Self Help Radio 113016: Magda's Birthday Show 2016

(Original image here.)

Another year, another two hours of birthday songs for my sweetie, whose birthday is today.  What have you other deejays done for your significant others, hunh?  Bought them things they actually liked?  Spent time with them?  Showed your love in normal, non-radio-related ways?  That seems just  fine compared to mine, & makes me feel bad about all the time I've wasted in my relationship.  Oh well!

Here's another group of songs about birthdays for my wife's birthday but also (don't tell her) for anyone's birthday.  Even yours!  Plus I talk to party planners & to my spiritual mentor, who seems to have changed his titles.  It's confusing.

The show is now at the birthday party I call "Birthday Cake Boogie" Skeets McDonald _Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes_
"Happy Birthday (German Version)" Giorgio Moroder _Singles_

"Birthday" The Beatles _The Beatles (The White Album)_
"Pig Tails" Pookie & The Poodlez _Young Adult_
"Birthday Girl" Visitor's Day _Deadliest Creatures_
"All Lives Don't Matter" Hari Kondabolu _Mainstream American Comic_
"Don't Want To Make A Show Of Myself (On My Birthday)" No Bros _Double A-Side Birthday Single_
"Birthday Party" Yuno _Marsh_

"Eric's Birthday/This Ride" Shovels & Rope _Little Seeds_
"Waving At You" The Mountain Goats _Nothing For Juice_
"Birthday" Purple _Bodacious_
"Birthday Girl" Saturday Night Kids _Birthday Girl b/w Don't Do It_

"The End Of The World" David Greenberg & Harpeth Rising _The End Of The World_

(part two)

"Birthday Girl" Emergency Bible Study _Birthday Girl_
"Happy Birthday (Turn Gold)" The Bluebells _The Singles Collection_
"Your Birthday" The Troublers _Bunny: Songs '99-'03_

"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby" Tune Weavers _Vintage Music, Vol. 3_
"All You Gotta Be When You're 23 Is Yourself" Free Cake For Every Creature _Talking Quietly Of Anything With You_
"Ken Voss Birthday Interview" Bob & Ray _New Improved Bob & Ray_
"Birthday Mambo" Adam Green _Aladdin_
"Birthday Drunk" Fruit Bats _Absolute Loser_

"It's Your Birthday" Afro Dizzi Act _Welcome Speech EP_
"Happy Birthday!" Fojeba _Happy Birthday_
"Happy Birthday" The Mignots _Happy Birthday_
"Happy Birthday" The Pillbugs _Happy Birthday_

"Birthday Song" A Giant Dog _Pile_
"C'mon, It's My Birthday!" Dick Bruiser & The Punches _Oh!_
"Birthday" White Mystery _Blood & Venom

Whither Magda's Birthday Show 2016?

(I found this here.)

Since the very beginning of Self Help Radio, I've set aside a show a year to celebrate my lovely wife's birthday, which is December 1.  (I actually missed a couple of years because I was younger & just as stupid.)  One of the things I make sure to do is not to repeat recordings, but over time, you must understand that the choice of birthday songs diminishes.  People simply don't write as many birthday songs as they do Christmas songs, even though for many people their birthday is much more special, since it's theirs alone.  That's for those who get presents on their birthdays - some of don't anymore.

The present I give my love is this show, which is on tonight from 8-10 central, 9-11 eastern on 93.9 fm WLXU
in Lexington.  You should listen!  But why?  It's for your wife, dude!  Not just for her!  For anyone who has a birthday today, had a birthday earlier this year, or will have a birthday later this year - this show's for you!
(But really, it's for you, Magda.)

Preface To Magda's Birthday Show 2016: Confession Time Again

Boy, someone "confesses" a lot on this blog, doesn't he?

A brief search through this blog finds not a lot about changes or reevaluations of how Self Help Radio was made over its somewhat long run, but if you were a listener in early 2014, you noticed something.  One, the show was no longer on WRFL - I took a semester off.  The other was that, suddenly, out of the blue, in addition to interviews, the show featured fake advertisements.  "Self Help Radio was brought to you today by.." absurd businesses or people, unconvincingly voiced by yours truly, in mostly unsuccessful attempts at being funny.  Lots of those businesses were crowding the streets of poor, maligned Paint Lick, Kentucky.

There were precedents.  Some time in the mid-early-oughts (whatever you call them), I discovered the Firesign Theatre, & I loved their fake radio spots.  (I can't find an example, but perhaps you've heard "Ed's End Of The World Restaurant.")  At KOOP, I attempted to write & "perform" (read) some on the air, but I failed to make them funny.  I put that practice aside.

But!  Away from WRFL, without its spots to make radio lulls for which to change gears musically, I needed to make something myself, & I revisited that practice.  It became something I felt I needed to do every show.  So much so that now, your weekly Self Help Radio show features at least two fake ads.  Mostly they're silly, occasionally - very occasionally - they are somewhat amusing.  I have yet to make one that's actually funny.

Anyway.  The confession.  I have had a hell of a week.  In working on the birthday show (on tomorrow night), even though I will not repeat songs I've played previously, I lazily thought, what if I recycle a couple of fake ad spots?  Who will know?  No one who might have listened two years ago is listening now!

So this is what I did.  The two fake funny ads on tomorrow's show first appeared two years ago, on the birthday show then.  Again: nobody but me would notice.  But I feel guilt no matter what.  So.  I need to tell you what I've done.

You want to hear about all the money I've stolen from the elderly?  No?  Cool.  Cool.

Take Too Many Pictures

Here's a picture of my wife, irritated by me stopping to take pictures, like I do, when we're on our walks.  This was taken in Lexington, Kentucky, about two years ago, before we adopted our chihuahua.  I walked Winston, so I had probably handed over his leash to her - she's holding it out to give it back to me in the picture - to snap a photo of something stupid, like a chair in someone's lawn, or a chalk drawing, or a sunset.  (You can see a lot of my dumb pictures at my Tumblr blog.)

The thing is, I have a ton of pictures of my wife walking the dogs from some distance in front of me.  I take too many pictures, & I don't ever tire of that kind.  It reminds me of my life, in a way - following diligently the ones I love the most, trying to catch up, occasionally being reprimanded for lollygagging.

These are not pictures I often get to share, since they're of my wife & she hates pictures of herself, like every annoyingly beautiful person does.  (Us ugly people too!)  Since it's her birthday this week, & the show is a celebration of her, I thought that I'd share this one.  I hope she doesn't mind.

Show Names

My wife asked me today about show names.  She said, "How many different shows have you done with different names?"  It's a good question.

From 1994-1999, I did various shows at various times on KVRX.  Nowadays, it's important to have names for one's show on KVRX (I surmise from their schedule), but back in the day it wasn't a big deal.  Gary was on from so-&-so a time till so-&-so a time, there didn't need to be a name.  But!  At some point - when my show was on Mondays from 9-11pm, I toyed with the idea of calling my show "Thursdays With Gary."  The idea was the absurdity - "Every Monday, it's Thursdays with Gary!"  But then that book Tuesdays With Morrie came out & I didn't want to think my thing was a thing on the thing.

Most of my KVRX shows, therefore, were just shows with no name.  Gary is on at this time.

When I started Self Help Radio in 2002, that was its name.  It has endured.  For fourteen years!  But what other shows have I done?

There was a show called The War On Sailing that aired from 2008-2009.

Once in West Virginia, in addition to doing Self Help Radio on WMUL, I began an indie pop & rock show that I called Sugar Substitute (after the lovely Luxuriator song) as well as an electronics show I called Dickenbock Electronics.

Before I left West Virginia - & after I left WMUL - I had couple of podcasts that I didn't keep up with, one called Tags & Tricks - a jazz program - & another called The Zeke Moonshine Show - which was a country/folk deal.  My involvement with WRFL made continuing those impossible (or very, very time-consuming).

At WRFL I kept with Sugar Substitute - it was my default freeform show - but in the summer of 2014 I did a country blues show I called (clumsily) Woke Up One Early Morning Blues.  It was fun.

The next year, as I became involved with WLXU in Lexington, I did a show called Cradle To Grave which I loved to do but oy! it was a lot of work.

Is that it?

Thursdays With Gary
Self Help Radio
The War On Sailing
Sugar Substitute
Dickenbock Electronics
Tags & Tricks
The Zeke Moonshine Show
Woke Up One Early Morning Blues
Cradle To Grave

Those are the shows I've done?  Hm.  Seems disappointing in a way.