THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO: Preparing For The 1000th Show

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio # 1000 is scheduled for this Sunday, November 10th. We are proposing a drinking game for those so inclined: take a shot every time I say "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times." Honestly, I recommend sticking to non-toxic shots of orange juice, Gatorade, or Jolt Cola if you value your sobriety.

How does one prepare for a 1000th show? For some past milestones, we've offered countdowns of our all-time most-played tracks and all-time most-played artists, courtesy of our intrepid stats man Fritz Van Leaven. Fritz also concocted a unique and engaging premise for our 900th show. For most of our milestones (including our 20th Anniversary Show last year), we opted for a kind of greatest-hits playlist, winging our way through a selection of tracks that seem appropriate for celebrating our unlikely longevity as The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet. Although we do have updated stats (which will post on this blog next week), the latter approach is what we're embracing for TIRnRR # 1000.

When we do a TIRnRR's Greatest Hits show, we think of it as if we were a band putting on a big commemorative concert for our fans. We want to play the hits. We want to play some deep cuts. We know we won't play everything we want to play, nor everything each fan wants to hear, but our goal is for those fans to come away from it with a sense of giddy satisfaction, saying to themselves over and over on their way home, That was a show. THAT was a show...!

We're not going to plan many specifics in advance. I know the first song we'll play. I know what song will be played right around the 10:30 pm Eastern mark. I have a pretty good guess about what the last song is gonna be (prior to a familiar-sounding closing instrumental). We'll try to hit a few tracks from all of our TIRnRR compilation CDs. There are several more songs I hope to play, several more songs Dana wants to play, and we'll crush 'em all together in the moment. There will be many omissions. But this will be a show.

We began our observation of TIRnRR # 1000 on last week's show, spotlighting THAT VERY FIRST KISS (encore spins of the first tracks we ever played by a number of our favorite acts). You'll hear some of those artists again this week, but we won't be repeating any tracks from last week's show. When both shows are eventually available for download, you can listen to 'em back-to-back for a singular six-hour 1000th-show extravaganza.

1000 shows. I don't think either of us envisioned that when this thing started more than two decades ago. Nonetheless, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times [DRINK!]: this is The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet. And we have a show for you. Join us Sunday night November 10th, 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/ The weekend stops HERE!



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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, 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).

BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO), Part 9: Reach Out Of The Darkness

Concluding this long narrative of the history of our little mutant radio show This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl, as we near the unlikely-but-true occasion of our 1000th episode on Sunday, November 10th. You are but a click away from each of the preceding chapters: Chapter 1: The Kids Are Alright, Chapter 2: We're Your Friends For Now!, Chapter 3: I'll Send You a Tape From Central New York, Chapter 4: Hello There, Whole Friggin' Planet, Chapter 5: Sound Of The Radio, Chapter 6: Crafting Mixtapes In The Digital Age (or: Dana & Carl Make A CD), Chapter 7: Changing All Those Changes, and Chapter 8: Starting Over. And now: number 9, number 9, number 9....


OUR STORY SO FAR: As Syracuse Community Radio prepared to kill its webcast in December of 2006, fans and friends of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio donated thousands of dollars to save the show. This was sufficient scratch to fund a divorce from SCR, and to begin an independent webcast as Westcott Radio in 2007.

Eventually.


Music has power. It doesn't have unlimited power; it can't leap tall buildings in a single bound, and it can't heal the sick or balance your checkbook. It can't mend broken bones or broken hearts, and it can't persuade a soon-to-be-former soulmate to please, please give us one more chance. It can't buy us love. It can't even buy us lunch.

But music does have power. It can offer comfort, validation, inspiration. Catharsis. Companionship of a sort. Maybe it can't dry our tears, but it can grant us the freedom to weep without shame, to dance away the heartache, to twist and shout, to do the freakin' Freddie when only the Freddie will do. Music is there for us when we need it. I can't imagine a time when we don't need it.

The need to play music--to share music--lives and breathes at the core of any pop (or soul, or rock, or country, or jazz, or classical) radio show programmed by any music fan. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is but one of thousands of shows that have embraced that ideal. We are legion, even if each of us feels like a lone voice wailing Turn it UP! The power of music connects us. The beat goes on.

It took some time for TIRnRR to renew that beat after our split from Syracuse Community Radio. More than two months passed between our farewell to SCR on 1/7/2007 and our first Westcott Radio show on March 25th. We opened the Westcott Radio phase of our tenure with a spin of "Saying Goodbye" by The Muffs, offered as a bitter kiss-off to our former organization. Yeah, we were still pissed.



For all that, there was always a long-term goal of reconciling with SCR. We all shared the goal of bringing community radio to the Central New York broadcast airwaves, and there was an understanding that programming on Westcott Radio would some day migrate back to SCR once a viable FM signal was in place. But we needed to keep going in the mean time. Westcott Radio was the only way to do that.

2007 sucked. Continued technical issues and ever-present cash-flow woes often conspired to disable the webcast. We were radio-silent for nearly the entire month of September, coinciding with the time of my emergency back surgery, which took me out of commission for months. But Dana only had the chance to do a few shows without me before Westcott Radio was forced to go on another extended hiatus in late October. Those problems were not resolved until January. Other than whatever holiday music I played on my iPod, there was no Ninth Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show.

Westcott Radio and TIRnRR returned in January of 2008, and we all soldiered on to the best of our limited ability. This was our wilderness period, lasting until at least 2010. We were stuck in a rut, unable to expand our audience, barely able to hang in there at all. We were too stubborn to give up. And the power of the music wouldn't let us go.

A positive moment from June 11, 2009, L-R: John Wicks, Carl, Paul Collins, Dana

Facebook, of all things, brought us to a turning point, a positive turning point. A new TIRnRR chat group on Facebook revitalized us, and sparked an upsurge in excitement and engagement. Even as technical and financial hobgoblins persisted in plaguing us, TIRnRR was back.

And we wanted to do another TIRnRR compilation CD.

Jeremy Morris, whose JAM Recordings label had released the first two TIRnRR CDs in 2005 and 2006, had already declined to participate in any further sequels. It was a very amicable split, and we remain grateful for all Jeremy's done for the show, before, during, and after those CDs. Jeremy was an integral player in our fundraising, and we can't thank him enough. 



That still left us in search of another label. Through whatever sequence of thingamabobs, we wound up talking with Ray Gianchetti at Kool Kat Musik, probably in 2011, maybe as late as 2012. And a deal was struck for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 3.



Ray had a hands-off approach, so this was the first collection compiled solely and entirely by Dana & Carl. Over the years since Volume 2, always holding out hope we'd get to do another one someday, we had quietly secured tracks from a number of artists, including Hawaii Mud Bombers, The Richards, and The Tearjerkers (with their classic "Syracuse Summer").  We contacted more friends to get all-time TIRnRR Fave Rave tracks by Mannix and Anny Celsi, plus assorted goodies from Eytan Mirsky, Blotto, Lisa Mychols, Michael Carpenter, Gary Frenay, and more. We prevailed upon The Catholic Girls (left off of Volume 2) to give us another chance. The collection was mastered at Sub Cat Studios in Syracuse--my first-ever visit to a recording studio!--and released by Kool Kat in 2013. My liner notes reflected on our journey so far, and I felt like we'd accomplished our best compilation to date.

I honestly didn't think we could ever top Volume 3, so I put aside thoughts of ever doing another one. But Ray Gianchetti thought the time was right for Volume 4, which Kool Kat released in 2017. Volume 4 was...God, it was magic. I've told its tale in great detail elsewhere, and there are also liner notes, of course. But the bottom line was that this was just something special, a rockin' pop compilation that flows like a great album. I am humbled to have been a part of it. If we never do anything else, I'm satisfied and proud that we did this.



We kissed and made up with Syracuse Community Radio a long time ago. We're still on the web, now at sparksyracuse.org, and also back on the air. ON THE AIR! And you can actually hear us in Syracuse, at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM. At our request, the first song ever played on WSPJ was "Sound Of The Radio" by Screen Test, the same song that had kicked off TIRnRR's first webcast in 2000. Continuity. We still have tech problems. We still have money problems. Both Dana and I have suffered the devastating loss of loved ones, and Dana is now a cancer survivor. But God damn it, 1000 shows later and counting, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl is somehow still here. And we're still The Best Three Hours Of Radio On The Whole Friggin' Planet.

Is that the power of music? Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's also the power of friendship, the power of belief, the power of radio. The joy of radio. In 2019, a number of performers who support whatever the hell it is we do grew frustrated with the unreliable frizziness of our hiccuping signal, and decided to do a TIRnRR benefit compilation, Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. We were touched beyond our ability to articulate. After all of these years--decades--This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio still has the best fans a little mutant radio show could ever want.



Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Music can be absolute, but its power doesn't corrupt; it redeems. It can be a shared experience, a solitary experience, something as unique or as universal as our needs dictate. The power is sublime. The power is ours.

And Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, we get to call on that power, and make it shine. Sight gags on the radio. The Greatest Record Ever Made. The American Beatles, Her Majesty's Ramones, our designated House Band The Kinks, and some unfamiliar but irresistible reminder that radio's job is to sell records. All of it, and more. Feel the power; it belongs to you, too. 

And if we've told you once, we've told you a thousand times: this is what rock 'n' roll radio sounds like on a Sunday night in Syracuse each week. We're glad to have you with us. Together, we're boppin' the whole friggin' planet.

In the palatial TIRnRR studio with our pals Rich and Kathy Firestone

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You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, 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).

BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO), Part 8: Starting Over

Continuing the history of our little mutant radio show This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl, as we near the unlikely-but-true occasion of our 1000th episode on Sunday, November 10th. You are but a click away from each of the preceding chapters: Chapter 1: The Kids Are Alright, Chapter 2: We're Your Friends For Now!, Chapter 3: I'll Send You a Tape From Central New York, Chapter 4: Hello There, Whole Friggin' Planet, Chapter 5: Sound Of The Radio, Chapter 6: Crafting Mixtapes In The Digital Age (or: Dana & Carl Make A CD), and Chapter 7: Changing All Those Changes. Hey! Speakin' of changes, here's Chapter 8.

OUR STORY SO FAR: It's December of 2006. This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio has managed to hang on for eight years, find an audience on the internet as the radio station's music programming migrated to webcasting, release two compilation CDs, score an eensy bit of notoriety, and continue its unique quest to perform sight gags on the radio. A Syracuse New Times cover story on Dana & Carl is followed immediately by Syracuse Community Radio informing us of its decision to cease webcasting and pull the plug on TIRnRR.

We are not pleased with this.

12/17/2006: Merry Christmas, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio.

Having just been informed that our show had less than a month left to live, Dana and I seethed our way through The Eighth Annual (and presumably final) This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show. We were pissed. I was especially angered that we had managed to get some much-needed publicity for the station with the New Times cover story, and it was all being tossed away. It was reminiscent of the situation back in June of 1992, when WNMA, the host of our TIRnRR predecessor We're Your Friends For Now!, similarly told us the end was nigh as we soldiered our way through a Sounds Of Summer show. But there was one key difference between the end of We're Your Friends For Now! in 1992 and the sight of the Grim Reaper's scythe descending upon in TIRnRR in 2006.

This time? Man, this time we were gonna fight back. 

In fairness, I have to say that we understood the why of the SCR Board of Directors' decision to kill the webcast. Syracuse Community Radio's whole raison d'etre was and remains to establish and maintain a community radio station, and that meant getting and staying on the air, not necessarily on the internet. We still had WXXE-FM out in its remote Fenner, NY location, struggling to beam its paperweight signal to someone somewhere. WXXE's programming by then was purely a placeholder, kept on the air with a cheaper talk-radio format--prohibitive licensing costs made music programming out of the question--and continued only to retain our FCC license. That license was more valuable than the station itself, and even though its signal was virtually worthless, SCR needed to keep it going if there was ever to be any hope of advancing to something better.

Although the webcast was the only way anyone could actually hear any of SCR's original programming, it was hemorrhaging money. Something had to be done, and it had to be done quickly. The board didn't kill the webcast out of spite or pettiness; it did what it had to do for the organization to survive.

The fact that we understood and appreciated all of the above did nothing to appease our ire. It was if Joe Strummer himself whispered in our ears: Let fury have the hour, anger can be power...!



Danny Danhauser was the board member most sympathetic to our cause. If Andy Chertow was also on the board at the time--I don't remember--then he would have been on our side as well. By whatever means of negotiation and finagling, it was agreed that the programmers themselves could be allowed an opportunity to find some way to save the webcast.

"The programmers" in this example basically meant Dana & Carl. As self-aggrandizing as that statement may appear, it was also true. TIRnRR was the only show on SCR with any consistent record of bringing in donations from listeners. Our support wasn't nearly enough to keep that ship afloat by itself, but our fans had always stepped up when we asked them. And we had fans. Those fans helped SCR out of budget crunches before. It was time to call upon them again.

Within days after we received the webcast's death sentence, we sent this notice to the friends and fans of TIRnRR:

Is this the end of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio? We hope not, but things could look a lot better than they do right now.

On January 7th, Syracuse Community Radio will hold an emergency meeting to discuss whether or not to pull the plug on SCR's webcast, a project which has proven to be an enormous drain on the station's worse-than-limited resources. Currently, we have about $3600 in immediate debt, with an additional $1800 in licensing fees set to kick in on January 1st. On top of what we already owe, the webcast costs $407 a month, yet brings in only about $150 a month in contributions. This situation can not continue, and our system needs to be revamped, but right now we're asking for your help.

First, we need a lot of money, FAST. Our timing stinks--the week before Christmas may not be the best time to hit people up for donations to keep The Bay City Rollers on their media player, but we can't control that. We don't expect anyone to go into hock on our behalf, nor do we wish you to bypass donations to any of your other favorite causes. That said, we know that if someone doesn't step up, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio is history.



We offered a promise to fans and contributors: There will be no wasting of your good money after bad. Send what you can. We won't cash a single check unless and until the webcast has a viable path forward. If we fail, we will return all of your checks immediately. If we succeed, you will have saved This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio. Period. A decision will be rendered at an emergency SCR board meeting on January 7th, 2007. Save us. Please save us.

The response was...damn, I still get choked just thinking about it. The response was amazing. They liked us. They really liked us.

News of our desperate plea spread through the internet pop community. Jeremy Morris and JAM Recordings, home of the two TIRnRR compilations CDs, stepped up with incentives to offer potential donors, and other labels and artists kicked in, too. Pop web sites talked us up. Money started to pour in. Our former SCR colleague Eric Strattman wrote us to say he envisioned something like the climactic scene of It's A Wonderful Life, with friends hauling basket after basket of cold cash into that January 7th board meeting, some equivalent of Uncle Billy proclaiming, It's a MIRACLE! Nobody asked why, all they had to hear was Dana & Carl are in trouble, and they all wanted to help!


The reality was slightly less flamboyant, but it was essentially the same. Dana and I showed up for the meeting and informed the board that we had raised thousands of dollars, and not a dime of it could go to anything other than a continued webcast. I will cherish the memory of the shocked look on the faces of the board members for as long as I dance upon this earth.

The meeting was on a Sunday. That night, Dana and I returned to the studio for the final TIRnRR under our old arrangement. We were able to announce the news our fans were aching to hear:

Eight years, brothers and sisters. Eight years, and still here.



Details remained to be finalized. Sensing that the balance of power had shifted a bit, I drew a hard line in negotiations, insisting on some parameters that would not be subject to debate. It was a divorce settlement. We would agree to pay SCR a lump sum of money in exchange for all of the studio equipment, and we would set up a new independent webcast under the auspices of the Westcott Community Center, which had been home to our cramped little studio from the beginning. Some board members wanted more money than we were willing to give, but we made it clear: This is it. Not another penny, because we were saving the rest of the money to operate our new webcast. Take it or leave it.

They took it. And Westcott Radio was born.



Our 1/7/07 show had been our year-end countdown, playing back what we played a lot over the course of the preceding twelve months. Our # 1 most-played track in 2006 was "Should Have Been Mine" by The Catholic Girls, and with that, we bid farewell to the soon-to-be defunct wxxe.org. A new incarnation awaited us. We'd been pronounced dead. But we got by with a little help from our friends.

WHEN BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET RETURNS: Reach Out Of The Darkness

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, 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).

BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET (The History Of THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO), Part 7: Changing All Those Changes

Continuing the history of our little mutant radio show This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl, as we near the unlikely-but-true occasion of our 1000th episode on Sunday, November 10th. You are but a click away from each of the preceding chapters: Chapter 1: The Kids Are Alright, Chapter 2: We're Your Friends For Now!, Chapter 3: I'll Send You a Tape From Central New York, Chapter 4: Hello There, Whole Friggin' Planet, Chapter 5: Sound Of The Radio, and Chapter 6: Crafting Mixtapes In The Digital Age (or: Dana & Carl Make A CD). Time for Chapter 7.

OUR STORY SO FAR: Dana & Carl had hoodwink...CONVINCED Jeremy Morris of JAM Recordings to release a compilation CD, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 1. YEAH, baby! Except that when we sent him the compilation in 2003, he didn't like it, and didn't want to release it unless we made some changes.

Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Once we accepted Jeremy's wish to cut our DJ banter tracks out of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 1, it really wasn't difficult to revamp the CD into the sort of purely music compilation he had in mind. 

And it's worth reiterating that Jeremy was right; the other day, I listened again to the original, unreleased beta version of the compilation, and it doesn't hold up anywhere near as well as the released version does. The banter is a distraction, and I think the CD would not have been quite as well received if it had been released in its original incarnation. I like some of the individual bits of silliness, particularly "East Side Story...?!" (which was me warbling lines from Mad magazine's early '60s West Side Story parody, as Dana somehow makes his scornful glare audible), but excising them was a good call on Jeremy's part. 


So the changes were easy. We wanted a couple more tracks to make up the difference in running time. Jeremy supplied The Shambles' fantastic cover of the Connie Francis nugget "Warm This Winter." We contacted Lugless Booth to secure permission to use his track "I Blame His Brother," a TIRnRR Fave Rave about a songwriter trying to get a tune to Joey Ramone, but who is blocked at every turn by Joey's brother Mickey Leigh; demonstrating his own sense of humor, Mickey Leigh himself mixed the track. 

We did insist on leaving one of the original banter tracks in, and Jeremy agreed that "The Ballad Of Jah Clampett," our mock reggae reading of the theme from The Beverly Hillbillies, made an appropriately goofy and agreeable closing track. We switched out two other selections: Jeremy wanted to use "If We Try" on his own album, and directed us to use his track "What God Wants" instead; we decided that Sex Clark Five's "Japan Under The Sun" didn't work in context, and the band granted us permission to substitute "She's The End/Great Sheiks." We tweaked the sequence one more time for maximum punch, and This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 1 was completed by late 2003, maybe early 2004 at the latest. Scott Jameson of CNY Radio Archives, sat in with us to research an article about us and the station, and we felt like big shots. Even as the expense of music broadcasting prompted Syracuse Community Radio to switch to an all-talk format on WXXE-FM, our webcasting continued as before. And that's where our audience was anyway.

A TIRnRR CD compilation. I wrote the liner notes, Dana came up with graphics, and Jeremy lined up a professional to do the mastering. It seemed to take forever to happen, but the CD--OUR FIRST CD!--was finally released in January of 2005. Reviews and reaction were very positive, and Dana and I wanted to do a sequel immediately.


Alas, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2 was a troubled production from start to finish. Maybe we should have waited longer between volumes, though I don't know how much that quick turnaround did or didn't damage the process; perhaps the length of time it took to compile, complete, and release Volume 1 prompted us to rush the process of Volume 2. For whatever reason, it was a more contentious project overall. Most of the individual tracks were fantastic, as good as anything on Volume 1. But...troubled. It was a troubled production.

But you know what? Screw the troubles. It's a very good album, with simply ace contributions from John Wicks & the Records (whom our friend Rich Rossi brought to the TIRnRR table), Screen Test, Eytan Mirsky, astroPuppees, Cloud Eleven, The Spongetones, The Grip Weeds, Tim Anthony, Jim Basnight, and The Dipsomaniacs, among others. Jeremy suggested we use "I Just Wanna Stay At Home," a terrific track by The Blondes, but I asked if we could sub in The Blondes' tribute to my rock 'n' roll crush Suzi Quatro; I believe Jeremy chuckled, and made it so.



Our biggest thrill in putting together Volume 2 was securing a track from The Cowsills. We had been corresponding with Bob Cowsill, who expressed his support for whatever the hell it is we do on the radio, and especially for our embrace of The Cowsills' Global album, the best record of the '90s. We asked Bob if we could use "She Said To Me," a simply wonderful track from Global, on TIRnRR # 2. Our timing was awful. In August of 2005, as we were assembling tracks for our frivolous little compilation, the members of The Cowsills were frantically looking for brother Barry Cowsill, who was missing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Barry's body was discovered later that month. In the midst of this horror, Bob sent us an email granting permission to use "She Said To Me." I still can't believe he bothered with us at all during that difficult time. The Cowsills are good people, and we will always wish them the best (and we can't wait to hear their new album in 2020).

Landmark Theater Syracuse, 2019, L-R: Paul Cowsill, my lovely wife Brenda, anonymous blogger, Susan Cowsill, that other TIRnRR guy, and Bob Cowsill

A friend of mine--Mike Paduana, then the owner of a great little shop called Metropolis Book Store in North Syracuse--heard The Flashcubes' "Carl (You Da Man)" on Volume 1 and said, well, that could be about any guy named Carl. So he wrote a song called "Carl Cafarelli" for his group Beauty Scene Outlaws. The song was actually an outgrowth of a melody Mike had written, a melody his bandmates said sounded like a Carl Cafarelli type of song. They may not have meant that as a compliment. Nonetheless: melody, meet lyrics. Lyrics, melody. Don't you know Carl Cafarelli's on? I liked it, and it was an automatic go for This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2.

Another song we were eager to include was Mr. Encrypto's a cappella mix of "The Last Time," the isolated vocal tracks from a full-band cut on the first Mr. Encrypto album, Hero And Villain. We adored this one, but Jeremy did not share our enthusiasm. It was one of two tracks on Volume 2 that he asked us to remove; we reluctantly surrendered on the other track (an unfortunate decision that damaged our relationship with the act we had to drop from the CD), but held firm with "The Last Time." Jeremy accepted the compromise. He, in turn, had a track he had secured from another artist, and we didn't think it fit our CD at all. But it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation, so the track did indeed wind up on TIRnRR # 2, our objections notwithstanding.

For all its troubles, This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 2 turned out well. I wrote liner notes, Dana did the art, Jeremy had it mastered, and JAM Recordings released it in the latter part of 2006. Good reviews, and, I think, ultimately a good feeling for all of us. We did a CD release party at Metropolis Book Store, with performances by Beauty Scene Outlaws, Tim Anthony, and The Fallen Archies, and a giddy aura of satisfaction. My friend Dave Murray wrote a cover story about TIRnRR for The Syracuse New Times. That issue of the New Times hit the stands in December of 2006. Dana and I figured we were riding pretty high.




The ink wasn't even dry on our SNT cover story when Syracuse Community Radio informed us of its sudden (to us) decision to pull the plug on our webcast. We were greeted with that bombshell as we arrived at the studio for The Eighth Annual This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio Christmas Show on December 17th 2006, the Sunday following our fleeting moment of New Times stardom. Too costly, was the summary explanation for the webcast's imminent termination, perhaps (and perhaps not) accompanied by a Sorry, boys or a Thank you for all you've done, boys. Looking into the future, all we could see now was the end of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl.

Well, actually, we saw one other thing.

We saw red.

WHEN BOPPIN' THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' PLANET Returns: Starting Over

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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, 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).