10 SONGS: 2/3/2022

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 # 1114.

THE VENTURES: Walk--Don't Run

As we age, there is a risk of TIRnRR playlists becoming the de facto Obituary of the Week. Time is the enemy. The passing of the Ventures' guitarist Don Wilson prompted me to wanna play a few Ventures tracks this week, opening the show with "Walk--Don't Run." I have a specific memory associated with that song, a memory I shared when we lost the Ventures' other guitarist Nokie Edwards in 2018:

In the late '80s, probably around '88 or so, the Ventures were scheduled to play at a bar located in a shopping center in Seneca Knolls, a suburban area north of Syracuse. In another manifestation of Syracuse's frustrating feast-or-famine existence, the Godfathers were elsewhere in Syracuse that same night, and the Bodeans were also appearing at yet another local venue. I wanted to see all three shows. But there was no real choice: I had to see the Ventures.

The Ventures were one of the most influential groups of the early '60s, and the most influential American instrumental rock 'n' roll combo. I can say that without denying the sheer magnificence of Dick Dale and the Del Tones or Link Wray, or the importance of the Shadows in England. I became a fan in the early '80s, via an oldies radio spin of "Walk--Don't Run." Riveted. There was no way I would or could pass up a chance to see the Ventures play live.

I don't remember the name of the bar. The floor in front of the stage had been garnished with sand, to conjure a beach party ambiance. Soon, the band was on stage. Nokie Edwards had left the group by then, so the Ventures I saw were the "Hawaii Five-O" line-up of Bob Bogle, Don Wilson, Gerry McGee, and Mel Taylor. The owner of the venue introduced, "The best fucking dance band in the world, THE VENTURES!!"

Enthusiastic applause, followed by something like a half-second pause for effect. Maybe a quarter-second. Maybe a full second or more. No time at all, but a seeming eternity, a tantalizing tease. You know what I mean. That brief moment when time stands still, when a performer or a group knows intuitively that he or she or they is about to claim you in full. A half-second. Quarter-second. Less than a tick, yet a sweet, enticing forever. Mel Taylor's drums rolled. That guitar intro.

The Ventures opened their show with "Walk--Don't Run."

The Ventures opened their show with "Walk--Don't Run!"

I've had the pleasure and good fortune to see a lot of terrific shows, from the Kinks to the Ramones to Paul McCartney. No one grabbed me from the get-go better than the Ventures did.

DAVID RUFFIN: Don't Stop Lovin' Me

I've recently been in serious thrall to David, the originally unreleased 1971 album by former Temptations singer David Ruffin. "Don't Stop Lovin' Me" is one of the few David tracks that was issued in its day, serving as the B-side to "Each Day Is A Lifetime" (a track which also would have been on David, if there had been a David). I remain puzzled by Motown's decision to consign the album to the vaults. Great, great record, and we'll hear another of its tracks on next week's TIRnRR.

LOLAS: My Thoughts Have Been Replaced

Following several years of scattered Dana & Carl radio shows in varied incarnations, 1999 was This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio's first full year on the air. Lolas' debut album Ballerina Breakout was released in late '99, but it immediately became my favorite album of the year. Its track "The Best Part" became the first of many Lolas songs played on TIRnRR over the years, and we're delighted to add Lolas' latest to our little Play-Tone Galaxy of Stars. The new album All Rise was a digital-only release in 2021, and it's now available in physical (i.e., real) form courtesy of our friends at Kool Kat Musik. Of course we played it this week! Good stuff, then and now.

BRAM TCHAIKOVSKY: Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache

Our playlists are affected by our listeners. I don't mean just in terms of requests, but also in reading their comments and developing an understanding of what they dig. One such listener is Joel Tinnel, guitarist for the way fab Pop Co-Op. I don't think it's much--maybe any--exaggeration to say that either Dana or I pick at least one track each week with the specific goal of landing within Joel's rockin' pop wheelhouse. We aims t'please. Joel has good taste, so we figure a song that Joel likes has better'n even odds of enhancing whatever the hell it is we do here.

Joel has expressed his interest in the music of Bram Tchaikovsky, the late '70s/early '80s British act (BT the name of both the band and its frontman) best known for the pop classic "Girl Of My Dreams." When we played the Bandwagon's Northern soul essential "Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache" a few years back, it was Joel who pointed out that Bram Tchaikovsky covered the song on his/their third and final studio album, 1981's Funland. This week, that version finally made its belated TIRnRR debut. For Joel! The playlist benefits from an understanding of what our listeners like. Thanks again, Joel.

THE JAM: Monday

In the early '80s, I absolutely worshipped the Jam. Setting Sons had become one of my all-time favorite albums, and I likewise adored its successor Sound Affects. And yet, in our current far-future world of the 21st century, I had completely forgotten about the sublime Sound Affects album track "Monday" until Dana selected it for this week's radio extravaganza. Thanks, Dana!

THE 5TH DIMENSION: Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In (The Flesh Failures)

The effect of listeners again, though this one was an actual request from intrepid TIRnRR fan Dominique King. Thanks, Dominique! Mystic crystal revelation, the mind's true liberation.

BUCK OWENS AND HIS BUCKAROOS: Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass

"Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass" wasn't a request this week, but I first learned of this superswell Buck Owens number because a listener named Elma Tiran (whom we've since dubbed Sparky) wanted us to play it on the show a few years ago. Ever your rock 'n' roll radio customer service specialists, we tracked it down, loved its vibrant application of Beatlisms and fuzz guitar to the C & W Bakersfield Beat, and it became a TIRnRR perennial in short order. Thanks, Sparky!

THE CLICK BEETLES: Goodbye Margot

This ace new track from the glory, the splendor, and the wonder of the Click Beetles initially slipped right by us because, well, um...SQUIRREL!! Times are tough, so we can't afford to pay attention. Rich Firestone of Radio Deer Camp (heard Sunday afternoons from 5 to 7 Eastern, right here on SPARK!) was the first to give "Goodbye Margot" the radio love it deserves, and we're always eager to copy our Reechie and his Radio Deer Camp brilliance. Thanks, Rich!

"Goodbye...?!" But I wanna listen to Rich Firestone on Radio Deer Camp!

CHRIS CHURCH: Pillar To Post

LANNIE FLOWERS: Good

While each week's 10 Songs is built in large part from songs released in years (and decades) gone by, we always, always play new and/or recent irresistibles right alongside our cherished and familiar gems. I mean, would it be TIRnRR if we didn't play something from the Big Stir Records label? Hyperbole is its own reward. We love Big Stir, there's at least one Big Stir release in nearly every weekly playlist, and that trend may never end. 

Our current Big Stir obsessions are Darling Please by Chris Church and Flavor Of The Month by Lannie Flowers. We played tracks from each on last week's show, and different tracks from each on this week's show. You can't have great radio unless you play great records. Big Stir releases great records, and so we play 'em as part of our ongoing effort to slap together great radio. Thanks, Big Stir. Thank you, listeners. Let's play.

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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.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

10 SONGS: 10/20/2020

10 Songs is a weekly list of ten songs that happen to be on my mind at the moment. Given my intention to usually write these on Mondays, the lists are often dominated by songs played on the previous 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 edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1047.

BRYAN ADAMS: Lonely Nights

Will you risk your reputation?/I don't know....

I am reasonably certain that no one expected us to play Bryan Adams this week. I'm reasonably certain Dana didn't expect us to play Bryan Adams this week. Neither of us could be described as an Adams fan. The ballads leave me cold; I'm basically okay with "Cuts Like A Knife" and "Summer Of '69," but I never felt any real passion for them, either.

But "Lonely Nights?" That's a terrific pop track. It was the first Bryan Adams song I ever heard, occupying air time on Rochester FM rock radio in 1981. I guess I should go back and investigate the You Want It You Got It album, just to see if there are any other early Adams chronicles I might also dig. Most Bryan Adams material does not fit within my view of TIRnRR's chosen format. "Lonely Nights," on the other hand, practically embodies it. At long last, Bryan Adams makes his TIRnRR debut.

MIKE BROWNING: We're Hangin' Out

Well, speaking as a 60-year-old writing trying to get his first book published, I've gotta say Mike Browning's story is inspiring. Browning is just a little bit older than me, and his new six-song EP Never Too Late is his debut recording. Let's have Mike speak for himself:

Imagine working most of your adult life as nothing more than a cog in the corporate machine. Then imagine finding yourself in a community college classroom, led by one of your musical heroes. That happened to me, after I ran into Jamie Hoover of The Spongetones at a Dairy Queen in Oak Island, NC on a Sunday afternoon. His generosity in sharing his vast knowledge of recording and production techniques with me and my fellow students has brought me to this point...releasing my very first EP on the threshold of being a Medicare recipient. It truly is never too late.

And Never Too Late is a perfectly swell debut, highlighted by its sprightly 'n' boppin' opening track "We're Hanging Out." Never too late? Words to live by, my friends.

DIME BOX BAND: All Of Nothing

My first communication with Kristi Callan was last year, when we played a track or two from her old group Wednesday Week (including the fab MTV hit "Why") and she sent me a copy of her current combo Dime Box Band's then-recent album Happy. Actually, I think she sent me a digital file of the song "Everybody Lies" first; we played that, and then hopped on the CD when it arrived subsequently. Happy's effervescent country-pop style is engaging and agreeable, and I was particularly taken with "All Of Nothing," a Happy Hour nightclub rumination of possibility: But you might laugh/And you might leave/But then again/Maybe you need me. Every love story's gotta start somewhere. 

GALLOWS BIRDS: So Unhappy For You

The mighty Rum Bar Records label has been killin' it, with fantastic releases from Justine and the Unclean, The Shang Hi Los, Natalie Sweet, The Yum Yums, Muck and the Mires, The Real Impossibles, Brad Marino, Stop Calling Me Frank, and more. Add Gallows Birds to that Rum Bar Honor Roll, as this peppy and invigmoratin' track "So Unhappy For You" from the album Quaranteenage Kicks is exactly the sort of track I specifically crave just so's I can play it on the radio. I heard the track, and then I bought the album. Radio's job is to sell records. Even the DJs are not exempt from that.

THE MONKEES: (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone

"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." Paul Revere and the Raiders did it first, and The Sex Pistols covered it in the late '70s. And even compared to those two rockin' renditions, the definitive version belongs to The Monkees. Here's what I wrote about that record in a previous blog discussing my top 25 favorite Monkees tracks:

Paul Revere & the Raiders cut the first version of Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart's "Steppin' Stone," and there's ample rockin' reason why many consider the Raiders' take to be definitive. The Sex Pistols covered it in the '70s, certifying the song's enduring, surly cred. The Raiders were a rock 'n' roll group masquerading as costume-party Revolutionaries, so of course their "Steppin' Stone" simmers with authority and swagger. Yet I like The Monkees' version best. Although they were still just a prefab entity at the time, The Monkees' machine somehow created a rendition with even more punch than the original, more power, more precision; it can't match the seeming abandon of the Raiders, but it matches and even slightly surpasses their intensity. Puppets with a chip on their shoulders? Both "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" and Headquarters were just around the corner. The Monkees would not remain puppets for much longer.

NEW YORK CITY: I'm Doin' Fine Now

"I'm Doin' Fine Now" was a # 17 pop hit in 1973 for the (you guessed it!) NYC-based soul quartet New York City. The early-to-mid '70s was my AM Top 40 heyday--my head was practically stapled to Syracuse's WOLF-AM and WNDR-AM throughout that little era--but I have no real recollection of hearing "I'm Doin' For Now" at the time. See, don't trust a thirteen-year-old to keep proper track of this stuff. If I didn't know it then, I sure know it now, courtesy of Rhino Records' essential '70s soul box Can You Dig It?, and I'm retroactively declaring it a legacy fave rave, right alongside my Badfinger, Slade, Johnny Nash, and Elton John. Sometimes revisionism is its own reward. I'm doin' fine now.

BUCK OWENS AND HIS BUCKAROOS: Tall Dark Stranger

Some years back, we received the debut album by an ace combo called The Steve Deaton Three, and started playing one track in fairly heavy rotation: "Tall Dark Stranger." I didn't realize it was a Buck Owens cover, but some of our listeners did. They're a savvy bunch, those TIRnRR listeners.

Buck Owens was never much on my radar. I'd seen him with Roy Clark on TV's Hee Haw, and I knew The Beatles covered his song "Act Naturally," but that was the extent of my knowledge and interest. My peripheral awareness and acceptance of classic country brought Buck's "I've Got A Tiger By The Tail" into my sovereign airspace, along with a sublime instrumental called "Buckaroo." Within the past couple of years, intrepid TIRnRR listener Elma "Sparky" Tiran started requesting Buck's "Who's Gonna Mow Your Grass," so I broke down and bought my own Buck Owens anthology CD. Ol' Buck's been a frequent fixture on our playlists ever since. Thanks for the tip, Sparky!

THE RAMONES: She's The One

No less an authority than the late Greg Shaw once described "She's The One" as The Ramones' "best fast song yet." The comment came in his Bomp! magazine write-up of The Ramones' 1978 Road To Ruin album, and while "Ramones' fast songs" may seem somewhat broad as a sub-category--kinda like "liquors that contain alcohol"--we get the idea.  

VAN HALEN: Dance The Night Away

I was not a Van Halen fan. I mean no disrespect to VH fans when I say that, especially as they mourn the passing of Eddie Van Halen. When a performer dies, too many thoughtless would-be pundits are quick to puff and proclaim that they never understood what the fuss was about; that's rude, and I hope I'm not guilty of such boorish behavior. 

Because I always loved "Dance The Night Away." 

Yeah, I thought they butchered the cantankerous perfection of The Kinks' original "You Really Got Me," singer David Lee Roth tended to get on my nerves, and even Eddie Van Halen's note-heavy guitar style wasn't my cuppa. But I could see why folks liked them. Both "Jamie's Cryin'" and "Runnin' With The Devil" were first-rate rock tracks. A bit later, I was also okay with "Panama" and their appealingly meatball take on Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman," found their version of "Where Have All The Good Times Gone" more palatable than their previous Kinks cover, and liked "Jump" the first half dozen times I heard it (if not the subsequent seventeen billion times). Oh! And a girl I knew told me she thought I looked like drummer Alex Van Halen. I thought that was ridiculous, but a smart teenage boy knows better than to disagree with a pretty teenage girl paying him a compliment. And I was old enough to dance the night away.

"Dance The Night Away" transcends the discussion. When it was released in '79, my punk/power pop personality had already decided that Van Halen didn't fit into my rockin' pop cosmology. So I had to bend my rules to allow myself to dig "Dance The Night Away" anyway. It's no more silly in retrospect than it was in real time...because it was plenty silly in real time. I made excuses, and stumbled across the (true) notion that even the band you hate can be capable of one great song. I hated Styx, but I loved "Lorelei." I hated REO Speedwagon, but I love...liked "Tough Guys." I hated The Eagles, but...er, okay, bad example. (NO! I KID! I'm a kidder.)

But in this case, the premise is flawed. I never hated Van Halen. I wasn't into them, except when I was. As I've presumably matured, much of what I actually did hate--Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, some disco, even a little bit of Eagles--has grown on me. I doubt I'll ever care for Van Halen's "You Really Got Me," but maybe the rest of their stuff is due for reappraisal. 

I don't need to reappraise "Dance The Night Away." It was a fabulous track when I was 19, it's still a fabulous track now that I'm 60, and the through-line from then to now is steady and true. As I wrote in last week's playlist, I've been thinking for a little while about adding Van Halen to TIRnRR's Play-Tone Galaxy O' Stars. It could have been "Jamie's Cryin'," and it could have been "Runnin' With The Devil." It could have been. But really, it had to be "Dance The Night Away." What a great, great record.

Old enough to dance, not good enough to drum

STEVIE WONDER: Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours

If memory serves (and memory has proven to be persistent), this Stevie Wonder classic served as the theme song for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The good old days! One hopes for a return to that feeling of hope and promise very, very soon. 

Signed, sealed, delivered. Not yet. We've got work to do. 

Two weeks. And then the real work begins. Save us. Deliver us.

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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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