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 # 1074.
LESLIE ODOM, JR.: Good Times
Since this year's Oscar telecast happened to fall on a Sunday night--y'know, like always--we used that as an excuse to open our counterprograming exercise with a set of songs from movies. I love movies, but I'm not a movie buff, and I rarely get around to seeing many (sometimes any) of a given year's Oscar nominees. This is observation, not criticism nor confession. As always: dig what you dig.
I did see One Night In Miami..., a fascinating film about a true-life evening in 1964 when Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Muhammed Ali (then still called Cassius Clay) got together. We don't know what they did or discussed that night, so the movie itself is fiction, but it's compelling fiction. And it scored a few Oscar nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Leslie Odom, Jr., who plays Cooke to mesmerizing effect.
This week's TIRnRR kicked off with Odom as Cooke, covering Cooke's "Good Times," becoming Sam Cooke in a way that transcends mimicry. Magic. And an Oscar nomination well, well deserved.
THE BEATLES: A Hard Day's Night
Dana is sick of hearing me talk about seeing The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night at the drive-in in 1964, when I was four. So forget I mentioned that. But I'll never forget it. We're OUT! As much as The Beatles' music has meant to me over a span of decades, this movie may mean even more. Life-changing. Fab. So why on Earth should I moan? That left turn at Greenland turned out pretty well.
THE CARRIE NATIONS: Come With The Gentle People
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| Marcia McBroom, Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers |
Awright, here's your essential crossover: the 1970 film Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls was directed by exploitation king Russ Myer, written by movie critic Roger Ebert, featured an appearance by The Strawberry Alarm Clock, and told the tale of The Carrie Nations, a fictional all-female rock trio, two of whom were played by former Playboy Playmates Dolly Read (who was married to Dick Martin) and Cynthia Myers, lip-syncing to lead vocals by future Penthouse Pet Lynn Carey. We ARE the world!
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| Lynn Carey |
The film is a deliberately loopy, preposterous send-up of...well, I'm not exactly sure what it's parodying, though one presumes Jacqueline Susann's drug-filled soap opera Valley Of The Dolls was somewhere within the filmmakers' crosshairs. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. And sex. I first learned about the film in a Playboy pictorial when I was way too young to be looking at Playboy. Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls has become a cult classic; it did not snag a single Oscar nomination.
(For the record, the other three songs in our movie set were The Dave Clark Five's "Catch Us If You Can" [from Having A Wild Weekend], Tina Turner's "The Acid Queen" [from Tommy], and Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" [from Midnight Cowboy].
And...Scene!)
MICKY DOLENZ: Different Drum
This is precisely the sort of record for which the pimply hyperbole Awesome! was invented. I'm a first-generation fan of The Monkees, hoppin' into that barrel full o' hijinks during the first season of the group's TV series in 1966. I've wished in previous posts for surviving Monkees Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith to record a new studio album with members of The Monkees' ace touring band, a cracklin' combo that includes Christian Nesmith (Michael's son) and the incredible vocal talents of Coco Dolenz (Micky's sister) and Circe Link (whose "I'm On Your Side" was included on our compilation album This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, and was TIRnRR's most-played track in 2017). This combination of talent could create a mighty fine work, indeed.
The forthcoming new Micky Dolenz album Dolenz Sings Nesmith is the next-best thing, and a fantastic thing by any reasonable expectation. The elder Nesmith has no direct involvement, but the title's truth-in-advertising tells you that it's album of Nesmith songs, all engagingly rendered by Dolenz. Christian Nesmith arranged and produced, it sure sounds like Coco 'n' Circe providing the heavenly vocal blend that supports our Mick, and the overall effect is just delectably inviting. Man, this sounds wonderful. Dolenz remains in fine voice, and the material is, of course, top-notch.
The album is due out in May. The raving enthusiasm expressed above is inspired by bits from a teaser video, and by the release last week of the advance single, "Different Drum"/"Propinquity (I've Just Begun To Care)." Both of these tracks fulfill the giddy promise of what I hoped to hear. How great is Micky's version of "Different Drum?" It challenges Linda Ronstadt's sublime hit version with The Stone Poneys for the title of Best Ever. I'm very much looking forward to hearing the whole album.
FISHBONE: It's A Wonderful Life (Gonna Have A Good Time)
Getting back to the idea of counterprogramming against the Oscars, we very briefly considered turning the whole show over to songs somehow related to the movies. We rejected that notion in short order because a) it was too much work, and b) it would have prevented us from playing a lot of new stuff we wanted to play. CUT!
If we had pursued a show-length movie theme, it would have included Fishbone's MTV classic "It's A Wonderful Life (Gonna Have A Good Time)," which I'm told stole its title from some old black-and-white flick. Every time Fishbone plays, and angel gets a free drink.
THE MUFFS: Outer Space
Who knows what pop songs lurk in the hearts of DJs? The iPod knows!
It's no secret that the songs my iPod shuffles through during my daily commutes provide ongoing inspiration for some of my playlist selections on TIRnRR. Here's a rare case of my iPod influencing one of Dana's picks. "Outer Space" is an underrated track from The Muffs' 1997 album Happy Birthday To Me, and it's one I don't recall hearing before Dana played it on TIRnRR in January.
"Outer Space" popped up on my iPod a couple of times recently, and I made a mental note to consider it when cobbling together our next playlist.
What happened instead: I opened a set with "You're My Medicine," the latest digital single from America's Sweetheart Irene Peña. As Dana considered his options to follow Irene, I heard him play a couple of seconds of a Muffs track, and I said, "Hey, y'know, if you're thinking of playing The Muffs, I know just the song...."
THE SEX PISTOLS: EMI
Ah, what we do without record labels? What would we do first? Our beloved indie labels, from Big Stir to Kool Kat to Futureman to Rum Bar, Red On Red, Jem, JAM, and more, are forces for good. Larger labels aren't necessarily evil (though one could argue the Mob-connected Roulette Records was), but nor are they necessarily driven by any love of music. Records. Widgets. Geegaws. Notions. Tchotchkes. When money's all that matters, product is product, and nothing more.
But these big labels also brought us most of the pop music that formed us. EMI allowed us to hear The Beatles. And EMI brought us The Sex Pistols.
Briefly.
EMI chickened out with the Pistols, caving under pressure when the group's foul-mouthed appearance on a British TV talk show spurred public outcry, torches, pitchforks, et al. EMI cancelled The Sex Pistols' contract after one single, an action/reaction that inspired the group to write a kiss-off called "EMI."
It was not a rock 'n' roll love letter. I mean, if you wanna label it.
SUGAR SNOW: She Goes On
I tend to regard the music of Crowded House with benign indifference. I might maybe possibly play "It's Only Natural" or "Now We're Getting Somewhere"--the latter's Beatley Help!-inspired video got my attention during my MTV-watching days--but honestly, Crowded House generally just isn't on my radar.
Crowded House is on Simone Berk's radar. Under her boppin' dba Sugar Snow, the voice of Kid Gulliver recorded Woodface Reimagined, a very nice remake of Crowded House's 1991 album Woodface. Simone's lovely rendition of "She Goes On" serves notice that I should reassess (and possibly recalibrate) my radar. Don't dream it's over.
TOMORROW: My White Bicycle
In the '90s, Dana used to DJ at Syracuse's Club Zodiac, a cool nightspot which was later re-branded as Styleen's. This was in between the June 1992 demise of our first Dana & Carl radio series We're Your Friends For Now and the December 1998 beginning of whatever it is we do our current little mutant radio show. Now, you don't hire a DJ like Dana if you want a cookie-cutter music experience; Dana will play some hits and crowd-pleasers, but Dana's also gonna do what Dana's gonna do. He's gonna play stuff you don't expect. That's why you hire Dana.
One evening at the Zodiac, the manifestation of Dana doing what Dana's gonna do found Tomorrow's 1960s British psych gem "My White Bicycle" perched within a soundscape of, I dunno, maybe Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton. The club's buzzed clientele did not appreciate the brilliance of Dana's choice. Their loss. (And never mind that clientele's reaction during a subsequent Zodiac DJ shift, when Dana played my request for The Bay City Rollers...!)
STEVIE WONDER: Higher Ground
Maybe it's down to our collective connection to the divine, but our mortal thought processes work in mysterious ways. Other than a shared word in one song's title and the other act's name, I can't explain why Dana's spin of the '60s garage pop gem "I Wonder" by The Gants spawned an immediate and absolute need for me to follow with "Higher Ground" by Stevie Wonder. The mind goes where the song takes it. The next song takes over at that point. Higher ground. It's a long journey. We have some music to play as we go.
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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
I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl.
