Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: Ennio Morricone's Birthday

(image from here)

Most of the news is bleak. Bleak & ugly. & it ain't getting any better soon. So we thought we'd celebrate a great musician composer & artist on The Dickenbock Report this week.

The great Ennio Morricone was born on November 10, 1928. On what would've been his 96th birthday, we'll talk about him & play his music as interpreted by the artists he influenced & who admired him.

That's noon to 1pm tomorrow, November 10, on The Dickenbock Report on XRAY FM - 91.1+107.1fm in town, xray dot fm everywhere.

This Week In Self Help (Nov 3 + 5)

It was a terrible week for 99% of this country, even those who thought they won. They are not smart & they are horribly racist & sexist & when it goes bad for them - as it almost assuredly will - maybe they can find in their despair the ability to change & forgive themselves. Ha ha! No, they'll keep blaming people they fear! We are doomed.

It seems I was right to not work on a Self Help Radio episode this week. My anxiety was entirely justified. But there was radio from me anyway & it went like this:

On the Dickenbock Report, I had a fun show about sandwiches on National Sandwich Day. Listen at the XRAY web page. Or listen at the Self Help Radio web page. For the latter, remember the username SHR & the password selfhelp.

Where & when Self Help Radio should've been, I played a bunch of jazz, electronica, & experimental music. I called it a "Mental Health Day." I hope it prepared me for the shitshow that was election day. Maybe I'd be feeling worse if I hadn't done that. Listen at the KBOO web page. Or listen at the Self Help Radio web page. For the latter, remember the username SHR & the password selfhelp.

The last hour on the KBOO recording is an episode of Corporate Standardized Programming. It was an episode dedicated to artists we've lost recently, mainly July of this year. If you'd like to listen to that episode alone, you can listen at the Self Help Radio web page. Please remember the username SHR & the password selfhelp.

& also remember the famous adage: it's always darkest before it goes completely black.

Self Help Radio 110524: A Mental Health Day

(original image here*)

This isn't an episode of Self Help Radio but I'm in the habit of letting you know what I am doing on Tuesdays so what the hell. Here's one of those blog potsts.

As I've explained, I was too preoccupied with the impending death of my country to focus on making an episode of Self Help Radio this week. I just couldn't get my act together. My brain kept telling me to "take a mental health day" - something I've never done. Instead of an episode of Self Help Radio, I just played a lot of music that I might not ever really play on Self Help Radio - electronica, jazz, experimental. All taken from new releases I've listened to over the past few months. As I played them, I do think I was distracted a bit from the coming shitstorm.

Maybe it'll help you too. You can listen at the KBOO web page. Or you can listen at the Self Help Radio web page. (If the latter, username SHR + password selfhelp.) It's very little me, very much lots of I think interesting toons. See you on the other side.

Self Help Radio Mental Health Day Playlist

"A Problem With The Stars" Eldritch Priest _Dormitive Virtue_ (Halocline Trance, 2024)

"Melt All The Guns II" Devin Gray _Melt All The Guns II_ (Rataplan, 2024)

"What Nature Does" BK-One _A Blackbox Recovery_ (Self-Released, 2024)

"Vocoder (Club Mix)" Floating Points _Cascade_ (Ninja Tune, 2024)

"Reverie" Airflow _Head In The Clouds_ (Self-Released, 2024)

"Morsure Profonde" Soft Violet _Sterner Stuff_ (Alien Transistor, 2024)

"Sorrowful Bouquet" Alex Henry Foster _A Measure Of Shape & Sounds_ (Hopeful Tragedy, 2024)

"Destitute For Dreaming (Single Version)" Lisa Cuthbert _Destitute For Dreaming EP_ (Self-Released, 2024)

"It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago" Woody Jackson _Cowboy Yoga_ (ElectroVox, 2024)

"The Droopy" Max Jaffe _Reduction Of Man_ (Whited Sepuchre, 2024)

"Broken (Alternate Version)" Hidden Orchestra _Broken EP_ (Lone Figures, 2024)

"Clemency" Uniform _Nightmare City_ (Sacred Bones, 2024)

"Slow, Simple" Tim Brady / Instruments Of Happiness _Imagine Many Guitars_ (Redshift, 2024)

"Dylar" Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (Exit) Knarr _Breezy_ (Sonic Transmissions, 2024)

"Erase" Umberto _Black Bile: Variations_ (Thrill Jockey, 2024)

"Soft/Focus" Mark Templeton _Two Verses_ (Faitiche, 2024)

"Une Nuit Devant Soi" Orson Claeys _Odyssey To Self_ (Sdban Ultra, 2024)

"Calm Shores" Carl Lord _Sacred_

* A note about the image manipulated: the license is Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic. It has been manipulated by adding the Self Help Radio logo.

Whither A Mental Health Day?

(Image from the Wikipedia)

Like lots of folks, this election has caused me a great deal of anxiety. Not the candidates I support - but the fact that so many in our country seem to support the candidate that will do the most destruction. It hasn't been a healthy time for me & I found myself this week unable to put my all into Self Help Radio. So. I decided it was best to take a mental health day.

But I couldn't leave you with a repeat or some other programming, so tonight at midnight, in place of Self Help Radio, I'll just play some music. I listen to a lot of music. Some of it would never find its way onto an episode of Self Help Radio because it wouldn't fit one of my dumb themes. So I'll shall some of that tonight.

& hopefully next week, when the dust clears, if we're all okay, if the country isn't on fire, we can return to whatever dumb theme I was going to explore - oh yeah, shotgun. That's the theme! Maybe because we'll need one next week to fight in the second Civil War.

A radio show. Just not Self Help Radio. On KBOO tonight midnight to 2am. 90.7fm kboo dot fm.

Preface To This Week's Show: What's A Mental Health Day?

(Original image here)

Here's what very well mind dot com says a "mental health day" is: "A mental health day is a day you take off from work or school, & minimize any commitments or responsibilities. You can use this time to focus on relieving stress, relaxing, having fun, & preventing burnout."

In my case, the relieving stress part seems paramount. I am incredibly stressed out by the upcoming election. I think I had a panic attack on Election Night 2020. It has made the past few days difficult for me. I am finding it hard to concentrate. I get genuinely anxious when I see anything on the news.

Usually Sundays & Mondays are days I work on Self Help Radio. I hope you don't think the interviews on the show are real - they are really improvised, but I usually do that with the funny people who act as the interviewees during the previous week. I managed to scrape together an episode of The Dickenbock Report today but have not done any work for SHR today. & I can't imagine tomorrow will be any better.

Last night I was up late looking over the mayoral & city council candidates for Portland. It was pretty taxing & stressful. Voting for President was not but it's not my vote I'm worried about - it's the rest of this country.

So I believe I'll take a mental health day tomorrow & forego an episode of Self Help Radio. I'll have some music programmed & there'll be a new episode of Corporate Standardized Programming but no theme, no interviews, no lame attempts at me being funny. I just don't have it in me.

& yeah, I stole the above image for World Mental Health Day & removed the World. Sue me.