Bo Live

This is a terrible picture taken from quite far away at a Bo Burnham concert I attended in Atlanta on this day in 2015.  I had become familiar with him when I was reviewing material for WRFL & we got a digital copy of his album, What., which would've been in December of 2013.

We didn't normally get comedy records, & I was very baffled by the first track, which is nearly ten minutes long, & which is mostly pantomime (not great for an audio medium).  But I was intrigued by it - & was glad to see the actual show on Youtube not long after.  That started me on the Bo Burnham journey - which led to this show, in which I was old enough to be the father of about 95% of the attendees.

Atlanta was a bit of a schlep from Lexington, Kentucky, where we lived, but we would often have to travel outside the city to see shows - usually Cincinnati or Louisville, but we went to Columbus & Nashville & even St. Louis if a band or comedian only came that close to us.

We don't have that problem in Portland!  Lots of shows come here - of course now I just have to feel comfortable to go to see them.  Which I am probably not.

Remind me to tell you how I fucked up seeing him on his next tour, which would be his last for a while - & that story is the subject of a song he did on his extraordinary Netflix show from last year.

Ginger(bread) Books

(images from Good Reads)

If you listened to this past week's Self Help Radio, you heard our librarian friend Carole talk about books involving gingerbread.  Why would she do that?  Well, it was The Ginger Show.  You didn't listen?  Maybe go do that now - at either KBOO dot fm or at the Self Help Radio website - & when you're done, check out the books she talked about, which were:

The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock

The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone

The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires, illustrated by Holly Berry

The Gingerbread Man Loose In The School by Laura Murray, illustrated by Mike Lowery
(This is the first of a series about the Gingerbread Man - the link will mention the rest!)

Hansel & Gretel by Bethan Woollvin

& Gingerbread For Liberty!: How A German Baker Helped Win The American Revolution by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch

You might find all or some of these good fits for your library! Or you might just want to read them at the library. Either one will make Carole very happy.

Self Help Radio 031522: The Ginger Show

Did Self Help Radio broadcast from this place this week? Alas, no!

Whilst sipping ginger tea, & delicately nibbling on ginger snaps, hoping to return home for a cold ginger beer post-show, I sat in the lonesome KBOO studios this morning & presented a radio show about ginger. Of all kinds! The name, the root, the red-head. & probably more. It was a very long show.

& surely it can speak for itself, so let's just tell you the what & where, were you foolish enough to miss it.  You can listen whenever you'd like, preferably while eating ginger &/or hanging out with a ginger (but do the latter gingerly), at both the KBOO website & at the Self Help Radio website.  As always, I remind you, should you choose the latter, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) to listen.

Lots of music & lots of stuff happened on the show.  All is detailed below.  & please don't forget to support KBOO radio right now!

Self Help Radio 220315: The Ginger Show
"Ginger" Wayne Parker _Rare Fifties Boston Rockabilly, Vol. 1_
"Ginger" Lovers _Star Lit Sunken Ship_
"Ginger" Twin Sister _Vampires With Dreaming Kids/Color Your Life_

introduction & definitions

"Prejudice" Tim Minchin & The Heritage Orchestra _Tim Minchin & The Heritage Orchestra_
"Ginger Geezer" Vivian Stanshall _Teddy Boys Don't Knit_
"The Land Of Green Ginger" The Orb _Back To Mine_
"Gingersnap" Jamie _Gingersnap_
"Do The Ginger Snap" Little Bobby Moore _Only Young Once - The King Records Story 1962_

interview with diviner Sammy Jarvis

"Ginger" Ginger Valley _Country Life_
"Ginger" The Lilys _A Brief History Of Amazing Letdowns_
"Mother Ginger (narrated by Jim Weiss)" London Philharmonic Orchestra, Stephen Simon, Conductor _The Nutcracker_
"Ginger Haired Man" Gallery _Nice To Be With You: All Time Greatest Performances_
"Ginger" The Front Bottoms _Back On Top_

interview with our library friend Carole (part one)

"Ginger Bread" Frankie Avalon _The Best Of Frankie Avalon_
"Sweet Gingerbread Man" Bobby Sherman _With Love, Bobby_
"Gingerbread" Jumprope _Shining Sun_
"The Gingerbread House" Plasticland _Wonder Wonderful Wonderland_
"Gingerbread Abode" Helen Austin _Always Be A Unicorn_

interview with our library friend Carole (part one)

"Princess Of The Gingerland" The Glitterhouse _Color Blind_
"Ginger Man" Barry Goldberg Blues Band _Blowing My Mind_
"Ginger Bread Man" The Shades _Green Crystal Ties Volume Ten (60s Garage Band Flashback)_
"Ginger Ale Yawn" Wolfie _You're Lucky I'm Skinny_
"Ginger Ale" The Clean _Modern Rock_

another installment of Marge's Large Kitchen

"Ginger & Spice" Hoagy Carmichael _A Portrait Of Hoagy Carmichael_
"Gingerbread Coffin" Rasputina _Cabin Fever!_
"Ginger Park" 50 Foot Wave _Golden Ocean_
"Ginger's Boogie" Ginger Smock with the Jackson Brothers _Boogie Woogie Gals: Boogie Songstresses & Piano Stylists_
"Ginger Kisses" Modern Girlfriends _Modern Girlfriends_
"Jackass Ginger" Poi Dog Pondering _Volo Volo_

Gary's moderately amusing ginger ale story

"Ginger" Neil Sedaka _The Brooklyn Demos (1958-1961)_
"Ginger Snaps" Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham _L'Avventura_
"Ginger" Hooverphonic _No More Sweet Music_
"Ginger" Speedy Ortiz _Foil Deer_
"Ginger" T.J. Assembly _Let's Go Down & Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds Of 1967_
"Playing Cards With Gingerbread" WinterKids _Memoirs_

conclusion & goodbye

"Ginger (La Rue Remix)" The Sensualists _Adaptations_
"Jack & Ginger" Ill Ease _Live At The Holiday Sin_
"Ginger, Baby" Ex Norwegian _House Music_
"Ginger" Georgia's Horse _Weather Codes_

Whither The Ginger Show?

Majestic root.

Ginger can mean or be many things.  It can be the delicious root pictured above.  It can mean (in UK slang mostly) a red-headed person.  & it can be a name or nickname (often based on the color of one's hair).  & that's not even talking about the adjective!  Tonight all of the word's meanings will be explored on Self Help Radio's show about ginger.

Perhaps it's these myriad reasons that made me start collecting songs about ginger & gingers in the first place.  Certainly there are more songs about the name than the vegetable, although if you add in gingerbread & ginger snaps & even ginger ale, it attempts to even the number somewhat.  I assure you it had nothing to do with this being the week of St. Patrick's day, the traditional holiday celebrating the Irish, whose folk are famously red-headed!  Howsoever the theme did occur to me, we shall have a show about all kinds of ginger tonight.

Listen from midnight to 3am on 90.7fm in town & online everywhere at kboo.fm.  Many songs, a few interviews, lots of embarrassing talking from me.  The usual!

Preface To The Ginger Show: I Cooked With Ginger Tonight!

(No, not that Ginger! Image from here.)

While Tina Louise is definitely the Ginger of my childhood, I wasn't cooking with her tonight, nor was I watching Gilligan's Island while I was cooking.  Come to think of it, I haven't watched an episode of Gilligan's Island in decades.  But they're burned into my brain from childhood, so I don't have to.  No, I was cooking with the root, which I hate having to peel, & also I don't enjoy grating it either.

If you bet me that I hadn't actually eaten ginger in anything other than gingerbread or ginger ale before I was twenty, I would take that bet - if you showed ginger root to me when I was fifteen, I wouldn't know what it was, let alone that it was edible.  To be fair, I was mostly confused & ignorant when I was fifteen, so it's not that I was simply culinarily ignorant.  Although I was.

My mother, in her eighties, once asked my sister Karin, "Did I cook for you when you were a kid?"  She wasn't getting senile - well, she was, but this wasn't an example of that - my mother was kind of realizing she hadn't been a very good cook.  I can remember maybe five meals we regularly had, & they weren't of the "more than one item" variety - we might have bread, but hardly any sides.  I can imagine my mother lacklusterly listening to her mother trying to teach her how to make meals.  Almost certainly my mother had a very small repertoire of spices - salt, pepper, perhaps some paprika - although she told me she found paprika a bit too spicy for her tastes.

This is sad but true: I didn't eat Indian food or Chinese food until I was in at least my third year of college.  I wasn't too adventurous but I also didn't really know about the other cuisines.  & I really didn't start cooking in earnest until maybe a little over ten years ago.  That's when I became familiar with ginger.  Which I cooked with tonight!  I made a recipe called "Thai Golden Curry."  It took an eighth of a cup of ginger.  I was supposed to grate it, but I did not.  I chopped it as small as I could.

It occurs to me that I don't really know the relationship between the ginger I cook with in non-dessert foods & the ginger in gingerbread, how it works, what the story is.  I must do some research.

& for the record, I was way more into Mary-Ann than Ginger.  When I was like eight.