Whither The Black Cassette?

If you haven't guessed - & assuming you care - I haven't been doing very well during the current KOOP Membership Drive. I get lots of calls during my show, & hardly any of them are people telling me to fuck off & die, so I can only guess why this radio show I work so hard for is incapable of raising any money for the radio station I love.

Maybe these are some reasons:

1) Everyone's just being nice. I suck.
2) People who might listen to my show like other KOOP shows better & give their money to that show.
3) My Membership Drive shows haven't been very good.

I am a sensitive soul & it has broken my already flimsy heart to not do very well, & I do expect there will come a time when there's no more Self Help Radio on KOOP. But while there is, I might as well continue to do this blog.

If it's any consolation - even if everyone who read this blog gave money to Self Help Radio, I'd still not be doing very well. I see the stats. Do you know how many people looked at this blog since last Wednesday? 28 hits. & some of you come more than once.

What's that? You didn't know you were invited to a Pity Party? Indeed! You are the Pity Party Pooper!

As I finish my fourth decade on this planet, I am strangely out of step - I find it hard to believe I was in college twenty years ago, & that there are some albums that I've known for longer than I've known most of the people I know. So - as a kind of therapy for me - for this last Membership Drive show, I thought I'd revisit that time period. I was a very depressed & lonely boy & the music I loved reflected that. The band My Favorite have a song called "The Black Cassette" (if you haven't heard it, the lyrics are here) which describes what could have been for me the summer of 1987. Or 1988. Or even 1998 if you want to make a big to-do of it, except I was on the road to figuring some shit out by then.

The show this week will be my reconstruction of what my black cassette might have been in those days. It may be a little too dark for an afternoon show - I'll be playing Joy Division, for fuck's sake! - but let's face it, I'm not going to make any more money for KOOP than I already have. So instead I'll just play music that's been in my head & heart for nearly twenty years now.

Afterwards, of course, we'll be jamming the Suicide Hotline. Call them early.