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 # 1207. This show is available as a podcast.
MICKY DOLENZ: Leaving New York
The new Micky Dolenz EP Dolenz Sings R.E.M. is nothing short of exquisite. I expressed my enthusiasm for the then-forthcoming project here. I've always liked R.E.M., but Dolenz nonetheless delivers the definite version of "Shiny Happy People," which was the EP's teaser single. Next week's show will serve up another example of our Micky taken an already-great R.E.M. song and making it even better.
Of the four songs on Dolenz Sings R.E.M., the only one I wasn't familiar with in its original form was "Leaving New York," a track from R.E.M.'s 2004 album Around The Sun. I'm listening to R.E.M.'s original right now for the very first time, just as I'm writing these words. It's quite good. I may need to track down Around The Sun and listen to the rest of it. There's so much great stuff out there, and we miss so much of it.
If it comes to dueling versions of "Leaving New York," I'm still going to give Dolenz the edge, partially by virtue of Christian Nesmith's incredible production and musicianship, partially because of the irresistible backing vocals by Circe Link, and a whole lotta lotta because of Micky freakin' Dolenz. We're gonna miss some things. Don't miss Dolenz Sings R.E.M.
THE JETTE PLANES: This Is Where We Live Today
The music we loved in the past helps to define us, and we can hold on to that definition and inspiration for as long as we wish. But it's important to supplement what we already know with discoveries of other things that are new to us. The Jette Planes are a young power pop band from Philadelphia, steeped in decades-old influences that are immediate and familiar, but which they annex with absolute authority. S. W. Lauden's Remember The Lightning (blog AND magazine) brought the Jette Planes into my airspace, and I'm delighted to make that connection. Fly the rockin' skies! This is where we live today.
THE GRIP WEEDS: Every Minute [acoustic version]
An unplugged version of my # 1 Grip Weeds track? Yes, please! This li'l treat appeared on the group's rarities collection Inner Grooves. Grip Weeds is what ya needs.
TAYLOR SWIFT: The Last Great American Dynasty
Hipsters need not apply. Taylor Swift is probably the biggest single star on the planet right now, as close to a Beatles figure as our diffused pop culture can recognize at this time. As a baby boomer myself, I would have thought Swift's records unlikely to be my cuppa.
I would have thought wrong.
A viewing of Swift's blockbuster concert film Taylor Swift: The ERAS Tour set me straight. What an engaging experience, and it opened my ears. I wanted to hear more. I wanted to know more. I was particularly taken with a song called "The Last Great American Dynasty," a track on Swift's 2020 album folklore. It felt of a piece with TIRnRR. I knew I wanted to play it on the show.
Listening to the show on Sunday night, my wife agreed that "The Last Great American Dynasty" felt right at home in our playlist, adding that it reminded her of some of the female-sung indie pop that often helps to build our three-hour shindig anyway.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Factions build divisions. Factions are notorious dumbasses. Maybe TIRnRR isn't gonna start playing "Shake It Off" (though I've just begun to realize how much that track reminds me of some of the chick-fronted new wave pop I was digging in the early '80s), but I say some of Swift's music is perfect for whatever the hell it is we do here.
"The Last Great American Dynasty" will return to TIRnRR this Sunday night. It's in a set that also includes Irene Peña, Juniper, and Amy Rigby (plus the Muffs, Lulu, Bush Tetras, and the Coolies), and they mingle swimmingly. It's all pop music. God created radio so we could play pop music.
Who are we to argue?
THE RAMONES: I Don't Care
Never underestimate the power of indifference. Or go ahead and underestimate it. I don't care.
(And yep, we deliberately played this in the same set as Taylor Swift. The Ramones are pop music, too. We do, in fact, care quite a bit about that.)
BONEY M: My Friend Jack
Not just Eurodisco--MOD-PSYCH Eurodisco! Boney M had such great (if unexpected) taste in covers, from the Creation to the Melodians. Their 1980 remake of the Smoke's 1967 UK freakbeat number "My Friend Jack" is inspired to a degree only the batshit-crazy can comprehend, but it works so well.
R.E.M.: Can't Get There From Here
See? We don't just play Micky Dolenz covering R.E.M.; we play actual R.E.M., too! I was very much into R.E.M. throughout the '80s, my interest commencing with a Trouser Press flexi-disc of "Wolves, Lower" and manifesting in earnest with "Radio Free Europe." "Can't Get There From Here" was part of that. I've been there. I know the way.
THE MC5: Kick Out The Jams
The Greatest Record Ever Made!
THE MONKEES: Love Is Only Sleeping
The Monkees' third album Headquarters is generally considered the group's masterwork, and for good reason. Headquarters captured a brief and magic moment in the Monkees' career, as the made-for-TV combo exerted some control over their recordings for the first time, shedding the puppet strings and willing themselves into existence as a functioning studio band. They weren't allowed to play on their first two albums. They played on every single one of the tracks on Headquarters.
That said, their fourth album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. is always going to be my favorite. Both Headquarters and Pisces were released in 1967, a time when the Monkees were at the peak of their rockin' pop stardom. The Monkees did play on Pisces, but the demands of a TV series, concerts, and the occasional recreational WHOOPIE! made them too busy (and maybe not sufficiently motivated) to be THE band in the booth.
So studio musicians served as auxiliary Monkees on Pisces. That fact diverges from the DIY purity of Headquarters, I guess, but Pisces retains both a pop sheen and a spirit of adventure, all of it effectively executed by the Monkees and company. You can't go wrong with Headquarters or Pisces.
With lead vocal and guitar by Michael Nesmith, organ by Peter Tork, percussion by Davy Jones, harmony vocals by Micky, backing vocals by Davy, with producer/bassist/acoustic guitarist Chip Douglas and drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh expanding the ranks of in-studio believers, the Barry Mann-Cynthia Weil song "Love Is Only Sleeping" was planned to be the Monkees' fifth US single, following immediate predecessor "Pleasant Valley Sunday"/"Words" (both sides of which were included on Pisces). A mastering error on the never-issued "Love Is Only Sleeping" 45 scotched its release long enough for someone at the record company to reconsider the potentially risqué notion of "Love" and "Sleeping" sharing canoodlin' space in the same out-of-wedlock title; "Daydream Believer" replaced "Love Is Only Sleeping" as the next designated 45. And American youth were safe from, y'know, sex.
But what an amazing single this would have been. As an album track on Pisces, "Love Is Only Sleeping" was the centerpiece of my decade-after-the-fact embrace of the album when I was in high school. The effect bordered on seismic.
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. was part of my crucible, that period from late 1976 through freshman year in college ('77-'78), a two-years-and-change span of wonder when I discovered so much from the past and the then-present. KISS. Punk. THE RAMONES!! The Flashcubes. The Kinks, the Yardbirds, the Runaways, the Sex Pistols, the Jam. When I deepened my understanding of the British Invasion, when I first heard the phrase "power pop," and when I began to realize that the Monkees were so, so much more than what I saw on TV.
This month--November 6th to be precise--marks 56 years since a group called the Monkees released an album called Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. Sometimes love is only sleeping. Its dreams carry through to the day, and back again to the night. A shiny new tomorrow will follow. The promise is whispered. The promise is true.
THE FLASHCUBES: Alone In My Room
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As noted, Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse the Flashcubes were a big, big part of my teenage rock 'n' roll crucible. My first Flashcubes show occurred just after my 18th birthday in January of 1978, a life-changing event that remains an everyday touchstone for me, and it's a large part of why TIRnRR exists in the first place.
All these years later, it's gratifying to know that some of the artists that fanned the flames of my crucible are still making music that matters. Many have passed, some have retired. We've seen that Micky Dolenz--the last surviving Monkee--has an essential new EP. And the Flashcubes' current album Pop Masters is my most cherished, most celebrated, most played new album of 2023. Fitting that the album itself is a tribute to the Flashcubes' own crucibles, irresistible covers of material previously recorded by acts that influenced the 'Cubes, from Pilot to Slade to Pezband to Sparks. The Flashcubes' Pop Masters cover of the late Dwight Twilley's "Alone In My Room" is a loving evocation of the palpable thrill of pop music itself. It gives me chills, even as the crucible itself keeps me warm. Bright lights, my friends. Bright lights need never dim.
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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 and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. Recent shows are archived at Westcott Radio. You can read about our history here.
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