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 # 1050.
THE BEATLES: While My Guitar Gently Weeps
We knew that TIRnRR's all-time # 1 most-played act was The Beatles, and it stood to reason that The Beatles would also be the act that's accumulated TIRnRR airplay with the greatest number of different songs. We were surprised to discover that "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was not among the 239 different Beatles tracks played on previous shows. "Revolution 9?" Yeah, of course we've already played "Revolution 9." Duh. And we've played The Drowners' peppy cover of "While My Guitar Gently Sleeps" on many occasions. But we never got around to playing the original.
Well. We hadda remedy that.
THE HOLLIES: King Midas In Reverse
There was a three-year span on TIRnRR where I decided I wanted to pursue some long-form programming gimmick throughout the course of a year. In 2009, we did The 50 KISS Strategy, which was a promise to play 50 different KISS tracks between New Year's Day and New Year's Eve. We dedicated 2011 to 301 Songs About 301 Girls, a very well-received effort to play a whole bunch of songs with girls' names in the title.
In between KISS and the girls, 2010 brought us The Hundred Hollies Initiative. We announced the gimmick with the playlist for our 1/10/2010 show:
Beginning with our spotlight on The Hollies last week, we have made a solemn vow to play 100 different Hollies tracks on TIRnRR before the end of 2010. A daunting task? You betcha! But The Hollies have a lot of terrific tracks to choose from, so we should be equal to the task. Besides, the price of failure is too terrible to consider: if we fail in our effort to play 100 different Hollies tracks this year, our penance will be to play something so horrible, so SICKENING that it offends the mind, the heart and the soul. I can barely bring myself to type it, but it must be entered into the public record:
If we play less than 100 different Hollies tracks this year, then we've gotta play "Old Time Rock And Roll" by Bob Seger as our punishment. (Y'know, it's difficult to type while holding one's nose.) But don't worry! We won't let you down! We've played 16 Hollies tracks already, so it's only 84 to go. You can count on us! We hope....
Yeah. We made dead certain to play 101 different Hollies tracks. Just to be sure.
And here's to the power of radio. Our friend and listener Rich Firestone credits The Hundred Hollies Initiative with rekindling his own interest in The Hollies. Radio's job is to sell records. We were happy to do our part.
JOE JACKSON: Steppin' Out
I've known my friend Beth Woodell for more than 45 years. I think we met around 1974 or so, though we didn't become pals until 1975-76, her senior year in high school, my junior year. We worked together on the school's literary magazine The NorthCaster, and started hanging out together outside of school as part of a small group of NorthCaster folks. Beth anointed herself our leader, by virtue of being the oldest member of the group, and also Jewish. Awrighty. That was sufficient qualification as far as I could tell.
Beth was (and remains) smart, witty, acerbic, creatively ambitious, and generally a hoot. We got on swell, but we did not share common ground in our musical tastes. Beth was a bit more refined in her preferred soundtrack, with an interest in jazz and classical that contrasted sharply with my eight-track mind.
She did also love pop music. Just about any kid who grew up in 1970s America had at least some lingering attachment to the sound of Top 40 AM radio. And, oddly enough, I think her own passion for pop intensified with post-punk New Wave. I like to think I played some small part in the expansion of Beth's pop vistas, though it's just as likely the broadening would have occurred anyway.
By whatever means she got there, Beth eventually became a big fan of Joe Jackson. It's not really much of a leap from Renaissance to "Is She Really Going Out With Him?," and Beth embraced Jackson's music with passion and enthusiasm.
And Beth is why Joe Jackson made our countdown of the 50 acts who've accrued TIRnRR airplay with the greatest number of different songs. She's guest-hosted the show several times, and she programmed a fistful o' Jackson on each gig. It's fitting that she had that effect on our stats. After all, she is the leader of the group.
THE KINKS: Waterloo Sunset
"Waterloo Sunset" is one of two songs by The Kinks given its own chapter in my book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), where it immediately precedes The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and Holly Golightly's version of "Time Will Tell" (itself also a song written by The Kinks' Ray Davies). This is how the book's discussion of "Waterloo Sunset" begins: It's one of the most beautiful depictions of burgeoning romance ever committed to song. And it's told, not from the perspective of the young lovers themselves, but from the viewpoint of a benevolent onlooker, wishing them well as they cross over the river, where they feel safe and sound.
I wonder what that onlooker would have thought of me when I was 18....
Our connection with the pop music we love is personal, deeply personal. We know that the songs on our stereo, our radio, our iPod, or our Close-N-Play aren't really about us, but we have license to incorporate them into our own experiences. We assign meaning. While The Kinks insisted elsewhere that it was only jukebox music, it is really so much more than that.
In the book, I place "Waterloo Sunset" directly after chapters about T. Rex, The Runaways, and "Sister Golden Hair" by America, a little trilogy threaded together with the memory of my near-disastrous freshman year in college, 1977-78. "Waterloo Sunset" follows with the potential for catharsis. Every day I look at the world from my window...Waterloo sunset's fine.
It's not the story Ray Davies intended to tell. It's the story I hear nonetheless.
THE LOLAS: Yer Gonna Need My Lovin' Someday
The Lolas' 1999 Ballerina Breakout album was an instant TIRnRR Fave Rave in our first year on the air. I don't know if we'd even heard their music before spinning either "The Best Part" or "Yer Gonna Need My Lovin' Someday" on the show, but we were most definitely hooked from the get-go. Tim Boykin's lead vocals reminded me of a more American-sounding John Wicks of The Records, and we went on to play a ton of Lolas tracks over the years.
EYTAN MIRSKY: This Year's Gonna Be Our Year
#standdowndonald Then we can start building a better year, leaving the debris of this one behind.
PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS: Him Or Me--What's It Gonna Be?
Paul Revere and the Raiders don't get anywhere near the level of respect and appreciation their rock-solid body of work merits. I put together a hypothetical 30-track Best Of Paul Revere and the Raiders collection, and I tell ya, that can stand against invaders and minutemen alike. "Just Like Me" is the Raiders track I chose for the GREM! book, but it just as easily could have been "Him Or Me--What's It Gonna Be?"
Now, we're savvy enough to know that "bubblegum" shouldn't necessarily be a pejorative. But the music of Paul Revere & the Raiders transcends that discussion anyway. For all their good-time vibe, their Revolutionary War costumes, their synchronized stage moves, their snappy patter, their TV stardom, and Mark Lindsay as the face that launched a thousand 16 magazine pin-ups, the Raiders made rock 'n' roll records. In fact, they made great rock 'n' roll records, releasing a string of nonpareil singles and fab LP tracks that can stand and sway alongside some of the best rock 'n' roll music of the 1960s. In the wake of the British Invasion in 1964, there was no shortage of domestic acts seeking to become known as the American Beatles; Paul Revere & the Raiders, already veteran hands at rockin' instrumentals and nascent frat-rock, were the first high-profile US act to seek the title of American Stones.
If Paul Revere & the Raiders were bubblegum, then by God, so were The Rolling Stones...
...Paul Revere & the Raiders were disdained by the hipper-than-thou. Their image, their approach, their name itself proclaimed them as uncool, square, and (ironically) anti-Revolutionary. In 1969, wondering if perhaps a rockin' Raiders record could connect with the progressive crowd if unencumbered by the Raiders brand name, Lindsay sent a new Raiders song called "Let Me" to an influential FM DJ in L.A.; the song was credited to The Pink Puzz, and the DJ loved it and played it until he learned that The Pink Puzz was really those crass, commercial sellouts Paul Revere & the Raiders. Suddenly, he didn't like the track anymore, and he stopped playing it. He was, let's face it, a weasel.
But the weasels were in control. That hasn't really changed since then.
THE RUBINOOS: I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend
From The Rubinoos' chapter in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" cops its chanted HEY HEY YOU YOU! hook from "Get Off Of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones, but reshapes it into something newer and more fully pop (as opposed to "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne, which merely imitates The Rubinoos without adding anything of note). Its guitars chime and its acolytes swoon, as if David Cassidy joined The Raspberries, or Dee Dee Ramone joined The Bay City Rollers. Gonna make you love me, yeah/I'm gonna make you love me, yeah/I'm gonna make you love me 'fore I'm done.
This is desire rendered as pristine, as likely to be content holding hands and staring at the stars as it is eager to move to the back seat. It is lust and naiveté, passion that could be reckless or prudent, hormonal or mannered, one night right now, all nights and days forevermore. It is caution discarded, inner voice heeded, more marks scratched in the permanent record, in ink or that damned # 2 pencil. It is the teen years at 45 revelations per minute. Its swoon is everlasting, like the love that pop songs promised us.
THE SPONGETONES: (My Girl) Maryanne
From The Spongetones' chapter in The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1):
"(My Girl) Maryanne" is a Steve Stoeckel composition from the group's 1984 EP Torn Apart. Its matrix was crafted in Liverpool, a root design shared by The Knickerbockers, Utopia, and all things Fab, assembled with justifiable pride in the U.S.A. The influence is evident and eager, yet more than mere imitation, in the same sense that The Beatles' "Thank You, Girl" was more than a mere imitation of The Isley Brothers. It's something new.
And it's irresistible. The guitars combust, the harmonies sail, the beat and the music surge, and the singer expresses his own giddy delight in the rat-a-tat sound of his chatty lover's extended soliloquy. Pop songs that complain about a woman who talks too much are a dime a dozen; in "(My Girl) Maryanne," Maryanne has a lot to say, and not enough minutes in the day. Our hero hangs on each syllable, reveling in the reward of how every word makes him love her more. YES! The word is love. And that love is as pure as the pop music we adore. Keep talking, Maryanne.
CARRIE UNDERWOOD: Some Hearts
Some hearts just get lucky sometimes.
I have tussled with occasional depression for most of my life. My situation is not unique, and I don't mean to make more of that than it is. I'm aware of the good things, and I cherish them. Music. Books. Friends. Family. Superheroes. Coca-Cola.
And my daughter Meghan.
We don't agree on music. We do agree that we both love music. When she was younger, she adored the songs she heard on Radio Disney, and she still listens to Sirius Radio's Pop 2K station, the partial soundtrack of her childhood. She also likes the metal on the Octane channel. She has, I think, moved past much of her interest in contemporary country music, though that's largely a byproduct of a male-dominated Bro Country pop scene that leaves her cold. Like her Dad, she digs what she digs. Halestorm. Kelly Clarkson. Five Finger Death Punch. Reba McEntire. Linkin Park. Lindsey Sterling. Sugarland. When Meghan gets married, she and I have an informal agreement that Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" will be the designated song for our father-daughter dance. We don't give a damn about our bad reputation.
Meghan has co-hosted TIRnRR many times, and she has played a bunch of Carrie Underwood songs over the course of those appearances. I think Carrie Underwood was the star of Meghan's third live concert experience, following a Radio Disney shindig (with The A*Teens, The Baha Men, Play, and LMNT) and an American Idol show in 2007. Her Mom treated her to a mother-daughter night out at the Onondaga County War Memorial, the same venue where I had seen KISS, Bob Dylan, and the Syracuse Blazers hockey team in the '70s. In 2013, it would also be the site where U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered the commencement address for Meghan's high school graduation. In between those gigs, Meghan and my lovely wife Brenda were at the War Memorial to see Carrie Underwood, with the then-unknown Little Big Town opening. And Meghan's eyes, ears, and mind grew wide with the possibility of pop.
I don't think Meghan had much specific interest in Underwood before that concert. Underwood had won American Idol the year before we started watching the show as a family. After the concert, though, Meghan's Carriemania manifested instantly. She eventually got all of Underwood's albums, and I'm sure she remains a fan now.
"Some Hearts" is a song written by Diane Warren, a lovely confection originally recorded by the great Marshall Crenshaw for his 1989 album Good Evening. Most Crenshaw fans don't consider it one of his biggest numbers, but I've loved it since seeing him perform it on Late Night With David Letterman. Uncool? I don't give a damn about my reputation.
Underwood's version of "Some Hearts" appeared on her 2005 debut album Some Hearts. She does really well with the song, retaining the affection and gratitude expressed in Crenshaw's original while adding her own effervescence. The production is glossy, but agreeably so. It sounds like a hit record, in the best sense of that description.
I like it more than Meghan does. She's been more likely to play "Before He Cheats" or any of a bunch of other Carrie Underwood selections. But Meghan was pleased to learn that her own devotion to Carrie Underwood propelled the singer into the list of the 50 acts who've had the highest number of different songs played on TIRnRR. And she knew, of course, that I would play "Some Hearts" to represent Underwood in our countdown.
I'm not sure, but I think the last time I played "Some Hearts" on TIRnRR was in August of 2013, when Meghan co-hosted with me right before she began her freshman year in college. It was an emotional evening, and we both wound up sobbing a little on-air. And rather than play our usual show intro of The Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?," I created an edit combining the Marshall Crenshaw and Carrie Underwood recordings of "Some Hearts" and surprised Meghan with it. It was quite a show.
Some hearts just get lucky sometimes. We can't plan our luck. We can't depend on it, we can't hold it, we can't carry it or brandish it. Sometimes it fails us.
Sometimes it doesn't.
Here's to all the hearts that get lucky. Here's to the hope that luck will touch more hearts still. Turn up the radio. We'll share the luck together.
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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).
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