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 # 1291
BRIAN WILSON: Love And Mercy
If some quirk of cosmic regulation and rulemaking decreed that only one--ONE--musician, performer, songwriter, and/or producer of the rock 'n' roll era could be acclaimed as genius, that one genius would be Brian Wilson.
Wilson's transcendent brilliance is widely recognized, but I was slow to accept it. As a kid in the 1960s, my awareness of the Beach Boys was peripheral--one of my older siblings had a copy of the Surfer Girl LP--and while I must have heard their hits again and again on AM Top 40 radio, they didn't really register in my ears at the time. One presumes I wasn't picking up the good vibrations.
That changed, sure, but the change took a while. In the '70s, even as teen me became increasingly obsessed with '60s rock 'n' roll, the Beach Boys were still merely a peripheral. A high school acquaintance tried to convince me of Brian Wilson's bona fides as occupying a rarified strata alongside the Beatles, and I found that notion preposterous.
Guess I'm dumb.
By the end of high school in 1977, I did love "Good Vibrations" and I liked or loved some of the early hits. I thought "Wouldn't It Be Nice" sounded intriguing in commercials for the movie Shampoo, and while I didn't like any of the '70s Beach Boys music I heard, the lure of the classic Hawthorne sound compelled me to pick up the Endless Summer 2-LP compilation. I added a copy of Pet Sounds during my freshman year in college. After college, circa '81 or '82, I bought used 2-LP reissues of 20/20 & Wild Honey and Friends & Smiley Smile.
For all that, I still wasn't ready to proclaim the genius of Brian Wilson. That willful myopia crumbled as I heard Capitol Records' series of two-on-one CD reissues of the Beach Boys' '60s albums. Revelation. Not because of format; because I was finally paying attention. That led me to reacquaint myself with Pet Sounds.
You know how I talk about the greatest record ever made, insisting that an infinite number of individual tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. I mean that. But when it comes to albums, man, there is only one all-time greatest album. Pet Sounds. It remains as near to the celestial as human ears can comprehend.
In that same general time frame, I also bought Brian Wilson's then-recent eponymous album on CD, sold to me by a Desert Shore Records clerk named Dana. Yes, the one-and-only that Dana. Ah, the dialectic of pop music. The album's opening track "Love And Mercy" is Brian Wilson's best-known solo song, a singularly appropriate comfort in our troubled times, and the imperative choice to open this week's show, as TIRnRR mourns the passing of a genius named Brian Wilson.
THE BEACH BOYS: In My Room
"In My Room" was on that Surfer Girl album in the ol' family music library, and I won't even attempt an explanation of why I didn't notice its irresistible warmth until many years later. Stupid kid. I'll be in my room.
THE FLASHCUBES WITH MIKE GENT: Reminisce
The new single is out TODAY! Act accordingly. "Reminisce" by the Flashcubes with Mike Gent is my top new track of 2025 so far, and its debut as a digital single marks the first official release of material from the forthcoming various-artists blockbuster Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes.
"Reminisce" will spin again on our next show, alongside the debut airings of three more Make Something Happen! tracks by Ballzy Tomorrow, Dolph Chaney, and the Verbs, plus a reprise of the Choosers' cover of the Flashcubes' first single "Christi Girl." AND! We'll throw in non-Flashcubes material from each of the other acts on Make Something Happen!, servin' up other fine treats courtesy of sparkle*jets u.k., Librarians With Hickeys, Chris von Sneidern, Graham Parker, Joe Giddings, the Kennedys, Pop Co-Op, Hamell On Trial, Super 8 featuring Lisa Mychols, the Armoires, the Peppermint Kicks, the Mayflowers, Callan Foster, Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin, Tom Kenny and the Hi-Seas, Sorrows, and the Spongetones. We have the hitmakers who make things happen!
THE BEACH BOYS: God Only Knows
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
BIG STAR: Thirteen
THE RAMONES: I Want You Around
It's hard to follow "God Only Knows." Nonetheless, Dana pulled off that seemingly dauntless task with the haunting adolescent ache of Big Star's "Thirteen," compelling me to fill out the three-fer with the Ramones' uncharacteristically tender ballad "I Want You Around." Sling and arrows be damned. The eternal teen heart will keep its rhythm and persevere.
THE CRICKLE: Place In My Heart
Gotta love a combo that took its nom de bop from a childhood memory of mispronouncing the name of "Red Rubber Ball" popmeisters the Cyrkle. The Crickle, bless 'em, are still with us and still vital. Their '80s track "Place In My Heart" is a TIRnRR perennial, and it was part of a glorious 1985 various-artists cassette called Garage Sale! 19 Wylde And Savage Bands!
Garage Sale! was released by the ROIR label in association with Goldmine magazine. And it was the precipitating incident that got me to subscribe to Goldmine, eventually resulting in my twenty-year tenure as a freelance writer for the magazine. That long story is told here.
My 1986-2006 time as a hired hand for Goldmine looms large in what passes for my legend. The slight notoriety I garnered via GM fed efforts to raise awareness of this little mutant radio show, which has turned out to loom kinda large in its own right. The combined, um...loomage of Goldmine and This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio enable me to pound the pulpit on behalf of rockin' pop music, to write books, and somehow even compile professional CD releases like Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes.
So yes, yay, and yeah-yeah-yeah, Garage Sale! was a VERY important release for me. Thanks, Crickle! Clearly, you're always going to have a place in our hearts here.
ANNETTE FUNICELLO [WITH THE BEACH BOYS]: The Monkey's Uncle
In my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), my chapter about the Monkees' magnificent single "Porpoise Song (Theme From Head)" notes:
"...Everyone who knows me knows that I love the Monkees. I love the TV series, I love the prefab Kirshner-era records, the hey-hey-we're-a-real band triumph of the Headquarters LP, the Monkees with sidemen compromise of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. (my favorite Monkees album), the schtick, the ambition, the songs, the image, the truth behind the image. I'm a believer already. But there's something emphatically special about the movie Head and its soundtrack. It's part of the grit that gives the cotton candy substance...."
That said, let us not be too quick to presume the cotton candy has no substance of its own. Pop music is its own reward, and any music that moves you or touches you or engages you has no need to justify itself to anyone else. Let 'em get their own soundtrack. AND their own goddamned cotton candy.
I bring this up here to acknowledge that, for some, the legend which has grown around Brian Wilson will exalt Pet Sounds and SMiLE, but perhaps not so much the Beach Boys' earlier frothy favorites. "Surf's Up" ¡SÍ!, "Surfin' Safari" ¡NO!
If that POV exists, I disavow its validity. "I Get Around" is essential. "Help Me Rhonda" is essential. "Little Deuce Coupe," "Shut Down," "Surfin' USA," and the rest of this fun-fun-FUN! catalog are timeless, well-crafted, well-executed absolute pop gems, and they would be worthy of accolade even if Brian Wilson's ambition and vision had never went on to declare he just wasn't made for these times.
Paradoxically as ephemeral and eternal as it gets, "The Monkey's Uncle" is the title theme from a 1965 Disney flick co-starring Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello. The film opens with Annette singing the song on-screen with the Beach Boys backing her up, and it's a winningly goofy confection perfection. It doesn't even NEED any grit!
Straitjackets are not appropriate beach wear. We are infinite. We can dance and we can think, we can dream and we can plan, goof around and create, dive into the possibility of the immediate and conjure the promise of the abstract. We can be the beach boys and beach girls we wish to be. Fun, fun, fun. Life is too short to disdain fleeting opportunities to enjoy it.
BRIAN WILSON: 'Til I Die
I'm a leaf on a windy day. As all of us are. We'll return to celebrate the genius of Brian Wilson again on July 6th, with a special edition of TIRnRR called GOOD VIBRATIONS: Brian Wilson and the Legend of Summer. Fun in the sun and the pet sounds of the soul, influence and impact, sincere flattery, girls on the beach, reasons to smile, the feel of a vibe, the vibe of feel, an impressionist portrait of the effect genius can have in inspiring others to craft their own reaction and creation. Surf's up. Godspeed, Brian Wilson.
THE GRIP WEEDS: You're So Good To Me
For this week's feature on Brian Wilson as a performer, we elected to stay away from other artists covering his work. We allowed ourselves one easygoing exception, with the Grip Weeds' able and amiable take on "You're So Good To Me" taking us up to the bitchin' Witching Hour. The track comes from the various-artists set Jem Records Celebrates Brian Wilson, and you can bet on hearing more selections from that album on our July 6th show.
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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. You can read about our history here.
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