Self Help Radio 041814: Cassettes

Today's show celebrates a piece of dying media that was very important to me for many years.  The cassette used to be a big part of nearly everyone's lives - & now has been relegated to the realm of aficionado & nostalgia.  The show, however, is more celebration, than elegy!

You can listen to it now now now at the Self Help Radio web site, where it might just fit on a ninety-minute cassette tape.  If so, here's side one & here's side two.  What would normally be written on the J-card is listed below.

As always, be kind - rewind!

(side one)

"Cassette Squeaking/Venetian Blind" Charlie & Todd _Party Fun With Recorders Volume 1_
"C30 C60 C90 Go!" Bow Wow Wow _Girl Bites Dog_
"Cassettes" R. Stevie Moore _Kaffeeklatsch_
"On Tape" Pooh Sticks _CD86: 48 Tracks From The Birth Of Indie Pop_

"Mix Tape" Michael Shelley _I Blame You_
"I Have Made You A Mix Tape" Daniel Ledwell _Two Over Seven_
"Compilation Cassette" Darren Hayman & The Secondary Modern _Pram Town_
"Mix Tape" Stephanie D'Abruzzo & John Tartaglia _Avenue Q - The Musical_
"The Black Cassette" My Favorite _A Cult Of One_

"The Cassingle Revival" The Lucksmiths _Where Were We?_
"Cassette Revival" King Bear _Cassette Revival Therapy EP_
"Books On Tape & 45s" The Casino Ashtrays _Long After The Commercials Have Ended_

(side two)

"I Still Like Cassettes" Brother JT _The Svelteness Of Boogietude_
"Play Me A Tape" Miss Kittin _Batbox_

"Tape From California" Phil Ochs _Tape From California_
"Hiss On The Tape" John Martyn _Well Kept Secret_
"Tape Recorder Man" Momus _Folktronic_

"Tapehead" Francis International Airport _We Are Jealous We Are Glass_
"Veronica Made A Tape" Horowitz _Frosty Cat Songs_
"Cassette" Oh No _Dr. No's Oxperiment_

Whither Cassettes?

I am going to wax eloquent about cassettes on tomorrow's show, so I want to save something for that.  But here's a nice collection of musings about cassettes that may put you in the proper frame of mind for the show.

The weird thing is, putting the show together has made me feel like I miss cassettes more than I really do.  That's a little disturbing.

Okay.  Gotta go work on this week's Self Help Radio.  I think it'll be all right.

Preface To Cassettes: The Ultimate Fate Of Mix Tapes

I was a teenager during most of the 1980s (I turned 20 in 1988) so I believe I was at the prime age for the use of the cassette as a vehicle for romance & sharing: the mix tape.  Nowadays there are places online where you can gather songs; back then, you had to press record at the right time when you put the needle on the record.  I made hundreds of them, for several girls, & a lot for my male friends.

One great mix tape I got when I met a fellow who loved Tom Waits.  At the time, I had never heard anything by Tom Waits.  He offered to make me a tape of his favorite Tom Waits songs, but he asked, "What have you got?"  I was really into Nick Cave then, so I made him a Nick Cave tape.  Later on - it's sad I can't remember this guy's name - I asked how he liked it.  He loved it.  I loved the Tom Waits tape.  We couldn't agree who got the better bargain.  That was probably my best mix tape exchange.

There were bad experiences, too.  I was crazy about this chick named Amy, who shared a similar musical taste to me, & made her a mix tape in which there were, apparently, a lot of songs she already knew.  I expected it would convince her to be mine.  Instead, she said to me, "You're making me hate songs I used to love."  That relationship didn't go anywhere.

Mix CDs, though more convenient, & of course with much better sound quality, seem less personal.  I guess the whole process of sitting in front of your stereo, taking the records out of their sleeves, cleaning them, putting them on the turntable, turning the tape recorder on, playing the entire song, then making sure you pause before the next track on the LP starts - not to mention the process of scribbling in the tiny lines on the tape's cover - or whatever you call it - all of this took time & care.  & once it was done, you couldn't move the tracks around, like you can on a CD before you burn it.  You had to think about the tracklisting before you started.

& what has happened to all the mix tapes I've made?  Probably all thrown away, long ago.  Most of the women I made mix tapes for probably got rid of them after they got rid of me - & anyway, as the years went by, they also probably got rid of the cassette decks.  They used to be standard in cars; they aren't any more.  I know many people who've even gotten rid of their CDs, prefer to keep all their music on mp3s in an iPod &/or some kind of "cloud."

To be sure, I'd hate to have to sit down to make an actual mix tape again.  I miss vinyl much more than cassettes.  (& yes, I know, both are still around.  There are even cassette-only record labels.  I just don't collect anything in cassette or vinyl anymore.)  I hated the sound loss in cassettes, & of course I hated when the tape broke or got eaten by the player.  I have a couple of cassettes that I played too often, & have been demagnetized, & I keep them imagining I can play them again one day to save them - though I probably won't be able to.

But I think of the mix tapes I made with fondness, & would love to see some of them again.  I would also love to see some of the people I made them for again, too.  Probably, though, they, like the mix tapes I made them, are lost to me forever.

For Lack Of A Better World

Take this quiz, quickly.  No quibbles!  It's quality quizzing:

1) Do you or have you ever maybe even once?

a-No
b-Yeah
c-Oh
d-Dang

2) Did I ruin it for you or is that your thing?

a-Always
b-Sometimes
c-Never
d-Why

3) You had the chance, you took the chance - how do that make you feel?

a-I suppose
b-I thought so
c-I got it
d-I demure

4) The one you love loves you not.

a-Fury
b-Petulance
c-Assignation
d-Career

5) Hold your breath if you want to live.

a-Parentheses
b-Semicolon
c-Ellipsis
d-Starboard

6) Have you made it this far?

a-Superstar
b-Bombshell
c-Matinee Idol
d-Heartthrob

7) Your score indicates:

a-I have a pulse
b-I have to go
c-I have strange feelings that I can't explain
d-I must've been blind

8) You meet Leonard Cohen in early 1983.  You say:

a-I'm your man
b-Bob Dylan
c-That's no way to say hello
d-(Throat exercises)

9) A quiz should have at least ten questions, right?

a-That's a good question
b-Check out my website
c-Fundamentalist
d-Bob Dylan

SCORING! If you answered any of the questions correctly, give yourself five points.  If you answered any of the questions incorrectly, go ahead & give yourself more points so that you can feel better about yourself.

A score of 160 or more indicates you accidentally took a test by Cosmopolitan, but your relationship is all right.

A score of 20 or less indicates you probably shouldn't think what you think about the Greek God Dionysius, since he's real & knows what you're thinking.

A B+ or higher moves you quickly past second grade & into fourth grade.

A C or lower is average.  A D or higher is not.

Spoiler, A Lert

This is something my brain often does: it will separate the syllables of words that begin with sound "uh" as represented by the letter a, like alert, or again, or ahead, or askew.  It will assume that the letter a in the word is actually an article & will try to make sense of the word in that context.

For example, the phrase "Full speed ahead!" will seem, if I am exhausted or otherwise not paying attention, to be saying, "Full speed, a head!"  This will confuse me.

Or as the title of this blog piece seems to say: there's a lert named Spoiler.  But what's a lert?

I know from my readings in etymology that there's a linguistic term, called rebracketing (also called misdivision), in which words like "napron" & "nadder" become, because of how people decide to pronounce them, "an apron" & "an adder."  One word that goes the other way is "notch" - it used to be "an otch."  But it happens more often that the consonant is lost from the word, not that a consonant is gained.  (Not a gain! my brain says.)

But my brain is practicing a sort of rebracketing & the interesting thing is that most of the words - unlike alert - are words in their own right, like gain, head, & skew, with the a added as a prefix.  That might be the reason my head does that.

I remember when I was learning the days of the week, it helped me to learn to spell them to pronounce them, in my head, how they were spelled.  So Wednesday, which is normally pronounced Whensday, became, to me, Wed Nes Day in my brain.  My head still pronounces it that way.  I'm sure I sometimes will say it that way.

When I was young & my brain was limber, I could hold those words separate & know they were still the same word.  As I age, I think those mind-shortcuts are slowly unravelling up there, with consequences like this one: when someone says "the door is ajar," I have to rally myself to remember that that means it's partially open - not that someone has replaced my front door with the biggest mason jar I'll ever see.

Self Help Radio 041114: Breath

A show about breath!  It has left me short of breath!  I fear I've been wasting my breath!  Don't hold your breath or mutter things under your breath!  Help me catch my breath!  In the same breath I want to save my breath.  Or should I bate it?

Here you go, breathless one: a new show at Self Help Radio web central.  Or, if you prefer, individual halves of the show: half one & half two.  Breathy songs are below.

As always, you're a breath of fresh air!

(part one)

"Breath" Tall Dwarfs _Weeville_
"Every Breath I Take" Gene Pitney _Phil Spector: Back To Mono_
"Save Your Breath" The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir _...And The Horse You Rode In On_
"Take Your Breath Away" Prince Edward Island _This Day Is A Good Enough Day_

"Lose My Breath" My Bloody Valentine _Isn't Anything_
"The Last Breath Of Summer" Peter Himmelman _This Father's Day_
"Breath Control" Boogie Down Productions _Ghetto Music: The Blueprint Of Hip Hop_
"Cigarette Breath" Shinehead _The Real Rock_

"Baby's Breath" Bill Callahan _Apocalypse_

(part two)

"Onion Breath Baby" Elroy Peace _Onion Breath Baby_
"Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague" Frank Zappa _Uncle Meat_
"Out Of Breath" Ronnie Whitehead _Eccentric Soul: Mighty Mike Lenaburg_

"Every Breath You Take" The Swirlies _Damon Andy Rob Ron: The Yes Girls_
"Candy Breath" Honeybunch _Time Trials: 1987-1995_
"Catch Another Breath" Choo Choo Train _Briar High_
"Bated Breath" The Room _No Dream (Best Of)_
"One Breath" Anna Calvi _One Breath_

"Breathless" X _More Fun In The New World_
"Breathless" Momus _Timelord_

Whither Breath?

Has anyone ever written a poem in which all the lines rhyme because it's the same word?  I wanted to write a trifling little piece of doggerel about "breath" but there aren't many words that rhyme perfectly with breath: death, meth, Beth & Seth are the only ones I can think of.  The others are "near-rhymes" like "breast," relying on rhyming of the internal vowel sounds rather than the ending sounds (is that assonance?).

Anyway, I wrote a poem about breath that just rhymed breath with breath all the way through.  It went like this:

Because I could not stop for breath
I had to go & shop for breath.
Said she, "I see you're spilling breath."
Said I, "Better than killing breath."
Said she, "You should perhaps change your breath."
Such statements can derange your breath!
Still I worried about my breath.
Could I do without my breath?
I think I'll have to mint my breath.
A sweet taste just to tint my breath.
But what if I can't fix my breath?
Find something with which to mix my breath?
Seriously, what goes good with breath?
Like fire goes with wood, with breath?
I don't want chewing gummy breath.
I don't want Jamaican rummy breath.
I don't want super cheesy breath,
Lemon squeezy easy-peasy breath.
Since I can't have nothing breath,
I need to work on bluffing breath.
Said she, "You think too much of breath.
I even think that you love breath!"
Said I, "Until you tasted my breath,
I would have said I wasted my breath."
Said she, "Come here!" & took my breath
& with her lips she shook my breath.

I understand that I made the phrases all rhyme, not just the last words.  I couldn't help myself.

The first line is of course an Emily Dickinson riff.  I couldn't help myself there, either.

Preface To Breath: Sad Reflections On Childhood

Do you remember when suddenly it became a big deal whether your breath smelled bad or not?  Did it have something to do with puberty?

I remember my sixth grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Schwartz, was the first "close talker" I ever met. He would almost pull me to him to let me know something in confidence.  (Why he needed to confide in a twelve year old is another story.)  Mr. Schwartz's main problem was that he was most probably a three-pack-a-day smoker.  In those days, teachers would disappear in-between classes to puff down an entire cigarette in a five minute period.  & even though virtually every member of my family at that time smoked, I was astonished when he would come close to me, talk in low tones, & his breath smelled as bad as his teeth were yellow.

Being an ugly & fat child, I didn't get to play the boy-girl games of puberty & anyway I did my best to keep myself inconspicuous & out of trouble.  But I think it was some time in eighth grade when someone spat out that damning word for the first time in my life: halitosis.  It's a word that sounds as bad as it is.  It was probably in my Home Economics class (a class I took because at the end of the school year you learned how to make a pizza) when some of the more popular guys I sat next to complained of some dude who had halitosis.  They had discovered this fact not because they themselves noticed, but because a girl had complained about it when she kissed him.

I knew at that point I would never ever never kiss a girl.

Whether or not I myself had bad breath I couldn't say.  I didn't have cigarette breath, that was true.  But at the time I definitely didn't have terribly good dental hygiene, which is the easiest way to guarantee decent-smelling breath.  In my favor, however, was the fact that my family ate bland, white European food, with the most daring spice being salt, so I didn't smell of garlic or curry or anything like that.  But I drank a lot of soda, & ate a lot of crap junk food.  Chances are, I didn't have breath that smelled of posies.

None of it mattered, of course - I didn't have friends with whom I whispered all the time, & when I was finally able to communicate with the opposite sex, I would be talking to girls who weren't quite as shallow as the boys in my Home Ec class.

What they - or the boys in middle school, or even my friends - said about my breath behind my back is another thing entirely, & something I am not privy to.

Sympathy For The Dribble

Things are a little sad in Lexington to-day - the college basketball team, which was poised to win the college basketball championship, lost to another team.  "Second place isn't so bad" doesn't heal the hurt feelings of people whose happiness & pride had been tied up in a sports team for an exciting season.  People I know who are at the school were saying things on Facebook like, "I'm so proud of my school!"

On a dog walk during a play-off game, with the streets quiet & near-deserted, the wife told me she didn't understand sports fans.  She said, "I can understand wanting to play sports, but watching them?"  She assumed that they knew what she does, that the spectators are not in any way responsible for how the games turn out, & that the coaches & administration & players reap all the rewards.

I grew up in a family that loved sports, & was a child when the Dallas Cowboys won a couple or three Super Bowl victories in the late 1970s.  Even in those days, however, I didn't feel much of a connection to the athletes on the television.  When once I praised what I thought was an outstanding play, but one the other team had made, I was almost struck by one of my brothers.  Rooting for the other team was apostasy.  & I remember how frustrated & sad they would be when their team lost.

In Huntington, one time, a kid at WMUL was talking about the Marshall team taking on their rivals at the University of West Virginia.  "If they beat us," he told me, "I'll kill myself."

I understand how thrilling sports are, & I also understand it's a human tendency to take sides.  (Recently, I read an internet forum about "Marvel" vs "DC" movies.)  I know I tend to take things like the recent Supreme Court ruling as a "loss" to my team (people who want everyone in the United States to be healthy, well-fed, happy, & safe) & a "win" for the 1% who already control way too much.

It's in our nature.  So I sympathize, a little, with the "losers" who had no real stake in the game, who now feel as though they've been dealt a major blow in life, like discovering they have a medical condition, or they've lost a great deal of money.  (Well, the gamblers out there who are also school partisans may actually have.)  It doesn't make me care any more about the actual sport, & it certainly doesn't change my opinion that there's too much money in college sports & far too little in the liberal arts.  But I hope my friends who are feeling a little crushed today feel better soon.  "It's just a ball game," is no consolation, because, to them, it isn't.

Maybe next year?

Movie Review?

This blog features virtually no reviews of music.  It has some comments I felt like making after some musicians or artists who meant a lot to me died, but not really any "reviews" per se.

I've written hundreds of reviews of records for the various radio stations I've been at.  I never felt any of them were worth printing.  My favorite reviews, actually, were for things that weren't very good, or for things that I didn't have much to say about, so I would take the opportunity to write something dumb.  For example, there was a band whose name was the same name as one of my middle school teachers, so the review began like this:

My eighth grade English teacher was named [band name].  I kind of liked her, but everyone else thought she was a servant of the devil because she held us to high school standards.  She was small but stern, & obviously loved the stuff she taught us.  She introduced me to Poe!  Anyway, this band – which is two brothers – has nothing to do with that.  

This doesn't help you understand the band at all, so I do describe their sound & what tracks I like.  It's standard stuff for a radio review, which (usually) isn't meant to be read by anyone but a deejay thinking about playing a song on the air.

Which is not to say that I don't appreciate criticism.  I love to read what people think about stuff.  I don't agree with probably most of it, but I don't mind it.  Sometimes someone else's opinion reinforces my own - or, better yet, makes me think more deeply about what I believe or think.  For some people, however, criticism can seem to be a writer showing off his/her style, or it may just be a bad argument, someone trying to change your opinion, & that can be irksome.

But I was thinking of writing a review of a movie I recently saw, for no other reason than I just saw it.  Occasionally I write a review of something on the Internet Movie Database - very occasionally, actually - I recently wrote something for the first time in seven years - but I am rarely moved to comment on a movie in the same way lots of people are & do.  (You can read my handful of reviews here, if you'd like.  None is essential.)

& then I started thinking, this morning, how much more I enjoyed the Game Of Thrones season four premiere far more than the movie.  There were a few dull, expository stretches through the movie - but all the dialogue (& it was a talky premiere) in the television show seemed essential.

& what is the point, anyway?  If you like some of the music I like, you'll like some of the shows I've put together.  An album review or a movie review or a television review won't make much of a difference.  Will it?  How could it?

Self Help Radio 040414: The Way Out Show

Self Help Radio this week is way out!  It's way out in Kentucky.  Way out on a planet called Earth in the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy.  & it's got no way out.

But there are doubtless way out songs on the show you might enjoy.  You can listen to it here: Self Help Radio website.  Or you can listen to it directly here: part one & then also part two.  Way down below here is the list of songs I played.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Way Out Willie" Mickey Hawks _Bip Bop Boom_
"She's Too Way Out" Tony Dangerfield & The Thrills _Freakbeat Freakout_
"Way Out Love" The Four Pennies _Trouble Is My Middle Name_
"Way Way Out" The Girls _New Rubble, Vol. 5: Scratch My Back_

"We've Got A Way Out Love" The Originals _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 9: 1969_
"Hey Little Way Out Girl" The Construction _The Wigan Casino Story Continues_
"Way Out Love" The Isley Brothers _Between The Sheets_
"Way Out" Yeah Yeah Yeahs _Show Your Bones_
"Way Out" April March & Steve Hanft _Magic Monsters_

"When There's No Way Out" Guitar Slim _Atco Sessions_
"No Way Out" Joyce Harris & The Daylighters _The Domino Records Story_
"No Way Out" Clarence Reid _Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts Of Deep City_

(part two)

"No Way Out" The Chocolate Watchband _Love Is The Song We Sing (San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970)_
"No Way Out" Thee Headcoats _Heavens To Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats! (Already)_
"No Way Out" The Legends _Up Against The Legends_
"No Way Out Of Time" Robyn Hitchcock _Spooked_

"Way Out There" Chuck & Bill (The Kentuckians) _Oh Boy! The Brunswick Story_
"That's Your Way Out" The Pandoras _It's About Time_
"The Old Way Out" The Go-Betweens _Spring Hill Fair_
"Way Out Of Reach" The Manhattan Love Suicides _Burnt Out Landscapes_
"Way Out" Bass Drum Of Death _Bass Drum Of Death_
"I Found A Way Out" Bill Cosby _Talks To Kids About Drugs_

"Way Out West" Big Star _Radio City_
"Way Out West" Angel Corpus Christi _The 80's_
"Way Out" The La's _Callin' All_

Whither The Way Out Show?

Holy crap, I'm at this point where I don't really know what I can talk about during a show in which the theme is "way out"!

Why do you have to talk about anything?  Why not just let the music speak for itself?

Damn it!  It's me in italics!

Howdy.

You go away.  You're never helpful.  You pretend to be a more laid-back version of me but your ideas are stupid.

Oh, dude, that's harsh.

Let's take for example that last one: "let the music speak for itself."  It does.  I don't have a problem with that.  But I don't usually talk about the music I play.  I talk about the themes.

Wow, I guess I didn't know that.

You didn't know that?  You're ME for fuck's sake!

I don't listen to your show, though.  I tried once.  It was kinda boring.

Arrgh!

Wait.  Did you really just write "Arrgh"?

Yeah, it's a noise I make in frustration.

But you didn't actually say it, did you?

No, of course not.  Because I'm writing on a computer screen.  Anyway, when someone is talking to themselves, they usually don't make noises unless they want passers-by to think they're crazy-pants.

Writing "arrgh" is like the 20th century way of texting "LOL."

I hate you.

I know!

Preface To The Way Out Show: Frames Of Reference

I might have explained the way I find themes to explore on the show, before, on this blog.  But I will repeat myself.  It's not an interesting or mysterious or inspired process, but it is a process.  I think of something, usually at random moments, & I create a folder on my computer with the name of the theme & then start to fill it in.

A friend calls this "letting the universe talk to you."  I don't believe that coincidences mean anything, but if I am listening to three records in a row, & they all have songs about soap on them, my brain will tell me, "You should do a show about soap."  So I'll create the folder & let my brain work on it in the background.

At some point I decide there's enough songs to do a show.  I take a little more time to do more direct searching for songs, but the bulk of the show is already there.

Sometimes it takes years to get a theme covered.  In my "folder of themes" (which for some reason is labeled "extras" on my computer), I have folders that go back to 2008.  This is true!  Some ideas don't get much exploration.  They just lie there.

In any event, coincidences happen, & although I have left WRFL, I am still aware of the show schedule, & since last fall there's a show called "The Way Out" on the station.  It wouldn't bother me if that show's name (not necessarily its content) inspired this week's show, but I am here to say, it didn't.  The "way out show" folder was created in 2012, when Matt, the show's host, was still doing "Burning Sensations."

I toyed with the idea of contacting him to see if he wanted to record a disclaimer for me ("The program The Way Out is not involved with nor endorses the program Self Help Radio"), but I didn't want to bother him.  I can only say that he does a fine show, & it's on Thursdays at 2pm at wrfl.fm or 88.1 fm in Lexington.

I hope he doesn't think my show is a comment or rip-off on his!

Combatting Sunrise With Hate

This is true: I had an argument last night with someone in a dream in which we were talking about the New Testament's attitude toward homosexuality.  It wasn't even someone who was a friend, or is a Christian, or a homophobe - it was an old acquaintance's wife.  It was in a suite of apartments in which I have never lived but in the dream was my home.  My brain did this wonderful thing it does which confronted with the request for information it did not have: it didn't let me get to my computer to access that information.  I think my brain is clever to do that.

This is also true: The wife got a cable phone for us, but no one knows the number.  That doesn't keep it from ringing several times a day.  At least twice I've received calls from the Kentucky Prison System or whatever it's called.  It asks me to press one to accept the call & to press another key for more information.  There does not appear to be a number to refuse the call.  I don't want want to be rude but I also don't want to waste an inmate's time, so I just hang up.  Then I have the feeling I've broken someone's heart.

This is not true: I am a six foot tall dragonfly who has forgotten how to fly.  But I have not forgotten how to be a dragon.  It's difficult to get my jittery damn wings through doorways so now, out of frustration, I just breathe fire on them & burn my way through.  This has caused me to destroy my own home & also I am not invited to anyone else's houses anymore.  The novelty of having a friend who is a six foot tall dragonfly is made negligible by the property damage I inflict with my awkwardness & impatience (also, fire).  This in turn has caused me to plunge into deep despair but has not, alas, resulted in any real soul-searching or attempts to improve my character.

Five Inches Of Hair

"Is that all it will take?" I asked.  "Yes," he said.  "Just five inches of hair."

He had shifty eyes.  Night shifty eyes.  More comfortable with cold, uncomfortable fluorescent light.

"That's not a lot of hair," I said.  "It's enough," he said.

I looked around his office.  The place was untidy, like a teenager's room.  It smelled of coffee stains & unfinished tuna salad sandwiches.

"What're you looking for?" he asked.  "A ruler," I said.  "If you don't have a ruler - or a tape measure - there's no way to know if it's exactly five inches of hair."

Being exact was important to me at that time in my life.  It was a kind of mental punctuality.

"An inch is about as big the length from knuckle to tip of the average finger," he said, pointing one finger at me & using another (from the other hand) to demonstrate.

I hadn't looked at his hands yet, & now I wish I hadn't.  They looked like they'd been broken at least twice in the past, & repaired by an arthritic doctor.

"I guess that's fair," I conceded, pushing his hand out of my way.  "Five inches of hair is fair."

He clapped his malformed hands together & it made a pathetic noise.  He was happy, & I saw him reach into a desk drawer & remove a pair of scissors that could have doubled as shears.

"No, no," I said.  "Not now!"  "Not now?" he repeated as a question.

I made strange gestures over my head that I initially thought might be self-explanatory, but instead looked like I was trying to clumsily mimic a fashionable dance popular with trendy commercial music.

"I'll need to grow it first!" I finally explained.

Self Help Radio 032814: Ants

Ants! Ants everywhere! Where the hell did all these ants come from? Holy crap I'm covered in ants!

Save me from all these ants!  Listen to this show at the Ant Help Radio website!  Or you can listen to directly by clicking the two parts: part one covered in ants! or part two in the anthill!  All the ant songs are being carried away by a line of ants below!

Ants! Ants! Ants!

(part one)

"Army Ants In Your Pants" Bruce Haack _Listen Compute Rock Home: The Best Of Dimension 5_
"The Ant & The Grasshopper" Leon Rosselson & Roy Bailey _That's Not The Way It's Got To Be_
"Il Grillo E La Formica (The Ant & The Cricket)" Unidentified _The Italian Treasury: Abruzzo_

"Ants In My Pants" Bo Carter _Them Dirty Blues_
"I Can't Dance (I Got Ants In My Pants) (Louis Jordan, vocals)" Clarence Williams & His Washboard Orchestra _1933-1934_
"Make Me Dance, Little Ant" Joe Hughes & His Orchestra _I Dreamed I Was Elvis_
"I Got Ants In My Pants, Part 1 (Reverb Version)" James Brown _The Singles, Volume 8: 1972-1973_
"Idiosyncratic Ant Blues" Pagiins _Good Things Take Time EP_

"High Hopes" Frank Sinatra _The Complete Capitol Singles Collection_
"Ant Music" OK Go _Get Over It_
"Ants Invasion" Adam & The Ants _Kings Of The Wild Frontier_
"Red Ant" Smack Dab _Majestic Root_

(part two)

"Ant Corridor" Robyn Hitchcock _Luxor_
"Ant" They Might Be Giants _Indestructible Object EP_
"Exploding Anthills" Boston Spaceships _Zero To 99_

"Ant Man Bee" Captain Beefheart _Trout Mask Replica_
"Ants" Stephen Wright _I Have A Pony_
"200 Million Red Ants" The Majamood _Circus Days Vol. 6_
"Raft Ants" Wire _Read & Burn 2_
"Ants In My Hands" Modey Lemon _Thunder + Lightning_

"Ant Farm" Eels _Electro-Shock Blues_
"Hopi Ants" Lida Husik _The Return Of Red Emma_
"Mister Ant" Psapp _The Camel's Back_
"Ants On A Log" Randy Travis _Full Circle_

Whither Ants?

Radio shows about insects prove immensely popular with entomologists everywhere, who make up roughly 0.005% of the listening population.  This difficult demographic can only be made happy by songs about insects.  Therefore, the United States Radio Commission For Radio requires people who make radio type shows to occasionally cater to the demands of entomologists &/or weirdos who enjoy insects.  This is what Self Help Radio is doing this week.

We'll return to non-ant programming next week.

New Sponsor!

I'm very proud to announce that Self Help Radio has a new sponsor for this week's show.  It's Ant Monthly, the number one magazine about ants in North America.  We're glad to have them aboard!

There Is A Rant & It Never Comes Out

I am not one for complaining about a lot of stuff - except for snow!  It's snowing today!  It's sunny for a second & then it's snowing today!  What the hell? - but I have a rant building up & I'm wondering if it's possibly going to explode all over this blog at some point.

But I don't know if I rant too effectively these days.  I used to be better at it when I was younger - people would describe my airbreaks on KVRX as "rants" - but nowadays I feel weird expressing my own opinion in that manner.  One, I don't think anyone cares; & b, I confess I worry about offending people, which leads me to, who the hell am I & what right do I have to express an opinion (angry or otherwise) about anything?  Isn't it bad enough that people have let me on the radio?

But seriously, SNOW?

That's not what I want to rant about, or discuss, or whatever.  It's just weird.  It's not sticking - it's above freezing - but it is snowing, which is weird, because it's not spring anymore.  Or is it?

That's what I thought.  Here's a picture from downtown Lexington today:

Damn it!

Ant Obsession

This week's show is about ants.  From time-to-time I wish, instead of doing my show, I could just say, "Here's someone doing something better than I ever could, please watch/listen/experience this instead."

In the fourth season (or series) of Monty Python, there's an episode called Michael Ellis, which is fixated with ants.  It's a must-see - & here's an example why: Romantic poets writing about ants:



(Sorry about the Spanish subtitles.)