Preface To A Week Without Self Help Radio: The Uncomfortable End Of The 1968 Project

(image from here)

So. As I've explained before, I decided to listen to records from 1968 as voted on by users of the website Rate Your Music & then playing the longest song on the record on the radio (usually on sub shows) & talking about the song & the record. I did seven of them. & I made a dumb mistake.

Here's the mistake: the website is dynamic. Users can vote all the time on the records. & they do. So the list kept changing. Especially past the first fifty entries or so. Okay, that's not the mistake. The mistake was that I felt the desperate need to update my own list with any changes in the order on the list. Let me give you an example.

In between (let's say) the fifth & sixth entries something like ten entries moved up &/or down in such a dramatic fashion that I spent the first third of the show "catching up" - & telling you, like you give a damn, about the numbers they were & the numbers they are (as of the show).

This was a very dumb way to manage this. As I was gathering material for the eighth installment, there were so many entries that moved & changed that they would now take up the bulk of that show. It was becoming unwieldy. & it was all because I felt the need to be somewhat faithful to the list as is than perhaps as it was when I started the project.

Because the project was intermittent. I did seven parts in over a year, maybe in almost two years. Of course a dynamic, user-opinion-based list would change a lot.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I'm not going to continue with the 1968 Project at this point. But.

Soon enough I'm going to attempt the 1969 Project. & when I do that, I am going to take a snapshot of that album list on Rate Your Music & I am going to keep that snapshot & not attempt to keep up with the changes as new users vote on the 1969 album list.

In effect I'm saying I won't make the same mistake again.

This by the way is an example of how insular my radio world is. Virtually no one heard these radio shows I'm talking about, & less might have sought them out on my website, & a sum total of nobody at all was wondering when I would return to it. But I felt the need to explain why I haven't done an eighth episode at this point.

If you're thinking, wow that's dumb. It is! I know it is! & yet. This is me.