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 # 1243.
July 21st.
This week's show fell on the 40th anniversary of the day Brenda and I got married. We are still together, and together will shall remain. Happy Anniversary, Brenda!
Our wedding song was the lovely Buddy Holly ballad "True Love Ways." So we open this week's rockin' pop proceedings with the Mavericks' ace cover of "True Love Ways," segued into "Someone To Hold On To," the Villas' irresistible ode to finding the love of one's life (as heard on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 5), and wrappin' up our opening true-love tribute trifecta with the Half Cubes' remake of the Rubinoos' "The Girl," a track which recruits Rubinoos Jon Rubin and Tommy Dunbar to assist in establishing a beach head to hold on to true love ways. The girl. As a boy, that's all I ever want. My girl is Brenda.
It just so happens that Sunday was also Half Cubes singer and bassist Gary Frenay's 40th anniversary. HuzZAH, Gary and Jackie! See, now I understand why Brenda and I couldn't hire Gary to play at our wedding in '84. Priorities. I can dig that. And Dana and I will open our next TIRnRR with a brand-new single by the Half Cubes.
Meanwhile....
THE RUBINOOS: Nowhereseville
By the time you read this, I expect to be enjoying the afterbuzz of my first-ever Rubinoos show. I've been a fan since I was 17; 47 years is a long time to wait to see one of my favorite bands, but I betcha it was well worth the wait.
On this week's TIRnRR, I wanted to prep for last night's Rubinoos club show by playing some Rubinoos, and supplementing with a number of other tracks featuring Rubes guitarist Tommy Dunbar. The latter category included the Half Cubes number in our opening set, plus tracks by Duncan Faure, Vox Pop, Ken Sharp, Marty Rudnick, Scott McCarl, Kyle Vincent, and Suzy and Los Quattro.
And for the evening's first Rubinoos spin, we opted for "Nowheresville," the track the Rubinoos allowed us to use on our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4. Here's what I wrote about "Nowhereseville" at the time:
...The music we listen to as teens can resonate throughout our lives, etched in memory alongside every eternal snub and accolade. In 1977, I was a seventeen-year-old senior at a high school in Syracuse's northern suburbs. I liked oldies better than most then-current music--the Beatles, the Monkees, the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, and my recent discovery, the Kinks--but I was also looking for new. I liked KISS. I liked "Cherry Baby" by Starz, and "Isn't It Time" by the Babys, "Carry On Wayward Son" by Kansas, Boston's debut LP, Sweet's Desolation Boulevard, and Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Spurred by intriguing things I read in Phonograph Record Magazine, I would become a fan of the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and Blondie before the end of the year, as this high school senior transformed into college freshman. But before the Ramones, or the Pistols, or my nascent hormonal devotion to Blondie's Debbie Harry, one group stood as the great teen hope. That group was the Rubinoos.
The Rubinoos were young, not much older than I was. They were on the radio, with a hit cover of Tommy James and the Shondells' "I Think We're Alone Now," and (on freer-form WOUR-FM) with a delectable album track called "Wouldn't It Be Nice." They were on TV, lip-syncing "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Rock And Roll Is Dead" on American Bandstand. They were revered in the pages of Phonograph Record Magazine, and they were one of the subjects of My First Rock Journalism. Their eponymous debut album was an absolutely essential purchase for me. God, I loved this band. That has never changed over the ensuing crashing and passing of four freakin' decades. I love the Rubinoos. I will always love the Rubinoos...
...[For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4], we initially selected a track called "This Is Good," a frothy li'l pop tune whose title provides its own spot-on review. But another song on the [This Is The Rubinoos] EP kept haunting the ol' consciousness. "Nowheresville" can best be described as pop noir, a shotgun marriage--well, more like a .45 automatic marriage--between a hardboiled crime paperback and Tiger Beat, Mickey Spillane meets Shaun Cassidy. And even that sells it short. It is a fully-realized slice of pure pulp, made pretty in spite of itself by the talent of the Rubinoos. Jon Rubin's unmistakable, irresistible voice soars, Tommy Dunbar's guitar twirls tastefully, while the lyrics could serve as a summary of something published by Gold Medal Books in the '50s or Hard Case Crime today. The one they call Honey was slurring her words/"Oh, why should we have to cut this thing in thirds?/I know the perfect patsy/Yeah, a pretty little bird/Who better to take the fall in Nowheresville?" Man, I would read that book, battered cover to battered cover, right now.
The juxtaposition of these extremes is somehow natural and flawless. How did the Rubinoos pull this off? In the words of Mike Hammer in Spillane's I, The Jury: It was easy....
KISS: Calling Dr. Love
Speaking of how the music we listen to as teens can resonate throughout our lives....
GLENN ERB: I Never Said Goodbye
The new Glenn Erb album Category Four comes to us courtesy of Friend To The Show Rich Rossi, who worked on the record and co-wrote all of the originals (not counting the cover of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter"). The album was produced by Jamie Hoover--THERE'S your pop pedigree!--and Rich thought we might wanna consider its opening track "Baby Is A Hurricane" for airplay on our little mutant radio show.
Instead, I was drawn to the closing track, "I Never Said Goodbye," a solid tale of a relationship reaching the end of its road. It makes its TIRnRR debut this week. It spins again on our next show. Say hello to Glenn Erb.
DEADLIGHTS: For Free
New single from Deadlights? Instant airplay, guaranteed. Good stuff, as always.
THE RUBINOOS: Wouldn't It Be Nice
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE RUBINOOS: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
ALSO The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE GRIP WEEDS: Lady Friend [vocals only mix]
Wow. Rubinoos playing in Rochester this week, the Grip Weeds in Syracuse last week. People should envy us. I envy us. The Grip Weeds put on a fantastic show at the Lost Horizon, and their cover of the Byrds' "Lady Friend" has become a perennial TIRnRR Fave Rave.
The Grip Weeds' full recording of "Lady Friend" is on their sublime 2021 covers album DiG. This lovely a cappella mix can be found on A Deeper DiG, the bonus third disc packaged with the DiG Super Deluxe Edition. That is, of course, the edition any self-respecting Grip Weeds fan will get.
So: Respect yourself! Here it comes again. Dig?
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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
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