Self Help Radio 112316: Black & White

Hello, it's the day after Thanksgiving.  I decided not to put the show up yesterday because it was a holiday & also I was very busy.  Not doing holiday stuff, at all.  But busy nonetheless.  Hey - life isn't always black & white!

But this week's show was!  In addition to tons of songs about things both black & white, I talked to a famous film director who only makes black & white movies, & to a world-renowned artist who has chosen to only paint in black & white, & we talk to my spiritual mentor about rigid belief systems that see things in only black & white.  Wow!  That almost excited me, & I was there!

The show is of course at the Self Help Radio website.  There's a password you know, it's on the page.  Lots of black & white songs are below, you synesthete you!

(part one)

"Black, Brown & White" Brownie McGhee _Songs For Political Action, Vol. 6: The People's Songs Era 1945-1949_
"Black & White" The Raincoats _The Raincoats_
"Black & White" Crippled Pilgrims _Down Here (Collected Recordings 1983-1985)_

"Black & White" Serge Gainsbourg _Initials B.B._
"Black & White" The Windbreakers _Meet The Windbreakers_
"Black & White" The Nuns _Rumania_
"Black & White" The Upper Room _Other People's Problems_

"Black & White" Generationals _Actor-Caster_
"Black & White" Parquet Courts _Sunbathing Animal_
"In My Black & White" Plasticland _Mink Dress & Other Cats_
"Black & White Unite" Belle & Sebastian _Storytelling_

"Black Or White" Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel _Timeless Flight_

(part two)

"Black & White Thunderbird" The Delicates _Hot Rods & Custom Classics_
"Black & White Incident" Marc Bolan _Love + Death_
"Black & White World" Elvis Costello _Taking Liberties_

"Black Minds, White Lies" Salty Pirates _The Kids At The Club_
"White Face, Black Eyes" Andrew Jackson Jihad _Can't Maintain_
"White Lung/Black Lung" GRMLN _Soon Away_
"Black In A White World" The Watts Prophets _Things Gonna Get Greater: The Watts Prophets 1969-1971_

"Me & The Black & White Dream" The Orchids _Unholy Soul_
"In Black & White" Easy _In Black & White_
"Black & White (& Blue All Over)" Cleaners From Venus _Back From The Cleaners_
"Born & Raised In Black & White" The Highwaymen _The Very Best Of The Highwaymen_

"Black Tie White Noise" David Bowie _Black Tie White Noise_

Whither Black & White?

(This image from here.)

Eek, I don't have a lot of time but I do need to tell you that tonight's show - which has the theme "black & white" - will be on the air in just like three hours oh hell! in Lexington 93.9 fm WLXU!!

Plus I will be on the air tomorrow morning at 7am holy moley! in Dallas on 89.3 fm KNON!!

Seriously, I barely know whether I am going or going or coming or going or coming or coming or going.  Where am I?  What am I?  I which it were all as simple as black & white!

Preface To Black & White: A Week On The Radio

Check this: I am going to have three radio shows on three different radio stations this week, in two different cities!

No, I won't be traveling around like some kind of Phil Collins going from one Live Aid to another*, that would be crazy!  But here's the Gary you'll hear if you care to hear some Gary this late in the year:

1) My regular show, on 93.9 fm WLXU, Self Help Radio, from 8-10 central, 9-11 eastern, a show in black & white, that's the theme, tomorrow night, like always, Lexington Community Radio dot org.

2) My first ever sub show on 89.3 fm KNON in Dallas!  7-9 am central, 8-10am eastern, Thanksgiving morning, covering Dave Chaos' Thursday Morning Blend, KNON dot org.  Very excited about this - my first radio show in the metroplex!

3) Early morning radio on 88.1 fm WRFL, 1-4 am central, 2-5am eastern, taking (in a remote way) some shifts while the kids are away for the holidays.  It'll be my regular late night fare, nothing to wake up for, you've heard it & turned it off, WRFL dot fm.

It's complete insanity!  But I hope I have a lot of fun.  Also, that I don't fuck it up.

* Very dated 1980s reference.

Toward A More Depressing World

Imagine if I were an actual kind of columnist, & had to sit down on a regular basis (for some reason, in my mind's eye, I am thinking of sitting down to a typewriter*) & write a regular column for an actual publication.  Yes, perhaps this is what this blog is about, but here's something you have suspected said out loud by me: I actually have almost nothing to say.

Except of course I do.  For example, here are my last couple of tweets (which you could read as they happen if you follow the show on Twitter):

1) When I first heard,"Good artists make, great artists steal," I thought it meant that good artists compel great artists to commit theft.

That's an awkwardly worded confession about confusing sentence structure crammed into 140 unforgiving characters.  Hardly amusing, but I heard someone say that sentence today & it reminded me how confused I was when I first came across the adage.  "How in the world," I thought to myself, "do merely good artists somehow force actual great artists to steal?  & what kind of stealing?  Shoplifting?  Bank robbery?  Trump-style investment rip-offs?"  Then I saw the comma & went, "Ohhh."'

2) These tweets were a two-fer:

One of my pet peeves is when a movie or TV show uses a dreadful but familiar classic rock song at some dramatic moment.  It's like, I know Hollywood is controlled by baby boomers but for fuck's sake some really great music has been made in the last fifty years.

This was a result of a pretty decent season finale of the wonderful show Better Things having the mother drive her daughters somewhere while a horrendous old song by Alice Cooper called Only Women Bleed.  But it's a song that's been played on the radio pretty much all my life, & Louis CK & Pamela Adlon are just a little older than I am, & they probably haven't listened to any new music since they were in their 20s.

Mainly I felt it was a disservice to make the young female actors learn the words to that overblown attempt at rock & roll social relevance.  "The song is often mistakenly presumed to be about menstruation," Wikipedia says.  No shit?  Why's that?  Idiots.

But ultimately none of this matters, because I don't have a hand in doing anything creative in Hollywood but it pains me, as someone who spends a great deal of time listening to new music - & certainly not the sort of music Louis CK & Pamela Adlon listen to on commercial radio with their kids, music they most definitely roll their eyes at - but really great new music that will never find its way onto television shows (or commercial radio).  & I wish they knew it.

& don't say, "But Gary, that's a great song."  It might be, but I doubt it.  It's a familiar song.  Just like every fucking familiar song in every fucking movie trailer, even the ones for millenials.  It's just depressing how for the most part, no one in any creative sphere seems to think there's been any music worth listening to for the past thirty plus years.

When they do use music, they use disposable commercial pop that will date the movie terribly in the years to come.

That's my opinion anyway.  I wish I had a job picking music for movies.  I'd be all right at it.

But as a columnist cranking out a daily think-piece?  Like with this blog, man, I'd suck at it.

* It's probably because everything I learned about newspapers I learned from the 1950s Superman TV program.

These Moments, Every Second Just Stuffed In

The year almost over, it's a shame the leaves haven't fallen yet.

Except they have, in places unlike this one.

You're too shy, aren't you, to ask the stranger about the lake.

You just wanted to take pictures of the birds there.

The signs say "lost" as if losing time & place was intention.

Appointments are like bills, paid with different currency.

Spend a long time driving now, another meditation.

Apartment blocks along the highway seem built of sorrow.

You imagine music coming out of places where no music lives.

Finally remembering to sing a song into your phone so you don't forget it.

There are faces, there are voices, which can cripple you.

The blink of a lover's eye, better than anything on film.

A cat leaps up, sits close, doesn't need a reason.

She stole a glass for you, she even claimed she thought of it herself.

Wait!  A complaint!  Imagine it in silver or gold.

& remember how to open & close doors just in fucking case.