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 week's edition of 10 Songs draws exclusively from the playlist for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1069.
THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS: All Strung Out Over You
The Chambers Brothers are one-hit wonders, but man, what a hit that was. Their 1968 smash "Time Has Come Today" is a freakin' wall of rock and soul, and I'm probably going to add it to my ever-forthcoming book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I haven't listened to the full eleven-minute version in far too long, but I owe myself that pleasure in the near future. Even the single version is a bit lengthy at nearly five minutes, but it's five minutes well spent. TIME!! The Ramones did an incredible cover of the song in the early '80s; even they couldn't improve on the original.
As is often the case with one-hit wonders, The Chambers Brothers cut more good stuff beyond the solitary Chosen One everyone knows. I've begun a casual dive into some of that recently, picking up both a CD best-of set and an expanded CD reissue of the group's The Time Has Come album. "All Strung Out Over You" was a single off that LP, a great track that only charted regionally. It deserved better.
THE CLICK BEETLES: If Not Now Then When
The Click Beetles' "If Not Now Then When" made its CD and digital debut on the 2019 compilation Waterloo Sunset-Benefit For TIR'N'RR, and subsequently appeared on the combo's groovyfine 2020 album Pop Fossil. Click Beetles CEO Dan Pavelich is a long-time friend of TIRnRR, and Dana and I are fans. Dan also runs the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza.
And he's a cartoonist and graphic artist of some note; he designed the eye-catching look of Allan Kaplon's new CD Notes On A Napkin, a release you'll hear on next week's exciting edition of our little mutant radio show. Dan is currently offering to craft an individual caricature for folks interested in glitzin' up the ol' on-line avatar, all for a mere five bucks. Good deal, I'm doing it, and you should oughtta do it, too: DRAW!!! If not now, then when?
DAWN: Candida
I have often mentioned that the summer and fall of 1970 was when I really began listening to AM Top 40 radio in earnest. Well, actually it was in my bedroom, which I guess we could name "Earnest" to simplify the narrative. Earnest and I may (or may not) have missed Dawn's first big hit "Candida" that summer; we certainly heard follow-up hit "Knock Three Times," and were duly smitten. More than five decades later, I still love both "Candida" and "Knock Three Times," and they are the only Dawn tracks that mean anything to me.
(I can't speak for Earnest's opinion of Dawn at this late date. He never writes, he never calls....)
ARETHA FRANKLIN: Chain Of Fools
I'm looking forward to seeing National Geographic's new four-part biopic of Aretha Franklin, but I'd actually forgotten about that when Dana and I were hammerin' out this week's playlist. It wasn't even a case of Because my iPod said so!, a process which influences many of my song choices (because what could be more pleasantly powerful than the music you hear while you're driving?). No, "Chain Of Fools" just popped into my head, I realized it had been quite a while since it last appeared on the show, so, inevitably, Chain-chain-chaaaaaain!
GOSPEL SWAMPS: Great Distances
Ooo--a MYSTERY band! Like Jack, Doc, and Reggie before me, I love a mystery. You can read the story so far (and buy the single) here. But even if we solve the puzzle, nothing can be revealed until April. It's okay. It will be worth the wait.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS: Day Job
"Don't quit your day job."
It's good, practical advice. As one pursues creative vision and dreams, it's important to have food to eat, a place to sleep, and sufficient reading light. Plus, y'know, decent internet.
But the dull phrase Don't quit your day job is usually tossed around as a put-down by simpletons who don't want you to dream. They don't want you to sing. They don't want you to act. They don't want you to do, to write, or paint, or attempt anything larger than the stuffy limitations of their stunted imaginations, their 2D world view. Swine. They deserve a variety of two-word replies each time they utter their witless witticism.
"Day Job" by The Great Outdoors offers what may be the first positive use of the phrase. (Early '80s Syracuse pop icons The Tearjerkers had a song called "Don't Quit Your Day Job," and I betcha that was aces, too, but I only heard it once in a bar, and you know what a great combination beer and memory make.) The Great Outdoors includes bassist and longtime TIRnRR Fave Rave Teresa Cowles, the song has a cool video, and it's as catchy as cooties, in a good way. And its implied message is self-effacing but affirming: don't quit your day job, fine, but keep on doing. The future is as wide as the great outdoors.
KID GULLIVER: Forget About Him
A spin of Kid Gulliver's fabulous "Forget About Him" on this week's show marks the 19th consecutive TIRnRR to include at least one track with a lead vocal by Simone Berk. It's not a TIRnRR record or anything--one presumes Ray Davies, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Joey Ramone could edge it--but it is evidence of our ongoing Berkmania. Simone made her TIRnRR debut on July 5th of 2020, fronting WhistleStop Rock's "Queen Of The Drive-In." We played that and a bit of Kid Gulliver over the course of subsequent weeks. But it was Kid Gulliver's "Forget About Him" that kicked off this current streak on November 15th, a Berk barrage also maintained by Kid Gulliver's recent single "Beauty School Dropout," WhistleStop Rock, Sugar Snow, and Berek/Lehane. "Forget About Him:" is our favorite. Berkmania! Let's make it 20 in a row next week.
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| Carl's back! |
THE MONKEES: When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)
Our immersion in the music we love builds ongoing reference points that (happily!) linger on and on. If the radio plays a song we remember from some cherished, decades-old mixtape, our brains momentarily fool us into expecting the next song on the radio to be whatever followed on that long-gone cassette. The connection is intrinsic, instinctive, and intimate. They're not just songs; they're parts of our lives.
When I hear The Monkees' "When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)." I expect the track to skip. All apologies to Carly Simon, but that's the way I've always heard it should be. My brother's copy of More Of The Monkees had a persistent whoopsie! in that song's first verse, causing our starry-eyed singer Davy Jones to render the line So little girl now don't you run and hide as So little girl now don't you ru-ide.
"When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)" was written by Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer, and while it's not anywhere near one of my top 25 Monkees tracks, it is by default my favorite Sedaka song. I was never much into Sedaka; with the exception of his Elton John collaboration "Bad Blood," I didn't like most of Sedaka's mid '70s comeback hits, and I didn't like The Captain And Tennille's ubiquitous Sedaka-penned "Love Will Keep Us Together." I kinda liked "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" as a '60s oldie, but despised Sedaka's mature cocktail-lounge hit remake. Yeah, when it comes to skipping records, I would rather skip that one entirely.
But The Monkees? We never skip The Monkees. No need to ru-ide. I've got quarters to set atop the stylus, and the will to use them.
TODD RUNDGREN: Couldn't I Just Tell You
From the Todd Rundgren/"Couldn't I Just Tell You" chapter in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"This is an example of the latest musical trend. It's called power pop.
"It was 1978. The band Utopia was appearing on The Mike Douglas Show. The song that Utopia's front man Todd Rundgren introduced as "the latest musical trend" was practically a golden oldie, a track Rundgren had recorded and released much earlier in the decade, on his 1972 album Something/Anything? The song "Couldn't I Just Tell You had not been a hit, its 1972 single release barely making it into the Hot 100, peaking at # 93 with an anchor. For Rundgren to refer to this six-year-old song as the latest...anything could have only been an example of the prickly performer sneering haughtily at trendy hipsters, hip trendsters, and, one supposes, anyone who liked pop music. Yeah, screw them."Wait, wait! 'Anyone who liked pop music?' That's me he was sneering at, damn it! Oh, the humanity...!
"But I didn't care. God, it was such a great song. Seeing it performed on TV asserted the song's hold on me, a hold that was already there, but which tightened its grip securely and permanently with this televised faux embrace of the latest musical trend. Power pop. Suits me just fine...."
THE TEMPTATIONS: My Girl
This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio playlists are constructed in large part on impulse. Feel. What songs feels right after the song we just played? It's informed alchemy in action, and it may not make sense on paper; a set that opens with the engaging homespun pop of Mike Browning, segues into the Central New York Americana of Harmonic Dirt, and follows with the essential Motown sound of The Temptations, the alt-rock of Hole, and a 1-2 shot of power pop from The Bay City Rollers and The Flashcubes might suggest we're messin' with you.
But we're not. It's ALL pop music. This stuff sounds wonderful together. And one never needs to justify playing The Temptations.
From a previous post about definitive jukebox singles: "'My Girl' is immortal, and perhaps the definitive Motown single. It's furthermore the sort of pervasive classic that is always lying somewhere near the surface of your subconscious, a tune you might not think anyone ever actually wrote, but which must instead have been passed down from generation to generation."
The folks songs of our native land. Sunshine on a cloudy day. So much honey the bees envy me. It's all pop music. That's why we love it.
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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.
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
Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio: CD or download
Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1)will contain 165 essays about 165 tracks, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1). My weekly Greatest Record Ever Made! video rants can be seen in my GREM! YouTube playlist. And I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl
