Self Help Radio 021315: Valentine's Day 2015 - Famous Lovers

(Original image here.)

Ah, love!  What a mess it is!  & what messy lives the lovers of history & myth had!  From Adam & Eve to John & Yoko, things don't usually turn out so well.  Why do we love these stories, then?  Why do we fall in love?

None of those questions are answered on today's show (heck, none of them were even asked!) which features nothing but songs about famous lovers, as well as an interview with historian David Fruchter about his new book about love, a report by Marge Most, & an update by SHR's man in Hollywood, Mark Miller.  It will not be a good substitute for flowers & candy if your better half expects that, but it'll kill time on the drive to the fancy schmany restaurant to be sure.

The show is over at the Self Help Radio website, right at the top of the playlists.  When you click one of them, it'll ask you for a username & a password.  They're available on the page, not hard to find, but they're also SHR & selfhelp if you are impatient.  They're not a secret.  The songs I played in each half of the show are listed below.

Happy Valentine's Day!

(part one)

"Adam & Eve" Paul Anka from Paul Anka Sings His Big 15_
"Adam & Evil" Elvis Presley from Spinout_
"Adam & Eve" Bob Marley from The Great Legend Of Reggae_

"Helen & Paris" Dancing Mice from Quiz Culture_
"Pyramus & Thisbe" Lida Husik from The Return Of Red Emma_
"King Solomon's Song & Mine" Momus from Circus Maximus_
"Orpheus & Eurydice" Helen Slater from The Myths Of Ancient Greece_

"(If) Cleopatra Took A Chance" Eddie Holland from The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 2: 1962_
"Abdul & Cleopatra" Jonathan Richman from The Best Of Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers (The Beserkley Years)_
"The Continuing Story Of Mary & Joseph" George Carlin from When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?_
"Mary & Joseph" Richard Thompson from Henry The Human Fly_

"Héloïse & Abélard" Anna Erikssön & Mason Bendewald from Meet Me At Père Lachaise_
"Letter From Heloise To Abelard" Laura Paton from A Lover's Gift/From Her To Him_
"Abelard & Heloise" Spokane from Leisure & Other Songs_

(part two)

"Lancelot's Tune (Guinevere)" Tom Rush from Tom Rush Celebrates 50 Years Of Music_
"Beauty & The Beast" Joan Gerber from The Story Lady_
"Beauty & The Beast" David Bowie from Heroes_

"Romeo & Juliet" William Shatner from The Transformed Man_
"Romeo & Juliet" Michael & The Messengers from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968_
"Romeo & Juliet" Dire Straits from Making Movies_

"The Legend Of Bonnie & Clyde" Merle Haggard from The Great Merle Haggard Sings_
"The Ballad Of Bonnie & Clyde" Georgie Fame from The British Invasion: The History Of British Rock, Vol. 5_
"A Day In The Life Of Bonnie & Clyde" Mel Torme from A Day In The Life Of Bonnie & Clyde_
"Bonnie & Clyde" Mick Harvey & Anita Lane from Intoxicated Man_

"Everyone Has Something To Hide Except Me & My Monkey" Kristin Hersh from Echo_
"The Ballad Of John & Yoko" Teenage Fanclub from Deep Fried Fanclub_

Whither Valentine's Day 2015: Famous Lovers?

I like doing Valentine's Day shows, &, I suppose, the topics are almost limitless.  But at a certain point, panic sets in.  I've done (according to the Self Help Radio website's list of themes I've covered) eleven Valentine's Day shows (I have no idea why I didn't do one in 2006) with themes like love, hate, crushes, jealousy, boyfriends, girlfriends, love songs, lovesickness, finishing the line "love is…", & last year, valentines, but after I started gathering music for this year's show I realized I totally could've done an entire show on Romeo & Juliet without too much trouble.  & now I'm just planning on playing a few songs about them in the middle of a larger show.  Panic.  Sets.  In.

You could help, you know.  You could suggest future Valentine's Day themes.  Email ideas to me.  Respond to this blog entry.  Come to my house, slap me around a bit, & taunt me with better ideas.  Anything.  Because.  Panic.  Sets.  In.

Not right away, though, since I have a year after tomorrow to think of something else.  Tomorrow there'll be songs about all kinds of historical, mythical, & fictional lovers.  I'm a little surprised that there aren't more pop songs about Pyramus & Thisbe, but I understand I'm not in charge of the world.  Alas.

Self Help Radio's 2015 Valentine's Day show is on from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  I'll have it up on the Self Help Radio web place long before Valentine's Day.  I am told the show is a powerful aphrodisiac.  Or was that a prank call?

Jon

(I found this picture here.)

There's nothing I can really say about Jon Stewart's decision to leave the Daily Show.  Actually, there's a lot of things I can say & why not say them here?

Though I think it's right & proper to continue the show, we have to admit it's going to be weird without him behind that desk.  I've watched it faithfully for a very long time now.  I started watching it way before the 2000 election - but I just read that he started in 1999.  I wasn't a regular viewer of the Craig Kilbourn version, so I must have heard some buzz about it early on.

This is how long ago it was: I was often not home at 10pm (when it aired in Texas) so I would have my VCR programmed to tape it.  I would have videotapes of the show to watch when I had time.  Videotapes!  Sometimes I'd accidentally tape over something I hadn't watched.  Those pre-DVR days were so barbaric!

I watched him during the 2000 election.  I watched him on his first show after 9/11.  I've watched him I guess fifteen years now.  It's a long relationship.  It's crazy that it will end this year.

Not that I haven't had my problems with him.  I thought the "Rally To Restore Sanity" was really dumb & ineffectual.  & most damning of all: not funny.  Politically, it might have really made a difference.  I remember the wife & I almost drove up to DC to take part in it, but when I was watching it, that Saturday morning, from home, I was so glad we didn't.  Bands I didn't like (mostly boring commercial radio fare) played for a long time before half-assed attempts to humor intending to promote reasonable discussions in the country were performed, & so fucking lame they were.  Oh my god.  A month or so later, in an off-year election that Stewart might have actually influenced, the Republican Party began its resurgence.  If Stewart didn't have his "I'm just a comedian defense" (another thing about him that I find disingenuous), he might feel a bit ashamed for wasting his considerable clout on a mostly unfunny performance at gathering of his fans.

Even though what I just wrote nearly attained the level of rant, I truly respect & admire the man.  I wish the people who should watch his show - mainly people who trust Fox News - actually did watch it, but there were times when, by sheer virtue of how he presented a story, he did enlighten me, inform me, even sometimes changed my mind.  & of course he was so very funny.  I don't think I watched one show that I thought, eh.  I always found something to laugh at.

I think my heartbreak over the end of the Colbert Report was ameliorated by the fact that he'll be back on the air soon.  I don't know what Jon Stewart intends to do - he surely isn't going to do a talk show that will compete with his friend.  I haven't seen Rosewater, but will when it comes to DVD - yet I certainly hope he won't spend the rest of his days behind a camera instead of in front of it.  As much as I love John Oliver's show on HBO, I didn't really think he was all that great when he subbed for Stewart.  I missed Jon Stewart so much that summer.

& I'll miss him more knowing he won't be on weeknights mocking the self-important & telling jokes to power after this year.

Lover lover lover

I wanted to do this year's Valentine's Day show about famous lovers, & so I shall, but it hasn't been easy.  Why didn't you tell me there weren't a shit-ton of songs about Pyramus & Thisbe?  I would've believed otherwise.  In a perfect world, there'd be one by Momus & another by Belle & Sebastian.

In fact, I now wish I had promised a show just prominently featuring the word "lover."  I would most definitely have played the Leonard Cohen classic:

& maybe even mixed it up with songs like this one:

Though that may be too ridiculously suggestive for Friday morning.

I am grateful, however, that though there are famous lovers throughout history, & though there are only a few of those that have been celebrated in song, the ones that are celebrated in song have a lot of songs about them.

& because of that: I am also regretting not just doing a show about Romeo & Juliet.

Another Year, Another Groan

Last year, I wrote on the this blog why I don't watch the Grammys.  But I pay attention to the Facebook, Twitter, & Tumblr, & people are talking about Grammys (which aired last night) today.

Most of the people who are talking about the Grammys are people who don't know or don't care that there's an amazing world of music out there that isn't played on top 40 radio, or on any commercial radio at all.  Those same people listen mostly (I would assume) to either whatever's on the radio now or music that meant a lot to them (which was probably also on the radio then) when they were of the age (teens to early twenties) when music seemed to mean a lot.  & when I say, "whatever's on the radio," I tend to mean, whatever's on whatever popular service people listen to, because I simply don't know.

In short, they don't listen to the sort of radio I make, or to the music one hears on the sorts of radio stations I've been on (college/community).  I have in fact been told by people (my family, acquaintances who listen to my show when they've found out I do one) that my music is "weird."  Whatever is accepted as mainstream is "not weird" to them.

I have no problem with that.  I make the assumption that, in general, that they are more passive listeners of music than I am.  They are happy to accept whatever music is placed in front of them by corporations.  They're concerned with many other things than just the music they hear (mostly csex appeal & things the artists wear & say).  They aren't aware that so much of that music is, in effect, written by committee, & designed to be catchy so it sticks in your head.  (I liken it to music for commercials, which in a way it really is.)  (Perhaps you should listen to what Bo Burnham thinks of popular music.)

I started thinking that it's interesting that a "popular" form of art is composed of a such a narrow band of people.  The sort of musical act that makes its way to the Grammys, compared to the number of musicians out there, may make the Grammy crowd the musical 1%.

My point is that I get it.  I understand that people who have a limited knowledge of, or desire to discover, the vast amount of amazing music out there, some of which will stand the test of time in ways virtually all of this year's Grammy winners & nominees won't, I understand that they listen to & like the most convenient music that exists for them.

What I don't understand is the people I know from my radio stations who obsess & reblog & defend Grammy nominees + winners.  They know much more about the 99% of the music out there that the Grammys will never acknowledge, let alone celebrate.  & I have to ask, truly: don't they listen to their own radio stations?

Self Help Radio 020615: Tigers

Ah, tigers.  I stared at pictures of them all week.  I read article after increasingly depressing article.  I listened to a ton of songs about them.  I watched videos of their cubs.  (I stayed away from videos that show them hunting & eating large animals.)  I even cursed the world for leading them to the brink of extinction.  All of this for a radio show!  Seriously, if just you listened to the show, you got off way easier than I did!

It was I think a good show.  I interviewed an actual Bengal tiger (who came down from the Cincinnati Zoo), & also conservationist David Fruchter.  I also performed a Dramatic Readings Of A Classic Rock Song, as I am wont to be.  All this & so many songs about tigers that you'll feel like a cub again!

The show is listen-to-able at the Self Help Radio website.  Do pay attention to login/password information if you want to listen to any shows.  & the songs I played - the fearsome, nocturnal, fierce-toothed, gorgeously striped songs - they're listed below.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Tiger Rag" The Mills Brothers _Blue Skies: 45 Hits From The 30s & 40s_
"Tiger Man (King Of The Jungle)" Rufus Thomas, Jr. _The Sun Records Collection_
"Tiger" Sparkle Moore _Killer 7"_
"Teach Me Tiger" April Stevens _Ultra Lounge, Vol. 8: Cocktail Capers_

"The Tiger's Wide Awake" The Romeos _The Tiger's Wide Awake_
"Paper Tiger" Sue Thompson _Suzie (The Hickory Anthology 1961-1965)_
"Tiger" Brian Auger _The Mod Years_
"I've Got A Tiger By The Tail" Buck Owens _Classic Country: The Golden 60s_
"Tiger Girl" The Tigermen _Scum Of The Earth_

"I'm A Tiger" Lulu _The Best Of The Sixties_
"Tame Me Tiger" Bonnie St. Claire _The Singles_
"Hunting Tigers Out In 'Indiah'" The Bonzo Dog Band _Tadpoles_
"Tame My Tiger" T.Rex _Dandy In The Underworld_

"Paper Tigers" The Chameleons _Script Of The Bridge_
"Plain Tiger" Cocteau Twins _Tiny Dynamite_

(part two)

"Laughing Tigers" BFG _Fathoms_
"Tyger Tyger (Dub Version)" Jah Wobble _Glitters Is Gold_

"The Black Tiger" Phillip Boa & The Voodooclub _Boa Best Singles_
"Lions & Tigers" The Soft Boys _Nextdoorland_
"The Tigers Have Spoken" Neko Case _The Tigers Have Spoken_
"My Tiger My Heart" The Boy Least Likely To _The Best Party Ever_

"Like A Tiger" Fourth Of July _Fourth Of July On The Plains_
"Tiger In The Sea" Daysleepers _Drowned In A Sea Of Sound_
"Tiger In A Cage" Suave As Hell _Ashell III_

"Tyger Tyger" Tania Rivas _Tyger Tyger_
"Albino Tiger Rescue Squad" Bearsuit _The Phantom Forest_
"Tiger Eyes" Half Japanese _Overjoyed_

Whither Tigers?

Man, whatever you do, don't read web pages about tigers.  You can look at photos of them - they're truly stunning beasts - & definitely watch videos of them, especially their cubs, on Youtube or other video web pages - but if you read about them, you'll get angry & sad because there will come a time when they won't exist on Earth anymore.  Maybe in zoos, maybe in sanctuaries.  But of the nine subspecies that have existed, three are extinct, & one is extinct in the wild.  The rest are all endangered.

If I were some kind of crazy magician, I'd multiply the tiger species by a factor of a million or so & give them a fighting chance to take back their habitat from humans.  Also, I'd take away from humans the ability to defend themselves unfairly with weapons like guns & bombs.  Tiger claw & teeth vs human claw & teeth.  There'd be a whole swath of Asia, basically, which just be the nation of Tiger.  Imagine how glorious a place that would be!

Tomorrow's show will therefore have a tinge of melancholy to it, but I hope it's great nonetheless.  It airs Friday morning from 7-9am on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm.  I'll put it up on the Self Help Radio website later in the day.

& if you're up early, I'll be doing the two hours before Self Help Radio as well, because, why not?  It'll be freezing cold outside & I'm a weirdo!

Preface To Tigers: Save The Tigers!

Holy crap tigers are majestic creatures. It's terrifying to think we may one day live in a world where there aren't any. The World Wildlife Federation lays out the challenges of tiger conservation (salvation?) here.

This is information I may share on Friday, too, so don't be surprised if some of the things I say on the radio feel familiar to you.

Even Killing Machines Were Babies Once

The second love of my life used to do this cute thing when she was in a playful mood.  She'd light up like a spring morning & smile wide & say to me, "You were a baby once!"  Her reverie, which was adorable as all hell, would end with "Everything was a baby once!"

In that spirit, here's a compilation of baby tigers being super fucking cute:

Coming Up: A Radio Show

It's true!  This week, the show is about tigers.  Tigers as in ferocious beasts much, much bigger than my housecats, although my housecats think they're tigers & act as though every moment they refrain from leaping upon me & ripping out my throat is a gift they beneficently bestow upon me.  Indeed, in this picture:

They pretty much think they're the big tiger &, unless I'm feeding them, I'm the annoying little tiger.  See how amazingly patient they are with me?  Why, they could eat me alive!  They're so good to me.

I took that picture from this place: The Mighty Tiger: 15 Facts & 25 Stunning Photos.  You may want to bone up on that before this week's show.  Although I might have chosen 15 Photos & 25 Stunning Facts.  Because that is how I am.

Self Help Radio 013015: Jerks

(Original image here.)

God, some people are such jerks.  Did you know, some jerks get an entire radio show about them?  Can you even imagine it?  What sort of jerk makes a radio show about jerks?  A big ol' jerk, I bet!  But does it make you a jerk to listen to a radio show about jerks?

That's for you to find out!  You can listen to Self Help Radio's show about jerks any time you'd like because it's now over at the Self Help Radio website.  The site is kinda password protected, so please make sure you see the login (SHR) & the password (selfhelp) while you're there.  Yeah, I just gave them to you - I'm not some kind of a jerk!

The jerky songs I played are below.  About half of them appear to be about a dance craze in the mid-60s that for some reason never attached itself to the pejorative "jerk."  I guess that's how dance crazes are.

Thanks for listening!  (You're not a jerk.)

(part one)

"Bongo Jerk" Laurel Aitken _Laurel Aitken: Ska Legend_
"Buzz The Jerk" The Pretty Things _Get The Picture?_
"Can You Jerk Like Me?" The Contours _The Very Best Of The Contours_
"Cool Jerk" The Go-Go's _Return To The Valley Of The Go-Go's_

"Don't Be A Jerk, Jonny" The Drums _Summertime!_
"Everybody Jerk" Jackie Lee _The Duck_
"How Not To Get Jerked" Boogie Down Productions _Sex & Violence_
"I Can Be A Jerk" Eddy Current Suppression Ring _Rush To Relax_

"I Do The Jerk" Bill Pinkney _Jerk! Shake! & Vibrate!_
"Jerk" Buzzcocks _Buzzcocks_
"The Jerk" The Clarendonians _Trojan Mod Reggae Box Set_
"Jerk" The Haywains _Desperately Seeking Something_

"The Jerk" The Larks _The Jerk_
"The Jerk" Martha & The Vandellas _Dance Party_
"Jerk It With Soul" Willie Walker _Northern Soul Fever, Vol. 3_

(part two)

"Jerk" Noise Addict _Meet The Real You_
"Jerk" Senseless Things _Christine Keeler_
"Jerkin' Back & Forth" Devo _New Traditionalists_
"Jerks On Ice" Elk City _House Of Tongues_

"Jesus What A Jerk" The Verlaines _Some Disenchanted Evening_
"Knee Jerk Reaction" The Green Circles _Antipodean Screams, Vol. 1_
"Long Time Jerk" The Clash _Super Black Market Clash_
"Planet Jerk" Barcelona _Transhuman Revolution_

"Serenade To A Jerk" Spike Jones & His City Slickers _Strictly For Music Lovers_
"She Loves The Jerk" Elvis Costello _Goodbye Cruel World_
"Tear Jerker" Personal & The Pizzas _Raw Pie_
"We're All Jerks" Impanada _Business Deal Band Lotto 2_

"When In Rome (Do The Jerk)" Rocket From The Crypt _All Systems Go III_
"You're A Bigger Jerk Than Me" The Karl Hendricks Rock Band _Oh, Merge_

Whither Jerks?

[This is this blog's 2000th post!  Hooray!]

Frankly I'm surprised there aren't more songs that call jerks what they are.

[2000 of these!  It's kinda crazy, right?]

I found so many damn songs about the 60s dance craze called the Jerk, & frankly, it's kind of a dumb dance.

[I've never done 2000 of any thing!]

So the show tomorrow will be jerk-heavy, but not entirely the kind of jerk you're thinking about.

[Probably not even 2000 radio shows!]

I resisted finding general songs about assholes.  I thought all kinds of the jerk ought to be represented.

[I'm so much more excited about this than anyone else!]

Just giving you a taste of what to expect tomorrow morning.

[Well.  Maybe not that excited.]

As usual, it's on from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington.

[My cats are looking at me with more withering stares than usual.]

Also simulcast (I don't think I've ever used that word before) at wrfl dot fm.

[They're jerks.]

& of course later at the Self Help Radio homepage.

[Nothing excites them.]

Hope you listen.  Also, congrats to me for 2000 blog posts!

[You noticed!  Hooray!]

1999 Poem

This is not a poem about 1999, a year I don't really remember (that's not true).  It's a poem I've created by laboriously (some may say foolishly) going through & picking the first word of every blog post (including this one, which will be the last word of the poem) I've written for this blog.  It will therefore have 1,999 words.

It goes a little something like this (hit it!):

Hi this when here's but quick this I in I we why Halloween amazingly as before hey
I I do oh you what normally I I I it's recently Halloween as I hey this ah today my I I
It's today's it this I it's I whatever man I'll seriously I'm well people yeah here wow boy
I it's my I that's it's damn greetings alas the another I this a the it's I someone har boy
My I I just nothing like they happy do it's what what this buy hey it's dude I is nothing
I I welcome it's did oh well I've I LB friends thank James I I this need I I I if so dearest I
Hello why because as this as the I'd from I two lookit no I Madchester this my I 1) I I
Yea a hey OH MY GOD THIS IS INSANE!

I barely got through the first five months of 2007!  (I started this blog in late 2006.)  There's no way I'd have the time (not to mention the energy) of going through one thousand nine hundred & ninety nine posts.  What am I, nuts?

Can I at least say I tried?  & maybe not feel like such a loser?

Countdown To 2000

Suddenly it's two days before the end of the world!  Not really.  The 2000 I am referring to is the 2000th post on this dumb blog ostensibly created to supplement my radio show.  Alas!  It does not.

This is post # 1998 (I think) (let me check) (yeah, okay, it is) & I haven't any idea how to of if to make # 2000 a big deal.  There are many things working against making a small milestone (oh god) such as this something to celebrate:

1) No one reads this blog, so the only one who might celebrate is me.
2) I've tried to make little every-hundredth-post milestones (that word) something to celebrate but nobody (since no one reads this blog) made reference or contacted me or whatever so things I had planned to giveaway were never given away.
3) I had thought of a third but forgot because I was distracted by my wife wanting me to hold my diabetic cat so we could check her blood sugar, a two-person job to be sure.

Is it really a big deal?  I dunno.  But I don't want to keep talking about it.  Instead, I should mention that so far this year my favorite record is Malcolm Middleton & David Shrigley's Music & Words.  I think it's quite clever & really funny.  I find it very odd that I never knew who David Shrigley was before.  Now I see him everywhere.  I've just followed him on Twitter!

The record is pretty profane, full of lots of bad words, so most of it I can't really play on the radio.  Like the first track, which I share below.  It's great!



But seriously, if you have any ideas about how to celebrate two thousand Self Help Radio blog posts, let me know.

Also PS: New Louis CK special.  That's fucking awesome!

I'll Never Fly Again

The TSA - the Transportation Security Administration of the United States - has a blog which I've never read before.  Someone commenting on Tumblr led to last Friday's chilling post, TSA 2014 Year In Review.  If that doesn't sound scary - & it really doesn't, I'm not saying it is, or else I'd be frightened by the very thought of year-end lists - please take a second to read the article.  If you do, you'll see pictures like these:

These are grenades (mostly inert) & guns (mostly loaded) taken by the TSA in the past year.

& there's more.  My favorite by far is this one:

The caption reads, "An 8.5" knife was discovered in an enchilada at the Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (STS)."

In an ENCHILADA?  At the CHARLES M. SCHULZ airport?  Good grief!

I think it's great that the people we entrust to keep our air travel safe appear to be doing their job, but wow, can you imagine what actually gets through?  Or is that a weird thing to focus on?  Am I really that cynical?

A KNIFE in an ENCHILADA for fuck's sake.  I can't stand it!

Self Help Radio 012315: Shoulders

(Original image here.)

Well, after the show today & all week on this blog, what can I say about shoulders that I haven't already said?  Lots!  I haven't said anything about shoulders!  I didn't talk about shoulder anatomy or shoulder health or even stuff like "what your shoulders say about you"!  I barely scratched the surface of shoulders.  Okay, that sounds weird.  It sounds like I'd get skin under my nails & there'd be some blood.  Anyway.  Shoulders, am I right?  Am I right?

The shoulders Self Help Radio show is where it was always meant to be at Self Help Radio Shoulders Central.  While there, pay attention to login + password information.  All the songs I played, but not my terrible rendition of Denver John's "Sunshine On My Shoulders," are listed below.

Take care of your shoulders!  & thanks for listening.

(part one)

"There's A Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder" McKinney's Cotton Pickers _Bix Restored, Vol. 5_
"Don't Come Cryin' On My Shoulder" Louis Jordan _Louis Jordan& His Tympany Five, Vol. 1: 1938-1940_
"There's A New Moon Over My Shoulder" Tex Ritter _Collectors Series_

"(Danger) Soft Shoulders" Sonny Til _Solo_
"Cold Shoulder" Johnny Cash _The Man In Black 1954-1958_
"Angel On My Shoulder" Shelby Flint _Shelby Flint_
"Look Over Your Shoulder" Helen Shapiro _At Abbey Road 1961-1967_
"You Can Cry On My Shoulder" Brenda Holloway _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 5: 1965_

"Don't Cry On My Shoulder" Sam Cooke _The Man Who Invented Soul_
"Head & Shoulders" Pattie Young _Detroit's Golden Soul: The Ron Murphy Masters_
"Go Cry On Somebody's Else's Shoulder" The Mothers Of Invention _Freak Out!_
"Soft Shoulders & Dangerous Curves" The Willis Brothers _Thunder On The Road_
"Shoulder To Shoulder" George Jones _Where Grass Won't Grow_

"Ride On My Shoulder" Paul Revere & The Raiders _Hard 'N' Heavy (With Marshmallow)_

(part two)

"Chips On My Shoulder" Soft Cell _Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret_
"Shoulder Pads # 1 & 2" The Fall _Bend Sinister_
"Looking Over Your Shoulder" Even As We Speak _A Three Minute Song Is One Minute Too Long_
"Across My Shoulder" The Primitives _Lazy 86 - 88 (Singles Collection)_

"Over Your Shoulder" Echo & The Bunnymen _Echo & The Bunnymen_
"No Hard Shoulder To Cry On" Julian Cope _Jehovahkill_
"Over My Shoulder" I Am Kloot _Gods & Monsters_

"Young Shoulders" Magic Bullets _Magic Bullets_
"Shoulder" The School _Loveless Unbeliever_
"Let Me Lend My Shoulder" Big Harp _White Hat_
"Cold Shoulders" Gold Motel _Gold Motel_

"Some Dandruff On Your Shoulder" Jens Lekman _I Know What Love Isn't_
"Over My Shoulder" Paul Banks _Banks_

Whither Shoulders?

If you are a weirdo & read this blog with any regularity, I want to apologize for writing so late on Thursdays.  I try to write earlier, but I spend Thursdays putting the show together, & I'm totally a last minute sort of guy.  Most of the papers I wrote in college were written the night before.  So if the show seems shabby - well, that's why.

Self Help Radio is a family show, so I would never talk about ridiculous sexual stuff on the air, but I do want to point out that shoulders are things that both men & women find attractive (this articles says women choose mates by shoulder size first), & like most everything in my life, I found that out in a weird way, with my best friend in high school exclaiming that a woman in another car (we were driving) that she had "amazing shoulders."

Listen, puberty was confusing for me, & what I mostly fixated on was the girls I thought were pretty, & I remember being in Home Economics class in eighth grade listening to guys comment about a particular girl's ass.  An ass?  You can be attracted to the thing people poop out of?  All very confusing.  Mostly, I remember, a girl's face & something about a her shape - the curve of her body - was what made my blood boil.

I wish I could've been more open about my perplexity, but I just filed it away: "my friend likes women's shoulders."  & I paid more attention to shoulders after that.

What happened later on in life, of course, is that if I fell in love, I tended to appreciate pretty much all of the object of my affection.  Including their shoulders.

None of this will be discussed tomorrow on Self Help Radio, but there'll be many other shoulder-related things discussed as well as lots of shoulder songs.  That's from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm in Lexington, & online everywhere at wrfl dot fm.  & of course it'll end up on the the Self Help Radio website.

See you then!

Preface To Shoulders: Shoulders The Band

Some time in the early 1990s, someone gave me a cassette tape of a local Austin band called Shoulders.    They don't play out as much as they used to, but at that time they seemed to be on the verge of some kind of fame (or infamy) that never quite materialized.  (This happened to so many bands & musicians I saw in Austin during the twenty years I lived there, but there's no reason to believe that doesn't happen in pretty much any city with a thriving music scene.)  You can see their website (not updated since last September) here, & there's a Wikipedia page here with more information than I'll give on this blog.

Though the Wiki page calls their work "drunken carnival music," it's not a stretch to simply say they sounded, from the music to lead singer Michael Slattery's voice, like Tom Waits.  Pretty much every band these days that's trying to make "drunken carnival music" (there's a band in town called the Ford Theatre Reunion that does pretty much the same thing) is chasing the dragon that is Tom Waits' two seminal 1980s records, Swordfishtrombones & Rain Dogs.  I don't believe this is an insult - there's a whole genre of music, power pop, which is a subset of bands trying desperately to make perfect pop a la the Beatles.  & truly, there were some Shoulders songs that were much, much better than what Waits was doing at the same time.

I listened to that cassette a lot, & was a little let-down when they released a record which contained re-recordings of many of the songs on the record.  Too slick, I thought.  In particular, they had somehow managed to overproduce a lot of the delightful rough edges of my favorite Shoulders song, "Uncle Achin."  I had seen them play at least half a dozen times, but (if the Wikipedia page is to be believed), they achieved some notoriety in Europe, & toured there.  At some point, I didn't go see them anymore; in fact, I feel like they weren't even gigging in Austin anymore.  Or I just wasn't paying attention.

I bring the band up because (although this hasn't happened) it's usual for me, when I do a show, to get a request not for a song that fits a theme, but for a band whose name that fits the theme.  Maybe in the next couple of days someone will ask me to play a Shoulders song.  But as I've talked about before, it's one of my dumb rules that it's the subject of the song, not the band's name, not the name of the album, that qualifies a song for my show's theme.  If Shoulders did a song about shoulders, yes!  I'd play them.  But as far as I know - & I confess I never heard their second record - they don't.  So I won't.

It doesn't stop me from sharing one of their songs here, though.  Here they are, three years ago, performing my favorite song of theirs, at one of my favorite pubs in Austin, which sadly no longer exists:

Today Is My Birthday

Yes, I was born on this day forty-seven years ago.  I know this because it says so on all my official documents.  I don't have any memories of the day itself.  So of course everything I say about that day should be taken with a grain of salt, which is an odd idiom meaning "with healthy skepticism."

So these are the facts (or "facts"):

I was my mother's sixth child.  She was thirty-nine years old when I was born, & it had been around seventeen or eighteen years since her first child was born.  What a weirdo.

According to my oldest sister, my mother kept her pregnancy a secret, beginning what would be a lifelong embarrassment of me.  How does one keep a pregnancy in its seventh month a secret?  Baggy clothes I guess.  Ancient German deception.  When my mother went to a nearby clinic for a check-up or because she wasn't feeling right, my sister told all my other siblings that she was going to give have a baby.  She probably should have wagered on it; no one believed her.

I was born in a little clinic on the corner of Shiloh Road & Miller Road in Garland, Texas, at 9:30am.  January 20, 1968, was a Saturday.  The little clinic actually stood there, a glaring reminder of those responsible for my existence, until only a few years ago, when it was torn down & replaced by a more appropriate landmark: a giant gas station/convenience store.  I confess I have stopped there since & bought a soda.

(There's a picture of the clinic that I took in the nineties, but it's in a box somewhere & I'll never be able to find it right now.)

I was two months premature, but I've never heard anyone talk about my early moments on this earth being touch & go.  I had assumed I spent some time in an incubator or other contraption that preemies are kept in safety, but my mother tells me she took me home as soon as she could.  Again, I have no memories of that time.

Forty-seven years later, it just feels like another day.  Not nearly as dramatic as a secret pregnancy, a premature birth, a brand new gas station/convenience store!

But I'll try to enjoy it nonetheless.

I Have A Martin Luther King Jr. Story

Not that I met him or anything - he was assassinated when I was barely three months old.

This is not a good Martin Luther King, Jr., story.  It's a story about the American South, white people, & racism, & of course it involves my family.

I'm not going to mention which family member is involved.  No need to embarrass anyone who may have evolved since the incident.  A couple members of my family seem to have reformed & speak more respectfully about African-Americans now than they did in my childhood.  They voted for Obama, & not just because they are Democrats.  More members of my family, however, are unrepentant racists, & it's one of the reasons I don't enjoy visiting them.  After the 2008 election, one member of my family on Facebook just inserted Obama's name into what were already moldy racist jokes.  It's the kind of family I come from.

I hate to pussyfoot around this, but the story uses the n-word, but I'll just write "n-word."  You know what that means.

A family member was in Austin (though not to visit me).  I had already lived there for a while.  That family member met me on campus (where I worked) & we went to get something to eat.  At that time, you could drive through campus from 26th Street (now called Dean Keaton) to MLK (which was previously called 19th Street).  We were going to eat somewhere that we could get to more quickly by taking I-35, so I told my family member to go south through campus & take a left on MLK, toward the highway.  My family member noticed that the street was called Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard, & off-handedly made the observation, "They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere."

I sputtered & told this family member that I completely disagreed with the comment in no uncertain terms.  I was, frankly, shocked & appalled that anyone would make that observation, even one of my unrepentantly racist family members, about Martin Luther King.  Who in the world outside of Klan members didn't show him a modicum of respect?  The fact that my family member would even say the n-word in reference to him outraged me into a kind of angry incoherence.

But despite that, my reaction didn't lead to any confrontation or animosity, as this family member probably expected that from me, & besides was pretty secure in their racism.  We went to get food.  I doubtless continued to shake my head in bafflement for a while.

I have kept this memory while my family member has probably forgotten it.  One of the reasons this memory has stayed with me (in addition to its blatant awfulness) was that I was angry with myself for not standing up to this person or at the very least having something devastating to say in response.  So when I have told the story in the past, I have made myself more of a hero, adding a (what I think is) clever retort that I thought of later.  I guess I'm lying, but really it's only a lie in the sense that I made my comeback more of what I was thinking (but couldn't at that time put into words) than just me saying in horror "Oh fuck did you really say that?"

Here is how it should've gone, or did go, if my family member could have read my thoughts:

Family Member: They've got a street named for that [n-word] everywhere.
Me: Ha! You have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.  Compared to Martin Luther King, we're the [n-word]s!

But really, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference to my family member's racist world view.