Self Help Radio 061314: Lazy

Whew, doing a lazy radio show sure tuckered me out.  I think after this I'm going to nap.

If you didn't hear today's show - lazypants - you missed tons of great music, an interview with Curt Lack of Lazybones Magazine, a report from Marge Most at the 2014 Laziest Person In Lexington Pageant, & a great conversation with my spiritual mentor the Rev. Dr. Howard Gently about how not to be lazy!

The show is now available at the Self Help Radio website, or, for those too lazy to click more than once, here are the direct links: part I + part II.  A litany of lazy tunes is listed below.

Yawn!

(part one)

"Lazy" Marilyn Monroe _The Voice, Songs & Films Of Marilyn Monroe_
"Lazy" The Nuns _The Nuns_
"Lazy" Moe Tucker _I Spent A Week There The Other Night_

"Lazy" Daniel Johnston _Songs Of Pain_
"Lazy" The Primitives _Lazy 1986 - 1988_
"Lazy" Love & Rockets _Earth Sun Moon_
"Lazy" It's A Musical _The Music Makes Me Sick_

"Lazybones" Louis Armstrong _The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-46)_
"Too Lazy" T-Bone Walker _The Original Source_
"Lazy Boogaloo" George Guzman _Explosivos (Deep-Soul From The Latin Heart)_
"Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer" Tex Williams _Those Lazy Hazy Days_

"Just Lazy" The Footprints _You Got A Ticket To A Mobile_
"I'm So Lazy" Let's Wrestle _Nursing Home_
"We're Selfish & Lazy & Greedy" Go-Kart Mozart _Instant Wigwam & Igloo Mixture_

(part two)

"Lazy Life (Of No Fixed Identity)" Super Furry Animals _Hometown Unicorn_
"Striving For The Lazy Perfection" The Orchids _Striving For The Lazy Perfection_
"Lazy Miss Daisy" The Bartlebees _What Is It All About?_

"Lazy Day" The Boo Radleys _Everything's Alright Forever_
"Lazy Day" Beach Fossils _Beach Fossils_
"Lazy Days" Cali Giraffes _All My Life 7"_
"Lazy May" Essex Green _The Long Goodbye_

"The Devil Ain't Lazy" Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys _San Antonio Rose_
"Lazy Man's Lament" Carroll County Ramblers _More Of The Carroll County Ramblers_
"Lazy Fat People" The Barron Knights _Lazy Fat People_
"Lazy Boys" Nuclear Regulatory Commission _Lazy Boys_

"Lazy Line Painter Jane" Belle & Sebastian _Lazy Line Painter Jane_
"Lazy Heart" Black Tambourine _Black Tambourine_

Whither Lazy?

"'Tis the voice of a sluggard -- I heard him complain:
'You have wak'd me too soon, I must slumber again.'"
(Isaac Watts, 1674 - 1748)

Oh man, I'm the sluggard in that quote!  I nap too much.  I have a list of things - easy things, simple tasks - that I try to get through every day, & I rarely finish that list.

For example, writing in this blog is on that list, & look - it's after 7pm as I write this.  The lazy show will air in roughly twelve hours!  How lame is that?

Anyway - you see - it's the lazy show on Self Help Radio tomorrow from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm in  Lexington & online at wrfl dot fm.  If you're too lazy to wake up - I totally understand - I'll put it on my website around noon.

Unless I get a case of the lazies.

Peter Dinklage With A Mullet

high school is hard

Today is the birthday of awesome actor Peter Dinklage, whose amazing work in Game Of Thrones makes the nerd in me so incredibly happy, even if it appears his character is about to die.  (No spoilers!)

For the record, he's a year younger than I am.  So it's nice to have a slightly embarrassing high school picture to show for his birthday, knowing all the while he's always going to be more amazing than I am.

I never had a mullet in high school.  If he & I had gone to the same school, I'd be either one or two years ahead of him (summer birth children were often put in the class after their birth-months).  He looks like he was part of the decade he was in, the 1980s (latter half).  I looked then, as I look now, like a slovenly boy who'll never grow up who wears whatever someone left around for him to wear.  Like now, I would let my hair grow until it was too much to deal with & then get it cut off.  I have only been to barbers a few times in my life - lately, I get the wife to cut my hair, & in the old days, it was usually a friend.

My shabbiness extends to my facial hair.  Although I cut that myself.

In my high school, if you had a hint of stubble, some male authority figure - usually a vice-principal - would make you go to the nurse's office & shave, with just soap & a razor that had been there for years.  Ha ha, that'll teach us personal grooming!

That's one thing Peter Dinklage & I probably had in common in high school - we shaved every morning!

Happy birthday to him!

The Lute, Maligned

a lute

I don't know what it is about the lute that draws my derision.  If someone these days, for example, wants to sing the praises of Sting (the dude who used to be in the Police), I will usually say something snide about him in reference to his lute music.  "He can't be in the new Constantine television show," I might say, "because he has ten more albums of lute music to record."

So today I was reading about the lute & beginning to feel a little more sympathetic to it.  In particular, I was saddened by the late developments of lute which had as many as thirteen strings, making it difficult to play & hard to keep in tune.  I also felt sad that, as its popularity waned, some folks transformed their lutes into guitars.  Could there be anything more insulting to a musical instrument than someone making it into a different musical instrument?  It's like your partner loving you more after plastic surgery.  The decline of anything makes me feel sympathetic, since I myself was born in decline, & things continue to get worse.

But then, on the Wikipedia's page on the lute, I read this:

The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist, "lewtist" or lutist.

Really?  Fuckin' REALLY?

Every other musical instrument player is happy to add an -ist suffix to their instrument & go to town.  Violinist.  Pianist.  Clarinetist.  Who the hell do lutists - the only name they should use, & certainly not "lewtists" - think they are to add a whole other syllable to their name to make themselves sound more important?  Lutenist?  Are you sure you don't mean Ludenist, one who makes Luden's lozenges?  For fuck's sake.

That clinches it for me.  Sympathy all gone.  Lutes suck.

Woke Up Early One Morning Blues, Episode Four

Ishman Bracey

Here's the fourth episode of my blues show, Woke Up Early One Morning Blues, which airs the hour before Self Help Radio.  This episode focuses on the Delta blues originators.

It's available now on the Self Help Radio website.  The list of artists & songs I played is below.

"Low-Down Mississippi Bottom Man" Freddie Spruell _The Paramount Masters_
"Trouble Hearted Blues" Ishman Bracey _Legends Of Country Blues: The Complete Pre-War Recordings Of Ishman Bracey_
"Blue Harvest Blues" Mississippi John Hurt _Hard Times Come Again No More, Vol. 1_

"Canned Heat Blues" Tommy Johnson _Canned Heat (1928 - 1929)_
"Screamin' & Hollerin' The Blues" Charley Patton _Founder Of The Delta Blues (1929-1935)_
"Mississippi Bottom Blues" Kid Bailey _Pure Vintage Blues: Future Blues_
"Over To My House" Elvie Thomas & Geeshie Wiley _Going Away Blues_
"Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" Skip James _The Complete Early Recordings Of 1930_

"My Black Mama, Pt. 1 & 2" Son House _Blues Images Presents 1920's Blues Classics, Vol. 2_
"Future Blues" Willie Brown _The Greatest In Country Blues (1929-1956), Vol. 1_
"All Around Man" Bo Carter _Them Dirty Blues_
"Too Long" Charlie McCoy _Charlie McCoy (1928-1932)_

"My Buddy Blind Papa Lemon" King Solomon Hill _Mississippi Blues: Rare Cuts 19_
"Rambling On My Mind" Robert Johnson _The Complete Recordings_