Coming Up Tomorrow On The Dickenbock Report: National Beer Lovers Day

September 7 is National Beer Lovers Day. While noon may be a little early in the day to be enjoying a beer, The Dickenbock Report hopes you enjoy reporting - including musical reports - about beer.

That's tomorrow, Sunday, from noon to 1pm, on 91.1+107.1fm in Portland, & online everywhere at xray dot fm. If we're lucky, Dick Dickenbock will tell that story about how he & Foster Brooks used to trade places & no one noticed (for the millionth time).

This Week In Self Help: August 29 + 31 & September 2

Above is a picture of the walls of Edinburgh Castle taken when I visited Scotland in 2016. It's pretty much the only picture of a castle I've ever taken. & since Self Help Radio this week had the theme "Avalon," it's also the closest picture I have that relates to that theme. Otherwise it would be more pictures of mist & fog.

Here's what I was allowed to get away with on the radio this past week:

On XRAY FM on August 29 I subbed an afternoon show, just playing songs & tawking.
Listen at the XRAY website. Listen at the Self Help Radio website.

On XRAY FM on August 31 I had an episode of The Dickenbock Report reporting on National Zoo Awareness Day.

Listen at the XRAY website. Listen at the Self Help Radio website.

On KBOO on September 2 was that aforementioned Self Help Radio episode about Avalon.

Listen at the KBOO website. Listen at the Self Help Radio website.

On KBOO on September 2 as well right after Self Help Radio I had an episode of Corporate Standardized Programming wherein I played lots of new releases.

Listen at the KBOO website (after Self Help Radio). Listen at the Self Help Radio website.

Of course I must remind you that if you listen at the Self Help Radio website you might be asked for a username & password. Those are SHR & selfhelp respectively.

Wisely Portland did not let me be on the radio the remaining 162 hours of the week.

Self Help Radio 090225: Avalon

Self Help Radio traveled to Avalon for this show. Figuratively, of course. Avalon is a legendary place. It most probably never really existed but that hasn't kept people from looking for it! They could've just waited for this show - there are enough Avalons on this to satisfy most Avalon searchers. I even know someone named Avalon - I talk to her on the show - maybe she's the Avalon someone's been looking for! What I'm saying is, instead of spending all that money going to Glastonbury Tor, maybe just listen to this show when you feel like seeking Avalon.

You can visit the Avalon show anytime you'd like at either the KBOO web page or the Self Help Radio web page. If you choose, the latter, please remember the username SHR & the password selfhelp - you may need them. Everything that happened on the show is listed below.

Now we wait for Arthur's inevitable return.

Self Help Radio Avalon Show

"Avalon Town" Bing Crosby _The Bing Crosby CBS Radio Recordings 1954-56_

"Avalon" Nat King Cole _The Unforgettable Nat King Cole_

"The Avalon Boogaloo" George 'Harmonica' Smith _Blowing The Blues_

introduction & definitions

"Avalon, My Home Town" Mississippi John Hurt _Rediscovered_

"Stones For Avalon" Tyrannosaurus Rex _Unicorn_

"Avalon" The McCalmans _Ancestral Manoeuvres_

"Key To Avalon" Eliza Gilkyson _Undressed_

"Avalon Of The Heart" Van Morrison _Enlightenment_

interview with my friend Avalon

"Avalon" M People _Fresco_

"Fields Of Avalon" Idha _Troublemaker_

"Avalon" The Hang Ups _The Hang Ups_

"Good Old Pig, Gone To Avalon" Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard _'Em Are I_

"Avalon Or Someone Very Similar" Yo La Tengo _Popular Songs_

interview with Arthurian Studies Professor Irwin Cottington

"Avalon" The Rosebuds _Songs From Crap Kingdom_

"Avalon" Black Whales _Through The Prism, Gently_

"Avalon" Foxygen _Hang_

"Avalon" Hudson Abadeer _Languor & Dolomite / Volume Two_

"Avalon" The White Buffalo _Darkest Darks, Lightest Lights_

interview with president & founder of the Portland Avalon Society: Chester Hardington

"On The Avalon Stairs" Fruit Bats _The Pet Parade_

"Take Me Avalon I'm Young" Pond _9_

"Avalon" Blur _The Ballad Of Darren_

"Road To Avalon (feat. KT Tunstall)" Brian Lopez _Tidal_

"Avalon" Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi _They're Calling Me Home_

conclusion & goodbye

"Avalon" Matthew Ellis _Matthew Ellis_

"Avalon" Coral Collapse _Symmetries_

"Avalon" Daddy's Beemer _Tangles_

Whither Avalon?

(illustration of Avalon from here)

When it comes to these themes I explore, I sometimes have straightforward ways of deciding on them & sometimes roundabout ways. Because I write in this blog about the origins of my themes I try to keep in my mind how they came about. & this one was one of the more roundabout ways.

Recently I was watching the second & final season of Netflix's adaption of the comic book The Sandman. I enjoyed though I found it somewhat s l o w & a little too self-serious for me. I also probably found the (spoiler alert) bodiless Orpheus a little too ridiculous when I was probably supposed to be more sympathetic. It just made me laugh. You can talk & sing without lungs? Yay magic! Anyway.

Because the show had long moments of characters glaring at each other my mind wandered a lot, & I tried to remember if Neil Gaiman in the Sandman comic ever dealt with Arthurian legends. I might even have visited the Sandman Wiki to see if the names Arthur or Merlin were noted there. (I still can't remember so if they did turn up in The Sandman, remind me if you can in the comments.) After I had found myself back to watching the show, & the glaring had turned to sulking, I started to wonder if I had ever done an Arthurian-themed episode of Self Help Radio. I guess I hadn't.

Obviously I could've chosen anything but Avalon seemed promising, so I made a note & started looking for songs. It helped that I have a friend named Avalon that I could interview for the show. Once I felt I was ready, I began putting that show together. Thanks Sandman series!

The Self Help Radio Avalon show happens tonight, Monday September 1, from midnight to 2am on 90.7fm in Portland & online at kboo dot fm. Tonight is the night I get to pull that sword from the stone!

Preface To Avalon: King Arthur & Me

(The cover of Camelot 3000 # 1 found here)

As a child, I loved fantasy & sci-fi more or less equally, though when it came to old stories of Britain, I was much more attached to Robin Hood than to King Arthur. It took the comic book above, Camelot 3000 by Mike W. Barr & Brian Bolland, to draw me into that legend. It was of course both fantasy & sci-fi - it took place in the year 3000 - but the story was great & Bolland's art remains magnificent. What really hooked me to the Arthurian legends was the essay Barr wrote in the back of the first issue about Thomas Malory's Morte D'Arthur, which I checked out from the library very soon after I read that piece, &... Never finished. It was written in difficult old English & not all that gripping. I was just fourteen, I wasn't really going to suddenly go nuts for something written like the Canterbury Tales. I might have mentioned this to my tenth grade teacher, who might have suggested T.H. White's The Once & Future King to me. That was more my speed. I think I read that book twice in a row.

Golly I had so much time when I was young.

We did have movies we could turn to when we liked legends - sometimes old ones, like Errol Flynn in Robin Hood - but while there were lots of Arthur movies out there - I was too young to watch Excalibur but would see it later - I think my favorite Arthur movie of the ones I've seen remains Monty Python & The Holy Grail.

This website ranks the Arthurian movies worst to best. I am surprised I never saw The Sword In The Stone. But I guess by the time I was off to college I had consumed as much King Arthur as I wanted. Tho now looking at that list it appears I want more. Dang it.