Self Help Radio 041415: Indiepop A To Z # 47

Kahimi Karie, Las Kellies, Kenickie

The next-to-the-last Self Help Radio on WRFL was… nothing special.  It was a regularly scheduled indiepop a to z episode that managed to cover Kar - Kind.  I don't even think I'll finish the letter K the next time I do this.  It was a lot of good music, though!

I've left a lot of radio stations, & each time I do, I do it with as little fanfare as possible.  My time had ended at KVRX in the summer of 1999, & my last show was nothing special.  For KOOP, I did do a Season Finale, which you can still listen to, & of which I am a little proud.  (It was kind of the precursor to the fake interviews I do these days.)  I realized my time was up at WMUL back in 2010, right before we moved to Lexington, & didn't think anyone listened to me, so I didn't make a big deal out of it.  But next week - well, I hope to say goodbye to WRFL & Lexington in style.

But the penultimate episode?  I put as little effort into it as possible.

Kidding!

The show is now available for listening any time at the Self Help Radio website.  Pay attention to username/password information please.  The songs I played are below.

Please enjoy! Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Gregorian Spring" Karibean _Love, Tears, & Spiritual Blessing_
"Vogue Bambini" Kahimi Karie _I Am A Kitten: Kahimi Karie Sings Momus In Paris_
"Mon Coeur Balance" Katerine _Mon Coeur Balance_

"Little Sister" Katie Goes To Tokyo _My Naked Heart_
"Kate" Katie Smokers Wedding Party _Kate_
"What Color Are You?" Katie The Pest _Homemade Hits, Vol. 1_
"Gifted" Katrina & V Twin _Rough Trade Shops: Indiepop, Vol. 1_
"Miss Misery" Katydids _Katydids_

"Happy People, Scary Planet" Kawaii _If It Shines, We Have It_
"Looking Up" The Keatons _The Beige Album_
"Sea Wave" Keen On Girls _Between Two Waves - The Second Wave_
"Flamingo" Kellarissa _Flamingo_
"Hit If Off" Las Kellies _Las Kellies_

"Head Full Of Steam" Dan Kelly _Write Your Adventures Down: A Tribute To The Go-Betweens_
"Down Fall Down" Kennedy _Neurotica EP_

(part two)

"Fizz Pop" The Kennedy Pill _Knowing Where It All Leeds_
"In Your Car" Kenickie _At The Club_
"Nothing At All" The Kensingtons _Hope Corner Lane EP_

"Away From Home" Klark Kent _Music Madness From The Kinetic Kid_
"Ya Ya Ya" Kester & The Kitchenettes _Yay 4 Cuteness_
"You Still Make Me Smile" Dan Kibler _Capsule_
"New Day, Fresh Start" Kicker _Our Wild Mercury Years_
"Lucky" Kicking Giant _Julep: Another Yoyo Studio Compilation_

"New Year's Day" Kickstand _Pop American Style_
"Pillows & Blankets" Kid Auto Races At Venice _Summer Escape_
"The Cradle Born" Kid Sinister _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 5_
"It's In My Blood" Kids On A Crime Spree _We Love You So Bad_

"Hooligans On E" Kill City _Hooligans On E_
"What Comes After" The Kill Devil Hills _What Comes After_
"Tyme Machine" Kincaid _Plays Super Hawaii_
"Disdain" Kind _Split 7" with The Cudgels & The Dufflecoats_

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 47?

Yes, tomorrow will be the last time my ridiculous attempt to play a song from every indiepop artist from a to z will air on Lexington radio.  So I have to complain about what people today think "indiepop" means a few more times.

Though I took a week off from my regular tomfoolery, I promise to have yuks & sentiment galore for the final RFL show, which will be about Los Angeles, which is where I'll end up in a month of so.  I can't even begin to think about it though - I am still working on tomorrow's show!

It'll be from 7 - 9 am on 88.1 fm in Lexington + online at wrfl dot fm at the same time.  Also, I'll have it up on the SHR web in no time after.

Sorry if I seem exhausted.  I had to mow the lawn today.  I hate to mow the lawn today.  Now I am stinky, there are leaves in my hair, & as I gaze into the backyard, I see a ridge of grass just mocking me.  Bastards.

Preface To One Last Indiepop A To Z On WRFL: Expectations

People ask me all the time (no they don't), they say, "Hey Gary, with only two shows left on WRFL, are you going to make them both so spectacular that you'll blow a giant hole in the schedule that the station will take months, even years, to fill?"

& I always say (or would say, if anyone really asked me something like that), "Gosh no!  When people expect anything of me - or when I myself set expectations I am supposed to live up to - I naturally choke & self-sabotage in the most predictable way possible."

Hm.  That dialogue that never happened may be why no one really wants to talk to me.

As I've explained before, I started the silly Indiepop A To Z more than a decade ago (& I'm currently on the letter K) & used to do it whenever I felt like it.  But now I do it every four months.  It was scheduled for the end of April.  So why put it off?

Why put it off?  Because you will never finish it!  Shut up!  You shut up!

Beyond all that, I am wondering when I will be sufficiently unpacked to re-start the show, most probably as a podcast, once I'm in Los Angeles.  On the Self Help Radio web site, I'm suggesting I'll have an episode for June 6.  That gives me five weeks.  But a lot can happen in five weeks!

I'm only sorry the show this week will be without my usual ridiculous bells & nutty whistles.  The music is great, however.

I've Had A Weird Day

Sorry I am writing this so late.  Something wonderfully strange happened to me today that I can't at this point go into.  My wife also appears to have found a place for us to live in Pasadena, which is right next to Los Angeles, but which she found nicer homes to rent when she went house-hunting this past weekend.  I'm sorry I wasn't there to help her but I'm not sorry that I missed the experience.

The application to rent was insane.  She got off the plane last night & spent two hours filling it out.  She thinks, actually, that one of the reasons we may get the house is that no one else actually took the time to finish the damn application.

I think it'll be a month - or four weeks, really - from today that we'll be loading the animals into a car & leaving Lexington.  I've talked about the crazy four-day trek we're going to make, but as I sit here working on Friday's show, I worry more about the weeks I won't be doing Self Help Radio.  It's such an integral part of my life that not spending days listening to & gathering songs about a particular topic will feel odd, like I'm missing out on something.

& what the hell will I do in Los Angeles?  I've contacted a couple of radio stations but have so far gotten no replies.  I haven't pitched them anything - I tried that once & got a terse response from a person who obviously hadn't read my email & who replied, "We don't accept syndicated shows" - I just asked general questions about volunteering.  Non-commercial radio stations, where nearly no-one gets paid unless they're an NPR affiliate, are notorious for lack of follow-through.  I will visit them in person once I am in the city proper.  Or improper.

Look at me, writing about the future!  This week's show won't be anything special, so I'm taking it easy.  I like to ease out of places.  Next week's show will be more fun.  I will pack it with jam.  Did I use that phrase properly?  What?  Oh!  I meant to say it'll be jam-packed!  With jam.

The Jam?

No, jam!

It'll be delicious!

Sorry, I'm getting silly.  My day was surreal.  I will write about it soon!

I Forgot To Mention! Also, A 4/20 Story

Aw, rats.  It was just too early.  I subbed a radio show this morning from 10 am to noon, a show on WRFL called the Bindle, which also covers different topics, & because it was April 20, I thought I'd do a show about grass.  Not marijuana - that was the show's joke.  I'm not going to put it up, but I'll try to put the playlist up on the SHR website before I do Friday's show.

I've never been a fan of pot.  I used to always say this when people - when the large mass of people I've known in my life - who all enjoy smoking pot - this is what I would always say as to why I don't enjoy marijuana: "I never got past the point where it just turned my brain into a block of wood."

But this is true.  I might've only smoked the dreaded ganja ten times in my life.  Unlike that moment when I had a beer & it tasted really, really good, I never got to the point where I enjoyed myself while high.  Mainly the guys I worked with at the video store in Austin would make me smoke it to level out my drunk so they could go do cool things & I could close the place.  Being high would make it really hard to walk home.

The first time I smoked pot, I was 24 years old, & there's even a picture of it, it was such a momentous occasion:

I was with my friends Russ, Scott & Suloni, & we were at a chick named Karen's house.  (I think that's Karen's hand in the picture.)  I don't remember getting very high.  Everyone else did, though.  They were all giggles.  I didn't do it again for years.

Initially, I had a reluctance to do anything that might be mind-altering.  My father was an alcoholic, & while I didn't see him enough as a child to understand what that entailed (he was a very functional alcoholic, it seemed, most of the time), the hatred my mother had for his destroying their marriage & their family obviously rubbed off on me.  I was happy to see him, because when I was a kid, he'd bring gifts (or take us places, driving while intoxicated, & buying us comic books & Slurpees), but I naturally sided with my mother, who freaked out when she came home from work & Daddy had visited us that day.

As far as I know, my father never tried pot, but I had two older brothers who did*.  They tried it all the time.  All through my childhood.  At some point in high school my brother Ralph (the younger of the two) tried to use my love of the Beatles to convince me that marijuana was a kind of sacrament.  It was a weird conversation.  He was insistent, for example, that John Lennon was singing "Everybody smoke pot" at the end of "I Am The Walrus."  I had read by that point as many interviews with Lennon as I could - it may have bothered them that I knew much, much more about the music they grew up with by the time I was thirteen than they ever did - I told my brother that Lennon insisted he was singing, "Everybody's got one."**  My brother said, "Of course he'd lie!"  I confronted him with the fact that Lennon said this in 1980, right before he died, & he talked openly about his heroin use, among other things; why would he want to be coy about advocating pot in a song?  To this, my brother Ralph had no reply.

Ralph did, for a time, replace the word "drugs" for the word "love" in songs he would sing when he heard them on the radio.  For example, "All You Need Is Love" became "All You Need Is Drugs."  It was very funny, to him.

My brothers resembled the stoners at school, who weren't part of my world, & who seemed to have given up giving a shit for the sake of getting high.  I didn't enjoy school much, but I did well there, & it seemed that it might lead somewhere, & I couldn't see turning into my brothers as much of a future.

By the time I tried marijuana, I was will to do anything.  I would do acid for the first time in the coming months, for example, & I had become a social drinker.  The fact that marijuana held no charm for me is distressing on this Cannabis Day because I'll soon be living in a state where medical marijuana is plentiful.  If you've read anything I've written here, surely you must know I am an anxious sort with all kinds of obvious nervous conditions, which I'm certain marijuana could help with.  What will happen, I wonder, in the future?  Can you recommend an understanding medical professional in the Greater Los Angeles area?

Because I haven't ruled it out on anything.  It's just that whiskey tastes better.  Maybe you can get marijuana whiskey in California.  Couldn't that be a thing?  & if it is, would it be at all interesting?

* My oldest brother, as far as I know, has never done a drug, had an alcoholic drink, or smoked.  Interestingly, my younger brother - the two of them are nineteen years apart - has a similar resume, although I think he's had a beer in his life.
** In the Playboy interview, when pressed about this, Lennon said, "Everybody's got one, a penis, a vagina, whatever."  I am paraphrasing my memory.