10 SONGS: 12/29/2022

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 # 1161: OUR PRAYER: Love, Hope, And Holding On. This show is available as a podcast.

THE BEACH BOYS: Our Prayer

When I was teenaged college student and early twenty-something college graduate in the late '70s and early '80s, I wasn't much of a Beach Boys fan. That opinion evolved, in large part due to the influence of Bill Yerger, owner of Main Street Records in my college town of Brockport, NY. "Carl," Bill said, "we're gonna make a Beach Boys fan out of you yet." It took a while, and it didn't really click until a few years later, but I don't know how or when it would have happened without the positive influence of Bill and his wife Carol Yerger. I was so lucky to know them.

I was seventeen when I went off to college at Brockport in August of '77. Endless Summer was the sum total of my Beach Boys music library, and all I was ever likely to need (missing only "Good Vibrations" from what I would have thought a complete collection of essential Beach Boys tracks). I did add Pet Sounds to the ol' CC archives before the end of my freshman year, purchased from Bill when he was managing The Record Grove, a year before he opened his own store.

I remained in Brockport for a couple of years after graduating in 1980. That's when the Yergers began to work on me. applying their own set of good vibrations. A pair of two-fer double-LP sets from Main Street's used bin brought Smiley Smile, Wild Honey, Friends, and 20/20 into my collection. That was the first time I heard "Our Prayer."

It would be inaccurate to say my introduction to "Our Prayer" was some immediate revelation; as noted, it wasn't until years later that I realized my folly in delaying my full-on embrace of Hawthorne's Finest. When we settled on the theme for this week's special show, I knew we had to call it OUR PRAYER, and that we needed to open the show with the Beach Boys. 

Our prayer is for love, for hope, and for the ability to hold on. Our prayer is for friends, and our prayer is for music. Sometimes, our prayer is answered. Thank you, Bill and Carol. 

THE RASCALS: People Got To Be Free

I had the good fortune to see the Rascals at a club show sometime around the close of the '80s. It was 3/4 of the original Rascals line-up, with Felix Cavaliere, Gene Cornish, and Dino Danelli present and accounted for, missing only Eddie Brigati. All four Rascals eventually played a show at Syracuse's Landmark Theater in this bright 'n' shiny new millennium, but another commitment prevented me from attending. I wished I coulda made it, but it wasn't in the cards.

Dino Danelli passed away two weeks ago. He was an extraordinarily talented drummer; even though the Rascals are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I'm not sure the group gets all the credit they deserve, and I don't think Danelli's name comes up often enough in discussions of the great rock 'n' roll drummers.

Some time back, I started writing a celebration of the Rascals' (or the Young Rascals') "Good Lovin'" for my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I never completed the entry, and it's not part of the book's current plan, but its opening paragraph is worth noting here:

"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."

What a great, great group. Rest in peace, Dino.

ARETHA FRANKLIN: I Say A Little Prayer

If you're gonna bill a radio show as OUR PRAYER: Love, Hope, And Holding On, you had best give Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin her due chance to testify. Doesn't even matter if her testimony in this case happens to secular; a prayer's a prayer, man.

MELANIE WITH THE EDWIN HAWKINS SINGERS: Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)

The Greatest Record Ever Made!

MARYKATE O'NEIL: I'm Ready For My Luck To Turn Around

In this sublime gem that opens Marykate O'Neil's 2006 album 1-800-Bankruptcy, O'Neil and co-writer Jill Sobule declare readiness for luck to finally turn around. At some point in our lives, we all relate to that wish. Here's a bit of what I wrote about the song for The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1);

"...I'm ready for my luck to turn around.

"I used to say that I was made out of hope. Maybe I still am. Marykate O'Neil's wonderful track was one of my most beloved security blankets in 2020, first as I attempted to calibrate my own frustrations and expectations, and then more gravely as the year became...that year. I don't think O'Neil designed the song to be a comfort for anyone. That's just how it turned out. Ultimately, even the artist's own goals fall away as the audience adopts the work as its own. 

"I'm ready for my luck to turn around. As this world continues to give us more and more reason to question what we think we know, to lose faith in what we believe to be unshakeable truth, it's a sentiment worth adopting as both shield and sword. Stand by me. 

"If you're ready."

GREAT BUILDINGS: Hold On To Something

Recommended if you like [your Fave Rave here].

RIYLs can help us find new favorites. But they can also create a false and unfair expectation. In 1981, I read somewhere (possibly in CREEM, maybe in Trouser Press) that Great Buildings were like a male counterpart to the Go-Go's. I believe it was meant as a compliment, and since Beauty And The Beat was my top album that year, the comparison provided sufficient push for me to purchase Great Buildings' Apart From The Crowd LP before I had ever heard a note of the group's music.

And I was disappointed. It didn't sound anything at all like the Go-Go's. I filed it away.

I came back to it, though. Freed of the misconception that it would sound like boys singin' original tunes that channeled "We Got The Beat," I grew to appreciate the LP on its own sterling merit. Opening track "Hold On To Something" freaking knocked me out, once I gave it its proper opportunity. 

Great Buildings' Danny Wilde and Ian Ainsworth had been in the Quick, whose quirky 1976 cover of the Beatles' "It Won't Be Long" got some airplay on Utica's WOUR-FM when I was in high school. After Great Buildings closed up shop, Wilde went solo, and eventually reconnected with Great Buildings guitarist Phil Solem to form the Rembrandts. The Rembrandts scored a Top 20 hit with "Just The Way It Is, Baby," and achieved pop culture immortality with "I'll Be There For You," the theme from Friends. Maybe you're sick of that song--dig what you dig--but it was the number one song on the radio the week my daughter was born, and I will always, always cherish that memory.

Comparing Great Buildings to the Go-Go's was a fake-out, and the disparity between what was teased and what was delivered turned me off. Initially. But without that PSYCH! moment, would I have even gotten around to hearing Great Buildings at the time? No harm, no foul. The apparent dead end of that RIYL still led me to "Hold On To Something," a magnificent track that has now been in my all-time Hot 200 for four decades. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Baby, baby, baby, hold on.

POPDUDES: Share The Land

Going into the planning session for this week's show, our list of potential tracks included three songs associated with the Guess Who: the group's own fabulous rendition of "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature," the Halfcubes' ace (but currently unreleased) cover of "Hand Me Down World," and this capable take on "Share The Land," courtesy of Popdudes. The Popdudes track made it into the show, and it comes to us from the terrific various-artists set We All Shine On: Celebrating The Music Of 1970. We All Shine On scored some significantTIRnRR airplay this year--we'll hear one of its other tracks in our countdown show this Sunday--and "Share The Land" is certainly among the album's many highlights.

THE RAMONES: Do You Wanna Dance

A new year looms. I'm going to be mentioning the Ramones a lot in 2023. Wanna dance? I sure hope so.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Girls In Their Summer Clothes

Love's a fool's dance

I ain't got much sense but I still got my feet

The original plan was to close the main portion of OUR PRAYER with the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again," setting up Eytan Mirsky's incredible "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" as our post-signoff bonus track. We wound up running way, way over time, so we hadda remodel the plan a bit. Some songs came out, some songs came in, and a few tracks were moved around. All in the service of building a better playlist.

Bruce Springsteen's "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" was going to occupy this week's Greatest Record Ever Made! spot (because it is, after all, The Greatest Record Ever Made!). Figuring the paradox of fragile durability expressed in "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" provided an appropriate note to conclude our theme, we moved Melanie into the GREM! slot and switched Bruce into the finale. Bruce, in turn, set up Eytan for the encore.

(And yeah, Eytan Mirsky's "This Year's Gonna Be Our Year" is also The Greatest Record Ever Made! An infinite number, my friends, as long as they take turns.)

EYTAN MIRSKY: This Year's Gonna Be Our Year

That's our prayer. Every year. Every day. This year? Why the hell not?

Like Eytan Mirsky, Spider-Man is also from Forest Hills

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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.

10 SONGS: 9/9/2021

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 # 1093.

THE BROTHERS STEVE: We Got The Hits

The Brothers Steve say, "We got the hits!" Yes we do, friends. Yes we do. Lemme tell ya 'bout a few of them....

THE CHELSEA CURVE: Inconceivable

Are the gal and guys of the Chelsea Curve really releasing a new single every month? Man, I hate overachievers, mainly because I'm jealous of, y'know, ambition. I forgive 'em quickly because each of these singles has been pretty damned swell, which is why we play them all on the radio. "A Better Way" has been my fave of the lot to date, but "Inconceivable" may give "A Better Way" a run for its overachieving money. Awright. Keep 'em coming, you lot.

GREAT BUILDINGS: Hold On To Something

They'll be there for you. Long before Danny Wilde and Phil Solem found fame as the Rembrandts, they were (wait for it!) friends in an ace early '80s combo called Great Buildings. Their lone major-label LP Apart From The Crowd was released by Columbia in 1981, and it did not ship 'n' sell the units it deserved. I bought the album (prompted by a rave mention in either CREEM or Trouser Press), but didn't really appreciate it until a year or two later. "Hold On To Something" is the album's lead-off track, and it remains a peer to any and all of the greatest rockin' pop tracks from that decade.

KISS: Detroit Rock City

My first KISS record was the Rock And Roll Over album, a high school graduation gift from my sister in 1977. I'm not exactly sure of the subsequent chronology of my KISS acquisitions. Both Love Gun and Destroyer likely came to me via record club purchases, Alive II was a Christmas present from Mom and Dad in December '77, and a beat-up copy of Alive! came from The Record Exchange in Cleveland Heights. I also picked up a very used copy of Hotter Than Hell somewhere in this '77-'78 time frame, establishing my KISS collection through my first year at college. Dressed To Kill came later, a free-with-purchase, get-this-OUTTA-here! used copy scarfed up at Brockport's Main Street Records. Other than Ace Frehley's "New York Groove" 45 and (maybe) a used copy of Dynasty, this was the totality of my personal KISS library until I decided to go back and get 'em all circa 1989.

I'm pretty sure Destroyer was my second KISS album, my first after Rock And Roll Over. I confess that there was never really a KISS album that I loved; with KISS (as with many other acts), I was an individual song guy rather than a whole LP guy. Side Two of Destroyer had "Shout It Out Loud," a track I loved and have proclaimed The Greatest Record Ever Made! But in the '70s, my primary Destroyer go-tos were the first two tracks on Side One, "Detroit Rock City" and "King Of The Night Time World," and then "Shout It Out Loud" on Side Two. I tried to get into the rest of the album, and I would have probably liked "God Of Thunder" without its special effects, but I likely would have been just as good with a four-song Destroyer EP of "Detroit Rock City," "King Of The Night Time World," "Shout It Out Loud," and the hit AM ballad "Beth." I am as a god of thunder made me.

"Detroit Rock City" remains a favorite. Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet, get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat. I avoid getting sucked into arguments about whether or not KISS is power pop; they're not, but honestly, I think some of their songs come closer to my idea of power pop than, say, 20/20 does. 

Your mileage may vary. But look out for that truck ahead.

THE MIRACLES: Going To A Go-Go

I wish. I miss live music, but I'm generally not in any big hurry to mix with crowds nowadays, since crowds almost always include at least some people who are--what's the word?--stupid. I've only attended two live music events since the shutdowns, with a third coming up soon; I'm masked and fully Moderna'd, but...people. I look forward to seeing more shows when it feels appropriate to see more shows. In the mean time, the Miracles have a song to rev us up for our eventual return to that exciting, vibrant environment. Live music! Oh, I wanna go. 

NICK PIUNTI: Heart Inside Your Head

So much fantastic new pop music being released, and so little time to squeeze it into a mere three-hour weekly showcase. Dana and I would start our own radio station, but we've already established that we hate overachievers. Wouldn't wanna contradict ourselves. Nonetheless, Nick Piunti and the Complicated Men are no strangers to TIRnRR airplay--their track "Upper Hand" scored significant spins in 2020--and new single "Heart Inside Your Head" merits attention from all ears, minds, and attention spans. This is a hit record.

OTIS REDDING: You Left The Water Running

I had no idea that Otis Redding's 1967 gem "You Left The Water Running" was originally unreleased, appearing only on an unauthorized 45 in the '70s and finally seeing legit issue in the late '80s. Well, some things are worth waiting for. I knew the song from Rhino Records' Redding box Otis!, which my lovely wife Brenda gave me as a Christmas gift a couple of decades ago. Thanks again, darlin'!

THE ROLLING STONES: Get Off Of My Cloud

"Get Off Of My Cloud" is the first Rolling Stones song I remember hearing, a hit on the radio in 1965, when I was five years old. In memory of the late Charlie Watts (whose distinctive drum intro to this song means Charlie was the first individual Rolling Stone I ever heard), this is The Greatest Record Ever Made!

THE BOB SEGER SYSTEM: 2 + 2 = ?

An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Even with an infinite number, though, some turns are perhaps less likely than others.

Some may be surprised that Bob Seger gets two chapters in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I have given frequent public testimonial regarding how much I despise much of Seger's most popular work, and indeed a GREM! chapter about "Old Time Rock & Roll" is mostly about how much I hate that goddamned song. 

But for all that, a lot of Seger's earlier work is fantastic. Let's have a peek at a little bit of the book's chapter about "2 + 2 = ?"

"Maybe you never knew that Bob Seger made a punk record. If you didn't know, it's not your fault; neither music history nor Seger himself has seemed interested in the secret revelation of a dynamic, furious 1968 record called '2 + 2 = ?'

"It's a difficult dichotomy to reconcile. Seger's mass-market reputation is built largely upon a series of popular mid-tempo heartland ballads and MOR rockers, beloved by many, despised by others. They are soundtracks for truck commercials, banal and inoffensive radio fare with the bland personality of margarine. Even as I type that, I really don't mean any disrespect to those who love 'Like A Rock' or 'Against The Wind' or even--shudder--'We've Got Tonight' and 'Old Time Rock & Roll.' There are no guilty pleasures in pop music. If you like something, a guy writing dismissively about your familiar favorites is unlikely to alter your tastes, nor should it. Dig what you wanna dig. Just, y'know, forgive me for cringing when I hear any of that stuff. I have to dig what I wanna dig, too...

"...It can be galling to admit when you've been wrong. In this case, I comfort myself with a reminder that I still loathe the songs that made me critical of Seger's work to begin with, and (more importantly) that it's good to discover a redemptive portion of an artist's body of work. Seger's supposed to be a good guy; I'm happy to find concrete evidence that he made some records that I can love without reservation. Some of this has since been reissued on a 2018 collection called Heavy Music: The Complete Cameo Recordings 1966-1967. All of it remains relatively obscure.

"...'Get Out Of Denver' had been far and away my favorite among Seger's records. I also kinda liked 'Hollywood Nights' among the more famous choices. But this fresh treasure trove of archival nuggets introduced me to new favorites, recorded and originally released under the names Bob Seger & the Last Heard, the Bob Seger System, and Bob Seger solo. 'Noah.' 'Rosalie.' 'Lucifer.' Renewed spins of the still-great 'Get Out Of Denver' and the now-welcome 'Heavy Music (Part 1).' Rockin', man. And there was the immense, irresistible 'East Side Story,' a triumphant appropriation of Van Morrison's 'Gloria' riff in service of a tenement tragedy that was absolutely The Greatest Record Ever Made for the approximately two and a half minutes of my first spin of its cantankerous glory.

"'2 + 2 = ?' is even greater...

"...How did this happen? How could the Bob Seger of the wretched peacenik-baiting diatribe 'Ballad Of The Yellow Beret' also be responsible for the gooseflesh-raising intensity of the antiwar '2 + 2 = ?' And how did that guy go on to produce such mundane background noise to such numbingly popular effect? Seger's large. He contains multitudes. 

"But the multitudes need to hear '2 + 2 = ?' It's at least as savage as the Sex Pistols, as angry as the Clash, as explosive as the Stooges or the MC5. Never mind the bollocks, here's Bob Seger. Seger is a punk rocker."

THE SPEED OF SOUND: Tomorrow's World

Museum Of Tomorrow, the new album from Manchester's phenomenal pop combo the Speed of Sound, will be released by Big Stir Records on September 17th. It's very, very good. Very good. Find out more here, and get your wallet out. They got the hits. Tomorrow is coming atcha at the speed of sound.

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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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