Thursday, October 03, 2019

Sugar Substitute (Episode 166)

Wouldya look at that.  My first show on XRAY FM is actually the 166th episode of Sugar Substitute! How weird these things are!

The first episode of Sugar Substitute aired on August 4, 2009, on WMUL in Huntington, West Virginia.  The station had given me a three-hour block of time, & I didn't even want to think about how difficult it would be to make a three-hour-long episode of Self Help Radio.  So I split the block in half - I had been doing a ninety-minute version of SHR in Austin - & for the rest of the time, I played indie music under the moniker "Sugar Substitute."

The name comes from a song by the late, great Austin band Luxuriator, & I use their song (with their permission) in the intro.

The show was brought with me to Lexington, & when I was given yet another three-hour block, I did the same chrono-surgery.  When I decided - probably when I got the Monday morning show sometime in 2012 - to expand Self Help Radio to two hours, I shortened Sugar Substitute to sixty minutes.

At some point, more aggressive recruitment led to more students on the air, & the three-hour timeslots were mostly done.  I retired Sugar Substitute in 2015 or so.

When I was asked to do a show on XRAY, I had a couple choices - I could move SHR over from Freeform, or I could've done any number of shows I've done before - or a new show with a new name!  But I figured I'd stick with my love of indie, postpunk, punk, & related stuff, & it seemed natural to call the show Sugar Substitute again.

With that giant preamble, I wanted to let you know that you can listen to the show anytime by clicking here.  It's archived on the XRAY page.  You don't have to look at the dumb Self Help Radio website at all!

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