Self Help Radio 083118: Indiepop A To Z # 57

(I believe I found all these images on Discogs.)

& here it is!  The fifty-seventh installment of the million part series "Indiepop A To Z" featuring musicians & bands from the Minders to Monobird.  Thirty-two songs!  Not a lot of me!  It's bound to be a good listening experience.

It's been a while since someone's been snotty with me about this but it's important to note that a) I'm not just featuring indiepop but musicians & bands who I believe have influenced indiepop & 2) this whole endeavor is entirely my opinion, it's not supposed to be authoritative.  I might also add, iii) it's also not meant to be exhaustive.  I don't own everything.  That really would be exhausting.

The show is now at the Self Help Radio website & can be listened to at any time.  You will need a username & a password, in case you didn't know.  Try "SHR" & "selfhelp".  That should work.  The songs in beautiful alphabetical order are listed below.

Self Help Radio Indiepop A To Z # 57

"Hand Me Downs" The Minders _Cul-De-Sacs & Dead Ends_
"Fantastic Cat" Takako Minekawa _Roomic Cube_
"Loveless" Minema _Minema_

"Heading For Honey" Miniskirt _Woody Allen Likes Guitar Pop_
"New Broom" Minisnap _Bounce Around_
"Funeral Song" Minks _By The Hedge_
"Time Flies" The Minnows _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 4_
"Engine Heart" Mirah _You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This_

"Borbeck Riots" The Mirror Images _Carl 7"_
"Into The Heart" Mirrors _Lights & Offerings_
"Different Girl" Mirrors Over Kiev _The Sound Of Leamington Spa Vol. 6_
"Green Fairy" Miss July _Hey! Where'd The Summer Go?_
"Macrometric" Miss Mend _Macrometric EP_

"Click & You're Mine" Miss World _Waist Management EP_
"You Don't Care" Mission Impossible _Mit Sonnenschirmen Fingen Wir Den Blütenzauber 12"_
"Fashion Parade" Misty's Big Adventure _Fashion Parade_
"Never Find Time" The Mixers _Whaam! Bam! Thank You Dan! A Whaam! Records Compilation 1981-1984_
"White Mice" Mo-Dettes _Rough Trade Shops: Post Punk 01_

"You Don't Know Me" Mocca _Colours_
"Tom No Uta" Mocket Chick _Babble Dibble: Beikoku-Ongaku # 17, Winter 2001_
"I Melt With You (7" Mix)" Modern English _After The Snow_
"Girl Friend" The Modern Lovers _The Modern Lovers_
"Theme From Uranium Girl" Modesty Blaise _Uranium Girl_

"I Am A Kitten" Momus _20 Vodka Jellies_
"What Do You Want From Me" Monaco _Music For Pleasure_
"Say It Isn't So" Dylan Mondegreen _While I Walk You Home_
"Who's Holding You Tonight?" The Mondo Crescendo _Young, Naked, & Very With It_
"After We Were Drunk, But Before We Were Dead" Money Can't Buy Music _The Universe For Beginners_

"Cartas De Amor" La Monja Enana _Verano Del 99_
"Bats" The Monkey Run _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 8_
"When You're Happy You Won't Understand" Monnone Alone _Together At Last_
"Exploding View" Monobird _Who Is Who/Exploding View_

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 57?

It's another collection of things I consider indiepop or influenced by indiepop.  We should go from the Minders:



To Mirah:



To Misty's Big Adventure:



Into the subsection Mo with Modern English:



& Momus:



(Okay, that's him playing with Kahimi Karie, but he's not really an indiepop artist, & the song I'll play is a song he wrote for her & I wanted all of these to be live because I'm not playing any live songs tomorrow so this is him actually playing music & singing which he doesn't really do live anymore.)

To - well, I don't know where we'll end up!  I just know we probably won't find the letter M tomorrow.

It's tomorrow at noon.  It should be fun.  I hope it's fun.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 57: Nothing About Indiepop A To Z # 57

This is something I think about doing for/to this blog, for no real reason, except to highlight that I'm usually without any content but I keep writing anyway: I just want to crib a Wikipedia page & paste it onto the blog.

How would that work?  I wouldn't try to reformat the blog or anything, that would be too hard.  Mainly I suppose I would cut & paste, like so:

Mantovani

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For the surname, see Mantovani (surname).

Mantovani
Mantovani in 1970
Background information
Birth name	Annunzio Paolo Mantovani
Also known as	Tulio Trapani
Born	15 November 1905 Venice, Veneto, Italy
Died	29 March 1980 (aged 74) Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Genres	Light music
Occupation(s)	conductor composer light entertainer
Years active	1939–1980
Associated acts	David Whitfield

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (Italian pronunciation: [anˈnuntsjo ˈpaːolo mantoˈvaːni]) (15 November 1905 – 29 March 1980),^[1] known mononymously as Mantovani, was an Anglo-Italian conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. The book British Hit Singles & Albums states that he was "Britain's most successful album act before the Beatles...the first act to sell over one million stereo albums and [have] six albums simultaneously in the US Top 30 in

Holy shit, that's not bad. I wonder if the links work, too.

The only bad thing that I've noticed which I don't care much about is that the spacing seems off. Suddenly it's like double-spaced or one&ahalf-spaced or something, & I don't much care for that. Also, I don't know how to fix it.

Anyway, I've thought about doing that from time-to-time.  Now that I've done it, it doesn't seem all that fun or interesting.  But at least I did it!

Another Very Old Email But Not As Old As The Previous One

Here's an example of an email I would write many times in my life, desperately trying to charm a woman into dating me.  This is the last such example - I wrote this to the woman I've been with since then.  I read this to her today - I wrote this email on this day in 2001 - & she said, "I didn't understand it then & I don't understand it now."

This is not the entire email, but you'll get the gist of how ridiculous I could be when I was attempting to woo a woman.

-----

Maestro,

The rain, it falls on the just & the just-so alike.  My 450 year old umbrella is difficult to handle with a cigarette in the right hand.  It is work that I am at & lunch that I am dreaming of.  Work in fact is what I am avoiding doing & a nonsense email seems just the ticket.  So I present to you, for your edification, a History Of Tickets.

I mean, A History Of Nonsense.

Nonsense was unheard of in early evolutionary times although some now-extinct species very often did ridiculous things.  It's not really nonsense, you know, as the great philosopher Rene Descartes-McGillicutty said, unless one is trying to be nonsensical.

Which brings us to Lewis Carroll.  We get a little too close to Lewis Carroll all of a sudden so we need to pull back a little.  All right.  This is just fine.

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician who liked to photograph little girls.  Sometimes naked.  Sometimes in a panda suit.  Sometimes in color, which is extremely silly, as the world wasn't even in color then.  Anyway, Lew (as he liked to be called, even though his real name was Charles) once said something very nonsensical about a John Lennon song:

 "The time has come," the Walrus said,
 "To talk of many things:
 Of shoes & and ships & and sealing-wax
 Of cabbages & and kings
 & why the sea is boiling hot
 & whether pigs have wings."

Which takes us back 400,000 years, on the rolling tundra of the Arctic Wastes.  Here, every year for as long as I can remember, huge throbbing masses of walruses (or walrusi for Latin students) gather to mate, get drunk, start fights, check their credit ratings, & otherwise play boring blues riffs till the police come & shut them down.  Darwin noted it, & Lamarck, too, although he wasn't so much nonsensical as mildly amusing.  I bring up the walrus not necessarily because they have funny faces; I, too, can play boring blues riffs till the neighbors come.  The difference between me & walruses is that I don't necessarily like to.

Flash forward again to a very personal moment in my life: my first kiss.  It was barely a few months ago, but it feels almost like last week.  To this day I'm not entirely sure it wasn't Ray Davies in drag, but he/she did serenade me with the Best Kinks Song In The World, "Waterloo Sunset."  Then, as the night wore on, & his/her make-up gradually covered my face, neck, shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, wrists, the backs of my hands, & four of my ten fingers, I knew things were going too fast.  I had only recently left the seminary & the only thing I had unpacked in my house was my Bible.  So I quickly turned to Ray (he/she called him/herself "Dave" but I like to think it really was Ray Davies in drag) & I quoted from scripture.

Well, that ruined the night, let me tell you.  I learned that very night my First Valuable Lesson: Quoting Scripture will not get you into someone's pants.  I say I learned it, but I can't stop quoting Scripture.  It's so scriptural, you know?

I think my first single off my first record will be "Can't Stop Quoting Scripture."

People keep interrupting me whilst I am trying to be scholarly.  I don't believe we have talked about Nonsense In The Time Of Christ, so I believe I can crucify two birds with one nail here.  Bear with me.

Christ was a big flashy freak who loved the ladies, baby.  Oh yeah.  He wore crazy colors & said things like, "Blessed are the meek because they are so GROOVY Y'ALL!" while the disco ball spun & the apostles snorted coke in the men's room.  Meanwhile on the Throne, God The Father was worried.

"Am I like that dad in 'American Beauty'?" he wondered to himself.  He bit his Holy Nails & wished he had married like His dad had told him to.  He was lonely & worried & so he went to the stream to do some fishing.  It was a long stream, & cold, & the fish danced around his hook but did not bite.  He turned to his companion & said, "The fish are not biting.  Something about this stream has changed."  He companion offered him a drink & he drunk deeply.  It was good gin.  He stared into the stream at the fish that would not bite & he had another drink.

Holy shit!  This email turned into an Ernest Hemingway story!  I'm so sorry about that.  Let's get back to the business of being colloquial before it becomes too much for me.

How are you?  Did you totally have fun last night?  I got drunk & watched a movie.  Then I listened to records & played with my cats.  Yeah, it didn't rain.  It's raining now, which is a bummer because I'm hungry & I wanna walk somewhere to find food.  Gosh, I hope this email finds you well.  I hope the weather's better when we go drink beer tomorrow.  I mean, when I drink beer & you drink whatever.  Ha ha.  Well, I have to go back to work now.  I hope you have a good day with your monkeys.  Ha ha.  Write back!

xo g

A Funny Old Email

Hm, I'm not sure I can figure out when this email was written but I wrote it to my friend Carole, who's lately been helping out on the Tuesday Morning Blend, more than twenty years ago when she was Volunteer Director at KVRX.  We had to report our volunteer hours every month, & I did a lot of work for the station.  I thought you might enjoy this.  I've annotated it because I can.

-----

From: slug@mail.utexas.edu (Die Nacktschnecke)*
Subject: Volunteer Hour Report

Hello ladies**,

I am reporting again, at the end of the month, the incredible work that my staff has done the last four weeks.  I hope that you recognize their achievements, etc.

Maintaining the KVRX love list*** - (approximately 30-45 min. @ day)
                                        .....Gary Dickerson

Maintaining the KVRX Web - (oh, he's done at least 6 hours this month)
                                        .....Gary Dickerson

Minor consulting with various KVRXers about web issues (now & then -
                            maybe two volunteer hours, maybe?)
                                        .....Gary Dickerson

Downloading porn for use at Goon Skwad**** meetings (about four hours a day)
                                        .....Gary Dickerson

I think that about covers it.  I hope that that is enough for you bloodsuckers.

Oh, wait.  There is this fellow, a cable deejay named Jacob***** who has been helping me with the Topless 39******.  It takes about an hour (or so) to do the script for the basic list, & I've asked him to also go through the web & find links for bands on the list, & that takes an enormous amount of time, like, two hours a pop (or at least it took me that long).  He's only done that for one week.  So, I figure,

 four weeks basic topless = 4 volunteer hours
 one week expanded topless = 2 hours

He may do it this week as well; I haven't gotten the script from him yet.  I don't see why he wouldn't.  But I wanted to tell you that he has been doing work for the web page, & deserves credit accordingly.

xoxox
gary

-----

That may not have been interesting for you, but it was for me, especially the ridiculous way I pretend I have a staff (& ruin the whole vibe by actually having someone helping me out!) & also I enjoy the channeling of Groucho with the "you bloodsuckers" line.

Now I really need to go work on the Tuesday Morning Blend for tomorrow!

* Yeah, that was my email address at UT.  I had it from 1993 until 2009 when I moved away.  Some time later they retired the mail.utexas.edu server so even though I wish I could've kept it forever, I wouldn't have been able to even if I stayed.  By the way "Nacktschnecke" is German for "naked snail," which is, of course, a slug.
** Carole was Volunteer Director with someone else.
*** That was the station's mailing list.
**** The first rule of Goon Skwad is that you really don't want anyone from the Goon Skwad to talk to you about Goon Skwad I promise.
***** I don't remember this person at all.
****** That's the snotty KVRX "most played" list.  Not a top ten, a topless thirty-nine.  They still have it, you can see it on their website.