Howdy! It's Zeke Moonshine!

As promised, here's a Pony Express missive letting you know that this week's episode of the Zeke Moonshine Show - starring Zeke Moonshine - as well as old timey country & blues musicians like Wilmer Watts, Ken Maynard, Casey Bill Weldon, the Girls Of The Golden West, Patsy Montana, Skip James, Bukka White & much, much more - is now available for your listening pleasure at self help radio dot net.

If you're not interested, might I suggest you stare at this lovely photo of the Girls Of The Golden West until you find yourself in the mood?



Please remember, though Zeke has his own still, he starts drinking & playing records long before you get there. Bring your own!

Caps Lock On!

I'll probably be talking about this more as we get nearer to the time, but the Saturday shows I do - Dickenbock Electronics, Tags & Tricks, & The Zeke Moonshine Show - will be postponed - not preempted - while I am busy the next two Saturdays in a row.

NOT THIS SATURDAY! Tomorrow will be the Zeke Moonshine show as promised!

But the Saturday after next I'll be at a wedding in (of all places) Missouri, & then the next week - if the creek is willing & the Good Lord don't rise - the wife & I will try to attend Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity. (Actually, I want to go to that one - the wife wants to attend Stephen Colbert's March To Keep Fear Alive.)

This means that the Saturday shows, bless 'em, get pushed ahead a fortnight. Will you ever forgive me?

I'll mention it as the time draws ever so near. But tomorrow Zeke will be here. I PROMISE!

Hap-py An-ni-ver-sar-y!

The 8th Anniversary show is now up for listening & stuff at self help radio dot net! You will have to bring your own cake & party hats. I ate it all when the show aired this morning.

On the show I gave shout-outs to all the nice people who subbed over the years but can I do it also on this blog so I will be able to read about it later when I am sober? All right then!

Big thanks & much love to Little Danny, to CJ Buchanan, to Lisa & Jay who kept the show warm while I was on a winter vacation to Europe, to Art who took the helm on Tax Day 2007, to Justin whose excellent show I miss a great deal, to my apprentices who graduated into programmership after they took over my show for a day: the lovely & whip-smart Erin, the lovely & smart-alecky Stephanie, & the lovely & grizzled Gary, who I miss & whose tattoos appear regularly in my nightmares. Finally, a big thanks to Delaney, who didn't have to make a big deal of subbing SHR but did.

I don't think I missed anyone, but maybe I did. You should tell me. I calculated that I've done over four hundred Self Help Radio shows, so I hardly gave others a chance, but I should thank the nice folks who let ME sub THEIR show over the last few years too: the Jennifers &, later, Lace, for letting me sit in the sweet seat at the late, lamented Ear Candy; Scott for sharing his noisy space at Stronger Than Dirt; Jason & Joanna, for letting me babysit their baby Pot Luck before they flew the Austin nest; Andrew, whose Heliocentric Hootenanny is very much missed; Tracy & Smokehouse who did two great blues shows on different stations on the same frequency; Little Danny who trusted me twice to handle Soul Sauce; Taylor whose Queer Waves was always better when he did it instead of me or anyone else; Mark who let me dabble in the prog without being too nerdy about it; Lisa for the Clear Spot & Jay for the Lounge Show & Art for Jamaican Gold - how kind for you to trust me to do your excellent shows; & Justin for letting me sit in on the House Call as often as he did. Like I said, I miss that show a bunch.

There are others, too many, not to mention the shows I've subbed recently on WRFL for programmers I've not met yet. In most cases, I tried to follow the programmer's style & musical genre; insofar that I came anywhere near their standards of excellence, it was because I listened like a good pupil to their tutelage. Thank you all!

I may not get to sub any Austin shows ever again, but I hope that, when my sixteenth anniversary stumbles around, I'll have many different people to thank.

Happy anniversary Self Help Radio!

Whither The Counting Numbers?

As you may or may not have guessed, this is my eighth anniversary show. My first show as "Self Help Radio" (a name that took forever for me to come up with) was October 9, 2002. (I had done two or three other shows at a different timeslot, but though they were "themed," the show wasn't guaranteed the slot, & the name hadn't been attached.) By my count, I've done 402 Self Help Radios, though that doesn't mean 402 themes. If you eliminate the "regular" shows (my end-of-the-year favorites, my Christmas shows, the indiepop a to z shows, guest shows) (but you must leave in the "year" shows for my birthday, since they are a specific theme, & also the Valentine & Halloween shows, since they, too, are about specific aspects of the holiday) (I'm torn about shows dedicated to an artist, especially the ones where I play covers of the artists instead of all the artists - I'm leaving them in!)...

I count 337 separate themes. Wow.

Not only that, & not counting "The War On Sailing," which I don't have good records of anyway, I also subbed or covered at least 174 other shows on four different radio stations plus podcasts.

(This of course doesn't count any radio I did prior to Self Help Radio. I deejayed lots of time on KVRX in the 1990s.)

It's been a busy eight years! & I'm not stopping any time soon! So please listen to the anniversary show - airing very early tomorrow on WRFL 88.1 fm in Lexington & all over the world on computer, & then archived later (I'll say when) at self help radio dot net. Self Help Radio is eight! Does that mean we're in second or third grade?

Preface To The Counting Numbers: The Last Preface Ever?

When I was young, I made the mistake of mispronouncing "preface" in a public situation: a dumbass debate in eighth grade history class. I pronounced it "pre-face," not "pref-iss," & remember the gentle correction by my teacher, Mrs. Lane, & the class's ridicule, in the same memory pod. I should've looked at my Mirriam-Webster. What a fool was I.

On my second blog entry, I started the idear of the "preface" to the week's theme. I had some leeway then, as I did one show a week. Not now. Now, when I should be doing a preface, I'm doing an electronica show, or a jazz show, or an old timey country/blues show. It makes the blog entry where I explain the upcoming show the same blog entry where I have to say, "Hey! Listen to the show!" I've been uncomfortable with that.

You don't care, I know. But I do. & I'm the only person who regularly reads this blog.

So, from now on, no prefaces. This is the last one. I know, this could be an internal memo, but, seriously, no one's reading this but me, the person who writes it, so who gives a fuck? I am buzzing from tonight's Dexter, I could give half a shit what some random person who's googled "buzz" & "Dexter" thinks.

But yay! I've been doing my radio show for eight years! Yay! & I'm the only one who cares! Yay! Hooray!