Self Help Radio 011714: The Smelly Show

P U!  Oh man, this radio show is stinking up the place!  Well, what did you expect - it's Self Help Radio's smelly show.  & it is ripe.

You can listen to it now of course at the Self Help Radio website or there are direct links here: part I & part II.  The songs I played are below.

Sorry about this.  I need deodorant & mouthwash.  Whew.

(part one)

"The Sense Of Smell" PBNJBuchanan _What Died In Here?_
"Stinky Stuff" Kimya Dawson _I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean_
"What's That I Smell" The Famous Hokum Boys _Vol. 2 1930 - 1931_
"I Smell A Rat" Big Mama Thornton _The Original Hound Dog_

"I Like Stinky Cheese" Dick "Two Ton" Baker _The Music Of Dick "Two Ton" Baker_
"Smell Of Incense" Southwest FOB _Smell Of Incense_
"Odorono" Petra Haden _Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out_
"Case Study: Buffum's Fragrance Counter" Drs. Carter & Gourley _Superego Volume 3, Episode 9_
"Stinking Drunk" Big Black _Atomizer_

"The Scent Of You" Starlet _Stay On My Side_
"Mr. Stinky" Ballbusters _No Hang Ups_
"Stinky Poodle" Tangela Tricoli _Garageaholic, Psychedelic Outsider Music!_
"Simple & Fragrant" Gilmore Tamny _All Is Fair In Love & Chickfactor: CF Mixtape 1_

(part two)

"Smells Like Cartoon Planet" Space Ghost _Musical Bar-B-Que_
"Smells" Richard Pryor _Richard Pryor_
"Smelly Tongues" The Residents _Meet The Residents_

"Sigh's Smell Of Farewell" Cocteau Twins _Love's Easy Tears_
"The Fragrance Aroma" Muslimgauze _Izlamaphobia_
"New Car Scent" Hospital Bombers _At Budokan_
"Buddy Odor Is A Gas" Gruppo Sportivo _10 Mistakes / Buddy Odor Is A Gas_
"We Smell Fear" Birds With Ears _Youth In Asia_

"Stinkfoot" Frank Zappa _Apostrophe_
"Smelly Water" Chumbawumba/Negativland _The ABCs Of Anarchism_
"Deodorant" Tall Dwarfs _The Sky Above, The Mud Below_

Whither A Smelly Show?

I feel weird writing this because I actually have finished the show.  I think the end product is tolerable.  It's not all that great, actually.  But I did record it live, & only made a couple of edits to my airbreaks.  But they were to try to make it funny.

These are the things that I've never liked about radio that I miss: underwriting, legal IDs, station promos.  Inevitably I feel like they take precious time away from the music I want to play or the dumb things I want to say.  But they do give structure to the show - if you have to play an underwriting grant at a quarter past the hour, you learn (as a deejay) to make sure you don't play a super-long track or you learn to not schedule an airbreak around it.  (By the way, the FCC would be fine if you played a super-long track.  You're not supposed to let underwriting interrupt regularly schedule programming.  But it's always felt weird to me, since it's a legal agreement the station has entered into with the donor business.)  For my new shows, I'll have fake underwriting & probably-not-funny skits I've made myself to help break up the tedium.  I understand I am only doing them, though, because I am used to all the required station stuff from my recent experience.

Well, also, I'm trying to be funny.

Anyway, I did the show today & it'll be up on the website in about twelve hours.  It's somewhat important to me that I make a new show available at the same time every week, so I will stick to that schedule.  I hope someone downloads & listens to it, & it would be great for some feedback.

By the way, "you suck!" is not terribly constructive.  Although that has never stopped my mother from saying it to me every day since third grade.

As I mention in one of the airbreaks you can hear tomorrow - to answer the usually rhetorical question that headlines the blog-before-the-show: I have three beagles & three cats.  I know a thing or two about smelly.  Why not share my experience with an easy-to-offend world?

Preface To A Smelly Show: Who You Calling Smelly, Stinky?

I live with three dogs & three cats.  I know a thing or two about stinkiness.

Maybe there's a better question: how can we make a radio show about smells smell good?  Or bad?  Or at all?

John Waters had the idea of Odorama for one of his movies.  It's funny, I thought that it happened for more than one movie.  Anyway, there was a card given out to folks at the theater & numbers would flash on the screen relating to one of the scratch & sniff options.  Viola!  You got to smell what you saw.

It's too late for me to prepare such a thing - so of course this week's show will not be in odorama or audio-smell or whatever.  But wouldn't it be great if it was?

Although to be honest, the smell of death is pretty close to the smell of flatulence.  & I may have songs about both.

Tumblr Addiction

Hi, my name is Gary, & I spend way too much time jumping from Tumblr blog to Tumblr blog laughing at nonsense.

According to Wikipedia, Tumblr was developed starting in 2006 & now hosts like 150 million blogs.  I have this blog, on competitor Blogger, but I also have a Tumblr blog, which I started in January of 2010.  I mainly featured links to Youtube videos of musicians I like (& some of the videos don't exist any more), & the occasional ridiculous or pretty picture.  I ignored it for most of last year, even though it takes no time to update it, but I'm trying to be better now.

When I started it, I had no real idea what made it different from Blogger.  It's because I very rarely "follow" blogs & even then I don't "reblog."  I understand that's how folks connect with one another using Tumblr, I just don't really do it.

What I do is this: I find a Tumblr blog, skim through it, find something funny, & then looked where it has been "reblogged" from.  Then I visit that blog, skim through it, find something funny, etc.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.

The animated gifs are the best.  I love that people take time to make them.  There were animated gifs from the Golden Globes while the Golden Globes were still on the air.  That's pretty amazing.  I like to think people make the majority of them at work on someone else's dime.

In any event, it's a bit of a time waster for me.  I need to restrain myself.  But there's this Tumblr blog making fun of twelve-step programs!  Oh no!

Self Help Radio 011014: 1978

My last WRFL show is available for listening to now at the Self Help Radio website.  You may notice it's an hour longer than the actual show.  That's because there was a lot of great music I liked in 1978 & I focused on mainly albums & not singles.  Not singles!  What a crazy thing!  So included with the actual radio show is an extra hour of 23 more songs from 1978 that kick ass.  I could probably do a five hour radio show with my favorite music from that year.  Thankfully there are right-minded folks who keep me away from five-hour radio shows.

The song list is below.  The radio show's three parts can be accessed at the website or like so: part I then part II then part III or really in any order.

Thanks for listening!  Remember there'll be a new show this Friday!

(part one)

"Ever Fallen In Love" The Buzzcocks _Love Bites_
"Top Of The Pops" The Rezillos _Can't Stand The Rezillos_
"I Am The Fly" Wire _Chairs Missing_

"The Beat" Elvis Costello & The Attractions _This Year's Model_
"Safe European Home" The Clash _Give 'Em Enough Rope_
"Shot By Both Sides" Magazine _Real Life_
"Another Girl, Another Planet" The Only Ones _The Only Ones_

"Wuthering Heights" Kate Bush _The Kick Inside_
"Comes A Time" Neil Young _Comes A Time_
"Holocaust" Big Star _Third/Sister Lovers_
"Another Girl, Another Planet" The Only Ones _The Only Ones_

(part two)

"It's The New Thing" The Fall _It's The New Thing_
"Street Waves" Pere Ubu _The Modern Dance_
"The Day The World Turned Dayglo" X-Ray Spex _Germfree Adolescents_
"Public Image" Public Image Ltd _First Issue_

"Bye Bye Love" The Cars _The Cars_
"Can't Stand Losing You" The Police _Outlandos d'Amour_
"11:59" Blondie _Parallel Lines_
"I Just Want To Have Something To Do" The Ramones _Road To Ruin_

"Lee Remick" The Go-Betweens _Lee Remick_
"I'm Not In Love" Talking Heads _More Songs About Buildings & Food_
"Uncontrollable Urge" Devo _Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!_
"You Know You're A Man" Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band _Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)_

"You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory" Johnny Thunders _So Alone_

(part three)

"Read About Seymour" Swell Maps _Read About Seymour_
"Bored" Destroy All Monsters _Bored_
"Take Me, I'm Yours" Squeeze _Squeeze_
"(We Got The) Neutron Bomb" The Weirdos _(We Got The) Neutron Bomb_

"Nobody's Scared" The Subway Sect _Nobody's Scared_
"The Model" Kraftwerk _The Man-Machine_
"Know Your Product" The Saints _Eternally Yours_
"We're Desperate" X _Adult Books/We're Desperate_
"Lexicon Devil" Germs _Lexicon Devil_

"I Want To Be An Anglepoise Lamp" The Soft Boys _I Want To Be An Anglepoise Lamp_
"Hearts In Exile" The Homosexuals _Hearts In Exile_
"Can't Seem To Make You Mine" Alex Chilton _Bangkok/Can't Seem To Make You Mine_
"Brickfield Nights" The Boys _Alternative Chartbusters_
"If The Kids Are United" Sham 69 _If The Kids Are United_

"Hong Kong Garden" Siouxsie & The Banshees _Hong Kong Garden_
"Wives In Orbit" The Red Krayola _Wives In Orbit/Yik Yak_
"Damaged Goods" Gang Of Four _Damaged Goods_
"Suspect Device" Stiff Little Fingers _Suspect Device_

"Part Time Punks" Television Personalities _Where's Bill Grundy Now?_
"Human Fly" The Cramps _Human Fly_
"Where Were You" The Mekons _Where Were You_
"Killing An Arab" The Cure _Killing An Arab_
"Survive" Bags _Survive_