Fake THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO Playlist: Records I purchased in Brockport, NY

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl is simply too large a concept to be neatly contained within a mere three-hour weekly time slot. Hence these occasional fake TIRnRR playlists, detailing shows we're never really going to do...but could.

I went to college in Brockport, NY, 1977-1980. I graduated before my girlfriend (and now wife) Brenda, so we got an apartment in the village of Brockport, and we remained there for another two years.

I've done previous fake TIRnRR playlists dedicated to music I listened to in my dorm rooms and music I listened to in my first apartment. Today, I wanna throw together a playlist of records I purchased in Brockport. I'm only including actual purchases, whether new or used; this list excludes radio-station giveaways (disqualifying Radio Birdman and Oingo Boingo, among others), free-with-purchase goodies at the best little record store that ever was, Main Street Records (thus excluding "She's A Dog" by Simply Saucer and Dressed To Kill by KISS), and records received as gifts (like the Yardbirds and Animals LPs given to me by a girl I knew from my McDonald's job, or the Village People live album Brenda gave me). 

Otherwise? Fair game here encompasses any LP, 12" single, 45, cassette, or (much later) CD that I acquired in Brockport for cash or (much later) credit card, whether it was the used copy of the Monkees' Head album I bought for a buck a two from a friend or the three-LP Australian import Monkeemania I scored at Main Street. In addition to scores at the mighty Main Street, it includes purchases made at The Record Grove, The Vinyl Jungle, Trader Shag's Emporium (which now occupies the space that once housed Main Street Records), or any other new or used retail outlet in Brockport, plus garage sales, on-campus transactions, and what have you. It includes purchases made on visits back to Brockport in later years, but it doesn't include anything I bought on my most recent visit in 2024, because...well, because I don't remember what I bought on that visit. Yes, I do indeed remember purchases made in 1977-1982 waaaay better than I remember 2024. 

And I remember each of the records listed below. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you some of the sounds I bought in Brockport. And obviously, it begins with the Record Grove purchase that changed my life in 1977. Take it, Dee Dee.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl--y'know, the real one--airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read all about this show's long and weird history here: Boppin' The Whole Friggin' Planet (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO). TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS are always welcome.

The many fine This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio compilation albums are still available, each full of that rockin' pop sound you crave. A portion of all sales benefit our perpetually cash-strapped community radio project:

Volume 1: download
Volume 2: CD or download
Volume 3: download
Volume 4: CD or download
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Volume 5: CD or download

Fake TIRnRR Playlist: Records I purchased in Brockport, NY [and where I bought 'em]

THE  RAMONES: Sheena Is A Punk Rocker (Sire, single) [The Record Grove]

RICK JAMES: Give It To Me Baby (Gordy, Street Songs) [Main Street Records]

THE ROLLERS: Doors, Bars, Metal (Epic, Ricochet) [MSR on my last-ever visit, circa 1988]

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: I'll Be Your Mirror (Verve, The Velvet Underground & Nico) [MSR]

SQUIRE: The Life (Hi-Lo, ...Get Smart!) [MSR]

THE SEX PISTOLS: Did You No Wrong (Virgin, single) [TRG, same day I bought "Sheena"]

--

GLADYS KNIGHT AND THE PIPS: I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Motown, VA: The Motown Story) [MSR]

KLAATU: California Jam (Collectors' Choice Music, 3:47 e.s.t.) [Trader Shag's Emporium]

THE KINKS: I Took My Baby Home (Pye, The Pye History Of British Pop Music) [The Vinyl Jungle]

ELVIS PRESLEY: (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame (RCA, Elvis's 40 Greatest) [MSR]

CAT STEVENS: First Cut Is The Deepest (Decca, VA: Hard-Up Heroes) [TRG, special order import!]

HOLLY AND JOEY: I Got You Babe (Virgin, single) [MSR]

--

THE HULLABALLOOS: Did You Ever (Collectables, England's Newest Singing Sensations/On Hullabaloo) [TSE]

THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: You Tore Me Down (Sire, Shake Some Action) [MSR]

THE MOST: Rockerfeller (Out Of Print, VA: From The City That Brought You...Absolutely Nothing) [MSR]

CHUCK BERRY: Johnny B. Goode (Chess, Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits) [MSR]

JOAN JETT AND THE BLACKHEARTS: Love Is Pain (MCA, I Love Rock 'n' Roll) [MSR]

THE DAVE CLARK FIVE: Concentration Baby (Epic, single) [table set up on campus]

--

THE NEW YORK DOLLS: Babylon (Mercury, Too Much Too Soon) [MSR]

R.E.M.: Radio Free Europe (IRS, single) [MSR]

LITTLE RICHARD: Good Golly Miss Molly (United Artists, The Very Best Of Little Richard) [MSR]

LOVE: My Little Red Book (Elektra, Love) [MSR]

BLONDIE: In The Flesh (Chrysalis, Rip Her To Shreds) [TRG]

THE PRETENDERS: Kid (Sire, single) [MSR]

--

THE MONKEES: Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again? (Colgems, Head) [purchased from a friend]

THE MONKEES: Circle Sky [live] (Arista, Monkeemania) [MSR--saved up money for weeks!]

DOLENZ, JONES, BOYCE AND HART: I Remember The Feeling (Capitol, Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart) [MSR]

THE CLASH: Complete Control (Epic, The Clash [USA]) [MSR]

CHERIE AND MARIE CURRIE: Since You've Been Gone (Capitol, single) [MSR]

THE UGLY DUCKLINGS: She Ain't No Use To Me (Trash, VA: Ear-Piercing Punk) [MSR]

--

THE GO-GO'S: Vacation (IRS, single) [MSR]

THE BONGOS: In The Congo (PVC, Drums Along The Hudson) [MSR]

THE B-52'S: 52 Girls (Warner Brothers, The B-52's) [MSR]

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD.: Public Image (Virgin, single) [MSR]

DAVID BOWIE: See Emily Play (RCA, Pinups) [used record sale at the dining hall]

THE ROMANTICS: I Can't Tell You Anything (Spider, single) [TRG]

--

THE BEACH BOYS: Sloop John B (Capitol, Pet Sounds) [TRG]

DAVID JOHANSEN AND ROBIN JOHNSON: Flowers In The City (RSO, VA: Times Square OST) [MSR]

JOHNNY THUNDERS: You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory (Sire, So Alone) [MSR]

THE FOUNDATIONS: Baby Now That I've Found You (Pye, VA: Best Of The British Invasion) [forgotten record retailer]

THE REAL KIDS: Now You Know (Bomp, VA: Experiments In Destiny) [MSR]

THE BOBBY FULLER FOUR: Another Sad And Lonely Night (Rhino, The Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four) [MSR]

--

THE JAM: The Eton Rifles (Polydor, Setting Sons) [MSR]

THE WHO: The Punk Meets The Godfather (MCA, Quadrophenia) [MSR]

TELEVISION: Elevation (Elektra, Marquee Moon) [TRG]

THE FLESHTONES: Let's See The Sun (IRS, Roman Gods) [MSR]

BOW WOW WOW: I Want Candy (RCA, single) [MSR]

THE FOUR TOPS: I Can't Help Myself (Motown, Greatest Hits) [MSR]

THE BARRACUDAS: I Wish It Could Be 1965 Again (Voxx, Drop Out With The Barracudas) [MSR]

THE 13th FLOOR ELEVATORS: You're Gonna Miss Me (Sire, VA: Nuggets) [MSR]

--

THE MC5: Shakin' Street (Atlantic, Back In The USA) [lawn sale]

SLADE: Gudbuy T' Jane (Reprise, Sladest) [MSR]

JOSIE COTTON: Johnny Are You Queer? (Elektra, single) [MSR]

THE TREMBLERS: I'll Be Taking Her Out Tonight (Johnston, Twice Nightly) [MSR]

IGGY AND THE STOOGES: Gimme Danger (RCA, Raw Power) [MSR]

THE SCRUFFS: Revenge (Power Play, Wanna' Meet The Scruffs?) [MSR]

THE RECORDS: Paint Her Face (Virgin, single) [MSR]

BIG STAR: September Gurls (Ardent, Radio City) [MSR]

--

KIM WILDE: Kids In America (EMI America, Kim Wilde) [MSR]

GEN X: Dancing With Myself (Chrysalis, single) [MSR]

THE VENTURES: Hawaii 5-0 (United Artists, The Very Best Of The Ventures) [MSR]

Man! Already too long for a real-world playlist, and I still didn't get around to Talking Heads, the Lovin' Spoonful, Lords of the New Church, Judas Priest, the Fireballs, New Math, the Chesterfield Kings, Nikki and the Corvettes, the Hypstrz, Stiv Bators, Roxy Music, Shrapnel, the Rolling Stones, Blue Cheer, the Senders, the Music Explosion, the Hollies, Bruce Springsteen, Gary Numan, Cheap Trick, the Cars, the Invictas, Shoes, Utopia, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bebe Buell, the Damned, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Quincy, Tommy Tutone, the Vapors, the Knack, Herman's Hermits, the Pleasers, Joy Division, Fingerprintz, Split Enz, the Boomtown Rats, the New Colony Six, the Buggles, Soft Cell, T. Rex, Alice Cooper, Blotto, Devo, the Rutles, Marshall Crenshaw, the Rubinoos, and...and...and...!!

THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: The Bay City Rollers, "Wouldn't You Like It"

 Drawn from a previous post, this is not part of my new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1).

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!

THE BAY CITY ROLLERS: Wouldn't You Like It

Written by Eric Faulkner and Stuart Wood

Produced by Phil Wainman

From the album Wouldn't You Like It?, Bell Records [UK], 1975/Rock n' Roll Love Letter, Arista Records [US], 1976

When I was in college in the late '70s, I had a friend named Jane, who was a DJ on the Brockport campus radio station. We hung out together a few times, including one night when I kibbitzed with her in the studio while she did her radio show. And I requested one specific song....

By the end of the Me Decade, former teen idols the Bay City Rollers were persona non grata to the buying public, an embarrassing relic of adolescence for those (mostly female) fans who'd outgrown their puppy-eyed crushes on this Tartan-clad combo. And most music lovers who identified as older, male, hipper, and/or more mature just despised the Rollers all along.

But not me. Once I learned to ignore the ludicrous notion of the Rollers as the next Beatles, I found that I liked some of the Rollers' records just fine, thanks. I was especially taken with "Rock And Roll Love Letter" and "Yesterday's Hero." As a teen, I even tried to conceptualize a never-gonna-happen Rollers movie I called Catch Us If You Can, a '70s BCR counterpart to A Hard Day's Night. When I became aware of power pop, I was delighted to learn that the writers of Bomp! magazine included the Bay City Rollers as at least a tangent to that discussion.

I saw the Rollers lip-sync an album track called "Wouldn't You Like It" on the Midnight Special TV show, and I was instantly captivated by its power-chord riffs, chugging rhythm, and sheer overall oomph. My interest in the Rollers wasn't then sufficient to prompt me to buy many of their records--I had the "Rock And Roll Love Letter" and "Saturday Night" 45s, and the Dedication and It's A Game LPs--but my girlfriend's pal Debi was an unrepentant Rollers fan; she had the Rock N' Roll Love Letter album, and played "Wouldn't You Like It" for me. Man, what a great track.

So some time later, when I was chilling with mi amiga pequeña Jane as she did her radio show, I bugged Jane to play "Wouldn't You Like It." Bugged. Begged. Pestered. Pleaded. No, Carl!, she insisted, I'm not playing the freakin' Bay City Rollers on my show! 

She finally relented just to shut me up. Grumbling all the while.

The song played...and, to her surprise, she liked it, and said so on the radio. Gotta give her credit for that. She went so far as to say that if the Rollers had just come along a couple of years later than they did, they would have been considered part of the new wave. 

That was more than forty years ago. We were pals, and we parted as pals. I still think of Jane whenever I play that song, a Bay City Rollers album track that illustrated the transcendent value of ignoring prejudices, and embodied the enduring strength of friendship. And I dedicate the song once again, as I did on the radio just the other night, to an old comrade. This one goes out to my friend Jane, wherever she is. Thanks again, my friend.

Hope ya like it.

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My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available for order; you can see details here. My 2023 book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is also still available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. 

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: Sister Golden Hair

Listen, man: just because I have a new book about the Ramones coming out, it doesn't mean I've forgotten about my long-threatened OTHER book, The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). That book ain't dead yet. Expanded from an earlier piece, the following was prepared as a potential chapter in GREM!, but is not in the book's current blueprint.

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!

AMERICA: Sister Golden Hair

Written by Gerry Beckley

Produced by George Martin

Single from the album Hearts, Warner Brothers Records, 1975

The story you're about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect those caught in the circumstances as they happened.

Simon and me, represented by anonymous actors

1978. In the spring semester of my freshman year in college, my roommate and I did not get along. At all. We'd been friends initially. At the beginning of the previous semester, Simon and I both lived separately on the third floor of our dorm, and we'd hit it off at first. I was living in a triple, and my roommates hated each other. Before the fall semester was half done, they were at each other's throats, and we all needed to go our separate ways, fast. Dan left, Pete stayed, and I switched places with Simon's then-roommate, Bill. And that, in theory, shoulda put us all on a path to serenity and peace.

Ha! I say HA!!

I don't remember how long it took for Simon and I to start clashing, but I doubt it took very long. On the surface, we were very different: a white kid from the suburbs of Syracuse and a black kid from Jamaica, Queens. But there were similarities, too. We were both sensitive, we both thought of ourselves as witty, and we were both basically lonely, insecure individuals. Simon didn't have a girlfriend at the time, and he wanted one; I had two girlfriends in rapid succession--with an unfortunate overlap of about a half hour, and a potential third on the periphery--but was still standing (barely) on shaky ground. 

And we were both really, really into music. Alas, the music was also an area of contention.

You know what sounds I was into. Simon favored far mellower fare, including Renaissance  and his favorite group, America. Decades later, I finally recognize the appeal of these artists; at the time, it was wallpaper to this burgeoning punk. Simon, in turn, thought my music was noise. There wasn't a lot of common ground there.

For dramatic purposes, my college girls Becky and Tina will be portrayed by Frida and Agnetha

Conflicts commenced almost immediately. Or did they? My memory of events is adjusting itself. Conflicts really arose more after I'd switched girlfriends. Simon got along all right with my first college girl Becky, but Becky and I didn't spend all that much time in my room. Tina was in my room a lot, and she and Simon did not get along. My problems with Simon were not her fault, but her presence exacerbated issues. Even after Tina and I broke up, Simon and I remained at odds, and the situation never improved.

It got worse, actually.

Becky and Simon started dating, which was okay with me; I really did wish Becky well, especially given how poorly I'd treated her. It took me a while to appreciate how much of a dick I'd been. Story of my life. I always think I'm in the right at the time, and rarely realize until much later, in retrospect, how much I contributed to any random clusterhug. I like to think I've matured, a little bit, somewhere along the line.

But not when I was eighteen. Not yet. I was still a clueless schmuck at eighteen.

The stereo in our dorm room belonged to Simon. I don't recall now whether I was forbidden from using it, or if I was allowed to use it occasionally provided I was more delicate and careful with it than I generally was with anything else. Either way, I was using Simon's stereo one day, listening to my freshly-purchased new copy of My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello. Tina was listening to the LP with me--although no longer really a couple, we were still spending (too much) time together--and I was perhaps a bit too clumsy with the stylus. Simon claimed I'd damaged the cartridge, I denied it, and I left the room in a huff. When I returned, I discovered that Simon's aim was also true; my Costello LP had been snapped in half.

I saw red.

Simon was at the other end of the hall, talking to our Resident Assistant. I yelled, and charged down the hall full-steam, intent on doing to Simon what he'd done to My Aim Is True. The RA grabbed me and pinned me against the wall, as Simon scowled at me. It would not be our only physical confrontation, but I'll spare you the dreary details. He was right, and I was right; he was wrong, and I was wrong. It took me years to accept my own culpability in all of this.

I made plans to move out, preferably to another dorm entirely, but it was easier said than done. Frustrated, I gave up on the notion of new digs. That meant Simon and I had to figure out a way to coexist. 

The funny thing is, we did manage to get through the rest of the semester somehow. We still bickered, but we both at least tried to keep the peace. When freshman year finally ended that May, we were delighted to be parting company, but we shook hands and bid each other good fortune.

I saw Simon sporadically during the rest of my time in school. Sophomore year, Simon came to my dorm room, furious about something he thought I'd said about him; this time, I really was innocent, so I invited him in to talk about it, and we made a cautious peace. A couple of years later, after I'd graduated but still lived in town, Simon visited my apartment once, and the exchange was friendly and basically good-natured.

My perception of the group America remains permanently tethered to my memory of Simon. I hated their records. I may or may not have been okay with (or, more likely, indifferent to) either "A Horse With No Name" or "Ventura Highway" when they occupied my radio in 1972, but I had no use for "Muskrat Love," "Lonely People," or "Tin Man." I don't remember hearing "I Need You" until Simon played it for me, and its lyrics We used to laugh/We used to cry/We used to bow our heads and wonder why were like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. Now, I bow my head and wonder why. All these years later, I can't explain why I was so dismissive of this music. 

Even within my willful stance as a teen misanthrope, I had to concede that America's song "Sandman" was possessed of a simmering, surly spirit. And, no matter how much I claimed to hate America, I had to admit that "Sister Golden Hair" was just brilliant.

This was an unenlightened period in my young life. For example, I thought the Beach Boys were hopelessly square. RAWK! I thought anything mellow had to be the sound of capitulation to the mundane, the boring. I held fast to an underdeveloped mind-set cast somewhere between Annie Hall and Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. 

Yet I loved pop music. I liked ABBA, I liked the Bay City Rollers, I loved Herman's Hermits. Loving Shaun Cassidy's hit version of Eric Carmen's "Hey Deanie" at the same time that I was getting into the Clash isn't necessarily a contradiction--it's ALL pop music--but I was a contradiction, and so sure of my conflicting convictions. 

Will you meet me in the middle
Will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little
Just enough to show you care?
Well, I tried to fake it
I don't mind sayin'
I just can't make it

"Sister Golden Hair" is everything you could want from an AM pop radio hit. It sounds bright and sunny, catchy as hell, while conveying a sense of yearning and regret. I understand regret: I still look back and wish I'd been better. Even within the maelstrom of sullen teendom, as I blithely made blunders and committed sins that I should have known enough not to do, as I dug in my heels to hate a band my roommate and former friend adored, I grudgingly--no, willingly--accepted the wonder of "Sister Golden Hair."

It's been more than forty-five years since I met Simon, and more than forty since we last had any contact. I remember my behavior, and it makes me cringe, the time between notwithstanding. I suspect I learned some lessons in the process, though I wish I could have learned these lessons a bit more quickly and efficiently. 

If, in fact, I've learned them at all. 

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider supporting this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available for preorder, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!!

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, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

POP-A-LOOZA: The Beatles And The Green Hornet For MEESTER TACO

 

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a look back at a couple of silly little radio commercials I wrote for a fast food restaurant in my college town of Brockport, NY: "The Beatles And The Green Hornet For MEESTER TACO."

One of these days, I should post the script for the one actual, broadcast radio commercial I ever wrote and got on the air. One of these days. Meanwhile, my college and post-college experiences in Brockport gave birth to posts concerning Main Street Records, the Flashcubes, the Flashcubes again, the Kinks, the Kinks again, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Ramones, the Ramones and Flashcubes AND the Runaways, Lou Reed, the Damned, the Romantics, Hamilton, the Go-Go's, the Jam, the Monkees, the Flamin' Groovies, the Sex Pistols, Yoko Ono, the posters on my wall, my own pathetic attempts to make music, my all-time favorite songs from when I was a junior in high school (1976) through two years after snaggin' the ol' BA (1980-82), and my freshman year roommate. There's more, including even some jukebox musicals I fantasized about writing, and several separate entries from my college Fantasy and Science-Fiction class journal (Parts 1, 2-3, 4, 5, 6, 7-9, 10-11, and 12-14, stopping at The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Brockport memories often show up in my writing, across all manner of subjects.

Irwin Shaw said that writers are charged with the responsibility to report where we think we are and what this place looks like today. Our life's own stories inform the stories we write, whether fiction or nonfiction. I've written my autobiographies of growing up in the 1960s and trying to make my way through the 1980s. I have not yet been able to fully address the subjects of my life in the '70s and the early '80s, my years in middle school, high school, college, and post-college life in a college town. After all this time, lingering memories of where I thought I was and what that place seemed to look like in those days...well, it all remains intimidating. I've only written the first few introductory paragraphs of my '70s memoir, and I've so far been unable to continue it.

I might get to it yet. Meanwhile, here's me at the age of 20 in 1980, goofin' around with some pop culture icons on behalf of a Mexican food joint in Brockport, NY. "The Beatles And The Green Hornet" for MEESTER TACO" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon, or by visiting CC's Tip Jar. Additional products and projects are listed here.

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, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

THE EVERLASTING FIRST: Quick Takes For T [music edition]

Continuing a look back at my first exposure to a number of rock 'n' roll acts and superheroes (or other denizens of print or periodical publication), some of which were passing fancies, and some of which I went on to kinda like. They say you never forget your first time; that may be true, but it's the subsequent visits--the second time, the fourth time, the twentieth time, the hundredth time--that define our relationships with the things we cherish. Ultimately, the first meeting is less important than what comes after that. But every story still needs to begin with that first kiss.

TELEVISION

So many of the stories of my immersion in pop music begin with things I read, particularly with things I read in rock 'n' roll magazines. The tabloid Phonograph Record Magazine had a seismic effect on me, introducing me to an interest in punk rock. This was the spring of 1977, my final semester as a high school student, and before I'd managed to actually hear (or have any interest in) this broad category of punk music. I read Patti Smith's Penthouse interview in 1976, and I saw a sensationalist news report about the Sex Pistols in late '76/early '77. But it was PRM that really impacted me.

A New York City band called Television was among the many acts I first encountered vicariously, in the pages of Phonograph Record Magazine. The list of artists introduced to me via PRM also includes the Ramones, Blondie, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Damned, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Chris Spedding and the Vibrators, the Dictators, Milk 'N' Cookies, and more. I don't even remember what the writers at PRM said about Television; I only know that I was desperate, desperate to hear them and all of these other groups. Patti Smith was initially a disappointment to me when I first heard/saw her on The Mike Douglas Show, whereas the Sex Pistols thrilled me when WOUR-FM played "God Save The Queen" in the summer of '77. I had to wait until the start of college at the end of that summer to hear some of the other acts that PRM recommended to me.

At school at the State University College at Brockport, I pestered jocks at campus station WBSU to play this stuff for me. Sometimes they refused, sometimes they complied. WBSU gave me my first listen of Television, with a spin (and several requested spins thereafter) of a track from Television's then-recent debut album, Marquee Moon. That track was called "Elevation."

Oh. My. GOD...!!

That was enough to get me to buy Marquee Moon at The Record Grove in Brockport. The rest of the album was also great, but I was well and truly mesmerized by "Elevation," then and now. Here's a bit of what I've written about the song for a tentative spot in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):

"Vertigo.

"For the disaffected and dissatisfied in 1977, no track expressed the feeling of rock music in dizzying free fall with greater menace and implied ennui as 'Elevation' by Television. 

"A large part of growing up manifests in staking one's own claim on fresh vistas. We don't necessarily crave a complete break from the past, from the frontiers settled by older siblings or preceding generations. But we want some real estate to call our own...

"...I could never get enough of this jagged, loping, serpentine noise, so mesmerizing, so different, so gratifyingly dizzying in its willful application of elevation going to my head. And staying there. Marquee Moon was among my earliest LP purchases in this broad category of NEW MUSIC circa '77 and '78. It would not be the last. 

"Oh, no. Not even close to the last."

THE TEMPTATIONS

Like the rock reads mentioned above, radio had an enormous influence on my development as a pop fan. Throughout most of the '70s, from roughly '70-'71 or so through leaving home for college in 1977, I listened to the radio nearly every night. Radio is such an ingrained component of everything I am that I can't possibly separate it. Radio gave me everything. Fine, TV gave me the Monkees, and flexi-discs in Trouser Press magazine gave me R.E.M. and Fools Face. I'm very grateful for that. But radio is where I first heard the Beatles, Badfinger, Gladys Knight and the Pips, KISS, Graham Parker, the Raspberries, Johnny Nash, Chuck Berry, the Isley Brothers, Alice Cooper, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Yardbirds, the Who, the Flamin' Groovies, the Hoodoo Gurus, Run-DMC, the Jackson Five, Dusty Springfield, Linda Ronstadt, the Spinners, the Four Tops, Sweet, and...and...

...you get the idea.

Radio also gave me the Temptations. I'm old enough to remember the Temps' legendary '60s sides, but I don't recall them contemporaneously; I came to them all well after the fact. It's especially weird that I don't remember their ubiquitous 1965 smash "My Girl," but the memory does what the memory does, even when it's a Motown memory.

I think I kinda sorta knew the Temptations prior to 1972, in the sense that I sorta kinda knew there was a soul group called the Temptations. I think. But in '72, "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" was the Temps' first hit record released within my prime AM radio era, when my ears were all but superglued to Syracuse's WOLF-AM and WNDR-AM. Maybe I heard the Temptations before "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone," but this was the first time I noticed them.

Once again, we turn to The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):

"In 'Papa Was A Rollin' Stone,' Papa is every familiar stereotype of shiftless, shifty, amoral grifter made real, the roguish charm he presumably had in life dissipated in death, leaving the palpable pain in the voices of the Temptations as his resigned and unsympathetic eulogy. They mourn him nonetheless.

"On Syracuse's WOLF-AM, where I first heard this compelling diatribe in all its beaten and defiant glory, there was a Sunday night public affairs program called The Black Experience. I think it was a local program, though it may have been syndicated for all I knew. I usually switched the station over to rival WNDR on Sunday nights; I was a suburban white kid, and not remotely part of the show's target audience (and besides, if I was gonna listen to talk radio, I'd try to find a rebroadcast of a 1930s episode of The Shadow or The Green Hornet on public radio instead). What little I thought I might understand of the black experience was conveyed through pop culture, through my peripheral awareness of blaxploitation flicks like Shaft and  Superfly, perception through a fisheye lens. 

"In my sheltered environment, the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" felt genuine. Vocals by Dennis Edwards, Melvin Franklin, Richard Street, and Damon Harris convey dismay, disappointment, and reluctant acceptance in paradoxically equal measure. The controlled funk of the musical underpinning conjures emotional and economic desolation, possessed with a will to shrug it all off as if the artists are too cool to succumb to the big, bad world. I thought Damon Harris's falsetto lines were performed by a female singer, and I also thought that all Papa left his poor abandoned family was a loan, but even in my cluelessness I recognized the song's power, its disillusionment, its ache, its fury. Its sense of irreparable loss. The Temptations told a story. I listened. And I thought maybe--maybe--I understood. It was a sad story. I wished it could have a happy ending...."

TOMMY TUTONE

Jenny, I got your number/I'm gonna make you mine....

No, not that song. Before we all heard all about getting Jenny's number, my introduction to the music of Tommy Tutone was delivered by Breaking The Rules, a 1980 2-LP loss-leader sampler that included the band's song "Cheap Date." I confess I was more taken with Breaking The Rules tracks by Elvis Costello ("Tiny Steps"), Rachel Sweet ("I've Got A Reason" and her cover of the Velvet Underground's "New Age"), the Joe Perry Project ("Let The Music Do The Talking"), Rockpile ("Wrong Again [Let's Face It]"), and especially Quincy's "Critics' Choice" and "Turn The Other Way Around." There was also the Beat's "Don't Wait Up For Me," plus the Boomtown Rats' "I Don't Like Mondays," but I already owned those tracks prior to buying Breaking The Rules at Brockport's Main Street Records.

So my first exposure to Tommy Tutone didn't make much of an impression, nor did the track "Which Man Are You," which opened a 1981 loss-leader set called Exposed II: A Cheap Peek At Today's Provocative New Rock. Exposed II also repeated "Cheap Date" from Breaking The Rules, but I was too busy playing Holly and the Italians' "Tell That Girl To Shut Up" and the Psychedelic Furs' "Pretty In Pink" over and over to care about the Tutone tracks.

But yeah, 1982's "867-5309/Jenny" blew me away. Just like it did everyone else. I bought the 45, the only stand-alone Tommy Tutone record I've ever owned. I recall hearing 1983's "Get Around Girl" a few times on the radio, but Tommy Tutone remain pretty much a one-hit wonder for me. A deeper dive into their catalog may be in order, just to see if any other numbers might also be worth getting.

THE TROGGS

Yes, that song. Wild thing, you make my heart sing. But the Troggs' 1966 smash recording of "Wild Thing" wasn't my introduction to the song, at least not my conscious introduction to it. I mean, I must have heard those Troggs warblin' on the radio about where the wild things are (and what the wild things do) at some point in the '60s, but I didn't really notice. I may have also heard "Love Is All Around," but it likewise would have been background music rather than something that made me feel it in my fingers and feel it in my toes.

So when an act called Fancy had an AM radio hit with their version of "Wild Thing" in 1974, it was a new song as far I was aware. I didn't remember the Troggs, and I'd certainly never heard the Wild Ones' forgotten original 1965 "Wild Thing." I didn't particularly like Fancy's hit, except that I picked up some hint of pouty sexiness in the chick vocals, which did intrigue my teen hormones even if I didn't care about the record. I would have been more intrigued if I'd known that breathy lead singer Helen Caunt had posed for Penthouse magazine. Wild thing, I think you move me.

When did I discover the Troggs themselves? Memory is imprecise, but I'm sure it was part of my overall embrace of '60s music--especially British Invasion--as a teen in the mid '70s. My first Troggs acquisition was "With A Girl Like You" on the 2-LP The History Of British Rock Vol. 2, received for Christmas in 1976. That collection looms largest in my legend for giving me my first Kinks record ("All Day And All Of The Night"), but it also led to more Troggs. I grabbed used 45s of "Wild Thing," "Love Is All Around," and the incredible "I Can't Control Myself." 

My first Troggs LP was a cutout-bin purchase of their 1975 album The Troggs, which didn't carry quite the same frenzy as their '60s work. I eventually secured the Troggs' double-album best-of set The Vintage Years, and much, much later the Archeology 2-CD set. Oh, and the 1992 Athens Andover album, which found the Troggs working with members of R.E.M. Love is all around. Wild thing, I can't control myself. 

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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, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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