10 SONGS: 5/11/2024

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 # 1232. This show is available as a podcast.

PAUL COLLINS: Tell Me

King of power pop Paul Collins brings us this sublime first tease of Jem Records Celebrates Jagger & Richards, the latest in the label's series of various-artists salutes to classic rock songwriters. This radio show has been all in for Jem's previous celebrations of John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Pete Townshend, and Ray Davies, and we've for damned sure been all in for Paul Collins' recent Jem work. For us, Paul Collins covering the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me" is a match made at our Satanic Majesties' request. We'll have the Midnight Callers' contribution to Jem Records Celebrates Jagger & Richards on our next show.

(And, while we presume future Jem Records Celebrates volumes will get to Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and/or Bob Dylan anon, consider this an early request for Jem Records Celebrates Michael Nesmith. It doesn't seem immediately likely, I guess. But it just might be the one...?)

THE FOUR TOPS: I'm A Believer

Speaking of Michael Nesmith and his prime mates the Monkees....

The Four Tops are my favorite Motown act, but I confess I mostly know their incomparable singles and not so much their album tracks. Time for a deeper dive! 

This cover of the Monkees' Neil Diamond-penned hit "I'm A Believer" is one of two Monkees covers on the Four Tops' Reach Out. Maybe we'll get around to spinning Levi Stubbs wailing "Last Train To Clarksville" on some near-future show. The idea of the Four Tops covering the Monkees seems odd to me, not because it doesn't work--I'm a big fan of Monkees songs, and I'm a believer that the Four Tops could pull off just about any material they wanted to do--but because I find it weird to a hear big hit act covering another big hit act's contemporaneous material. It comes across as filler, but it wasn't uncommon in the '60s, especially for entities viewed as primarily singles acts. And in the hands of the Four Tops, it's compelling filler. Yeah, a deeper dive into the Four Tops' LP tracks is way overdue.

THE SHIRTS: Tell Me Your Plans

I wanna repeat some previous blog comments about this track. Consider this the prologue for our next selection by Rome 56: 

My enthusiastic immersion in punk, new wave, and other assorted rock 'n' roll labels in the late '70s did not include the music of the Shirts. It wasn't a rejection of the Shirts; I just wasn't exposed to their recordings until many years later. Lack of opportunity? I guess. The only thing I remember hearing from them at the time was a track on the various-artists LP Live At CBGB's, wherein singer and actress Annie Golden's greeting to the Bowery audience was something like, We're the Shoits, from Brooklyn. She exaggerated the accent deliberately...

 Nice shoit, Annie

...Still, I didn't really hear the Shirts until a very long time after the fact. I snapped up a used CD reissue of their 1979 eponymous album in, I dunno, the early '00s?  I was immediately and overwhelmingly taken by that album's opening track "Reduced To A Whisper," hypnotized by a guitar sound that reminded me of the Shirts' CBGB's contemporaries Television. 

As a whole, the Shirts didn't really sound at all like Television; the comparison was based almost entirely on a similarly serpentine six-string thrum and the two groups' shared stomping grounds. The Shirts were...well, I don't wanna call them more mainstream than Television, 'cause that ain't exactly it either. But there were hints of connection to some things beyond the Bowery, to, say, the progressive-folk mix aura of Renaissance, or maybe even post-Woodstock FM radio, but at least a little more aggressive. It all still felt like part of Television's world, the Ramones' world, the world of Blondie, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Max's Kansas City. CBGB's. New York City really has it all.

From that first album, the track "Tell Me Your Plans" just clicked with me recently. Its simmering blend of regret, resignation, yearning, and unmeasured dollops of uncertainty suggests a love affair approaching a crossroads without benefit of a map. Or a plan. There is, at best, a bumpy road ahead. There may not even be a road at all.

What's the plan, then? It's hard to tell.

ROME 56: The Man Behind The Man With The Gun

The immediate plan is to start playing Rome 56. The connection to the Shirts track extolled above is Rome 56 guitarist and "Tell Me Your Plans" author Arthur Lamonica, who was himself one of the Shirts. See, I love it when a plan comes together. From Rome 56's uberswell current album Paradise Is Free, "The Man Behind The Man With The Gun" is an absolutely ace slice of pop noir, like a Gold Medal paperback translated into irresistible, radio-ready rockin' pop music. Hardboiled radio-ready rockin' pop music. Perfect crime. And we'll return to the fascinating scene of that crime on our next show.

Sounds like a plan.

ELENA ROGERS: Goodbye Neighbor

It has become TIRnRR's unofficial policy to play each new Elena Rogers single as it's released, and we will often continue playing it until Elena releases a newer single. Works for us! We gave Elena last week off, and this week sees the debut of latest Elena Rogers single "Goodbye Neighbor." "Goodbye Neighbor" usurps the playlist spot that had been occupied by her previous single "Queen," which itself elbowed her previous previous single "I Feel Alive" out of its way. It's a song-eat-song world out there. 

"I Feel Alive" has already locked up a berth on TIRnRR's year-end countdown show. And this coming Sunday night's shindig will include TWO Elena Rogers songs: Another spin of "Goodbye Neighbor," and a new cover of an older Elena Rogers track, the latter courtesy of Mike Browning. See, this policy benefits all of us.

BONEY M: My Friend Jack

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

CIRCE LINK AND CHRISTIAN NESMITH: Satellite

The nonpareil combined forces of Circe Link and Christian Nesmith are working on a new progressive rock album called Arcana. It's a follow up to the duo's 2021 prog album Cosmologica, and donations/preorders for Arcana can be placed here. Meanwhile, Dana's spin of a Curved Air track inspired me to follow with "Satellite," a past favorite from Cosmologica that we haven't played in a while. "Satellite" reminds me a bit of both Renaissance and Yes, at least in the sense that I could imagine it as performed by the early '70s incarnation of either of those bands. Progressive as we wanna be!

THE SPEED OF SOUND: Question Time

The physical release of the Speed Of Sound's new album A Cornucopia: Minerva is cornucopia indeed: A three-CD or three-LP set, supplementing the main record with two additional full-length albums. A big, big wall of sound delivered at the speed of sound!

 "Question Time" is the last track on the first platter, and it provides its own authoritative answer, a lovely statement of indie-bred UK pop, raised in the underground with an eye on the sky and an ear to the airwaves. Cornucopia! We live in a time of plenty. 

THE BEATLES: I've Just Seen A Face

The Beatles, with the opening track from their classic album Rubber Soul.

Don't even try telling me it's from a different Beatles album instead. I know. But this is how I heard it, as the beginning of the American version of Rubber Soul rather than an LP track on the UK Help! And that has meant far too much for me to let go of it easily. 

THE MARTINI KINGS: Take Five

Vermouth, forsooth. The subtitle for the new Martini Kings retrospective Enchanted Lovers says it all: "Celebrating 40 years of intoxicating sounds in jazz, exotica, tiki, and lounge." I'll drink to that! And we bellow LAST CALL! for this week's extravaganza with the Martini Kings' demonstrating olive supreme with their confident take on the Dave Brubeck Quartet's "Take Five." Grab the designated drivers. It's time to see ourselves home.

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 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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: My Friend Jack

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

BONEY M: My Friend Jack

Writtten by The Smoke

Produced by Frank Farian

Single, Atlantic [UK], 1980

My relationship with disco is complicated. I hated it during its heyday, but began to re-think my position as it became clear that some (not all) of the Disco Sucks movement was built upon a foundation of tacit racism and homophobia. I further realized that a lot of the disco LP-burnin' Fascists hated my preferred punk and power pop almost as much as they hated dat ole debbil disco, so...enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But never mind the shifting parameters of my mixed-signal interactions with disco. Eurodisco group Boney M was a breed apart anyway, willfully weird but extremely pop.

My first awareness of this German group was in print only; I don't recall hearing their only US hit (a cover of the Melodians' reggae classic "Rivers Of Babylon") in 1978, but I did see them mentioned in the music press here and there. The mentions weren't necessarily positive; I think a review in The Syracuse New Times awarded their album Night Flight To Venus a mere one star. The Rezillos also received the same single-sun rating in those same local tabloid pages; I loved The Syracuse New Times (and much, much later did some SNT  freelancing myself), but I say both Night Flight To Venus and Can't Stand The Rezillos deserved a few more stars than what SNT said.

No idea when I finally did hear Boney M's music. In the '80s? Probably not. More likely it was in the '90s or even in the Naughty Aughties, but I was instantly taken with their Eurodisco cover of UK psychedelic pop group the Smoke's '60s nugget "My Friend Jack."

Although I was already familiar with the original version, I didn't have any specific affinity for it. I later came to appreciate the Smoke's version, but bear that context in mind when I say I still prefer Boney M's unlikely cover. Boney M's take is amazing, adding slick grandeur to the Smoke's electric sugar lumps, bringing it to the club crowd with extra swagger while retaining its freak-flag legacy.

Ultimately, Boney M's sound is closer to ABBA than it is to, say, the Trammps, though it's not all that far removed from Ammi Stewart's pumpin' rock-disco remake of Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood." But "Dancing Queen," "Disco Inferno," and "My Friend Jack" all fit within disco's parameters, suggesting a dancefloor much wider and more accepting than we may have deemed likely in the fever of a Saturday night. 

I have a single-disc Boney M best-of CD that satisfies my occasional Boney M jones. It includes "My Friend Jack" and "Rivers Of Babylon," of course, plus Boney M's covers of the Creation's "Painter Man" and Harry Belafonte's "Mary's Boy Child," the latter served up as a medley with original song "Oh My Lord." That's...man, that's some eclectic fodder for disco, even Eurodisco. 

My friend Jack eats sugar lumps. The kids all call him "Sugar Man." The disco lights seem to bump 'n' hustle of their own volition tonight. Brilliant lights. Shiny. Enveloping. Minds expand. Feet move to the beat. Have ya met my friend Jack? Dance, Sugar. Dance.

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 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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! Works In Progress

 

Although I've long since completed (and submitted) a draft of my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), the subject itself remains open for me. I continue to work on more GREM! entries, for use here on the blog and for potential engagement in an even-more-theoretical The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 2). An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made as long as they take turns. Maybe I take the infinite part of the book's tagline too literally.

Nonetheless! Here's a look at bits of some of my many GREM! works in progress. 

THE PRETENDERS: Back On The Chain Gang

It was just like starting over.

The Pretenders emerged in England in 1978, led by Chrissie Hynde, an American playing guitar and singing lead. Hynde, guitarist James Honeywell-Scott, bassist Pete Farndon, and drummer Martin Chambers turned out to be great Pretenders, debuting on record with a 1979 single covering the Kinks' "Stop Your Sobbing." More records followed: singles, two albums (1980's Pretenders and 1981's Pretenders II), with the 1981 EP Extended Play in between albums. 

And then half the band died. 

WAR: Low Rider

Has anyone ever used the word "imperious" to describe the rhythm of War's 1975 hit "Low Rider?" I'd presume it hasn't been done, and it may be a stretch to use it now. But GodDAYum, that regal riddum rules by divine and absolute right. Imperious War!

When discussing the records that make us wanna dance, prance, and make romance, we often talk about the beat. But more than the beat, "Low Rider" has a visceral, almost physical rhythm that dictates a mandatory moving of your body. Typical of me being me, I didn't come to appreciate that rhythm until way, way after the fact.

BONEY M: My Friend Jack

My relationship with disco is complicated. I hated it during its heyday, but began to re-think my position as it became clear that some (not all) of the Disco Sucks movement was built upon a foundation of tacit racism and homophobia. I further realized that a lot of the disco LP-burnin' Fascists hated my preferred punk and power pop almost as much as they hated dat ole debbil disco, so...enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But never mind the shifting parameters of my mixed-signal interactions with disco. Eurodisco group Boney M was a breed apart anyway, willfully weird but extremely pop.

PEGGY LEE: Fever

There is cool, and then there is cool. Cool-as-a-fever cool. No other approximation of cool has ever been anywhere near the sizzling cool of Peggy Lee's 1958 absolute annexation of Little Willie John's R & B (and crossover pop) hit "Fever." 

THE MAYTALS: Pressure Drop

Listening to Johnny Nash didn't prepare me for this.

I first saw Toots and the Maytals name-checked in some magazine (either Rolling Stone or Playboy, possibly both) in the late '70s, though I wasn't conscious of the music until many years thereafter. I recall that Linda Ronstadt was among those praising the essential nature of Maytals LPs Funky Kingston and Reggae Got Soul, and if I couldn't quite fit reggae into my new wave rock 'n' roll world view at the time (the Clash notwithstanding), I did get there eventually. 

THE POLICE: Roxanne

When I worked at a record store in the '80s, one of my co-workers was horrified when I mentioned that I didn't really care about the music of the Police. "Horrified" may not be much of an exaggeration; he gasped, put his hands to the sides of his face in a manner that would have made Macaulay Culkin proud, and backed away from me slowly. I think I saw him mouth the world Unclean! 

I had liked the band initially, around the time of their first two albums in the late '70s, but found myself losing interest in them as they became (to my taste) increasingly...mainstream? I guess. I wasn't trying to be hipper than the crowd, honest; it was just that I preferred their earlier records. I appreciate some of their bigger hits a bit more now than I did then, though I'm pretty sure I'll always detest that damned stalker song, "Every Breath You Take."

And "Roxanne?" My God, "Roxanne" was far and away the best thing on AM Top 40 in 1979. Nothing else even came close to it. 

ABBA: Dancing Queen

There is a false conviction among some rock 'n' roll fans that ABBA's music is inherently schlocky. This conviction is a big ol' pile of piggy poop.

AM radio surrendered to ABBA's "Waterloo" in 1973. I may have struggled with some indecision over whether or not I liked the song at the time, and I can't explain why. It was a pop song. I like pop songs. And I sorta liked ABBA. Ultimately, I decided that I liked "Waterloo," too. 

"SOS" was my favorite among ABBA's initial run of hits, though the only ABBA singles I bought were "Knowing Me, Knowing You" and "Take A Chance On Me." I also loved "Dancing Queen." I had no use for "Fernando." I was indifferent to "Mamma Mia" and "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do." Reading in Bomp! magazine's 1978 power pop issue about "So Long," a purportedly great ABBA power pop song I'd not yet heard, was reason enough for me to buy my friend Jay's copy of ABBA's Greatest Hits. I was perfectly okay with ABBA's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Hell, a lot of ABBA's hits are closer to original-formula '50s/early '60s rockin' pop than anything that a band like, say, Genesis ever did.

"Dancing Queen" is ABBA's signature tune. It's often lumped in with disco, but its gloss is more girl-group than Studio 54. It shimmers in its own deliciously pure pop way, not beholden to trends, timeless yet still so '70s it could have been sporting a WIN button.

THE AVENGERS: We Are The One

The Clash sang that anger could be power. Even before that line appeared in The Clash's London Calling album track "Clampdown" in 1979, a San Francisco group called the Avengers was on stage at Winterland, opening for the Sex Pistols in that group's final appearance meltdown, and embodying the concept of cathartic fury. Anger. Power. Rock 'n' roll.

BLONDIE: (I'm Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear

A love letter from Lois Lane, sung by Marilyn Monroe, backed by the Dave Clark Five.

Blondie's lead singer Debbie Harry was sexy without any appearance of trying to be sexy. She didn't even seem to be conscious of her everyday allure, her natural beauty and glamour, her God-given possession of It. She just was. 

My first awareness of Blondie came via Phonograph Record Magazine in 1977. I've never forgotten writer Mark Shipper's description of the band's look as "like Marilyn Monroe backed by the Dave Clark Five," a blurb which (even more than Debbie Harry's attractive image) sold me on Blondie well before I ever heard a note of their music. When I got to college that fall, I immediately started carpet-bombing the school radio station with requests for all of the acts I'd read about in PRM, from Television to the Dictators, and certainly including constant (and urgent) petitions to hear Blondie's "X Offender." I loved the track on first spin, and I have never stopped loving it since. And they called it puppy love!

THE JAM: In The City

Punk could be pop. In America, the Ramones already knew that, even if the charts didn't reflect the verity of that aesthetic.

THE YOUNG RASCALS: Good Lovin'

Little Steven says garage rock is "white kids trying to play black rhythm and blues and failing--gloriously." Fair enough. So what do we call it when a white group tries to play soul music, and succeeds? We could call that the Young Rascals.

THE RECORDS: Starry Eyes

Dreams of fame and fortune are not held solely by the performers.

THE VOGUES: Five O'Clock World

It should only be a footnote in the story of "Five O'Clock World," but the result is so engaging, so perfect, that I can't help elevating it to a prime moment in the history of rockin' pop on TV. 

THE DICKIES: Banana Splits

TRA-LA-LAAAA! TRA-LA-LA-LAAAAAA! TRA-LA-LAAAA! TRA-LA-LA-LAAAAAAAAAA!

No. You get a hold of yourself. Don't be messin' with the manifest majesty of the Banana Splits.

And don't be messin' with the manifest DESTINY of The Greatest Record Ever Made!, whether it's Volume 1, Volume 2, or an undrafted free agent. The infinite does what the infinite does.

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 new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now 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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

10 SONGS: 11/17/2023

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 # 1207. This show is available as a podcast.

MICKY DOLENZ: Leaving New York

The new Micky Dolenz EP Dolenz Sings R.E.M. is nothing short of exquisite. I expressed my enthusiasm for the then-forthcoming project here. I've always liked R.E.M., but Dolenz nonetheless delivers the definite version of "Shiny Happy People," which was the EP's teaser single. Next week's show will serve up another example of our Micky taken an already-great R.E.M. song and making it even better.

Of the four songs on Dolenz Sings R.E.M., the only one I wasn't familiar with in its original form was "Leaving New York," a track from R.E.M.'s 2004 album Around The Sun. I'm listening to R.E.M.'s original right now for the very first time, just as I'm writing these words. It's quite good. I may need to track down Around The Sun and listen to the rest of it. There's so much great stuff out there, and we miss so much of it.

If it comes to dueling versions of "Leaving New York," I'm still going to give Dolenz the edge, partially by virtue of Christian Nesmith's incredible production and musicianship, partially because of the irresistible backing vocals by Circe Link, and a whole lotta lotta because of Micky freakin' Dolenz. We're gonna miss some things. Don't miss Dolenz Sings R.E.M.

THE JETTE PLANES: This Is Where We Live Today

The music we loved in the past helps to define us, and we can hold on to that definition and inspiration for as long as we wish. But it's important to supplement what we already know with discoveries of other things that are new to us. The Jette Planes are a young power pop band from Philadelphia, steeped in decades-old influences that are immediate and familiar, but which they annex with absolute authority. S. W. Lauden's Remember The Lightning (blog AND magazine) brought the Jette Planes into my airspace, and I'm delighted to make that connection. Fly the rockin' skies! This is where we live today.

THE GRIP WEEDS: Every Minute [acoustic version]

An unplugged version of my # 1 Grip Weeds track? Yes, please! This li'l treat appeared on the group's rarities collection Inner Grooves. Grip Weeds is what ya needs.

TAYLOR SWIFT: The Last Great American Dynasty

Hipsters need not apply. Taylor Swift is probably the biggest single star on the planet right now, as close to a Beatles figure as our diffused pop culture can recognize at this time. As a baby boomer myself, I would have thought Swift's records unlikely to be my cuppa. 

I would have thought wrong.

A viewing of Swift's blockbuster concert film Taylor Swift: The ERAS Tour set me straight. What an engaging experience, and it opened my ears. I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know more. I was particularly taken with a song called "The Last Great American Dynasty," a track on Swift's 2020 album folklore. It felt of a piece with TIRnRR. I knew I wanted to play it on the show.

Listening to the show on Sunday night, my wife agreed that "The Last Great American Dynasty" felt right at home in our playlist, adding that it reminded her of some of the female-sung indie pop that often helps to build our three-hour shindig anyway. 

Yeah. Oh yeah.

Factions build divisions. Factions are notorious dumbasses. Maybe TIRnRR isn't gonna start playing "Shake It Off" (though I've just begun to realize how much that track reminds me of some of the chick-fronted new wave pop I was digging in the early '80s), but I say some of Swift's music is perfect for whatever the hell it is we do here.

"The Last Great American Dynasty" will return to TIRnRR this Sunday night. It's in a set that also includes Irene Peña, Juniper, and Amy Rigby (plus the Muffs, Lulu, Bush Tetras, and the Coolies), and they mingle swimmingly. It's all pop music. God created radio so we could play pop music. 

Who are we to argue?

THE RAMONES: I Don't Care

Never underestimate the power of indifference. Or go ahead and underestimate it. I don't care.

(And yep, we deliberately played this in the same set as Taylor Swift. The Ramones are pop music, too. We do, in fact, care quite a bit about that.)

BONEY M: My Friend Jack

Not just Eurodisco--MOD-PSYCH Eurodisco! Boney M had such great (if unexpected) taste in covers, from the Creation to the Melodians. Their 1980 remake of the Smoke's 1967 UK freakbeat number "My Friend Jack" is inspired to a degree only the batshit-crazy can comprehend, but it works so well.

R.E.M.: Can't Get There From Here

See? We don't just play Micky Dolenz covering R.E.M.; we play actual R.E.M., too! I was very much into R.E.M. throughout the '80s, my interest commencing with a Trouser Press flexi-disc of "Wolves, Lower" and manifesting in earnest with "Radio Free Europe." "Can't Get There From Here" was part of that. I've been there. I know the way.

THE MC5: Kick Out The Jams

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

THE MONKEES: Love Is Only Sleeping

The Monkees' third album Headquarters is generally considered the group's masterwork, and for good reason. Headquarters captured a brief and magic moment in the Monkees' career, as the made-for-TV combo exerted some control over their recordings for the first time, shedding the puppet strings and willing themselves into existence as a functioning studio band. They weren't allowed to play on their first two albums. They played on every single one of the tracks on Headquarters. 

That said, their fourth album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. is always going to be my favorite. Both Headquarters and Pisces were released in 1967, a time when the Monkees were at the peak of their rockin' pop stardom. The Monkees did play on Pisces, but the demands of a TV series, concerts, and the occasional recreational WHOOPIE! made them too busy (and maybe not sufficiently motivated) to be THE band in the booth.

So studio musicians served as auxiliary Monkees on Pisces. That fact diverges from the DIY purity of Headquarters, I guess, but Pisces retains both a pop sheen and a spirit of adventure, all of it effectively executed by the Monkees and company. You can't go wrong with Headquarters or Pisces.

With lead vocal and guitar by Michael Nesmith, organ by Peter Tork, percussion by Davy Jones, harmony vocals by Micky, backing vocals by Davy, with producer/bassist/acoustic guitarist Chip Douglas and drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh expanding the ranks of in-studio believers, the Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil song "Love Is Only Sleeping" was planned to be the Monkees' fifth US single, following immediate predecessor "Pleasant Valley Sunday"/"Words" (both sides of which were included on Pisces). A mastering error on the never-issued "Love Is Only Sleeping" 45 scotched its release long enough for someone at the record company to reconsider the potentially risqué notion of "Love" and "Sleeping" sharing canoodlin' space in the same out-of-wedlock title; "Daydream Believer" replaced "Love Is Only Sleeping" as the next designated 45. And American youth were safe from, y'know, sex.

But what an amazing single this would have been. As an album track on Pisces, "Love Is Only Sleeping" was the centerpiece of my decade-after-the-fact embrace of the album when I was in high school. The effect bordered on seismic.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. was part of my crucible, that period from late 1976 through freshman year in college ('77-'78), a two-years-and-change span of wonder when I discovered so much from the past and the then-present. KISS. Punk. THE RAMONES!! The Flashcubes. The Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Runaways, the Sex Pistols, the Jam. When I deepened my understanding of the British Invasion, when I first heard the phrase "power pop," and when I began to realize that the Monkees were so, so much more than what I saw on TV.

This month--November 6th to be precise--marks 56 years since a group called the Monkees released an album called Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. Sometimes love is only sleeping. Its dreams carry through to the day, and back again to the night. A shiny new tomorrow will follow. The promise is whispered. The promise is true.

THE FLASHCUBES: Alone In My Room

As noted, Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse the Flashcubes were a big, big part of my teenage rock 'n' roll crucible. My first Flashcubes show occurred just after my 18th birthday in January of 1978, a life-changing event that remains an everyday touchstone for me, and it's a large part of why TIRnRR exists in the first place.

All these years later, it's gratifying to know that some of the artists that fanned the flames of my crucible are still making music that matters. Many have passed, some have retired. We've seen that Micky Dolenz--the last surviving Monkee--has an essential new EP. And the Flashcubes' current album Pop Masters is my most cherished, most celebrated, most played new album of 2023. Fitting that the album itself is a tribute to the Flashcubes' own crucibles, irresistible covers of material previously recorded by acts that influenced the 'Cubes, from Pilot to Slade to Pezband to Sparks. The Flashcubes' Pop Masters cover of the late Dwight Twilley's "Alone In My Room" is a loving evocation of the palpable thrill of pop music itself. It gives me chills, even as the crucible itself keeps me warm. Bright lights, my friends. Bright lights need never dim.

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 new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now 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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl