Self Help Radio 010318: One Hundred Things

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One hundred songs?  Nope.  One hundred minutes of radio?  Not exactly (more like 120).  One hundred insights?  Not as such.  One hundred different voices?  No one counted but, probably not.  Just one hundred things?  No - hundreds of things!  In increments of one hundred!  One hundred lovers, calories, degrees, roses (& other flowers), pounds, fish, unread messages, pounds of clay, reasons, times, years, words, rooms, dollars, days, nights, brides, punks, cars, & percent!  That's probably one hundred times one hundred!  (No, it isn't.)

The first Self Help Radio of 2018 contained multitudes, including interviews with a spiritual mentor, a voice artist, & a travel writer.  The show can be listened to now at the Self Help Radio website but be aware!  It'll ask you for a password & a username, both of which are available on the site if you look hard enough.  The show is two hours long but divided in two so each mp3 is an hour long.  What's in the parts is listed below.

Here's hoping you listen one hundred times!

(part one)

"100 Lovers" Tennis _Small Sound_
"100 Calorie Man" Boat _Setting The Paces_
"100 Degrees" Shout Out Louds _Howl Howl Gaff Gaff_

"One Hundred Roses" The Smittens _The Coolest Thing About Love_
"£100 In 15 Minutes" Puritan Guitars _Messthetics Greatest Hits: The Sounds Of UK D.I.Y. 1977-80_
"100 Fish" Space Ghost _Yeah, Whatever..._
"100 Flowers" Gingerlys _Gingerlys_
"100 Unread Messages" Gruff Rhys _American Interior_

Interview with the Rev. Dr. Howard Gently

"The Hundredth Time (with Duffy Driediger & Ryan Peters)" Gigi _Maintenant_
"A Hundred Pounds Of Clay" Gene McDaniels _The Very Best Of Gene McDaniels_
"Give Me A Hundred Reasons" Ann Jones _The History Of Country & Western Music, Vol. 18 (1949-1950)_
"100 Other Lovers" Devotchka _100 Lovers_

"One Hundred Years" The Migil 5 _Ripples Vol. 4: Uptown Girls & Big City Boys (30 Brit Building Gems)_
"Hundred Times" Shapiros _Shapiros_
"100 Different Words" The Enormous Room _100 Different Words_

(part two)

"House With A Hundred Rooms" The Chills _Heavenly Pop Hits (The Best Of The Chills)_
"100 Years War" The Paper Cranes _Halcyon Days_
"100 Years" Vagabon _Infinite Worlds_

Interview with comedian Sasha Kaboingaboing

"I'm A Hundred Percent For You" Fats Waller _1934-1935_
"I Need A Hundred Dollars" One String Sam _Rural Blues, Vol. 1_
"One Hundred Million Dollars" John Mulaney _The Top Part_
"100 Days, 100 Nights" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings _100 Days, 100 Nights_
"Wedding Of The Hundred Brides" The Motions _Rubble, Vol. 5_

Interview with travel writer David Fruchter

"One Hundred Punks" Generation X _Punk You! Vol. 1_
"100 Car Pile-Up" Scrawl _Nature Film_
"A Hundred Years Of The Street" The Victorian English Gentlemens Club _The Victorian English Gentlemens Club_
"100" Even As We Speak _A Three Minute Song Is One Minute Too Long_

"One Hundred Years" The Cure _Pornography_

Whither One Hundred Things?

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The first Self Help Radio of the year tells you one thing you probably already knew: nothing much is going to change.  Sorry about that!  It's going to be another year of mostly arbitrary themes, goofy interviews with "experts," & of course great music of all genres in service of the goofy & the arbitrary themes.

This is not an apology or anything - sorry if you thought that - wait - I just want to make it clear that a show like Self Help Radio is mostly impervious to things like resolutions.  Mostly.  I mean, it's like that Squeeze line, "I want to be good, is that not enough?"

With that in mind, tonight's show celebrates a bevy of things in the quantity of one hundred.  It also features interviews with a comedian called "the man of a hundred voices," with a travel writer who's written a book called "100 Places To Go," & with my spiritual mentor, who, I don't know, will tell us one hundred things maybe about the Numinous?  You'll have to listen to find out.

You can do that by tuning your radio dial to 93.9 fm WLXU in Lexington but also you can listen online.  It's from 9-11pm eastern.  It's bound to be an awkward way to bring in the new year.

Preface To One Hundred Things: Numbers

For a show based on themes, numbers may seem like an easy, go-to way to fill a few hours.  People are always singing about numbers; as long as you don't pick something weird like 37, you can probably find lots no problem.

In fact, Self Help Radio has done number shows before.  The number nine & the number zero come to mind, & recently seventeen, but I don't think the show has leaned on numbers as much as it could have.

It's much more fun to do things like I've done this week: a number of things.  I've done that too!  A million miles comes to mind.  But you know what?  When you aren't specific, like with "miles," the show is basically what you do when you do numbers anyway.  I could have just called this show's theme "one hundred" & it would've been the same.

Oh em gee this is boring.  But it has been a fun show to put together.  A hundred things!  I think you'll like it.

Happy New Year!

I think I'll let Charles Schulz field this New Year's wish.

That Was The Year That Was

It's time for end of the year accounting.  You don't need to be here for this.

Total number of radio shows I did this year is: 62

Total episodes of Self Help Radio: 51*
Total episodes of freeform radio: 11
Total numbers of radio stations I was on: 3**

Self Help Radio episode stats are going to be a little complicated.  As you see above, there were 51 episodes this year (although one was repeated on the air in Lexington in November when I took a week off, & as I note below, I did re-do two episodes on KVRX just two days ago).  Of those 51, you can say that 41of those had unique themes***, by which I mean themes that the show had never explored before & were not themes folded into a regularly scheduled holiday spot.

Because there are shows I do for special days, like Valentine's Day & Halloween, that may seem like repeated themes, which in some way they are, although I pick a different aspect of the holiday each year.  Here are the themes that recur, with the unique element covered this year:

My birthday: 1981
Valentine's Day: Sweethearts
Halloween: Black Cats

There are three shows I do which have the same theme but always feature different music.  Those are;

Magda's Birthday Show (all birthday songs, but ones never played for this show)
Gary's Favorite Music (songs from the year that I dug)
A Very Self Help Radio Christmas (holiday tunes I've never played before)

& then there's the Indiepop A To Z series, which happens three times a year, & which is a continuing alphabetical list of indiepop bands.  No two episode is the same, but it is part of a series.

Finally, one show is a repeat of a theme.  My anniversary show revisits an old theme, but adding new songs or perhaps reevaluating said theme.  This year, we went back to reconsider a show from 2004.  I am too tired now to see how many songs were repeated from the earlier show.

That adds up to 51!

Non-Self Help Radio data: I subbed ten shows on KNON in 2017, & played around for four hours on KVRX a couple of weeks ago just playing music.

That adds up to 62!

If you want to count the four hours I redid two Self Help Radio shows on the 29th, it's 63!  But I'm not greedy.

Certainly I hope to do more radio in 2018.  As for now - well, if I said I'd already started drinking, I'd be lying, but if I said I was thinking about starting to drink this early in the day I would not be lying.

Thanks for listening to Self Help Radio in 2017!  Look for more of the same nonsense in 2018!

* 53 if you count the two episodes I re-did on KVRX in late December.
** You can say four if you count the arts calendar I do every week for KFTW.
*** Here they are, in alphabetical order: Apples, Are You Ready?, Bars, Betty, Blondes, Cafes, Control, Cosmic, Crooked, Dancing, Diamonds, Dust, Fate, Ferris Wheels, Faces, Firsts, Foxes, Gas, Guards, Guilt, In The Sky, Johnny, Leonard Cohen Tribute, Lightning, Machines, Maybe, Mercy, One Day, Pencils, Questions, Rising, Rubber, Seventeen, Sidewalks, Smash, Tails, Turn It, Umbrellas, Venus, Visions, & Warnings.