Self Help Radio 092823: Corridors & Hallways

You may not know this but I tried to do this show from a corridor but the corridor has a guard who wanted my ID! & I tried to do this show from a hallway but the hallways was full of boxes of books! Plus both were heavily trafficked. There would have been a lot of interruptions. Would some of them have been comical? Probably. Would some of them have led to a kerfuffle? Almost certainly. Would I be in jail right now because my wife has told me she will not bail me out the next time I start a fight in a hallway or corridor? Oh yes indeed. So it was all for the best. Though I would've preferred to do a show about corridors & hallways in a hallway or corridor. We can't always have everything we want!

If you want to listen to this show, though, you can do so now or whenever (you should listen to it in a corridor or hallway tho) at the Self Help Radio website. Remember to use the username SHR & also the password selfhelp to access the file. Lots of stuff happened on the show. Lots of music was played. That is all detailed below.

The hallways pictured above was a podiatrist in Fort Worth. They didn't want us to exit the way we came in. I left them a Self Help Radio rug.

Self Help Radio Corridors & Hallways show

"Dark Shadows & Empty Hallways" Tammy St. John _Ripples Vol. 4: Uptown Girls & Big City Boys_

"Corridor Of Dreams" Cleaners From Venus _Midnight Cleaners_

"Hallways Of My Mind" The Dells _The Dells Musical Menu/Always Together_

introduction & definitions - featuring the Definition-O-Tron 3000

"The Sixties Corridor" The Meanies _No Sleep 'Til Bedtime 7" EP_

"Standing In The Hallway" The Bangles _Different Light_

"Corridors" The House Of Love _Audience With The Mind_

"Hallway" Gorky's Zygotic Mynci _Spanish Dance Troupe_

"Endless Corridor" Siglo XX _Answer_

interview with hobo Major Sterling

"Hallway" Marmoset _Tea Tornado_

"Ant Corridor" Robyn Hitchcock _Luxor_

"1997, Passing In The Hallway" Martha _Courting Strong_

"Corridors" B-Movie _Climate Of Fear_

"Hallways & Doors (feat. Eligh & Grouch)" DJ Drez _The Capture Of Sound_

interview with realtor Morton Smith

"Shock Corridor" Saint Etienne _Finisterre_

"Cat In The Hallway" Tiny Ruins _Some Were Meant For Sea_

"Take A Hard Look Down The Long Corridor" Sonny & The Sunsets _Hairdressers From Heaven_

"Hallways" Islands _A Sleep & A Forgetting_

"Corridor" Death Lens _No Luck_

our resident cinephile Chuck stops by!

"Hallway Symphony" Hamilton, Joe Frank, & Reynolds _Hallway Symphony_

"The Corridors Of Power" Dean Wareham _I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of L.A._

"Hotel Hallway" Like A Motorcycle _Dead Broke_

"Sun Corridor" Norse Horse _Hey Girl, Hey: A Polyvinyl Sampler_

"In The Hallway" Ducktails _Jersey Devil_

conclusion & goodbye

"Red Velvet Corridor" Swans _Soundtracks For The Blind_

"Bare Hallways" Hiroki Tanaka _Kaigo Kioku Kyoku_

Whither Corridors & Hallways?

(image from here)

All right. Let's get this out of the way. This is a rare "double theme" for Self Help Radio not necessarily because hallways & corridors can be (although aren't) synonyms, but because - & I know you suspected this - I couldn't find enough songs about one or the other so I had to combine the two. I just want you to know that there are plenty of songs about hallways & plenty of songs about corridors to fill a show each. I just didn't like enough songs of either kind to fill two hours of the show I wanted to do. I hope you understand.

The idea for this show came from a song that I won't play on the show. In the David Bowie song "Teenage Wildlife" (I recently listened to Scary Monsters for the millionth time) he has a part where he sings,

You'll take me aside, and say

"Well, David, what shall I do? They wait for me in the hallway"

I'll say "Don't ask me, I don't know any hallways"

In addition to noting David Bowie being massively unhelpful to a sad teenager, I also was intrigued by the word "hallway." It led me to trying to find songs about hallways. When there weren't enough of them, I also sought out songs about corridors. & that's where this theme came from.

Why won't I play the Bowie song? It's seven minutes long & that's really the only mention of hallways. It's a great tune but not really part of the theme.

Hey! The show is on today, Thursday the 28th, from noon to 2pm on Freeform Portland. You can listen at 90.3+98.3fm in town & online everywhere at Freeform Portland dot org.

Preface To Corridors & Hallways: Seeing Ghosts In Hallways

Above is a picture of a beautiful cat that is no longer with us. Her name was Bronte & I have written about her all over this blog, but you can read my memorial to her here. It is very hard to believe she's been gone for over two years now.

Dwelling on my lost children is not something I want to do, at least not in public. I carry them in my heart & I have pictures of them nearby so I can think of them, but I don't need to share those memories & that pain with everyone. I am only sharing this because it's something that comes to mind when I think of hallways.

That was our hallway in Kentucky. Some nights I would wake up for some reason - maybe to go get a drink of water - & who should be there in the hallway but Bronte. Sometimes when she was there the dogs refused to go past her, even though she wasn't mean at all. She was just a bit intimidating I guess. I would laugh & ask her what she was doing there & pick her up & kiss her. Which wasn't what she wanted at all. She just wanted to sit in the hall.

This post is titled "seeing ghosts in hallways" but I don't really see Bronte's ghost anywhere. Our hallway here in Portland isn't nearly big enough for ghosts. But I am glad the show this week is encouraging me to think about her. & how much I miss her. & how glad I was she found us & spent most of her life with us.

September 26, 1329

(credit Wikipedia)

Normally, when I don't have anything important to talk about - well - I never have anything important to talk about - I should instead say - when I don't have anything about my radio show to talk about - I look at pictures I've taken on that day over the past few years & share one or two of them, usually with an anecdote. None of the pictures I've taken on September 26 - not counting the ones I took today, which I haven't looked at - were worthy of a story. So I went to Wikipedia to see if anyone famous or interesting was born today. It turns out there were lots - look here - but it intrigued me that the second name on the "births" list - pre-1600 CE - was a woman named Anne Of Bavaria. It's always fascinating to me that we know the actual birthday of anyone that long ago, but Anne's story - Wikipedia calls her a "German queen consort" - seemed to strike some kind of weird chord in me.

She was royalty, a member of the House Of Wittelsbach, a dynastic German line that existed from the 11th till the 19th century. The current inbred British royals are descended from someone from this house. They've had money & lands for a long time.  So yeah, on this day in 1329, little Anne was born. Whatever she did for two decades is unknown, although I'm sure she lived quite well.

When she was nineteen, she married Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. He was about thirteen years older than she was, which may have seemed weirder then than now, & she was his second wife. His first wife had died the year before. From what I can gather, the important thing was getting Chuck an heir. He was from Prague, although Wikipedia says he was the first King Of Bohemia to be Holy Roman Emperor, so I'm not sure if I know enough about Prague & Bohemia in the fourteenth century to suss out what connections there were. I do wonder if Anne & Chuck spoke the same language. Wikipedia tells us her Czech name was Anna Falcká.

Anne's life from then on must've been both exhilarating & then sad. She was Queen Of Rome & Queen Of Bohemia. She & Charles had a son, in 1350, whom they named Wenceslaus, probably after the song. (Just kidding. The song didn't exist yet. But he was named after the saint who features in the song.) At last, an heir! But Wenceslaus died just a year later. & then, in 1353, at the age of 23, Anna herself died. A trajectory probably no different from the poorer folk of her day, but certainly she lived better than they did. Here are some facts that are mentioned in this article:

A story has it that she was heartbroken & never recovered after her only child’s death, but according to another version of the events her untimely passing was the result of a fall from a horse.

Oh! Also! A weird postscript courtesy the Wikipedia:

Asteroid 100733 Annafalcká, discovered by Czech astronomer Miloš Tichý at the Kleť Observatory in 1998, was named in her memory.

Isn't it fascinating that she featured prominently enough in someone's memory to name a frickin' celestial body after them?

So anyway - happy birthday to her? You didn't live long, you had no children, but there's an asteroid named after you, so - well done?

The 1968 Project, Part Five

(The front page of the 1968 releases section of Rate Your Music. The top four haven't changed.)

As I explained in a previous post, I have another dumb thing I'm doing which has occasionally found its way onto the radio. Please read the previous post to learn about the 1968 Project. I recently finished the fifth installment which, by the way, means I've listened to about 99 records now that were released in 1968. It's been a lot of fun.

That episode is both at the Self Help Radio website & on the KBOO website. You have to scroll for the episode on the show's website, but you can download it if you want; the KBOO show is a direct link.

Anyway. Just thought I'd tell you. I'll do another one after KBOO's Fall Drive ends.