into a radio show. We have not missed a week since then.
As we tried to figure this out and move forward, I wrote this bit for our 4/12/2020 show:
Sometimes yesterday feels a lot closer than tomorrow. Tomorrow can seem like a vague promise, a mere possibility. Tomorrow isn't even a destination; it's just the next leg of our journey, a marker we hope will be followed by another tomorrow, then another, and so on. In our desperate moments, we may suspect that tomorrow won't arrive at all.
Yesterday is always right there with us. We don't want to live in the past, but memories can help to sustain us in our uncertainty. It's true that memories (good and bad) can also hold us back, but whatever we are, whatever we will become, is a product of places we remember all our lives, lovers and friends we still can recall. We don't get to tomorrow without keeping the lessons that yesterday tried to teach us. Like the saying goes: those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it.
Or something like that.
Right now, many of us may think that tomorrow is even further away than normal--hey, remember normal?--that these days of self-quarantine, disruption, and fear will stretch beyond any horizon we can see. This is natural, and it's difficult to shake. In the present day, yesterday is still with us, for well or ill, as we continue our march toward that elusive tomorrow.
The Coronavirus has compromised our feelings of safety and security, distanced us from friends and family. On the positive side, it's made it okay for me to appear in public wearing a mask, bringing me one step closer to my dream of being Batman. If you laughed at that, or even if you just rolled your eyes, I hope it was a momentary distraction from heavier thoughts. These are heavy times. We hope you're coping. We hope you're well. We hope you will endure through tomorrow.
And, in the words of a Ray Davies song that Adam Schlesinger covered with Fountains Of Wayne: I hope tomorrow you'll find better things.
THE BEATLES: Here Comes The Sun
Here comes the sun. To quote a different song title: Let it be.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
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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.
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