Finding New Bob Dylan Quotes (In Your Grandma's Old Bible)

Lookit! It's a Friday & a Friday is & has been for the past year a Self Help Radio day! If you're happy & you know it, clap your blog!

I remember being a Tuscan wench at the age of nine who was amused by the phrase "boxing of the ears" whilst reading nor rereading Botticelli & his children's literature ho ho. For indeed, what is most punishful about that, putting a box on the ears? Ah ha, the children cannot hear. But no! I asked my pal Romeo McGreavy (who was also a Tuscan wench but two years older) & he didn't TELL, he SHOWED me. Boxing ears is bad like shaking baby is bad. Perhaps we shouldn't even WRITE about it. Ouchy.

I must confess, even though I flinch now, I do miss the random, amusing violence of childhood. Looking back, I am now aware that most of my insecurities, my sexual hang-ups, my inability to cope with darkness & small places that smell like cafeterias, my pronounced stutter when I am amorous, my lack of feeling in three of the fingers on my left hand, my fear of trough toilets, my sense of nausea when someone scratches on a big chief tablet, my mind's weird habit of repeating the calvary charge bugle in my head every time I walk through the door of an institutional-looking building, my need to be handcuffed to a chalkboard at least once a year, my habit of calling any woman with big hair "mom," my emptiness at not getting recess twice a day, my anxiety about jello in beige plastic cups, & even my dangerous joy in letting Elmer's glue harden over my eyes, nostrils & mouth, I know these were probably caused by the random, amusing violence of childhood. But so what? I can still miss it. I can miss it like an abusive spouse.

WHY DO YOU TRY TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN & CAN'T THINK? You're worse than the CIA. At least they have prescribe governmental parameters about what you can think. But they also spring for little radios to implant in your ears. I know, I used to have one. Until Romeo McGreavy boxed my ears & disconnected it forever. I have been alone since.

Here's a list of dos & don'ts for today's Self Help Radio:

1) DO listen.
2) DO keep listening even if I make you sick to your stomach.
3) DON'T vomit in your car. Pull over & lean your head out.
4) DON'T drive for a while if you're still sick.
5) DO keep listening, though. Some people eventually develop a tolerance for Self Help Radio.
6) DO call me if you think you'd like to talk. I am not allowed to convince you either way, but I have had training at an Energy Crisis Hotline.
7) DO make your friends listen by calling them & holding your cellphone up to the speakers.
8) DON'T be friends with them if they don't like the show.
9) DO ignore rule 8 if you want to have sex with the friend.
10) DON'T tell me if you have sex, though. My girlfriend's in DC for two more weeks.

I hope you'll listen!

You Shouldn't Judge A Blog By Its Blogger

Two random thoughts: 1) "myspace" is kinda cynical. I understand the desire to promote yourself until your balls are a bright blue, but still, I find it weird that people who have to know I don't play them on my show want to be my "friend." Is it too much to ask why you want to be my friend? Because I am on the KOOP myspace page? You make me sad. 2) Who do I have to blow to get on the blogger "notable updated blogs" blurb that's always there when I log on. Do they tell you when you're notable? Is there a cash prize? I make myself sad.

No one has noticed (apparently) that my radio show is sporting a whole new set of teeth. That cost a pretty penny, but I will point out, when one's radio show can convincingly sound like a character in an Erskine Caldwell novel, it's time to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Unless, of course, you're supposed to be an old fart country music show. Teeth get in the way of yer chaw! Spit out the bicuspid, grammy! We're having biscuits made mushy in hot white gravy!

Speaking of local bands, I can't sleep at night because I am afraid of local bands of ruffians that wander my neighborhood & break into my house & steal my stuff. I worry more because I don't own my own gun. I own a timeshare for an AK-47 that a friend in New York is using to renegotiate a contract. It just so happens I am disarmingly disarmed while my girlie, who has all the mad Lemur Fu skills in the family, is away in the nation's capitol walking slowly behind FBI agents to see if they care. I hope my poor sleeping skills do not affect my poor radio skills. But something always suffers, whether it's people who remember Roger Staubach or people who cut their teeth with a sieve.

I will be spending tonight rehearsing my line for my radio show (the line is this: Gary! Don't fuck up your radio show!) (I don't read that line on air) (the FCC doesn't like that kind of language, especially coming from me), so I'm sorry I can't return all your call. Maybe we can simply pretend our outgoing answering machine messages have coded replies to our queries? Or do you not like the word "query"? Do you think it's kinda gay?

I was going to offer you a present, but I am going to pay for reminding everyone of Roger Staubach. Since he doesn't give me any money, I can only hope he's not up tonight, googling his own name while smoking fine Moroccan hash & daydreaming about the time we held hands at a Dallas nightclub. He didn't tell me he was married. Nor a quarterback!

I must go now. I want to be a loner.

Whither Addresses?

I have forgotten where you live. Also, I have lost that little book I use to remind me where you live. As well, I don't appear to understand the general abbreviations for byways & other paths which are generally part of descriptions of place where people like you live. Dr. Ave. Blvd. Rd. Cir. Ln. Str. They confuse me. I don't apparently know where the hell I am.

Do I really think a radio show about addresses will help me? I once did a show about kissing, & no one kissed me for a month. Not even my cat. & she's a kissing slut. I believe that science has shown that religion will tell you that logic fails when reason is ignored by spiritually-motivated myths & fables. It takes a grain of salt to power the quantum mechanism that proves beyond a shadow of a fact that my show is the radio equivalent of "opposite day."

Also, people say I am nothing at all like William Shakespeare.

I was trying to misspell "contraindicated" one day many years ago (or last year) when someone asked me what my address was. I wanted to be funny, you know, like Bugs Bunny dressed up as Lincoln talking to Yosemite Sam & saying, "Look me up at my Gettysburg Address," but I apparently said something like, "I can't believe you're such a fucking freak," & now that person is suing me for defamation of a cartoon character. Nevertheless, it hit me: if people knew where I lived, they could write me letters, or come visit me. Pizza delivery folks would be able to bring food to me. People who walk around neighborhoods selling stuff could come to my door. I would have a presence in a telephone book. I would be able to say, as I haven't much of my life, "I have a place where I sleep." It seemed so magical that I cried, I broke down & cried, right then & there, in the dentist's chair. I know that James Joyce & Meryl Streep would call that an "epiphany," but I don't know anything about prostitution in the Bible, so I'll just say it was a life-changing moment & leave it at that.

Now I think I'll ruin it by doing a radio show about it.

That's this Friday. You might want to iron your shirt & stock up on spices. Just sayin'.

Preface To Addresses: How To Use Online Maps To Find Treasure!

From this point on, please, stop talking to me about pirates. Not only does it not make any sense (the only pirates you should be afraid of are love pirates), but you're just trying to cash in on Pirates Of The Caribbean Part 90: Keith Richards Is A Vampire Pirate! I liked you better when you were interested in hobbits.

I take as my text this week The United States Book Of The Phone, written in 1884 by Old Mother Bell. With an afterword & an afterthought by a fellow called Zip, whose code you might be familiar with. It's easy to crack. Let us take an example. Give me a series of five digits. What? 23432? Dude, you're in Suffolk, Virginia!

Those codebreakers from World War Doo have nothing on me.

This week's show will feature such feats of fancy. It's sponsored in part by imaginary parts of the United States Postal Pistol Service & of course Mapscomp, the famous map makers that got me out of many a tight jam with their 1000 page map booklet I always keep in the glove compartment of my wallet. Ha ha, the sheriff in Algodones, New Mexico, didn't know who the FUCK he was dealing with when he tussled with me & my boyz. Bam! Mapscorp says Los Colonias runs parallel to Los Romeros & it was a brief ride through someone's yard to BYE BYE overweight lawmarm.

We lost Toby that night, though. He was a good man. He was shot in the ass mooning a deputy. The medical examiner said the bullet travelled up the colon into the skull. It made us all feel bad for the all the times we called him "shit for brains."

Nowadays I've retired from my life of fun to enjoy a weekly radio show & my postpunk postcard collection. For those who are curious about my little patch of wheat: I lost it to the chaff parasite. But I managed to get inoculated, so we'll try it next year. Thanks for all the cards & letters. I burned them with my tears.

Do you remember where you live? I plan to find out tomorrow.

A Brief History Of My Great Love For England Dan & John Ford Coley

I'd really love to see them tonight.

But what really burns my butthole is that "Dan Seals," once the swingin' seventies were over & no one wanted to listen to his grooves, decided to go over to the dark side of music, "contemporary country" & fucking totally discarded the name "England Dan" because I guess he thought country fans would dismiss him as royalty or something. Selling out motherfucker.

That doesn't make me hate the good stuff, though. I mean, let's put it this way: twelve hundred Americans die every year choking on grapes (a fact I just made up, but it sounds good) & yet I don't hate listening to jelly. Especially when it's settling. They say Debussy conceived his most beautiful pop records while listening to jelly settle. & he didn't just settle for jelly either: he listened to whatever was in a jar. He even listened to jarred things as they agitated. Agitate is what my brain just told me is opposite of settle.

I like to do stuff regularly, but I also like to mix it up. That may explain some things, but it doesn't excuse others. An example: the Hotel Vietnam, located in Parsley, Kentucky. What were the Joneses thinking? They weren't. They weren't thinking. & now Jeffrey is going to need even more crack to treat his PSTD. It was like picking a baby's name from a random page in the phone book. With explosions.

I'm tickled pink to announce that, despite the evil mechinations of the Adversary, last Friday's show makes its podcast-sized debut on selfhelpradio.net. Just click here to get to the page that has the show on it. I can't remember doing it, but the recording seems to have me on it, so I guess I was there. It reminds me of the four times I might have lost my anal cherry before I actually did. The good news is, my dentist at the time will be in jail until 2009. The bad new is, I THINK I HAVE A CAVITY!

Changing Your Life, One Comb At A Time

The text messaging revolution has found its way to our iron-clad shores. Alas, I am without a legend. Can someone tell me what IWIWAUNL means?

In a few short hours (two, actually) or in a lot of long minutes (120?), there'll be another Self Help Radio & won't you be sad you made fun of my dad. I'll be making noises into a radio-quality microphone that will resemble the same sort of English that Will Rogers once spoke, only with a little less stammering & a mouth not full of tabacky. If you can understand what I am saying, I will have achieved one of my goals for today. The others include:

12) Find a lot of money in a dead man's pockets.
15) Write a great poem in my head while driving & forget it forever.
21) Learn to drink in my sleep.
23) Make out with dog(s).
27) Boogie until head wet with sweat.

The full list, which is modified daily, is available for downloading online through RSS feed once I figure out how to do it. A popular drinking game in Singapore nightclubs involves reading my "daily goals," then drinking a lot until they're translated into Singaporese, then drinking some more as drinkers realize I have boring goals. Caning is not the only way to end such a night, but how bad can it get?

Meanwhile, as the waves of time beat against the chest of existence, you've been distracted enough for me to put last week's show for your downloading pleasure over at selfhelpradio.net. Warning: do NOT listen to this mp3 podcast recording while listening to Self Help Radio live. It will bend space & time & you'll have to live through middle school all over again.

See you when you hear me, pilgrim.

Whither "Keep On"?

As I write this, much later than I normally write this nonsense, there's a magnificent storm happening in Austin. I had to drive through about two feet of water tonight, past cars who were in deeper than I was - & where *I* could have been, if they hadn't blundered there first. I love these kinds of storms, especially when I am more or less safe & dry, but I also think the power could be shut off at any moment, so I should type fast.

By the way, there were people there helping the stuck-in-the-water cars. I'm not that self-absorbed that I wouldn't have stopped. I don't live in the middle of nowhere.

Also, I am the only person in Austin who doesn't have a cell phone. My pets have cell phones, I don't. Someone had called a tow truck.

Which reminds me, I saw a tow truck today with a Jesus fishie on it. I know that businesses put those Jesus fishies on their logos, etc., to let Christians know they're a Christian business (whatever that means), but I wonder, do they know that it makes some people go, "Eew!" Isn't that the opposite of what being a business is all about? Also, what makes a Christian tow truck different than, say, a Muslim tow truck? More forgiving of debts? Would someone like to try that one out?

So the show in barely two days has the theme "keep on." Once again, I noticed that phrase almost peripherally & wondered how many songs repeat the phrase. There were a lot. I said, "I'll form a show around it." I took my medication. I had a nice sleepie. The days came & went. Soon, my schedule told me that I had to do that show. Now I will do it. But first, I'll take my medication. Then I'll have a nice sleepie.

Or maybe I'll go play in the rain.

Preface To "Keep On": I Want To Be In An Urban 1970s Sitcom Please

This week on Self Help Radio, a team of stinky linguists will decontruct the phrase "keep on." Then, the rest of the time (89 minutes) will be devoted to a long exposition of my painful childhood. & why not? Everyone thinks this "theme" is filler. I hear your sneers. I feel your squeals. I taste your haste. I see your inability.

Here are things I'll be discussing when I am not cussing:

1) How one learns that the pretty girls say very bad words & also fart when they think one is a deaf-mute.
2) How the same action that gets you cred in the second grade - say, bringing your favorite comic books to school - can have the opposite effect in the eighth grade.
3) How cruel youth can be when they're beating the living shit out of you.
4) How trying to be as inconspicuous as possible during twelve long years of schooling can make it impossible to reconnect with your old friends thirty years later on "classmates.com."
5) How easily one can be convinced that being locked in a closet on weekends can be a good thing for a child with an active imagination, especially when one's mother has a silver tongue.
6) How sex can't be explained through pornography or the colorful expressions your friend Kirk uses, even if they seem descriptive enough.
7) How falling off a motorbike can make you bleed a lot, & how the laughter of your fellows compares with a calm, drug-heavy ride in the back of an ambulance.
8) How much one can add to one's sleep requirement by sitting in the back of the room.

Oh, I can keep on doing this for a long time. I may keep on doing it all day Friday. Will you keep on listening? I will keep on hoping that you do.

When Pirates Dance!

As April ends, I want to remember the fourth month I experienced in 2007. It seemed gloomy, rainy & sad, but also weirdly sunny, bright & warm. I may have lost fourteen dollars this month. But I also may have gained a new tooth. As April ends, I am forced to wonder: was I involved with April at all? Or did I simply just mow the lawn a couple of times & then sleep fitfully?

In April, I found out the bees are dying. My own experience with bees has been that, while they appear to be listening, they really retain nothing. After I patiently explained the difference between sugar, high fructose corn syrup & aspertame to a very sweet worker one afternoon, she still wanted to make out with my diet soda. Then she stung me & died, which I found a little too much. My mother used to guilt me like that.

If there's one lesson we should take from April, it's that daylight savings time is taxing. Oh shit, that's like a pun. Ha ha! Or, we can say that tax day saves you everything but daylight. No, that's not true. I know. That the only thing safe from tax day is sunlight. Unless you deal in solar futures. Then, never mind.

I promised last April that I would keep a running tally of the number of times I clipped my nails this April, because I had dreamt that Sid Caesar told me that your fingernails grow twice as long but your toenails twice as slow in April. Or maybe I had dreamt that April Stevens had warned me about the Ides Of March last month, because that's when Caesar died. Or maybe I was just daydreaming while watching HBO's Rome. Did that end this April?

April's not over yet! There's still time to win the lottery, grow a goatee, nail 95 theses to your church's wall, become a vegetarian, design a series of stamps that commemorate McLain Stevenson, bag a thrush, help a friend learn her vocal scales, care for a particularly sickly tree, crawl from the wreckage, reject a telemarketer's advances, get lost in someone's eyes, hit it but don't quit it, & possibly squeeze in a good cry with a friend.

But hurry!

Oh, & if you're interested in what was happening in the middle of April with Self Help Radio, my Black Cassette show is available for your listening pleasure.

What To Expect & When To Expect It

Because I am on the radio, people expect me to know virtually everything about everything. I surprise them because I do. Ta-da! I know virtually everything about everything. It's just how you define "virtually." & "about." & "everything."

Much buzz has been generated in my own head this past week about my triumphant return to the airwaves to do Self Help Radio once again. Sure, many lives were lost in the crazy coup d'etat my foes from NPR & the "Everything 99¢" chain stores waged to get me off the air. They're still cleaning all the blood & raisins out of the carpet at KOOP. But though I was forced to retreat for a week, I am returning this Friday, like MacArthur to the Phillipines. & everyone agreed that the radio show MacArthur did the night of his return was the best radio show of his long career.

Not many people have written me to ask, "Gary, do you forgive your enemies for their ridiculous attempt at depriving the world of your genius?" Of course not. They are my enemies & we have an agreement. Besides, it's come to my attention that many religious figures urged forgiveness, & none of them ever had a radio show. There's a correllation there if you squint hard enough & have someone tap you incessantly on the forehead at the same time. I won't be drowned in the mistakes of the past, any more than I'll be clotheslined by the errors of the present. Right now, my concern is for the catastrophic boo-boos of the future.

Tomorrow is the new tomorrow; yesterday is yesterday's yesterday. The days of the week shall be renamed with the names of species of bees that are dying off. Please let me know when they announce the end of the world - I will therefore be able to start smoking again with impunity.

Ah, Self Help Radio. You are again safe, protected & loved. Let us converge in twenty-four hours, at the four-thirty time slot, & see what we can see. Embrace me! Embrace us all!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 8

Why make lists at all? Why best ofs and worst ofs & top tens? Could there be something wrong with it all?

The first "best of" list was not, as many have supposed, the Top Ten Best Laws Of The Land by Hammurabi, who, & many people don't know this, was also a disc jockey on the weekends. No, the oldest & among the best "best of" lists was a series of rocks, flower parts, animal guts & strangely-shaped twigs, made by none other than Lucy - the fossil of her "best of" list was found with her fossil, meaning she was probably obsessing over something when she died. Who's to say?

But is the Indiepop A To Z a list or merely an attempt to make some kind of "encyclopedia"? The folks over at twee.net probably didn't think their list of indiepop bands was definitive. They just wanted people to see what an example of indiepop was. Leave it to a freak like me...

Someone has probably guessed right now what the whole point is: it's a chance for a lazy deejay (me) to show off what a large record collection he has (duh) by following some dumb list. I'm sure someone's done it for all kinds of genres. I just happen to be doing it now. & even though it's a sign of laziness, BOY is it exhausting.

I thought of something funny just now. If you collapse "record collection," you get "recollection." Isn't recollection just a collection of records? I so want to become Andy Rooney right now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I continue a hopeless task on Friday. Tune in. We won't finish the Bs, but we'll get mighty close.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 8: Eight Times The Charmer!

Hello. Self Help Radio returns this week with the eighth installment of our popular "Indiepop A To Z" series. We last left off with a band called Brincando De Deus, so, as you can imagine, we're going to start - if not finish entirely, although I truly doubt that - the Bs.

This will be a return to Self Help Radio after a week off. If you must know, I was forced off the air by a brief but bloody military coup in my own home. If you heard Self Help Radio last week, you might have noticed the show was programmed by what sounded like very fat & lazy beagles. That's because our dogs found a way to lock me in the bathroom, eat everything in the house & then rush to do my show. I spent the weekend cleaning up after them. But I was able to reassert control when they realized they couldn't use my credit card. They're my dogs, so there's obviously a family resemblance, but in the photo on my credit card, I am clean-shaven. Foiled!

By the way, it's very obvious to me the dogs didn't think of this themselves. But the cats kept their paws clean. Or, if their paws were dirty, they cleaned them carefully before I noticed.

Anyway, I am committed to continuing the Indiepop A To Z for the time being, so let's put all the unpleasantness of the past week behind us & forge ahead. Eventually there'll be a gigantic audio documentation of indiepop from a to z which will be like a giant Ken Burns documentary - saved in someone's collection but never listened to.

Viva!

Whither A Self Help Radio Without Gary?

I should title this "Whither Death & Taxes," as that is the theme this week, but since I won't be doing it, I am concentrating on my absence. As you should. For what is my absence but the lack of my presence? Surely I woke up this morning expecting to be there, & you should be expecting me to wake up next to you every morning. Wait. What? I mean, you should expect that I am on the radio when I am supposed to be on the radio (you know, like we're supposed to be happy), & when I am not there, you should be thinking, "But where is Gary? Could he be (as we might assume he be) in a mess o'trouble? For he ain't got a lick o'sense! But maybe he'll find a bit o'luck, & we'll see him when we see him." You should be thinking that, by the way, in a bad Southern accent. If you're thinking it in a good Southern accent, you're missing the point.

Instead of preparing for my show in (what is it now?) nine days - & this show will change everything you think about dope dealers & greeting cards, I promise you - I have been watching the Larry Sanders show. If only Self Help Radio could be the Larry Sanders Show. This is my fictional invitation to a fictional talk show host played a person who has the beautifulest of all names, Gary, but spells it with two rs as if to say he's better than those Garys who spell with only one r. & he is. But he's the only one. Take that Garry Fucking Marshall! I didn't need you to finance my movie anyway.

So the show won't have me this week, but you will have the show. Except the show won't be hosted by me, so, although I am certain Art Baker will do a fabulous job, it won't quite be the show that I do. You know, the show that I do to you. For you. Because it is just me & you, my love, & the problems of one very minor radio celebrity & one completely oversexed listener don't amount to a hill of beans in this laser-hair-removal world. What are those problems? Well, I'd suggest we start at the Potsdam Conference & work our way down.

I'm hungry. Want to grab a bite to eat? Cool.

Preface To A Self Help Radio Without Gary: What If It Becomes A Habit?

Dearest Friends,

I am sorry I cannot be with you this week. Self Help Radio has been, alas, the victim of a buyout. A hostile takeover. Evil corporate ethics at their worst.

So this week, Art Baker of Jamaican Gold has kindly decided to step in to be a place-holder (& to do a damn fine show, I suspect) while the dust settles. While the lawyers fuck. While the money is counted.

This probably means a great deal to you, the shareholders. After all, you urged me to go public in October. You were all like, "Gary, your show is a public treasure! Let's all own a piece of you!"

The blame is partially my own, of course. I have a gambling problem. My problem is, I don't know how to gamble. I am completely incapable of learning the rules to any particular game. The cards need to add up to 21? How can they do that without calculators? The little ball goes where? Okay, I've put my coin in, why doesn't the machine move? Tens are wild? Is that like saying "nines are frisky but ones are dull"?

In any event, I lost even my controlling share in Self Help Radio. Next week, I will be an employee of the show, not the owner & proprietor. Which reminds me, I need to get a new shingle to hang out front. Anyway.

I can't be at the show this week, but please tune in to hear Art Baker talk about "death & taxes" & play songs about it. I'll be back the next Friday with a continuation of the Indiepop A To Z series, but, alas, you'll hear these chilling words - the death rattle of a show killed by commerce:

"Self Help Radio, a fully owned subsidiary of Bloat Enterprises, Worldwide. All rights reserved."

Sigh.

A Friday Hoppity

So, although I'm not sure if this is the official word of the station, the KOOP Spring 2007 Membership Driveis ending today. We have probably met our goal ($35,000) by now, & just want to be grateful & end the day with smaller & smaller requests for your help. Of course no money will be rejected, & I'll have special copies of "The Black Cassette" to give away on my own show for your pledges. So please listen. If you've been kinda down this week, & it reminds you of being a depressed teenager, my show should be a kind of comfort.

I won't be doing my show next week - I have an important presentation at work - but Art Baker of Jamaican Gold will be sitting in to do a Self Help Radio show about "Death & Taxes." I can't wait.

I'll be writing all next week, though, because I can. & because I've got writer's block in regards to my giant history of the war on sailing.

Do tune in! & do help give monetary support to Self Help Radio!

No Letter Today

Kurt Vonnegut has died.

I am sad & have nothing to say.

Whither The Black Cassette?

If you haven't guessed - & assuming you care - I haven't been doing very well during the current KOOP Membership Drive. I get lots of calls during my show, & hardly any of them are people telling me to fuck off & die, so I can only guess why this radio show I work so hard for is incapable of raising any money for the radio station I love.

Maybe these are some reasons:

1) Everyone's just being nice. I suck.
2) People who might listen to my show like other KOOP shows better & give their money to that show.
3) My Membership Drive shows haven't been very good.

I am a sensitive soul & it has broken my already flimsy heart to not do very well, & I do expect there will come a time when there's no more Self Help Radio on KOOP. But while there is, I might as well continue to do this blog.

If it's any consolation - even if everyone who read this blog gave money to Self Help Radio, I'd still not be doing very well. I see the stats. Do you know how many people looked at this blog since last Wednesday? 28 hits. & some of you come more than once.

What's that? You didn't know you were invited to a Pity Party? Indeed! You are the Pity Party Pooper!

As I finish my fourth decade on this planet, I am strangely out of step - I find it hard to believe I was in college twenty years ago, & that there are some albums that I've known for longer than I've known most of the people I know. So - as a kind of therapy for me - for this last Membership Drive show, I thought I'd revisit that time period. I was a very depressed & lonely boy & the music I loved reflected that. The band My Favorite have a song called "The Black Cassette" (if you haven't heard it, the lyrics are here) which describes what could have been for me the summer of 1987. Or 1988. Or even 1998 if you want to make a big to-do of it, except I was on the road to figuring some shit out by then.

The show this week will be my reconstruction of what my black cassette might have been in those days. It may be a little too dark for an afternoon show - I'll be playing Joy Division, for fuck's sake! - but let's face it, I'm not going to make any more money for KOOP than I already have. So instead I'll just play music that's been in my head & heart for nearly twenty years now.

Afterwards, of course, we'll be jamming the Suicide Hotline. Call them early.

Preface to The Black Cassette: An Elegy For Dead Media

I missed a bus yesterday & had to take one of the University's evening "combo" busses (cheaper than their "super-size" busses - no one can finish those trips!) & it went through a neighborhood I lived in five or six years ago & am never really around anymore. It's also been a glorious spring in Austin, so everything is lime green & glowing, even though the degrees the past few days have been closer to January temperatures than April ones (it's fine, though - it's over 80 degree today). Anyway, I did that thing that everyone does, clucking to myself how much has changed, oh, I remember who used to live there, etc., etc. It made me a little melancholy & I thought to myself, "If only I had never moved from here, I wouldn't be surprised by how much has changed."

Isn't that a weird thought? I really wouldn't want to live over there anymore - I like my house, I like my neighborhood - so what was I thinking? I was just missing stuff. Scientists have proven that, the longer you live, the more time you have spent, the more stuff you'll miss. Even with heavy drinking & possible brain damage from a lifetime of stumbles & head injuries, you can still have a sense of a place which, when disturbed, causes the feeling called "missing." I miss a lot of stuff. I've forgotten most of what I miss, but I miss it the same.

Tomorrow I'll talk about the last of my poorly-received Membership Drive shows, which is based on a song by the now-defunct band called My Favorite called "The Black Cassette," but today I just want to remember how amazing cassettes were for what seemed like the longest time of my life.

Nowadays, of course, we know the CD is over & we wait for the computer chips they'll plant in our head into which we can download songs. But I remember stealing my mother's cassettes - cassettes on which her parents in Germany had recorded their lives for her, cassettes she might have wanted to listen to when they died years later - to record nonsense on because, being 8 years old, I couldn't afford the 99 cents that a bag of three cheap cassettes cost. (Here's a fun correlation: a bag of cheap cassettes then, a spindle of cheap blank CDs today.)

I remember learning about cassette snobbery: when I asked a friend of mine to record something for me, he refused the cheap three-for-99¢ cassette I gave him, & used something he called "high bias" or something. Maybe I even learned that Dolby was not the name of that "Blinded Me With Science" dude. Whatever. It played just fine for me.

When I was was at KVRX, in the dwindling days before CD burning became a reality, I taped stuff from CDs that I reviewed. Short of buying the CDs (or stealing them, which I didn't do) taping was the only way to have them. Then - I think it must've been ten or so years ago - suddenly my department at work got a CD burner. I burned a shitload of stuff from KVRX in my last months there - I wonder what might have happened if technology were just a little bit faster...

Do I miss cassettes? They hissed. They got chewed up. They came (like CDs!) in plastic containers that cracked when dropped. I know I do miss making mix cassettes for girls. I do miss the care required in filling up two sides of 45 minutes each. An 80 minute CD seems charmless by comparison.

I have a feeling we'll be saying the same thing about [insert current technology here] in a couple of years. & I'll miss it. & hey! I might even make a radio show about it. What fun!

A Thursday Letter Makes Everything Better

I got this from a friend of mine who thought she was writing me a personal email:

Gary,
I know you'd rather spend your time worry about the Membership Drive and how badly you'll do boo hoo hoo, but I was thinking you might be able to help me with this:
I was thinking about the idiom, "Smart as a box of rocks," and wondering if there are others out there that convey the same meaning/feeling. I found a page of idioms, and there are some good ones, but I thought you'd just be able to make some better ones off the top of your head. Or maybe you could put it on your web page and everybody could come up with one!

Good idea, "friend" who doesn't care if my show disappears when no one supports it. Do you know how many people actually read this blog? Counting my mom? Counting my brothers, two of whom don't know how to read? Not a lot, but if even they gave a little bit of money to KOOP during my show, I might not get demoted & be forced to do three minutes at the end of day Sundays. So laugh, laugh, laugh about my sensitivity. I stole money from your house the last time I was there. Ha!

Er. Well, it doesn't matter, she doesn't read this blog anyway.

"Smart as a box of rocks," eh? That's pretty dumb. Unless one considers that the consciousness of rocks may be on an epic time scale & they take eons to deliberate. That makes our smarts hasty & ill-thought-out. Ever thought of that?

I like the idea of making up idioms ourselves, but I won't be a party to your condescension. I'll rather share some completely new Idioms For All Occasions, & you yourself can decide what they mean. But I'll expect to hear people use them on a regular basis or I'll pout.

1) She's the cheese in her own soup.
2) As scary as the war on sailing.
3) If you've got a pocket full of nickels, it must be spring!
4) Between the devil & the wombat, opt for the devil.
5) Turn when the road turns; only follow the sidewalk so far.
6) Don't let green leaves or cold pipes slow you down.
7) Act as though each day could possibly be repossessed.
8) To the many, mugs; to the few, tumblers.
9) Don't brush your armhair gently over him.
10) The laughter of arhythmia.

Feel free to add your own! It's our language to change as we want.

& do think about becoming a member on my show tomorrow... Details linked above... Call from foreign lands or call from inside my house after you're broken in... Just please help my show before I run out of ellipses...

Whither The White Album Covered?

I can't remember which cool East Coast band of the Throwing Muses - Pixies - Breeders - Belly axis covered a Beatles song first - it might have been Throwing Muses covering "Cry Baby Cry" or it might have been the Pixies covering "Wild Honey Pie" for a Peel Session - but basically every one of those bands (except Belly, now that I think about it) (but including members of the bands solo) covered a Beatles song. & every one of those covers came from The White Album.

Why do people like hip post-punker Americans think the White Album is so cool? Why do I think it's so cool?

I've been listening - seriously listening, not just familiar with them because they never go away - to the Beatles since I was in sixth grade. I saw that so-awful-it's-brilliant movie Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as a very little kid, & I was enchanted. Dopey as I was, I knew the title song was a Beatles song, but I was certain the rest of the soundtrack was new. That must've irked one of my older brothers - or, more probably, I asked for it - because for Christmas that year, I got the Beatles album. I never looked back - I knew right away the movie was garbage & the candy-colored record was the real thing. I was probably ten or eleven at the time.

(My older brothers & sisters, alas, were never again able to advise me about music. They listened to the radio, &, when the radio made a right turn, they stayed with what was "classic." My brothers were never able to advise me which Elvis Costello album I should start with, & boy did I get a blank stare when I asked about the Velvet Underground. Probably still would!)

(Maybe that's not entirely fair - my sister Karin did let me borrow a Ramones greatest hits record when I was in high school. But that's probably it.)

Anyway, I devoured the red & blue greatest hits comps (the only Beatles stuff I had besides Sgt Pepper) & though I didn't have the money to buy the records (I was young & had no income, & the records never showed up in bargain bins, & when I saved up & bought "Meet The Beatles," I remember how ripped off I felt because it was barely thirty minutes long), I did tape a show called "Ringo's Yellow Submarine" which was on at the time (it was in fact hosted by Ringo & he played Beatles songs from all over) & one radio station in Dallas used to play entire records at 10pm every weeknight. One night, they were playing the White Album.

I had a crappy unit that wasn't quite a boombox, but it did have a cassette deck & a radio. The antenna had been destroyed long, long ago, so to get any reception at all, I had to put a finger on the little wedge of metal (which was kinda sharp - one false move & it meant a tetanus shot) where the antenna was bent off. The cassette of that broadcast had various moments (one in particular I always expect to hear at the end of "I'm So Tired" as it fades into "Blackbird") when I had to raise my hand for some reason, so the signal faded to static. That was my copy of The White Album for many years - until I bought a copy on white vinyl at a record store years later, when I was in high school.

The next day at school, & this was middle school, I talked to my few friends about it. In particular, I was blown away by "Revolution 9." I had listened to it three times that night. My friend Russell, who, unlike me, had an older brother with good taste in music, & who had listened to the record many more times than I had, dismissed that track as a waste of time, so we talked about the rest of the record. I don't remember being offended, mainly because I was so enchanted. Every new Beatles song was magical to me, & I consumed it uncritically.

Later on, of course, when making mix tapes of Beatles songs for playing in my car or whatever, I would notice certain things - particularly that I almost never put a song on a tape that Paul McCartney sang - but that period of attacking my idols would come later, when I just got exhausted that people listened to this one band & nothing else. As if music started & stopped with them. That is an attitude I find exceedingly dull.

When listening to the White Album a few months ago, & thinking about this show, I made it a point to listen to the whole thing (& expecting to hear static at the appropriate times from the old tape - when will I forget that?) & to think about why I liked it so much. I think it's because it's the one Beatles record that seems like solo records from each of the Beatles, but with all the other Beatles playing on them. John Lennon's stuff is of course astonishing. George Harrison manages to be interesting, promising something he would never deliver ("Long Long Long" may be the greatest song he ever wrote), Ringo's song is a throwaway, like his solo career, & Paul McCartney manages feeble homage, treacle, tedium & schmaltz. (& yes, I think "Helter Skelter" is overrated. If I must listen to it, I listen to hear Ringo get blisters on his fingers.) The record, in a remarkable way, predicts the careers of the Beatles a couple of years before the split - although, it's fair to note, they were really already beginning to split.

I think that's why it's so cool. & by the way, the songs covered by the people above - with the exception of "Wild Honey Pie," they're all exclusively Lennon songs.

This Friday I will have the entire White Album covered in my grubby hands - yes, I even found a cover of "Revolution 9" - but I probably won't get to play it all. What I will play, though - well, you'll have to listen in, won't you?