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 # 1293.
THE BEACH BOYS: Good Vibrations
Although the late Brian Wilson was (of course) the Featured Performer on our June 22nd show, it still felt imperative to dedicate an entire show to Wilson's impact. Hence this week's presentation of GOOD VIBRATIONS! Brian Wilson and the Legend of Summer.
As our chosen title suggests, the intention this week was to pay tribute to the good vibrations of Brian Wilson's legacy. That effort needed to include Brian (with and without the Beach Boys), as well as other artists covering Brian's songs, and work by others inspired by Wilson. We also wanted to throw in some otherwise-unrelated songs about summer, and whatever else felt right in the context of picking up good vibrations.
My book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) has a chapter about the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," a celestial track from the wonder that is Pet Sounds. In that chapter, I write:
"...There is a risk in elevating Pet Sounds and forgetting about the simple wonders Brian and the Beach Boys crafted before that, in the days when they were the living avatars of the beguiling and alluring California myth. There are summer days (and summer nights) when 'I Get Around' is The Greatest Record Ever Made, as is its B-side 'Don't Worry Baby;' hell, arrogant strutting, backed by adolescent insecurity? That's both sides of the teenage experience captured at 45 RPM and wrapped in a picture sleeve. 'Surfin' USA,' 'Help Me Rhonda,' 'Fun, Fun, Fun,' and 'Girl Don't Tell Me,' each in its own infinite turn.
"The Beach Boys continued to record essential works beyond Pet Sounds, with and without brother Brian. ' 'Til I Die' from 1971's Surf's Up is heartbreaking in its desolate beauty, and that album's title tune is stunning. And honestly, it's ludicrous to even have this discussion of a greatest record ever made without talking about the miracle of 'Good Vibrations'...."
That miracle endures. And its eternal excitations move us toward our deeper dive into the legend of summer.
GARY FRENAY: It's Like Heaven
I first knew the Brian Wilson-Diane Rovell song "It's Like Heaven" from a cover version recorded by underrated teen pop star Shaun Cassidy. Save your snickering; it's good! I didn't hear the originally-unreleased version by Spring (aka American Spring, which was Rovell with her sister Marilyn Wilson) until a very long time after that. I really wanted to include something by Spring (probably "This Old World"), but I couldn't find my DIY copy of American Spring, and I suspect it has disappeared from my library.
My pick for the definitive "It's Like Heaven" comes from singer-songwriter Gary Frenay's 2015 album File Under Pop Vocal. Gary's a very familiar figure on TIRnRR playlists, as a solo artist and with the Flashcubes and Screen Test. Gary also wrote "Syracuse Summer," an incredible channeling of the sun-and-surf ethos into the mercurial climate of Central New York, an East Coast wonder recorded by the Tearjerkers and later by Gary with the FabCats. It would have taken an act of God-Only-Knows to block that from taking its rightful place in this week's playlist.
So yeah: We had to play Gary's "It's Like Heaven," and we had to play the Tearjerkers' "Syracuse Summer." Recommended if you like Heaven.
MICHAEL SIMMONS: Sail On, Sailor
Like Gary Frenay, Michael Simmons is also a frequent fixture on TIRnRR's sovereign airwaves. We've been playing Michael's superswell combo sparkle*jets u.k. for just as long as Stig has been dead (for ages, honestly), and their most recent album Box Of Letters was one of THE records of 2024 in these quarters. We've also carpet-bombed airplay of Michael with Popdudes, as a solo artist, and as a secret weapon for various 'n' sundry rockin' pop DBAs. Michael is at the mastering helm of the forthcoming various-artists blockbuster Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and sparkle*jets u.k. themselves turn in the title track on that set (which is--full circle!--a Gary Frenay tune). Hell, I think Michael was very nearly a founding member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but jealous guys Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy blackballed him for flirting with Saturn Girl. Man, teen superkids can be so petty!
And like...well, all of us, Michael was affected by the passing of Brian Wilson, and therefore compelled to express himself. Unlike most of us, Mr. Simmons possesses the talent to transmogrify that sorrow into art, and he absolutely nails this cover of the Beach Boys' "Sail On, Sailor," offered in Brian Wilson's memory. See? THAT'S why Michael Simmons is a TIRnRR FaveRave.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Girls In Their Summer Clothes
For this track from Bruce Springsteen's 2007 album Magic, these words from my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"..I think I read somewhere that Bruce Springsteen was heavily influenced by Brian Wilson--specifically, by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds--while he was making Magic. If that's not true, it should be. Its first two tracks, 'Radio Nowhere' and 'You'll Be Coming Down,' capture that elusive wispy quality of goals just beyond our reach, happiness that escapes our grasp. The result is mesmerizing. It doesn't sound anything at all like the Beach Boys. Yet it's difficult to imagine it existing in a world where Pet Sounds didn't exist first.
"None of this prepared me for 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes.'
"As pop fans--dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool pop fans--there are moments when our grandest ideas and ideals of the universe align within the concise running time of a new song we're hearing for the very first time. These are the all-too-rare moments when an unfamiliar track annexes us as its own. Body. Mind. Heart. Soul. Sometimes the feet as well. The purity and majesty of the experience is incomparable.
"That feeling that engulfed me the first time I heard 'Girls In Their Summer Clothes,' the same feeling that still claims me every time I hear it again. And the girls in their summer clothes pass me by. It is a flawless, gorgeous ache, a mournful ode to whatever has slipped away, and continues to pass us by. It is, like much of Springsteen's best work, a drugstore-rack paperback novel brought to life as a pop song. It means more than it says. It implies more than it reveals...."
THE KRAYOLAS: Surf's Down
Inspiration can be immediate and undeniable. It can also be finicky and introspective, even shy, waiving its right to reveal itself. Consider this message from Hector Saldana of the ace American rockin' pop combo the Krayolas regarding "Surf's Down," an inspired Krayolas track from the vaults:
"...When I heard the news of [Brian Wilson's] passing, I wanted to make some gesture to show how much he meant to me and the Krayolas. I decided to release a never-heard unreleased recording from spring 1979. I found the audio recorded at a small studio on an analog 8-track 1/2 inch Otari tape machine. I sent it to legendary mastering engineer Richard Dodd in Nashville and rush released it via The Orchard. We were super young and could sing high around a mic to get that sound...."
Inspiration deferred does not have to be inspiration denied. We were inspired to play "Surf's Down" as an integral part of our Brian Wilson tribute. "Surf's Down" is UP! And it's up again on our next show.
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE: Hot Fun In The Summertime
It would probably be a stretch to suggest that Sly Stone wrote "Hot Fun In The Summertime" under the influence of Brian Wilson. I don't quite believe any of Sly and the Family Stone's brilliant work was shaped by Wilson's pet sounds of the soul, at least not willfully. But it would also be a stretch to insist that Wilson wasn't a possible influence; Sly Stone was aware of everything going on in pop music in the '60s, and--to paraphrase something famously uttered by someone else in the Wilson family--Sly Stone was a genius, too. "Hot Fun In The Summertime" doesn't sound like the Beach Boys. Doesn't matter. Sly and Brian sound great in the same radio show. Hot fun, fun, fun in the summertime.
THE RONETTES: Be My Baby
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
Brian Wilson was obsessed with the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," and the record was an enormous influence on what his own genius went on to create thereafter.
THE FIRST CLASS: Beach Baby
From The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"Can a pastiche touch the divine? Can a copy become more than it is? Can mere imitation transcend its mundane genesis, and live on its own as something great?
"In rock 'n' roll? Yeah. It happens all the time.
" 'Beach Baby' conjures the classic sound of the Beach Boys without calling to mind any specific Beach Boys track. Perhaps there are hints of 'In My Room,' or 'Don't Worry Baby,' or 'California Girls,' or other lush, luxurious, mid-tempo hits from the pride of Hawthorne, but we're just grasping at straws in the sand to say so. Really, 'Beach Baby" sounds like none of these.
"And yet it sounds like all of them. Surf’s up...
"...And it’s not Beachmania; it isn't the Beach Boys, nor is it an incredible simulation. Lead singer Tony Burrows doesn't sound at all like Brian Wilson or Carl Wilson or Dennis Wilson, not Al Jardine nor David Marks, and for damned sure nothing like Mike Love. No one with ears would mistake it for a Beach Boys record.
"But the homage is clear and true, the tribute seemingly sincere, the result unerringly effective and moving. It’s sad, like a memory of summer love long gone. It’s festive, like the songs shared as one by revelers gathered around the fire, as the moon lights the sand and the promises of the stars above reflect in the irresistible spark you could swear you see in the eyes of someone you just might want to love for ever and ever.
"Long hot days. Cool sea haze. It seems so long ago, if it ever really existed in the first place.
"And now it’s fading away...."
Two from Pet Sounds, empirical evidence of a benevolent deity beaming a signal to mortal ears. In the words of a Beach Boys song we'll hear on this coming Sunday night's show: That's why God made the radio. And that's why the Benevolence gave as a mortal angel named Brian Wilson.
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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, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.
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