Last night the family and I drove over to Weber's, an old-fashioned, American Graffiti-style drive-in near us for after-dinner milkshakes and root beer floats. I recently loaded The Cars' first album on my iPod to please my wife during summer drives. It's on of her high school favorites, and I figured it would be a good time to introduce our boys to the album on our short drive. A massive thunderstorm broke out, so the normally 5-minute drive took a good 20 minutes. We ended up letting the album play out as we enjoyed our desserts. The boys warmed up to the album after our oldest son's initial "What's this music?!?!" as "Let the Good Times Roll" kicked things off. My wife loved every minute of it, and I got to thinking about the days when commercial radio stations played more than one track from a new album - and more than one track from an artist, for that matter.

Long before I bought a used vinyl copy of the first Cars album and long after having seen them at Philadelphia's soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum, at my first-ever rock concert (Greg Kihn Band opened, playing "Roadrunner," which at the time I had no idea was connected to Cars' drummer David Robinson - and yes, I can see how the fact that this connection came to me while sucking down a root beer float last night might be seen as pathetic) I knew every song on that first album. Late on a Sunday night, FM radio stations in the late-'70s occasionally featured a new release in its entirety, but that's not how I knew every song on this new album, The Cars. Rather it was because, in those days, there were occasionally new albums, over the course of the album's first few months on the market, radio stations would incorporate into their playlists almost in their entirety. I don't know what kind of payola system was in place for this to happen, how much coke satin-clad DJs snorted off the nipples of hookers, or what, but older heads will recall: there was a time when a new album often resulted in three or four tracks being played on the radio. As in the case of the first Cars album, there were even albums that DJs felt confident dropping the needle down at any point. I'm not dreaming, am I? As I listened to The Cars last night it occurred to me that the album contained not a single deep cut in its time!

I was trying to remember other albums on which every song was regularly played on the radio during the first few months of the album's release. Only counting albums that I would have heard when they were fresh (ie, classic Beatles, Stones, and Who albums from the '60s and early '70s, which had been featured in whole on the likes of A-Z Weekends [remember them?] do not count for me), I thought of The Rolling Stones' Some Girls, The Cars, and then two albums that probably mark the tail-end of this phenomenon - and that may have each spawned an album's worth of songs that charted, Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA. I've never owned the last two albums and I was already too-cool-for-school when they invaded the airwaves, but there was no getting around hearing every track on those albums played to death on commercial radio.

Are there other albums like that from your experience? Again, weed out any Classic Rock albums that you've heard on the radio years after they were released; keep it fresh. Has there been an album since the MJ and Boss records that reached this status? Maybe Nirvana's Nevermind was the last to come close, but what do I know about albums that have been released and played on the radio since? Could you ever imagine anything like this happening again? Are the days of DJs doing coke off a hooker's nipples that far in the past?

In my high school days, when staying up on Saturday nights, or whenever, to catch the half-hour syndicated, pre-cable music television show Rockworld was a highlight of my week, I'd look forward to catching some exciting New Wave artist I'd been reading about in Trouser Press, Creem, and any other off-the-beaten path rock mag I could get my hands on. One night I saw the video for The Beat's "Different Kind of Girl." They may have already been known in the US as "Paul Collins' Beat," to avoid confusion with the ska band, but it felt cool to refer to them as "The Beat" too. I immediately found this song really catchy and classic. The video, if memory serves, was done on a classic white background. One of the guys, maybe the drummer, wore a horizontal striped shirt. I used to think they were cool. The band members all had modified moptops, which, I'll explain to younger folks who may be rolling their eyes as they read this, was pretty cool in the late-'70s. I wish I could find that video. I've remembered it and the song fondly over the last 30+ years, but today I realized that I never bothered to follow up on anything by Paul Collins and The Beat. I don't know why, but I think I had a sense that hearing even one more song by this band might ruin the unexpectedly simple joy I got from "Different Kind of Girl."

At the time, I easily could have bought the album including that song. Today I could go on YouTube and watch a half dozen videos by Collins from that period. There's probably a site where I could download that album, be it legally or not. I know he's thought highly of among fans of New Wave and Power Pop music, styles of music I've got plenty of familiarity with. I used to own the first two albums by 20/20, but I've never heard another song by The Beat - Paul Collins' The Beat, that is. I don't know why. For that matter I've never heard a song by Nick Gilder other than "Hot Child in the City," and that's another great single from my youth!

Is there a song you love by an artist you've never bothered to further investigate?

King Strasburg

In honor of pitcher Steven Strasburg's remarkable debut for the Washington Nationals last night, can we compile the Top 10 Debut Singles in Rock 'n Roll? Let's keep it to singles rather than albums, which we've been over before. We'll have to don the Pince Nez to make sure our suggestions are actual debut singles. If a small indie release is an artist's first single before a better-known single on a larger label, them's the breaks, but there are those who might argue that R.E.M.'s original "Radio Free Europe" single is worthy of inclusion on this list.

OK, let's get to it. This shouldn't be too hard, right?

Some of us are old...

Do you remember your first music-playing device, be it a record player, 8-track, cassette player, Walkman, CD player, or for our youngest Townspeople, mp3 player? Care to describe it? Does anything stand out in your memory about it?

I had a record player that was plastic, olive-green, and textured on the outside. Flip up the top and the plastic was off-white - also textured, to better pick up smudges from my dirty hands. The turntable itself was brown. I can't remember for sure if the arm was brown or off-white, but I remember my shakey hands were always challenged by lifting the arm onto a specific track. The cord was a 2-pronged brown affair. I experienced my first electric shock on that cord, leaving one of my fingers between the prongs as I plugged it in. Ouch!

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Get over it!

I went shopping this morning for an interesting box set for a friend who turned 50 today. He's a cool, smart guy and big Bob Dylan fan but not what you'd call a hardcore music nerd. His taste in the folkier side of '60s and '70s rock is pretty solid, though, and in recent years he's begun to dig deeper into a couple of previously obscure artists, like Nick Drake. He'll often ask me questions about new avenues he wants to take. About 2 years ago he wanted to check out The Who Sell Out, after reading the typical critics' darling hype. Of course I told him to go for it. He did, and he still brings it up now and then. He generally likes it, but it's taking him some work.

I saw a new Richard Thompson box set, Walking on a Wire: Richard Thompson (1968-2009), and I was reaching for it before I saw the parenthetical year span in the title. Dammit, I thought, I'm not supporting Thompson for all the crap he's released since hitching up with Mitchell Froom! Some of you may recall I usually dislike Froom's sparkling kitchen sink approach to production. It keeps me locked out from getting inside the music.

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Walk on by...

I was listening to the first two dB's albums on my iPod the other night, and I forgot that the CD I burned to my iTunes had some singles tacked on. Years ago I landed a six-pack of early dB's singles, which along with awesome cover art included some songs I'd never heard on the two albums I'd been playing to death in the year leading up to that purchase. Way back when and again the other night I was underwhelmed by the song "Soul Kiss." I remembered how hearing that song became a Holy Grail issue for me when I was 18 years old. I remembered how finally hearing it didn't live up to the advance billing I'd somehow accepted as gospel.

Another Holy Grail that I shouldn't have bothered chasing was that first Buzzcocks ep, Spiral Scratch. It took me about 10 years to finally shell out for that bad boy, and it sucks. The Buzzcocks aren't the Buzzcocks, to me, without Pete Shelley singing lead. I never minded Howard Devoto singing for Magazine, despite never finding that band half as appealing as the Shelley and Steve Diggle-led Buzzcocks, but Spiral Scratch is not an ep I'd ever recommend tracking down and paying top dollar for - or even buying at a reasonable price as a CD reissue with bonus tracks, as I did.

You may disagree with my particular nonrecommendations, but I'm most interested in hearing your own walk-on-by nonrecommendations.

I was looking through a boxes of burned CDs looking for something (can't even remember WHAT I was looking for) and found the CD of Martin Newell's Greatest Living Englishman. It's been easily 10+ years since I listened to this disc (maybe because it was in with my "junk" cds and not in it's proper case...and also then did not make the great migration to the iPod in 2005).

I played it this moring and thought "How Did This LP Get Away?"

Do any Townspeople have a CD/LP/cassette that you totally forgot about, found, and wondered how you let it get away?

WORLD's GREATEST BAND! THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS!... I'm not going to make any claims on anyone else's behalf, but for me, I found that The Rolling Stones and The Clash, Twin Towers of live rock 'n roll credibility, were sorely disappointing live and actually seemed to derive as much as their legendary status and goodwill from studio wizardry as frequently derided bands, such as ELO and The Monkees. I never got to see the early Clash, documented at their ferocious live peak in the film Rude Boy (eg, the "Complete Control" footage above), but it seems to me that once they expanded their studio sound with the excellent London Calling and the rich Sandinista, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon couldn't keep up, couldn't present their newer music adequately in a live setting, and at the same time lost the focus to deliver the old stuff. Who knows, maybe that was poor Brian Jones' fault too.

Have you ever felt this way about any band you love that was hyped up as having tremendous live cred? Do I just feel this way because I tend to be a "record" guy rather than a live guy, or have you too ever been psyched to see some "amazing" live band only to leave the show looking forward to getting back to their crafted studio records?

This thread won't apply to everybody. For younger record nerds who have come of age in an era when downloads of just about any obscure album can be found for free on the web if you search long enough, there's little risk in accumulating all the mp3s your heart desires. The anxieties that older rock nerds have experienced may not ring true. It must be nice.

Some of you have already walked down the endless path of the hardcore record collector. There's no stopping you now, and if that's the case, more power to you! A part of me wishes I hadn't been scared off this path, but I was, by two once hard-to-find purchases I made when I was 18: a bootleg of the Sex Pistols' last show at San Francisco's Winterland and Iggy Pop and The Stooges' semi-bootleg document of that band's last show, Metallic K.O. As I said, today you could probably download these albums in the comfort of your home in less than 20 minutes. In 1981, a teenage boy without much cash to spare had to make a great investment of time and money to locate these albums and bring them home, with no opportunity to sample selected tracks for free on some blog. What if this bootleg I'm tempted to spend $20 on sucks? What if I hear more of the dude who illegally taped the show hooting and hollering for his favorite songs than I do the band?

Worse yet: What if the bootleg was a dreaded, DOA board mix, with little more than vocals and kick drum?

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In other words, "Go All the Way" and "Let's Pretend."

The subject line says it all. Thanks to Townsman Mwall for suggesting the topic. In the digital download age this is no longer an issue, but growing up, when vinyl was the main mode of music delivery, we sometimes shelled out for a Greatest Hits or Best of... album by an artist we really wished had made available their two to four worthwhile songs on a less-expensive double A-side single or EP.

What I ask of you is that you share actual purchases of this nature and not witty attempts at listing every possible 1-hit wonder with a Greatest Hits or Best of... album that you never bought or intended to buy. In other words, be real.

The first such album that came to mind for me is pictured above.