I Can't Begin, I Must Begin

Hi, my name is Gary & I am a self-conscious old douchebag who has been doing radio in Austin since the middle of the 1990s. I am hungry for your love & attention, but I am also possessed of a daunting modesty that many people would call "embarrassment," so the idea of having something like a "blog" makes me feel only slightly more comfortable than a root canal on a cruise ship full of evacuees from a war-torn country. But here I go. God help me.

I do this radio show, see, called "Self Help Radio," see. It has nothing to do with Self Help. It has everything to do with Radio. I believe that Radio (with a capital R, like a German noun) will not only save our lives, it might also help us with the Old Dude Upstairs. I confess, I'd love to make money doing Radio. The trouble is, there are only a few people making money doing radio these days, & those people might be called "programmers," except that word doesn't mean "the people who program the material being played on the radio"; instead, it means "the people who program the robots that produce most of the radio in the world." That's right, your FM dial is filled with robots. & I don't just mean the Bob Dylan Robot that just released a new record, neither. I mean you are listening to radio in your town that was created by someone living in some corporate tower in the middle of Somewhere Else, America, & it's being played to you by robots.

You know this. I am just trying to be silly. I won't ever make a dime off radio, but I will make friends & I will have a chance to play music I love & music you'll love, & I'll also get the chance to say, with voice a-trembling, "This Radio Station is Robot-Free!" Because I deejay at a station here in Austin called KOOP (pronounced either K-O-O-P or KO-OP, never like the last name of Reagan's Surgeon General, although sometimes it can feel stuffy & there might be chickens about) which is a community radio station with dozens of programmers who are all volunteers. I used to deejay at a college radio station called KVRX, which shares the frequency with us ("KOOP on during the day, KVRX at night" is the rule) & is like our bratty younger sibling with cooler hair & better access to the latest drugs. I have been doing this Radio stuff since the summer of 1994, & my current show, which is the name of this "blog" (just writing that makes my gall bladder throb), I have been doing for about four years now. So enough about robots. Let's talk about the show.

The name Self Help Radio is a private joke, as once someone told me, "Gary, your life is all about self-help." But it can mean a million other things, too, you know. It can mean I am helping myself on the radio, or it can mean you are helping yourself to radio, or it can mean that listening to me has a therapeutic affect on people whose minds have been completely destroyed by electroshock therapy, or it can mean that it's a chance to hear new, different musics. Create your own definition! Start your own blog! Be your own best friend! I'm not always going to be around to bail your out when your shenanagins get you in trouble, babe.

I like to organize the show around what I call "themes." (An esoteric word, I know. Look it up.) These themes hopefully lend themselves to interesting music & informative airbreaks & possibly ridiculous on-air commentary. Recent themes have included motorcycles, pearls, love letters & people who used to have chins but for some reason don't appear to anymore. (Okay, that one was made up.) I will also occasionally feature a single artist, usually to beg people to support the station during a Membership Drive (like a tribute to David Bowie last April, & an upcoming tribute to the Velvet Underground in a few weeks, or the tribute to the late Arthur Lee & his band Love after his sad demise in August). Sometimes the amateur etymologist in me will become fixated on a word or phrase - I have done shows in which the songs admonish you to "wake up!" or are asking you to "do it" without quite explaining what it is you are supposed to do. & I have the obligatory annual shows I annually, generally once a year. I do a show on my birthday (which is in January) which is a kind of creeping "best of" from the year of my birth on - I've done 1968, 1969 & 1970, & so this January, my favorite records from 1971. I do a Valentine's show, a South By Southwest show, a Halloween Show, a My Favorite Stuff From The Year show, & a Christmas show. The rest of the time, it's really about what sorts of themes pop into my head the moments before that head hits the floor after my girlfriend sucker punches me during our nightly "practice fights" (or what she calls "foreplay.")

These are a few of my upcoming themes:

091506: Sugar
092206: The Yellow Show
092906: The Sleepy Show
100606: A Tribute To The Velvet Underground

Do I take requests? Yes! For both songs to play & themes? Yes! Do I read haikus on the air! Yes! Can you write a haiku for me to read on the air? Please! (See my website for details on that.) Can you listen to old shows on your website? Yes! Will I come over to your house & clean the wasps' nest on the porch? No! Can you look forward to long-ass blog entries like this which are more tedious than promotional? Absolutely!

Now that that's all done, I hope you'll listen, & maybe become more involved. Later on, we'll talk about getting more involved. I'll also be talking about the eeriness of my fingernails, which grow & grow & grow, without regard for common decency or public approbation. That'll be riveting.

Fridays 4:30 to 6:00pm on 91.7 KOOP Austin, online at www.koop.org. See you there, beautiful.