Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: International Cello Day

(image from the Wikipedia)

December 29 is International Cello Day. Dick Dickenbock, being a big fan of music, loves to showcase musical instruments on his show. Especially big musical instruments. He sometimes dreams of having big musical instruments fight each other on the show! Cello vs. Tuba! But he'll settle for a show talking about & playing musical reports about the cello.

That's tomorrow, Sunday, from noon to 1pm, on 91.1+107.1fm in Portland, & online everywhere at xray dot fm. Hydraulophone vs Double Contrabass! Now that would be a match-up!

This Week In Self Help (December 22 + 24)

(found somewhere on Tumblr)

This was a week when I only did two radio shows but three of my shows aired. & two of those shows are back-to-back so it's almost like I only did one show & that was my Christmas gift to Portland this week.

XRAY superfan & former deejay Mark sat if for The Dickenbock Report on Sunday. He did a kind of holiday show but his spin was clever & a little subversive. You can listen to that show on the XRAY website & also on the Self Help Radio website (where the username is SHR & the password is selfhelp).

Self Help Radio featured my year-end collection of some of my favorite music of 2024. You can listen to that show on the KBOO website & also on the Self Help Radio website (where the username is SHR & the password is selfhelp).

This week's episode of Corporate Standardized Programming continued my vain attempt to celebrate those we lost in 2024. I have just finished September! That show is at the end of the KBOO file above or you can listen to it as a one-hour show on the Self Help Radio website (where the username is SHR & the password is selfhelp).

Only a few more shows in 2024! I'll probably screw them up.

Self Help Radio 122424: Gary's Favorite Music 2024

(images from Discogs & Bandcamp)

Here it is! A collection of two hours of some - but not all - of my favorite music of the year. I know I missed something. I always miss something. I tell myself I'll keep better records, find ways to remind myself, but then a year passes & I do my best to gather what I liked most. Here it is! Oh. I already said that.

It's not in any order except in the order that I thought would sound best. I don't really make top ten lists. I am not as rigid as that. What I like depends on my mood & my place in life. There are bands I thought I'd love forever that - even though I still love them in a way - I don't listen to at all anymore. I think I just like listening to new music a lot & it has changed my relationship to the old music in my life. I need to think more on this.

You should go listen to the show! It's available both on the KBOO web page & on the Self Help Radio web page. On the Self Help Radio page use the username SHR & password selfhelp to access. It was all music plus me talking. The playlist is below.

Happy holidays to all!

Gary's Favorite Music 2024

"DIY SOS" Crumbs _You're Just Jealous_

"JAMCOD" The Jesus & Mary Chain _Glasgow Eyes_

"Company Culture" Lambrini Girls _Company Culture_

"Stepping Across" Close Lobsters _Stepping Across_

"California Highway 99" The Softies _The Bed I Made_

"Where Are You?" The Chameleons _Where Are You?_

"Coast" Kim Deal _Nobody Loves You More_

"Alone" The Cure _Songs Of A Lost World_

"Woke Up & No Feet" Anastasia Coope _Darning Woman_

"You Will Always Be Alone In Your Mind" 36? _Finding Love/Having Autism_

"Lamplighter" Memorials _Memorial Waterslides_

"Pop Single" The Bug Club _On The Intricate Inner Workings Of The System_

"Stella The Begonia" Rubblebucket _Year Of The Banana_

"Gramme Friday (Live)" The Fall _Grotesque (After The Gramme) (Live)_

"A Taste Of Money" House Of All _Continuum_

"Sark E Myth" Momus _Yikes!_

"Techno Blank" Neon Kittens _RadioSickMusic_

"R&D" Dom Sensitive _Leather Trim_

"Toxic Energy" Swansea Sound _Toxic Energy_

"The World Was Round" BMX Bandits _Dreamers On The Run_

"Look Alive!" Jetstream Pony _Under The Bridge 2_

"You & Me & The Sea" The Proctors _Snowdrops & Hot Air Balloons_

"Different Tune" Lunchbox _Pop & Circumstance_

"The Order Of The Seasons" Los Campesinos! _All Hell_

"Bo's New Haircut" The Cords _Bo's New Haircut_

"Not Look Down" The Big However _Static Caravan_

"Dreamboat" Itchy & The Nits _The Worst Of Itchy & The Nits_

"My White Bicycle" Robyn Hitchcock _1967: Vacations In The Past_

"La Rockette" Organi _Babylonia_

Whither Gary's Favorite Music 2024

(original logo here)

It's that time of year when you see "best of" lists everywhere. I've expressed my dislikes for such lists before, usually around this time of year, on the blog & on the radio. No need to go over that again. I did have a curious thought just now - when I was a teenager it was considered extremely cool to like music that most people didn't even know about. It was common to think that was the "best" music out there. What might've happened if the world suddenly flipped upside down & those bands became big sellers, Grammy winners, household names? Was it just the thrill of being the only person who liked the music that made it the "best"? I hope someone has written something about this. It would be fun to know what psychological issues are at play.

Anyway, at this time of year I forego a "best of" list because I don't believe there's such a thing as "best." I find it weird that people need to represent their opinions that way. I find it extremely odd that media outlets will have groups of people vote on what's "best" & then present them under that term - so everyone involved didn't agree unanimously on the list? Does no one know what the word "best" means?

Me, I just present the stuff I've listened to most during the year. But I will admit that I have had to come to the hard conclusion that I don't really listen to music the way I used to. Part of it is that I make so many radio shows & listen to music for those shows. I don't often take the time to just listen to something as I might have when I was younger. Discovering music has become its own particular pleasure. But it & listening to music competes with other pleasures - reading, spending time with my wife, walking the dogs, consuming other media, cooking, eating, even sleeping. That's been another revelation - I seem to have slowed down somewhat. It takes longer to do the things I love which of course eats into that time. Perhaps it's part of growing old. I am grateful that I don't just listen to the same things over & over like many people my age - but there's no judgement if that's the case for you. I completely understand.

With that said - I'm on the radio tonight on KBOO from 12 midnight to 2am playing a lot of - but not all of - my favorite music of the year. I don't keep a running list & I listen to a lot of music so I'm sure to have forgotten something. But I'll do my best to represent the stuff I returned to in my listening. That's on 90.7fm in Portland & online everywhere at kboo dot fm.

Preface To Gary's Favorite Music 2024: Criticism

(Norman Rockwell, The Art Critic {1955} found here)

Critics in general have terrible reputation. In my opinion (which by the way is not a phrase most critics use) probably half of them desire no more than to turn a witty phrase or deliver a withering observation. Critics in general seem to me (another little qualification that critics hardly ever add) a joyless bunch whose self-satisfaction masks some issues they have tried to cover up with positioning themselves as arbiters of taste. Some critics are in fact clever. Some are insightful. But I have found most of them to be no better or worse than your friend who doesn't like something because "it sucks."

It took me some time to realize that there's no objective best or worst when it comes to matters of opinion. I had a friend - who really, really wished he could have been a critic that people would listen to - who got mad at certain critics because he didn't feel the way they did but also they were in newspapers so more people heard their opinion instead of his. People are strangely threatened by someone not liking the things they hold dear. The cure for that is to not think of the things you like as "the best" but to understand that there are many reasons for people to like things & it's fine if they don't like what you like. Honestly, more people than not don't like much of the music I like, & it affects me not at all. I would assume the fact that I mostly don't like what they like has never troubled them, either.

One of the things I often say - & I am sorry because I have discussed this many times before, most recently on the blog here - is that the only thing that can be said about an opinion is how informed it is. If I ask you about an artist & you tell me, "That guy sucks" but I ask another person & they know much more about the artist, I am probably going to take that person's opinion more seriously. Both opinions are equally valid - you like what you like - but an informed opinion has always been more helpful to me than an uninformed one. I myself have been surprised when people have taken an uninformed opinion by me as seriously as they have. One good friend of mine I discovered never listened to Talking Heads' last album because I told him I didn't like it much. I wish I had said "But I fucking love the song Blind!" Ooops.

The role of critics in my life - the ones I like to read - has not been to either justify my opinion or to influence my opinion but to give me context for their opinion. We may end up disagreeing - I enjoy this one fellow online who does videos about Star Trek but we disagree about a lot - it also helps that he's funny - but I feel more confident learning about someone's opinion if they can tell me more about that opinion.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I don't do year-end best-of lists on Self Help Radio, just spend a couple of hours playing some of the music I listened to a lot this year. I call them my favorites & that seems to me to be to be the fairest way to describe that - after all, if there truly were an objective "best of," then by definition wouldn't everyone's list be the same?

Think on that. More tomorrow.