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 # 1331
THE PEPPERMINT KICKS: Shaking Underground
At the top of this week's show, I said that any rockin' pop radio show that has an opportunity to open its latest presentation with a brand-new single from the Peppermint Kicks had damned well oughta open its presentation with that brand-new single from the Peppermint Kicks. The group's minty-fresh treat "Shaking Underground" shakes its shakables underground, overground, all around, and pounding around again. We're repeating it this Sunday. Shake with us!
SECTOR FRONTIER: Love Goes Out The Window
Although a contemporary track (released digitally in 2025, and on CD from our friends at Kool Kat Musik in 2026), Sector Frontier's "Love Goes Out The Window" could easily pass for a British new wave pop song from the early '80s. And if it had in fact been a work from 45 years ago, it would have been a fave rave for me, then and now.
In reality, Sector Frontier is the brainchild of Philadelphia popmeister Dave Cope, who is most familiar to TIRnRR under the dba Dave Cope and the Sass. Let's review the delightful fabricated biography of this delightfully fabricated "band:"
Sector Frontier: The Forgotten Vanguard of Post-Punk Britain
Origins in the Blitz of Boredom
Sector Frontier emerged from the smoke-choked pubs and council-estate squats of West London in 1978. The city was in pieces: strikes, bin bags piled like barricades, kids in safety pins fighting skinheads in Carnaby Street, and Margaret Thatcher’s looming iron fist promising “discipline.” Amid that chaos, Mick Murray—a sharp-jawed singer/guitarist with a sneer as wide as the Thames—decided to form a band “that sounded like the Jam after a fistfight with Devo.”
Mick recruited Ewan Swann, a lanky art-school dropout obsessed with German synths and cheap pedals. He played guitar like a buzzsaw but could just as easily hammer out a dystopian arpeggio that sounded like a factory collapsing. The rhythm section came from the Tupney brothers: Cliff on bass, perpetually sullen, and Wedge, a drummer who pounded with the subtlety of a demolition crew. They rehearsed in a condemned warehouse in Acton that smelled of damp carpets, spilled cider, and Marmite sandwiches gone rancid.
Songs from a Broken England
I approve of these lies, and I wish I'd fabricated 'em myself. Best I can do is play this sweet stuff on the radio. Open up your window! Pop love goes out to Sector Frontier.
Two disparate spins, each suggested by friends who have essential can't-miss podcasts. First up, Sgt. Splendor is fronted by Kate Vargas and Eric McFadden, and I confess I had not heard of them prior to their recent guest appearance on Only Three Lads, the weekly podcast hosted by Brett Vargo and Uncle Gregg. The Sgt. Splendor samples aired by O3L got my attention, and I made a point of snagging "Play On" (from their most recent album Isotopia) and wedging it into our playlist at the first available opportunity.
I never miss an episode of O3L, and I never miss an episode of The Spoon, the superswell podcast hosted by our friends Robbie Rist, Chris Jackson, and Thom Bowers. Writer Will Harris (another friend, and host of his own fab podcast Letting Them Talk) appeared with The Men Of The Spoon for The Spoon # 611 ("All The Chicks Dig Writers [The Will Harris Story]"), and Will's pick for that episode's Greatest Song You've Never Heard feature was "Eloise & I," a track from the 1989 Men Without Hats album The Adventures Of Women & Men Without Hate In The 21st Century.
(Heh. "Women & Men Without Hate In The 21st Century." As if!)
Anyway, as I wrote in yesterday's blog post about "The Safety Dance," "Eloise & I" "...reminded me of a cross between circa-1966 Paul McCartney and a less-annoying version of Styx. Harris mentioned that Men Without Hats were still active, and in fact had released a new album called On The Moon in 2025." I love the Beatles and kinda detest Styx (except when I don't), but "Eloise & I" was sufficiently beguiling to compel my purchase and programming of the track as soon as I could. This same Spoon-fed sequence of events also prompted "The Safety Dance" to occupy this week's Greatest Record Ever Made! spot (see below).
THE SHIRTS: Tell Me Your Plans
Possibly my favorite archival release so far the year, the Shirts' Live At Paradise 1979 showcases the band's live prowess and undeniable rockin' pop panache. I can't explain how or why I missed out on discovering the Shirts' music when I was a punk- and pop-obsessed college student in the late '70s, but I've been trying to make up for lost time. I bought a CD reissue of the group's 1978 eponymous debut album a few decades ago. I recently purchased digital copies of the Shirts' otherwise-OOP second and third albums, and we've been programming live Shirts with manic devotion.
This week marks our first spin of the Live At Paradise rendition of debut album gem "Tell Me Your Plans." It's probably my top Shirts song (perhaps in a virtual tie with "Reduced To A Whisper," also from the debut), and we'll play this live cut again on our next show. We'll also throw in a studio track from their second album Street Light Shine, and a track by Rome 56, which is Shirts guitarist Artie LaMonica's current combo.
MEN WITHOUT HATS: The Safety Dance [extended dance version]
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE RAMONES: Needles & Pins
When I was a college freshman in the spring of 1978, the Ramones were already on their way to becoming one of my all-time favorite groups. A few months before, "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" assumed the title of the record that changed my life, the "Rockaway Beach" 45 was my 18th birthday gift to myself, and I saw the Ramones share a bill with the Runaways and the Flashcubes, my first of eight Ramones live experiences, 1978-1991. The American Beatles. The greatest American rock 'n' roll band of all time. I wrote a book about them.
Either before or after my first Ramones concert, I picked up the then-recent "Do You Wanna Dance"/"Babysitter" 45, immediately presumed it was gonna be a double-sided mega-platinum kazillion seller, and was stunned--STUNNED!--when it didn't attain AM Top 40 radio ubiquity. Stupid real world.
Nonetheless, in the giddy enthusiasm of the moment, I wrote a review of the single as a freelance submission to CREEM magazine, and CREEM could not have been less interested in buying anything I wrote. Stupid, stupid real world! In the review, I wrote about the pure pop appeal of "Babysitter," and summed that up by declaring, "My GAWD, the Searchers live on!"
I meant it as a compliment, and the Ramones' decision to include their cover of the Searchers' 1964 hit "Needles & Pins" on the next Ramones LP (Road To Ruin, also in '78) validated my POV.
THE CYNZ: Impossible Ending
The Cynz have already secured a berth on our year-end 2026 countdown show, as our carpet-bombing approach to programming "Love's So Lovely" (from the Cynz album Confess) has established the track as a bona fide TIRnRR hit. We play the hits! Now, we also wanna include a few other worthy Confessions, as "Impossible Ending" makes its debut here this week, and yet another treat from Confess will light up our sky this Sunday.
RIHANNA: Shut Up And Drive
Maybe it doesn't seem likely for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio--a show with a nominal power pop format, and taking its title from a line in a Ramones song--but Rihanna's "Shut Up And Drive" also has a good chance of making our 2026 countdown show. From a future GREM! chapter, drawn from two previous editions of 10 Songs:
Rihanna's "Shut Up And Drive" is a stupid song about sex. But it's a great stupid song about sex, probably the best-ever stupid song about sex, and a legit contender for my all-time Hot 200. Yeah, even among songs that may or may not be stupid and may or may not be about sex.
I remember hearing Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" in 2007, and not being especially taken with it. In 2008, the updated version of her Good Girl Gone Bad (Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded) landed into my consciousness via my then-teen daughter, whose interest in "Take A Bow" and "Disturbia" brought those songs to my attention as well. I was a little surprised to discover I liked them (especially "Disturbia"), but I did indeed like them.
I missed out on the track "Shut Up And Drive." I'd heard it, but I never noticed it until a random search for playlist ideas brought me to it again. It was like a brand new song to me, and I loved it.
(How did I know I loved it? The fact that I played it on obsessive repeat would be a pretty clear clue to that.)
Wikipedia describes "Shut Up And Drive" as a new wave song--no, really!--based on "Blue Monday" by New Order. No offense to the mopey British guys, but I prefer it the way Rihanna did it.
"Shut Up And Drive" strikes me as a sort-of equivalent to "Heavy Music" by Bob Seger and the Last Heard, a track I initially dismissed as a stupid song about sex before realizing it was--you guessed it!--a great stupid song about sex.
Rihanna's song is greater. Drive, baby. Drive.
DAVE COPE AND THE SASS: Julee
As this week's show debuts Dave Cope's Sector Frontier, we close with an encore spin of the Dave Cope and the Sass record that sparked our obsession in the first place. From a previous 10 Songs:
Don't ever let anyone get away with trying to tell you there's no worthy new music. That's nonsense. Maybe the good new stuff doesn't reach your ears as effortlessly as it did when you were younger. But it's out there, and it's worth the effort to find it. Every week on TIRnRR, Dana and I try to do our part to mix the great new stuff with the great familiar stuff. Right now is always the best-ever time to be a fan of rockin' pop music.
"Julee," the title tune from a 2022 Kool Kat Musik release by Dave Cope and the Sass, is my favorite new track of this year so far. That's saying something, because as crappy as the year has been in general terms, there's been a rush of fabulous new music, courtesy of Kool Kat, Big Stir, Red On Red, Jem, Rum Bar, and so many others. In my head, "Julee" conjures a million different influences I can't quite isolate or identify; I hear some kind of mid/late '60s British vibe, which may be imaginary, but I don't care. Can't play this one enough.
Restraint is for suckers. Embrace the enthusiasm awready.
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I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.
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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