{"id":15221,"date":"2014-02-12T11:38:28","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T16:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15221"},"modified":"2014-02-12T11:38:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T16:38:28","slug":"midweek-music-break-the-rockin-rebels-wild-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/midweek-music-break-the-rockin-rebels-wild-weekend\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: The Rockin’ Rebels, “Wild Weekend”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"'WildB<\/span>ack in 2007, I started a Valentine’s Day tradition for The Missus. (Like many\/most such things, it didn’t become a tradition until the third time around.) It’s not a big deal — just something in the Things I Do category: I work up a mix CD for her.<\/p>\n

All of these CDs share a common series title, which is something of an in-joke between us (and so not shared here). Each year’s CD, furthermore, has its own theme, usually based on the title of the first or last song on the disc; the songs are selected because the theme plays a major role in their title, source, context, lyrics… whatever. I usually start coming up with possible themes during the preceding fall. I forget most of these preliminary ideas, but pretty much have the final one selected by sometime in January. The master list of possibles — dozens of songs — gets put together by the first week of February. And from then on, it’s a matter of whittling things down so they fit onto one side of a disc — roughly 21 or 22 songs, of about an hour’s total length — \u00a0in a sequence which both makes sense and sounds right.<\/p>\n

All of which may sound wonderfully romantic.<\/p>\n

But in fact, by the time I’ve spent a few hours during that last marathon through the full list I start to get a little tired, tired and bored and punchy. I start to grab at and cling to songs because they’re “interesting” to me, or (worse) “funny” to me — but not necessarily to her<\/em>.\u00a0Alas, in a few cases these songs have made it into the final cut. But I do fight this impulse (the expression “Kill your darlings,” y’know, doesn’t refer only to editing your own writing<\/em>). Some of the oddest<\/em> songs end up on the last-minute cutting-room floor.<\/p>\n

T<\/span>oday’s selection here at RAMH<\/em>\u00a0was one of the oddballs culled from this year’s mix.<\/p>\n

It never became a Monster Hit; I think the highest it went on the charts was around #7 or #8. Written by a trio of high-school students in the late 1950s, it was first released in 1960 — on a label owned by Tom Shannon, the DJ who first set words to it as a theme song for his Buffalo (NY) radio program.<\/p>\n

A couple of odd things in the above photo: First, most obviously, there’s no Rockin’<\/em> in the group’s name. They came up with that “enhancement” to avoid possible problems with\u00a0another<\/em> band called The Rebels, fronted by Duane Eddy<\/a>.\u00a0Second, the “Todaro-Shannon” credited as the song’s writers were, respectively, the guy who owned the studio where the band first did their recording, and — yes — the DJ.<\/p>\n

I’d never known the song had even commercial lyrics until seeing The Rebels’ Wikipedia article, which lists one version (maybe the original jingle) like this:<\/p>\n

Tommy Shannon Show <\/em>
\nKB Radio <\/em>
\nGreat times, news and weather <\/em>
\nThis is the place where things get better <\/em>
\nOn the…… Tom Shannon Show <\/em>
\nKB radio…<\/em><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, by the time the song finally took off, the lyrics were gone. (The first time I heard it was on an album which also introduced me to “96 Teardrops,” by ? and the Mysterians. I covered that song in a post here, in 2009<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:18 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:wildweekend_rockinrebels.mp3|titles=’Wild Weekend’|artists=The Rockin’ Rebels]<\/div>\n

“Wild Weekend” was recast as (no kidding) “Wild Weekend Cha-Cha,” which appeared on the flip side of later releases of the 45rpm record. You can hear that version over on YouTube<\/a>. It was also given real lyrics in the 1980s by NRBQ — one of those long-lived bands (like the Dead, or Phish) with a devoted following, and possibly worthy of multiple blog posts in its own right. Their version was slightly retitled to “It’s a Wild Weekend,” and NRBQ uses no saxophones, but otherwise, yeah, it’s the same song:<\/p>\n

[Below, click Play button to begin <\/em>It’s a Wild Weekend. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:30 long.]<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

[audio:itsawildweekend_nrbq.mp3|titles=’It’s a Wild Weekend’|artists=NRBQ]<\/div>\n

[Lyrics<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2007, I started a Valentine’s Day tradition for The Missus. (Like many\/most such things, it didn’t become a tradition until the third time around.) It’s not a big deal — just something in the Things I Do category: I work up a mix CD for her. All of these CDs share a common […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,2252,74],"tags":[484,985,3730,3731],"class_list":{"0":"post-15221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-themissus","7":"category-midweek-music-break","8":"category-music","9":"tag-oldies","10":"tag-valentines-day","11":"tag-rockin-rebels","12":"tag-nrbq","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Xv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15221"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15228,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15221\/revisions\/15228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}