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 # 1092: The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). Each entry is an excerpt from my long-threatened GREM! book.
ELVIS PRESLEY: Heartbreak Hotel
Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" was rock 'n' roll's equivalent of the shot heard 'round the world. A segregated America was about to be forced to integrate its pop charts in a manner without precedent, to look on in horror as its young embraced this race music, this primal beat, this blatantly sexual sound that their daughters would find orgasmic, that their sons would find irresistible. A white kid who could sing like a black man. Before long, more and more white kids would also listen to black performers, and pop music would change forever after. The roots of that change predate Elvis and "Heartbreak Hotel," but it is still impossible to overstate the cultural significance of this record. And it would be stupid to deny its lasting effect and appeal. One could only claim a handful of records as changing everything that followed. "Heartbreak Hotel" would top that list.
"Heartbreak Hotel" is the coronation of King Elvis I. Presley's Sun sides were his rise to power, but his reign begins at RCA, a declaration of Since my baby left me, I've found a new place to dwell signaling the dawn of a new era, a world without end, Amen. Elvis Presley is the single most iconic figure of American pop culture, and that status will probably never face any plausible challenge. The King is not dead. Long live the King.
WILLIE MAE "BIG MAMA" THORNTON: Hound Dog
We pin the launch of the Rock 'n' Roll Era to 1955, when "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets became a # 1 pop hit. That's a logical starting point. But even if Haley was this music's first crossover star, no one--no one--believes he and his cohorts invented that sound. Rock 'n' roll doesn't start with Bill Haley and his Comets, nor with that combo's previous billing as Bill Haley's Saddlemen (though it would also be wrong to deny their importance).
Where and when did rock 'n' roll start? There are a few key records that one could name as possibilities for the first rock 'n' roll record. "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brentson and his Delta Cats (1951, and really Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm) is the closest we have to a consensus choice, though some would point to "The Fat Man" by Fats Domino (1950). I would at least add Amos Milburn's "Down The Road Apiece" (1947) to the discussion, and no less an authority than Lenny and Squiggy (on TV's Laverne And Shirley) spoke on behalf of "Call The Police," a 1941 single Nat King Cole made with the King Cole Trio. There are other progenitors and trailblazers from across the heady mingling of jump blues, R & B, country, and swing that birthed this bastard child we call rock 'n' roll. What was the daddy of them all? Not even a blood test is going to make that determination.
"Hound Dog" is not the first rock 'n' roll record, but its original release does predate the Rock 'n' Roll Era. It was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller specifically for rhythm and blues singer Big Mama Thornton, and Thornton's "Hound Dog" single topped the R & B chart in 1953. Fittingly, her performance of the song is as much a growl as it is anything else, a snarling dismissal of a worthless cur who can wag his tail, but she ain't gonna feed him no more.
THE 13th FLOOR ELEVATORS: You're Gonna Miss Me
We are the weird.
We are damaged, disturbed, inadequate, unprepared. We don't fit in, couldn't if we tried, wouldn't if we could. We wake up wondering, find ourselves all alone. We live in a time of our own.
The late Roky Erickson is often remembered as a casualty, a fragile fallen angel, a flawed Icarus who flew too close to a merciless psychedelic sun. He sang of walking with zombies, of working in the Kremlin for a two-headed dog. Against type, he sang a beautiful ballad called "Starry Eyes," suddenly (if briefly) becoming a post-lysergic Buddy Holly. He warned ominously of the danger of slandering him. His mortal form was caged, in correctional facilities and sanitariums. His mind roamed where only wild things go.
With his '60s combo the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson sang of fire in the bones, of taking us to the empty place in his fire engine, of Easter everywhere. He was damaged. And with the 13th Floor Elevators, he gave us an incredible, unforgettable rock 'n' roll classic called "You're Gonna Miss Me."
"You're Gonna Miss Me" is acid made punk, as hallucinatory as Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, as badass as...anything, ever. It's the embodiment of the rock-critic concept of 1960s garage-built psychedelia, while sounding not quite like any of its peers.
It could only have come from Texas. It profoundly influenced at least one son of the Lone Star State: Billy Gibbons, later to find fame slingin' his sharp-dressed six-string with ZZ Top. Contemporary to the Elevators, Gibbons played with a group called the Moving Sidewalks, whose own awesome single "99th Floor" couldn't have popped into being without "You're Gonna Miss Me" providing a blueprint. "You're Gonna Miss Me" has continued to glow in the dark for all subsequent generations seeking the sound of electric guitars crossed with electric sugar cubes.
TODD RUNDGREN: Couldn't I Just Tell You
This is an example of the latest musical trend. It's called power pop.
It was 1978. The band Utopia was appearing on The Mike Douglas Show. The song that Utopia's front man Todd Rundgren introduced as "the latest musical trend" was practically a golden oldie, a track Rundgren had recorded and released much earlier in the decade, on his 1972 album Something/Anything? The song "Couldn't I Just Tell You had not been a hit, its 1972 single release barely making it into the Hot 100, peaking at # 93 with an anchor. For Rundgren to refer to this six-year-old song as the latest...anything could have only been an example of the prickly performer sneering haughtily at trendy hipsters, hip trendsters, and, one supposes, anyone who liked pop music. Yeah, screw them.
Wait, wait! "Anyone who liked pop music?" That's me he was sneering at, damn it! Oh, the humanity...!
But I didn't care. God, it was such a great song. Seeing it performed on TV asserted the song's hold on me, a hold that was already there, but which tightened its grip securely and permanently with this televised faux embrace of the latest musical trend. Power pop. Suits me just fine.
SHOES: Tomorrow Night
Shoes was one of the most notable (and durable) among '70s power pop groups, an exquisite four-man band from Zion, Illinois. Shoes took their first step with an album that was literally homemade, recorded in guitarist Jeff Murphy’s living room and released on the group’s own Black Vinyl label in 1977.
That album, Black Vinyl Shoes, was an instant pop classic, bursting with understated gems, songs simultaneously Beatlesque yet not strictly derivative of anything. Black Vinyl Shoes brought the group to the attention of Bomp Records/Bomp! magazine visionary Greg Shaw. Bomp released a non-LP 45 of “Tomorrow Night”/”Okay,” which still ranks as the best 1-2 punch of Shoes’ always-distinguished recording career.
"Tomorrow Night" is nearly textbook power pop, a pretty ditty that combines yearning and lust, its façade suggesting an equal measure of the two, but really looking for a steamy tomorrow-night stand. What the track lacks in explosiveness á la the Who or Raspberries is more than compensated by its confidence and posture, the music leaning forward with single-minded precision. It's catchy and aggressive, its dreamy, breathy vocals piloting a rockin' sound with one Beatle boot perched in the British Invasion and one ragged Converse stepping on a back-breaking crack in the New Wave of post-punk rock 'n' roll.
THE FLAMIN' GROOVIES: Shake Some Action
I've described the Flamin' Groovies' classic track "Shake Some Action" as sounding like an announcement of pop-rock Armageddon, and like the Beatles, Byrds, and Rolling Stones heading into the studio for a session with Phil Spector. And I don't think even that bit of willful hyperbole does the song justice.
As a college freshman in the Fall of 1977, I had my ear practically stapled to Brockport's student-run radio station WBSU, a closed-circuit AM signal heard only on campus. WBSU was where I first heard Blondie, Television, the Dictators, the Ramones, all based on my obsessive and insistent requests to finally hear more of this punk rock stuff I'd been reading about in (again!) Phonograph Record Magazine. I was also requesting the Monkees--WBSU's library included a copy of the group's then-rare 1970 LP, Changes, so my (often-futile) pleas for WBSU jocks to play something from Changes were my only opportunity to hear Davy Jones warble "I Never Thought It Peculiar." Okay, you may think it's peculiar, but I never did.
So yeah, I listened to WBSU all the time. And I remember one particularly revelatory afternoon of communing with BSU, as I heard a couple of terrific oldies that I didn't know at the time: "Five O'Clock World" by the Vogues and "Lies" by the Knickerbockers. I believe the DJ also played my request for "Any Way You Want It" by the Dave Clark Five. To top it off, I heard two contemporary groups I'd neither heard nor heard of before, both performing '60s covers: "The Batman Theme" by the Jam, and "Misery" by the Flamin' Groovies.
It was an inauspicious start for me with the Jam, who would later become one of my favorites. But the Groovies? Man, I was blown away by this band doing a credible cover of an early Beatles tune, and a somewhat lesser-known Beatles tune, at that. The Flamin' Groovies? Who the devil are the Flamin' Groovies?
An answer to that question wasn't immediately forthcoming...
...It would be well over a year before I paid any attention to this unsettled matter of the Flamin' Groovies' music. By the spring of 1979, a different friend, one who shared my fondness of punk and new wave, allowed me to borrow his copy of an import sampler LP called New Wave. This New Wave compilation had tracks by the New York Dolls, the Damned, the Dead Boys, the Ramones, the Runaways, Richard Hell and the Void-Oids, Talking Heads, and, of course, a Flamin' Groovies song called "Shake Some Action."
"Shake Some Action."
I consider myself fortunate to be the sort of wide-eyed pop fan that can sometimes fall in love with a song or a band instantly. It doesn't always work that way, but when it does, it's like a communion with an ethereal, ultimate radio station beamin' to me from the heavens themselves. It's magic, and there's no other word that will do to describe it. It was magic when I heard "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" by the Ramones. It was magic when I saw the Flashcubes live. And it was magic when I heard "Shake Some Action."
The song was just...hypnotic. There were so many little elements combining and clashing within that track, with bits of the Byrds and Phil Spector, a brooding, booming bass, guitars that seemed to snarl and jangle at the same time, punk swagger, pop yearning, and an insistent instrumental hook that grabbed me and whispered silkily in my ear, You're with us now, son. It was a recipe for cacophony, a surefire roadmap to a sonic mess...except that it wasn't. It was precise. It was perfect. And I swear, in that moment, I knew it was The Greatest Record Ever Made.
My Groovies fandom began with a spin of "Misery" on WBSU, and exploded when I heard "Shake Some Action" on a record lent to me by a friend, a friend I would lose before very long. An announcement of pop-rock Armageddon. The cataclysm would bust out at full speed. Sad to say, but there would be casualties along the way. Armageddon's like that.
Boom.SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE: Everybody Is A Star
Success. Stardom. Excess. Sly and the Family Stone generated hits, created influence, made some cash, and fed some bad habits along the way. The music was often phenomenal, a uniquely psychedelic hybrid that was absolutely rock and absolutely soul. The personal toll of this success, the weight of its numbing and high-flying rewards, would not be small. Its cost to Sly Stone in particular would be considerable.
"Dance To The Music." "Everyday People." "Stand." "I Want To Take You Higher." The gorgeously inviting "Hot Fun In The Summertime." "Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin," the latter of which should probably also be credited for teaching '70s U.K. glam rockers Slade how to spell. This is a great run of great singles, and that's just the singles. The albums that spawned them are acknowledged classics. 1971 brought the group another hit (the # 1 smash "Family Affair") and only # 1 album, There's A Riot Goin' On. From this pinnacle, a fall from grace was set to follow.
But: before that. Before drugs and spiraling craziness did all the destructive things they do so well, the B-side of "Thank You Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin" offers the dignity of acceptance, the quiet, welcoming comfort of a hand to hold and a shoulder to lean on. "Everybody Is A Star" is a casual, unassuming masterpiece, its groove so inviting, its sentiment so naturally easy and at peace.
Everybody is a star
Who could rain and chase the dust away
You don't need darkness to do what you think is right. In the words of another song: this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Even as we wish for better, stronger, faster, more beautiful, a light within can show the way home. Andy Warhol said everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. He was wrong. Everybody is a star, loved for who we are, not the ones we think we need to be.
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: I'll Be Your Mirror
Such a pretty song from such a shadowed origin, from such seemingly malevolent minstrels. For all the iconoclasm we associate with Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, "I'll Be Your Mirror" is very nearly a conventional pop song. For the lead vocal, the harder edges of Nico's Teutonic voice soften just enough to suggest a vulnerability, an understanding and empathy we might not expect. Reed's lyrics provide comfort for the crippled feeling within, against the gnawing internal ache that insists we can't be good enough, can't dare to dream of adequacy much less divinity, against a certainty that inside we're twisted and unkind. I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are. There's a hint of darkness, but a possibility of a hand to our darkness so we won't be afraid. Please put down your hands, 'cause I see you. The reflection is more forgiving than we expected.
DEL SHANNON: Runaway
The man formerly known as Charles Westover despaired. On February 8th of 1990, he took a .22 caliber rifle and ended his lives as Del Shannon and Charles Westover impartially. There would be no more walking in the rain, tears falling, feeling the pain. Despair finally made Del Shannon run away. He was 55 years old.
Many of Del Shannon's classic hits are compressed, almost claustrophobic little jolts of tension, fear, frustration, longing, loneliness, alienation, and even paranoia. Yet they sound so invigorating, so full of life lived against the odds, that it's even more unfortunate that Shannon couldn't achieve the catharsis offered in his own songs.
"Runaway" was his first and biggest hit, a # 1 smash for four weeks in 1961. The track is propelled in large part by the weird and haunting sound of a musitron, an electric organ played by Max Crook, who co-wrote the song with Shannon. Over and above the unique atmosphere supplied by the musitron, "Runaway" weeps and wails with Del Shannon at its fragile and desperate center, a lonely soul who has lost his one chance at love and happiness.THE COCKTAIL SLIPPERS: St. Valentines Day Massacre
"St. Valentine's Massacre" is a welcome earworm, maddeningly catchy, sounding incongruously bouncy while reflecting on love's uncertainty and rushing fearlessly and fatalistically toward an affair's assured and imminent end.
Am I still penciled in on your calendar?
Am I still the late night call when you've got nothing to say?
I know it's Thanksgiving night, and you say you love me
But who'll be the last lover standing come Saint Valentine's Day?
I'm thinking a box of chocolates isn't gonna cut it this time.
Little Steven Van Zandt's lyrics here imply a lovers' drama playing out in rapidly elapsing time. Was it adventure, was it fear, or sanctuary? Modesty Blaze's voice is tinged with both regret and resignation as she sings; behind her and with her, her band of sisters seems hellbent on holding an Irish wake for broken hearts. Across the calendar pages that fly by with cruel indifference--Thanksgiving night, Christmas morning, New Year's Eve--a love that can't even evolve from pencil to ink careens toward its inevitable erasure come the 14th of February. Now even your carrier pigeons have been picked off by the vultures/There's only one thing left for you to confess.... The song flies to its foregone conclusion on a conjugal bed of the most bittersweet la la la la lala las in rock 'n' roll history.
WAITWAITWAITWAITWAIT!
We got more of THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
THE T-BONES: No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)
One of 1965's final hit records was a cover of the music from an Alka Seltzer commercial. See? Best pop year ever! Granted, the T-Bones' "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)" was really a 1966 hit--its Billboard chart peak at # 3 was in February of '66--but it was released in December 1965, so...close enough, I say. I had the 45 on the Liberty Records label, and it was The Greatest Record Ever Made. I'd play that sucker on the family hi-fi, dancing around our little living room as the song created images in my daydreamin' little head. I would close my eyes. I swear, I could see the music. I saw colors, shapes, figures, even a brightly-garbed clown a-boppin' and a-swayin' to the tune. I was a weird kid. Still am. Nearly six decades later, the music still means as much to me as it meant when I was five, and as when I was three, when I was twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty-six, forty, fifty, and on down the dark and twisting path ahead of me. It's best played loud. No matter what shape.
THE RAMONES: Blitzkrieg Bop
1-2-3-4.
The Ramones set out to be the American Beatles. They succeeded, as long as we don't factor in extraneous things like fame, popularity, record sales, and money. But impact? Immortality? The buzz of irresistible pop perfection? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're forming in a straight line.
It started here, with a fab four of misfits from Queens aimin' for the toppermost of the poppermost, plausibility be damned. What, the Bay City Rollers were already trying to be the next Beatles? Fine. The Ramones would be a faster and louder version, innately more fascinating, emphatically more American. Imagining a chant like S! A! T-U-R! D-A-Y! NIGHT!! to be a prerequisite for radio success, the Ramones revamped the Rollers' approach into their own HEY-HO, LET'S GO! Number one with a bullet? Not even close. Shoot 'em in the back now.
Nonetheless....
Failing to ship and sell the massive volume of hit platters they envisioned, the Ramones kept going anyway. The kids are losing their minds. All revved up and ready to go.
The Ramones. The American Beatles. Yeah, that sounds about right to me.
Let's GO!
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