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 # 1198. This show is available as a podcast.
THE CATHOLIC GIRLS: Hear My Prayer
New work from the Catholic Girls is pretty much guaranteed a spin on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, and their new single "Hear My Prayer" provides further evidence of why we love the group. This is pop music that mourns its sadness but stands tall in its defiance, its insistence that there will be at least one more day. The single spins again on our next show.
THE MONKEES: The Door Into Summer
Always one of my very favorite Monkees tracks. It's from my favorite Monkees album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd., and its familiar sting of if-only regret suited my own tinges of melancholy as Dana and I were programming this week's show. Sometimes the laughter from that caravan feels ever more distant. Fool's gold stacked up all around us.
But we're okay, right? We acknowledge and move on, at least to the best of our capability. The music of the Monkees has always been a source of comfort, a source of satisfaction. Even their saddest songs can make me happy.
Happy is good. We can use more happy.
AMY RIGBY: Baby Doll
We've been giving a lot of air time this year to tracks from Juniper's recent covers album She Steals Candy, especially to Juniper's cover of Amy Rigby's "Baby Doll." Such a great song, and I don't think we've ever played Rigby's wonderful original. Dana rectified that oversight this week. Good on ya, Mr. Bonn.
Coincidentally, Amy herself posted the above picture to my Facebook page last week. Listen, I'm still pinching myself when artists of Amy Rigby's stature even give me the friggin' time of day, let alone post pictures of my Ramones book sighted in the wild. Amy captioned the pic, From the original Rough Trade in West London!, and I was immediately giddy to the nth degree. Thank you SO much, Amy!
Juniper's "Baby Doll" returns to TIRnRR this Sunday. Amy Rigby returns the following Sunday. We wouldn't dream of doing *ahem* THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO # 1200 without some Amy Rigby. Giddy is as giddy does.
CYNDI LAUPER: I Drove All Night
Is 1989's "I Drove All Night" my favorite Cyndi Lauper track? Yeah, I believe it is. And that's not faint praise; I think Cyndi's great, and I love her big smash hit records, including "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," and especially "Time After Time." I think the first time I heard the latter was when she appeared on The Tonight Show in 1984, delivering an electrifying performance of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and then topping it with a dramatic rendition of "Time After Time." Watching it on my little black and white TV, my jaw dropped. I was impressed, and I believe Johnny Carson also approved. Smart guy, that Carson. Robert Klein seemed to agree, too. Another smart guy!
Memory suggests The Tonight Show also introduced me to "I Drove All Night" a few years later. Hey, who needs radio when ya got Johnny Carson? Whether my first exposure or a reinforcement of established bias, Lauper's "I Drove All Night" knocked me out. Songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly originally crafted the song for Roy Orbison, and that intent is evident in the song's only-the-lonely DNA even if you've never heard Orbison's own splendid, posthumously-released version. Lauper owns it anyway; can't say that about many Orbison numbers performed by artists who weren't Roy razzafrazzin' Orbison.
In both the Lauper and Orbison performances, "I Drove All Night" just simmers with controlled desire, an earthly passion--burning up inside--accompanying a pristine love, impossible to resist, even if one were foolish enough to want to resist in the first place. Its consummation is sweet and well-earned.
Lauper's best track? Yes. Don't argue with the driver.
LIBRARIANS WITH HICKEYS: I Can't Wait 'Till Summer
Librarians With Hickeys' 2022 album Handclaps & Tambourines supplied this little mutant radio program with two perennial go-tos: "I Better Get Home" (TIRnRR's # 25 most-played track last year) and "Can't Wait 'Till Summer," which is guaranteed a berth on our year-end countdown for 2023. We play the hits. I love this gig. And in my mind, I imagine Lauper's "I Drove All Night" as an answer song to "Can't Wait 'Till Summer," the chronology of the two songs notwithstanding. In the Librarians With Hickeys track, love is unrequited, deferred at best, and just as likely to be taken off life support before there's even a hint of the summer sun. In "I Drove All Night," love wins.
I approve of that message. And it is worth waiting for.
STEVENSON AND COMPANY: Insane
Loyal TIRnRR listeners know Stevenson and Company from their magnificent little ditty "Talking Down To Me," which appeared on our most recent compilation album This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 5. A previous 10 Songs revealed that "Talking Down To Me" was "originally brought to our attention by every pop fan's best bud Steve Stoeckel. Steve's best known for his work as a member of the Spongetones and Pop Co-Op (the latter of whom are also represented on TIRnRR # 5), and 'Talking Down To Me' is a li'l gem originally written by Steve's friend Danny Stevenson. Steve subsequently earned a co-write on the song, and added bass and vocals to what Danny and his drummin' brother Bruce Stevenson had already done. We loved it! And we played it on the radio, crediting it to the nom de bop King Mixer.
"When it came time to address the idea of slapping together a fifth TIRnRR compilation, 'Talking Down To Me' was an automatic choice. At the artists' request, the billing has been changed to Stevenson and Company. Which is just as well; a King Mixer could have cost us a fortune in breach-of-promise cases...."
There's your preamble, and we're thrilled that Stevenson and Company have just released their debut album Out Of Time, and it most assuredly swoops 'n' sways the way a rockin' pop record oughta. Let me say here what my overlords won't allow me to say on the air: BUY IT!!! We played one of its many fine tracks on this week's show, and promised more in the weeks ahead.
So yeah: we'll hear another one this Sunday night. We would not be able to afford a breach of promise suit, believe you me. That would be insane.
DOLPH CHANEY: Ice Cream Embers
What does Dolph Chaney have in common with the Catholic Girls? Rhetorical question! New music from Dolph Chaney is also pretty much guaranteed a spin on This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. Catholic Girls? Meet Dolph. Dolph, the Catholic Girls. I'll get us some beverages.
Ah. Dolph brought his own refreshment.
Our lad Dolph has been a Fave Rave here, most especially for his all-time TIRnRR Pick T' Click "My Good Twin." Now, Dolph's back with his brand-new album Mug, courtesy of the benevolent visionaries at Big Stir Records. So this week: Catholic Girls and Dolph Chaney. Two great treats that treat great together. Or something like that.
And ya wanna know what else the Catholic Girls' "Hear My Prayer" and Dolph Chaney's "Ice Cream Embers" have in common? We'll hear 'em both again next week!
I pray there'll be ice cream.
THE JAM: That's Entertainment
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE RAMONES: Oh Oh I Love Her So
We've established that the Monkees make me happy. Same goes for the Ramones. My motto remains that a day without the Ramones would be like...I don't have any idea what a day without the Ramones would be like. Nor do I ever intend to find out.
"Oh Oh I Love Her So" is an explosion of adrenaline-charged joy, one of my favorite Ramones tracks. Like most of the Ramones' best works, it is pure in a way that may seem unexpected by heathens who don't worship at the Church of Ramones.
But it is pure. It is exciting and life-affirming and vividly real, even at its most cartoonish, even in the midst of its Bowery-bred seediness, the danger of its genesis redeemed by the exuberance of its pop. Fast. Loud. Pure. Oh oh, I love it so.
JACK "PENETRATOR" LIPTON: It's My Life
During Labor Day weekend, we learned that Jack "Penetrator" Lipton, a fixture of the Syracuse rock 'n' roll scene and a long-time friend of this show, had taken his own life. We were not yet at liberty to share this news publicly, and I wouldn't have had the will to do so anyway. That Sunday night, as I listened to this year's edition of Dana's Funky Soul Pit on TIRnRR, my mind wandered, and its meandering path kept strolling to Jack Lipton, and to Jack's decision to exit this mortal world.
Jack and I weren't especially close. I don't want to compare my sense of loss to the aches felt by his tightest friends and family. But I would say we were on good terms, and Jack's enthusiasm and boundless good will always made him seem like a pal. Maybe those who knew Robin Williams recognize that sense of seeming delight and humor, an illusion of cheer that hides whatever troubles may brew beneath. Where there tell-tale signs? I don't know. Probably not, not really...but I don't know. Neither do you.
I've written before of how suicide affects the survivors, or at least how it affected me when one of my best friends killed himself in 1979. No one can save us. But there are potential paths to facilitate our rescue: the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is within reach via a phone call to 988, and often our loved ones will be willing, eager, to help in any way they can. It may feel like no one will listen, that no one will understand. But someone, somewhere will listen, and they'll try to understand. Repeating what I said earlier this week: your life is worth saving. Our lives are worth saving.
Jack always wanted us to play his cover of the Animals' "It's My Life" on the show. We never did, not during his lifetime. It was too long for our chosen format, so we played some of Jack's other work instead, both solo and with the Penetrators and Mark Doyle and the Maniacs.
We played Jack's "It's My Life" this week. It's a good cover of one of my very favorite songs. It hurts to play it now.
But it was high time we did.
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Carl's new book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones is now available, courtesy of the good folks at Rare Bird Books. Gabba Gabba YAY!! https://rarebirdlit.com/gabba-gabba-hey-a-conversation-with-the-ramones-by-carl-cafarelli/
If it's true that one book leads to another, my next book will be The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Stay tuned. Your turn is coming.
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, archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.
