Preface To Intent: Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometime last week, I complained that that week's theme had too many songs for me to get through.  I wrote, "Please don't ever let me explore a theme that has the possibility of having more than ten hours worth of songs."  I am having the opposite problem this week.  I am having a hard time finding enough songs.

Well, yeah, I found enough songs.  But it wasn't the easiest journey.  Let's break this down:

The theme is "intent."  But why?  I guess I can answer that tomorrow.

Don't you have to read into songs to determine if they're about "intent"?  Why not simply look for songs about "intentions"?  The dictionary definition of "intent' is literally "intention or purpose."

& look, when you see the definition of "intention," you get, "a thing intended."  Suddenly your theme is opened up to intending as well as intentions!

That's how I filled the show up, anyway.  But maybe I can find a happy medium between too many songs & almost not enough songs.  For Pete's sake!

Valentine's Reminder

Happy Valentine's Day!  I remind you that you can listen to this week's Self Help Radio - which was all about the heart (💘) over at the Self Help Radio web page.  But wait!  There's more!

You can also listen to last year's Valentine's Day show, which was about flirting.  Not only were there very flirtatious songs, but if I recall correctly, we talked with flirting expert Dr. Jack Dick Curvybody & I played clips of my favorite flirt.  You can listen to it over here.

Have a happy day, lovers!

The Dickenbock Report Has Its Own Page

The Dickenbock Report has arrived on KBOO's web page!  & it only took five episodes & ten weeks!

There is now a Dickenbock Report page on the KBOO website.  KBOO archives all their shows, but if previous episodes of the Report are still there (since I assigned them to different shows), you'll have to follow the links on the Self Help Radio website to hear earlier programs.  You're not missing anything, in any case.

The Dickenbock Report is still in its infancy, & this week's show was cobbled together in haste from old episodes of Self Help Radio, Cradle To Grave, & some subbing I did on Freeform last summer.  Hopefully it won't continue to be a Frankenshow.  But since Portland hasn't heard much of anything I've ever done, & because much of what I've done hasn't been heard by anyone, I'm not going to feel too guilty plundering my archives.

Anyway, once that Dick Dickenbock guy shows up, I'm sure he'll make it all better.

Self Help Radio 021020: Valentine's Day 2020 - The Heart

(Original images from the Wikipedia, found here & here.)

Two millennials talking about dating apps.  A motivational speaker discussing a five-step plan to heart health.  A stranger who claims he has no heart.  An actual human heart that does impressions.  Lots & lots of songs about the heart.  What do all these things have in common?

If you know, send a postcard to Self Help Radio c/o Dickenbock Enterprises, Bangor, Maine.  We'd love to know.

No wait!  You don't have to do that!  I'll tell you: they are all part of this week's episode of Self Help Radio, which is a Valentine's Day episode, which is all about the heart.  Yes, many songs were played.  Yes, many guests were interviewed.  & yes, there were these odd pieces where a know-it-all anatomist talked about the actual human heart.  In a word: romantic.  What they had in common is the romance of the heart.

Listen to the show now & especially on Valentine's Day at Self Help Radio dot net.  There are a few hurdles to jump over to get to the show - you'll need to enter a username ("SHR") & a password ("selfhelp") (don't use the quotation marks).  But once you're there, you'll have two hours of hearty music.  What happens on the show is below.

Happy Valentine's Day!  Take care of your heart!

Self Help Radio Valentine's Heart Show
"What Will I Tell My Heart?" Arthur Prysock _The Legendary Big Band Singers_
"Hear My Heart" Ella Fitzgerald _Jukebox Ella: The Complete Verve Singles, Vol. 1_
"I Sold My Heart To The Junkman" The Starlets _Beg, Scream & Shout: The Big Ol' Box Of '60s Soul_

introduction & definitions

"Slow Down Heart" The Temptations _Emperors Of Soul_
"Locking Up My Heart" The Marvelettes _The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 3: 1963_
"Home In Your Heart" Otis Redding _The Otis Redding Story_
"My Runaway Heart" Carol Fran _Bluesoul Belles -The Complete Calla, Port & Roulette Recordings_
"I Ain't Got No Heart" The Mothers Of Invention _Freak Out!_

interview with Hearty the human heart

"Dark In My Heart" Lee Hazlewood _Lee Hazlewoodism - Its Cause & Cure_
"Mein Herz Sagt Oui" Jaqueline Boyer _Schlager-Erinnerungen_
"Temptation Inside Your Heart" The Velvet Underground _Peel Slowly & See_
"Ask My Heart" Eddie Billups _Atlanta Soul (The Peachtree Records Story)_
"A Heart Needs A Home" Richard & Linda Thompson _Hokey Pokey_

interview with Douglas Nome, a man without a heart

"Heart Of Mine" Bob Dylan _Biograph_
"Heart With No Companion" Leonard Cohen _Various Positions_
"Heart" Rocky Sharpe & The Replays _The Chiswick Story: Adventures Of An Independent Record Label 1975-1982_
"Another Nail In My Heart" Squeeze _Argybargy_
"Tapin' Up My Heart" The Mr. T Experience _...And The Women Who Love Them_

interview with motivational speaker Dirk Robbins

"Dear Heart" Cocteau Twins _BBC Sessions_
"Sloppy Heart" Frazier Chorus _Sloppy Heart EP_
"The Last Beat Of My Heart" Siouxsie & The Banshees _Peepshow_
"Destroy The Heart" House Of Love _The House Of Love 1986-88: The Creation Recordings_

interview with expert millennials Alyssa & Jason

"You Must Ask The Heart" Jonathan Richman _You Must Ask The Heart_
"One Big Heart" BMX Bandits _Theme Park_
"Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart" The Bartlebees _Urban Folk Legends_
"Epitaph For My Heart" The Magnetic Fields _69 Love Songs_

conclusion & goodbye

"Heart Of Glass" Nouvelle Vague _Bande À Part_
"I Saw My Heart Passing By" Stars In Coma _You're Still Frozen In Time_
"Dinosaur Heart" Bearsuit _Oh:io_

Whither The Heart?

(Yer heart's too big, fella.  Image from here.)

Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up so it's time for another Self Help Radio Valentine's Day show!  In the past, we've explored love & hate, crushes & jealousy, boyfriends & girlfriends.  We've featured love songs & tried to figure out what love is.  We got ourselves lovesick & experienced heartbreak, though we kept flirting with all kinds of sweethearts (including famous lovers), some of whom got roses but all of whom got valentines.  This year it seemed appropriate to look at the figurative center of love, the heart.

Which is what we'll do! That's tomorrow, Monday morning, from 6 to 8am, on Freeform Portland, which you can hear at 90.3 & 98.3 fm + online at freeform portland dot org.  I'm sure we'll hear a little about the anatomy of the heart but I suspect we'll spend much more time in metaphor.  Love lives in metaphor.  Doesn't it?

This will be the sixteenth Valentine's Day show Self Help Radio has done in the seventeen & a half years of its existence.  Why not a show in 2006?  I think it might have been one of those times the station airing Self Help Radio was off the air.  Or I forgot.  We've all forgotten Valentine's Day once, haven't we?  & those who live to tell of it never forget again.

Preface To Hearts: Card Games

A long time ago, I discovered some folks at my work had a regular card game.  Poker, it was, not Hearts, which is the card game referenced in the title, & which I once knew how to play but don't now, & which will not at all be the subject of any of the songs on this week's show, which is a Valentine's Day show, so the songs will be about the sort of hearts which one thinks of when one thinks of love & Valentine's Day, & probably there'll be some discussion about anatomical hearts, but we all know don't we that the heart is no more the seat of emotions than the liver is the seat of the soul, which as far as I know no one ever believed but which seemed like the right thing to say at the time, where was I? oh yeah, they played Poker not Hearts.

These weren't my friends but I was friendly with them & I wondered why I wasn't invited to their weekly poker game.  Indeed, even if it were small stakes, it seems like it would be fun to hang out with people - some of whom, come to think of it, I used to bowl with - & play cards & have male friends in my 40s.  When I asked, I didn't get a satisfying answer.  In fact, I don't remember the answer I got, but the answer basically said, "You can't play poker with us."

The person who rejected me - a co-worker - he didn't consult any of his poker buddies, but perhaps it was his game at his house.  He lived nearby at the time - walking distance, even on miserably hot Texas days.  Or nights.  But he unilaterally decided that I was not to be one of the poker people.

Interestingly, this guy had the habit of telling me, not all the time, but enough of a time that I noticed, stories from his poker games when we ran into each other at work.  "You'll never guess what happened last night at poker," he'd say.  Or: "Let me tell you this funny thing one of the guys told me on Poker Night."  He didn't seem to remember that I had hinted at one time that I might enjoy playing poker with the guys & he said no.  Or maybe he did remember, & he was just being a dick.

It didn't mean that much to me, not getting invited to play.  I had been excluded from things by people my entire life.  One gets used to such things.  He told me that it was a rule that one person picked all the music for one night, & one of the guys always played stuff everyone hated.  That would have been too much pressure for me.  The deejay in me would hope everyone was digging what I played.

Anyway, I thought about Poker when I thought about Hearts & I had hoped as I wrote this to come up with a clever ending which said something about "breaking Hearts" or "lonely Hearts" - oh I know!  I could have said, "I never did get to play Poker with those guys, so I spent many hours in my darkened room playing lonely Hearts."

Not bad.  I wish I had thought of it before I got to the end, though.  It remains just an idea that never saw proper exploration.

If I Might Complain A Little

Gripe, grumble, lament, moan.

Please don't ever let me explore a theme that has the possibility of having more than ten hours worth of songs.  I swear to Ra & Set & of course Isis that I have listened to a day's worth of songs about hearts & I am nowhere near finished.  At some point I am going to just stop & that'll be the show.

People often ask me if I've done a show about "cars" or some other very general theme.  There's simply no way to find the best two hours of music for something that could be an entire radio show.  Seriously, you could do a radio show called "Car Songs" & go years without repeating yourself.

The same is true about hearts.  I've eliminated heartbeats, heartbreak, & heartaches & still I have three days' worth of songs to go.  Please don't let me do this again.  Make me stick to more specific themes where I struggle to find two hours' worth of music.  Otherwise you'll get more of this:

Gripe, grumble, lament, moan.

Random Elevator Story

How long has it been since I've been on an elevator?  Is it weird to think there are elevators I've been on that don't exist any more?  But there are!  Here's a random story about one of them.

From sometime in 1988 until the building was renovated in the early 21st century, I worked in a building on the University Of Texas campus called Batts Hall.  It was built in the early 50s, & I assume the elevator dated from around that time - it certainly seemed to need to be serviced a lot, & sometimes I felt a little unsafe in it.

But almost every weekday morning for almost a decade I got in that elevator around 7:45am, rode up to the second floor, opened the lab I ran (it began as a language lab then ended a computer lab).  Some mornings - lots of mornings - I would have to go back downstairs for a meeting.  (Sometimes I did take the stairs, especially if I were late.)

Some mornings - not every morning - not even once a week - someone would have written, in precise penmanship, using a sharpie perhaps, the phrase "Jesus was gay" on the inside door of the elevator car.  "Jesus" was often not capitalized - "jesus was gay."  The first time I saw it - at 7:45 in the morning! - I chuckled & wondered who the fuck was up so early to write in the elevator?  Then I worried someone would think it was me when I got off the elevator!

Classes began at 8, & students are naturally late for 8am classes, so I was usually on the elevator alone, but I'm sure there were people up & down to all three floors of Batts after I was in my lab.  My meetings were often around 8:30, so I'd go back down - I'd try to use the elevator if I had seen the scribbled phrase - & inevitably, "jesus was gay" was violently scratched out, sometimes in marker, sometimes in pen, sometimes with so much pressure it fucked up the paint on the door.

Personally I don't believe in anything supernatural & I don't worship the people I admire, so anyone is allowed to think whatever they want about them.  It doesn't matter to me if you think Leonard Cohen is an asshole, & if you want to write it on the walls of a tiny elevator car, be my guest.  I'll think it's weird, but I suspect anyone who knows Leonard Cohen will know it's false, & anyone who doesn't know who Leonard Cohen is will likely think it's about some undergrad who's pissed off a girlfriend or something.

& yeah, I know, Jesus is a religious figure, who some think is the son of a god or a god himself or one-third of a god-thing, or all of the above, so it seems disrespectful.  So what?  If even some of the stories about him in the gospels are true, he endured way more opprobrium than an early morning graffito in an unsafe elevator in a college building.  What would he think of the anger & hate demonstrated by the person doing more damage to the paint than the simple sharpie?  It's hard not to marvel at the intense insecurity of the person who came to his god's "defense."

By lunchtime, someone had been dispatched to repaint, or clean off the sharpie, & I'm sure it was all forgotten - until a few days or weeks later when it happened again.

When did it start?  I began running the lab in 1994, & I saw it for the first time in the Fall of that year.  When did it end?  The whole building was gutted & remodeled - although I think they saved the elevator shaft though not the elevator - sometime in 2003 or 2004.  I had stopped running the lab in 1999, so the last I would have seen it was spring of that year.  (I worked on the ground floor then.  Not much need to go upstairs.)  I can't recall if I did - but I remember seeing it a lot.

Oh my gosh I want so badly to end this with the confession "It was me all along!"  But it wasn't.  I suspect it was someone who worked somewhere else in the building - the Spanish & Portuguese Department was on the second floor, where my lab was, so perhaps it was a disgruntled employee.  Maybe a grad student?  I never knew.  There were simply too many people in & out of the elevator for me to keep an eye on any "regular."

But perhaps that prankster made it a point to check up on his or her handiwork.  Maybe they even took pictures.  I have no idea why they would want to do such a thing, but I saw the whole chain of events happen more than a dozen times.  & there were days I never had to go back downstairs, or arrived late, or took the stairs.  I suspect if it were a scientific experiment, the results were the same every time.

How weird would it be if the person who did it found this blog post & wrote to me?  A twenty-year-old secret revealed at last?  Too bad I & this blog are hopelessly obscure.

Self Help Radio 020320: Moths

(Original image here.)

First things first: my apologies to Freeform Portland.  Moths are by their nature gregarious creatures & when they heard there would be a radio show about them, well, some of them emerged from their cocoons early to swing by this morning.  & they partied.  Hard.  Some even stayed up past their lifespans.  It was a fluttery, dusty good time.

Because the show this week was about moths, those delightful Lepidopterans who are always second fiddle to the more glamorous butterflies.  Not today!  Moths were the stars of the show, & they partied from six to eight in the morning in a way someone not battling crippling alcohol addiction ever has.  I can't tell you the number of feelers I had to push away because, you know, I'm a happily married man.

Alas, much of the festivities were not captured on the radio, since the show is mainly music.  But you can perhaps hear a commotion in the background during airbreaks & at least one time a moth did a credible imitation of the deejay that follows Self Help Radio, Jaxxmaster Kevrock.  I honestly thought it was him!  Moths are so great.

Listen to the show now at Self Help Radio dot net.  Please remember username password combo SHR selfhelp.  What happened on the show is listed below.  What happened at the show stays at the show.  You hear me, moths?  You hear me?

Self Help Radio Moths Show

"Moth" Underbirds _Underbirds_
"Mr. Moth" Cathy Young _A Spoonful Of Cathy Young_
"A Moth Is Not A Butterfly" Hawksley Workman _Treeful Of Starling_

introduction

"The Moth (feat. Lily James)" PJ Harvey _All About Eve (Original Music)_
"Moth" Lala Lala _The Lamb_
"Moth" Ken Nordine _Wink: Ken Nordine Does Robert Shure_
"Moth" Visitors _Kilt By Death: The Sound Of Old Scotland (1977-1984)_
"Moth" Blue Orchids _A View From The City 1980-1991_

frequently asked questions about moths!

"Melonella" Cocteau Twins _Echoes In A Shallow Bay_
"Bee Of The Bird Of The Moth" They Might Be Giants _The Else_
"Gypsy Moth" Hoyt Axton _The A&M Years_
"Lepidoptera" Bedhead _Transaction De Novo_
"The Love Moth" Liv Maessen _The Best Of Liv Maessen_

interview with "the moth man of topeka" Arnie Worrell

"Moth" Martin Simpson _The Collection_
"The Moth" Aimee Mann _Lost In Space_
"Dead Moth" Ann Magnuson _The Luv Show_
"Moth Song" Esmé Patterson _We Were Wild_

interview with schoolchildren studying moths

"Mothloop (Live)" Shriekback _Oil & Gold_
"Moths" 14 Iced Bears _Let The Breeze Open Our Hearts_
"90 Day Of Moths & Rust" Sugargliders _Top 40 Sculpture_
"Summertime" Bill Hicks _Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 1_
"See The Leaves" The Flaming Lips _Embryonic_

 interview with Duke Simpson, trendsetter

"Mothlight" The Terminals _In Love With These Times: A Flying Nun Compilation_
"Moth To A Flame" Ooberman _Tears From A Willow_
"I Feel Like Moth" Godzuki _Your Future_
"I See A Moth" The Garden _The Life & Times Of A Paperclip_
"Moth Like Me" Guerilla Toss _What Would The Odd Do?_

conclusion & goodbyes

"Moth Light" Mercury Rev _The Light In You_
"Like A Moth" Yuck _Stranger Things_

Whither Moths?

(An infestation! From here.)

The truth is, I first thought about doing a show about moths ten years ago, sometime in 2010.  I had been obsessed with the song "Melonella" by the Cocteau Twins, which just features Liz Fraser singing the Latin names in the Lepidoptera family, which includes butterflies & moths.  Since the name of the song is the scientific name for the wax moth, I figured I'd focus on moths instead of butterflies.  I had a sense that butterfly songs would be easier to find.  & I was right!

There hasn't been a Self Help Radio show about butterflies yet, but the moth show is happening, & I am not surprised to note that I have ten or so songs that have been released since 2010 in my folder of possible songs to play.  That's ten songs less than I would have had in 2010.  It only goes to show.  Sometimes the caterpillar of a show needs to crawl into its cocoon before it's ready to emerge.  As the moth show will do tomorrow morning.

Yes, Monday morning, 6-8 am, 90.3+98.3fm, Freeform Portland, freeformportland.org.  There'll be a lot of fluttering, & maybe not as much beauty, & possibly much more damage to clothes & crops, but we'll celebrate the little buggers as best we can.  The show will have a two hour lifespan!

Preface To Moths: Moth Story

Pardon me, I had a terrible day.  I am not going to talk about it, but I will tell you a story from over twenty years ago.

When I was a bachelor, & lived alone, I wasn't noted for keeping my place terribly clean.  I might vacuum every once in a while, but I lived in pretty grubby surroundings.  But I did shower daily, & I did make sure to have clean clothes.  One time, actually, I overheard a woman I had been dating talking about my "smell."  Afraid of what she might say, I tried to listen in.  She told whomever she was talking to, "Mainly Gary smells like clean clothes."

Also I'm not the most observant person in the universe but one day I did notice what seemed like a stain in the corner of my tub, opposite the shower head.  Most anyone else might have thought to clean it up, not me!  When I saw it from time-to-time, it seemed to be getting bigger.  At some point I realized it may be a cocoon, & so I thought, wow, there might be a butterfly in my shower.

You know because the show this week is about moths that it's going to turn out to be a moth.  In fact, I came in one night & actually got to see the creature slowly crawl out of the cocoon.  Chances are it was actually a brown house moth but I don't remember anything about it - it looked like your average moth.  Mostly gray.  Kinda small.  It just flew away.

That web page says that they're destructive but I never saw another moth in the house again.  Eventually the cocoon fell, & probably washed down the bathtub drain - I certainly didn't clean up there!  But I did glance at the place where the cocoon was occasionally , & thought about the reproductive fitness of that moth - unless it found its way outside my apartment, its genes probably died with it.

& I wondered where the little caterpillar came from, why I never saw it climbing my bathroom walls, why I didn't notice until there was actually a cocoon.  But that was easy to answer, & I did it already: I'm really not that observant.

Being observant is kinda exhausting.

Things I'm Doing For The Radio Not On The Radio

Have I mentioned this before?  Let me see.  I have!  In three posts!  Which you've probably never read.  So I'll say it again.

One of the first things I did for KOOP in Austin was to be a trainer.  I had trained dozens of new deejays at KVRX when I was Program Director & KOOP needed someone to teach their FCC class.  The second Monday of the month was when the FCC & Orientation classes were.  As I mentioned when we lost him, dear Taylor Cage taught the Orientation class, I (who was a smoker then) would go outside to smoke & then come in all smelly & talk for an hour about the FCC, its sometimes murky rules, & the policies KOOP adopted to attempt to make sense of them, & also not get fined.

It was fun, & I got to meet a lot of people - it was neat to know everyone before everyone else.  At some point - I guess in October of 2002 - when I got a show, I volunteered to spend the hour before my show shepherding new volunteers who wanted to show off what they might do if they were given a show.  We called it "The Pilot Show" - I'm not sure if I came up with the name or not - after the term "television pilot" - & one of the cool things was I let people do more than one pilot show, so it encouraged folks to stick around.  Some of the people who currently have shows on KOOP did Pilot Shows with me.

At some point I mentioned that to the Program Director at KBOO, who liked the idea, & asked if I might want to do the same thing.  I said sure, & she set aside the fifth Friday of the month for me to hang out at the station with new trainees & let them do their thing.  I had forgotten that that was the plan until I got an email a week ago with the names of the folks coming up today.  So that's where I'll be tonight.

Most of these folks have been trained, most of them have radio experience, I'm just there to offer a little advice & be there for help.  It's almost exactly the same thing I did in Austin except it's for four hours in a row & not one - & I don't get to sneak downstairs for a smoke during the show.  Because KBOO doesn't have an upstairs, & also I don't smoke anymore.

Because No One Even Remembers It's Thursday

For some reason, there's not a show page for The Dickenbock Report.  You can listen to the show & see the playlist over at the KBOO web site under the name of Alright Radio, which is the show that airs on alternate Thursdays.  I'm not sure if the KBOO web folks are being passive-aggressive about my silly show, or if there's been some sort of miscommunication, or if it's a mistake.

When asked to write something about the show - "copy," I hear it's called - this is what I said:

Join international radio journalist, newscaster, & talking head Richard D. "Dick" Dickenbock every other Thursday morning for a mostly musical look at that day in history.  The award-resistant Mr. Dickenbock has left or been fired by virtually every respected & credible news organizations, as well as Fox News, in his career.  Highlights include celebrations of birthdays, commemorations of death days, & the occasional field piece by correspondents other than Dick.  It's one hundred & fifty minutes of news you probably cannot use, on alternating Thursdays on KBOO. Listener attention ill-advised.

Actually, until just now, I had forgotten what I had written.  That's more interesting than I remember it.  As well, it's more accurate than I thought.

Hunh.

Self Help Radio 012720: A Lean Show/A Leaning Show

(Original image here.)

A lean show!  A leaning show!  It's like two mediocre episodes of Self Help Radio in one!  (Yes, yes, I know "mediocre Self Help Radio" is redundant.)

What happened?  Why did this show happen?  Let's not kid ourselves.  Someone leaned on the show & said, "Let's make this a thing, this lean radio."  Was it a butcher consortium?  The publicists of the Leaning Tower of Pisa?  Or just some strange rich & powerful weirdo who likes to make this sort of thing happened because he can, like Bloomberg running for President?  Who knows?  The only thing that's certain is someone wanted this show to happen, & it happened, & somewhere some sick, sick person is giggling with glee like he'd just watched a baby bird try to fly & fail.  & this is the worst thing: it will happen again.

Well, not exactly like this.  Maybe with a show about deficit spending.  Hopefully that'll be a different radio program.  Meanwhile, if you'd like to hear this one, & there's no reason why you would, it's now at the Self Help Radio website probably up to no good.  For reasons that make more sense as time goes by, you'll need a username (SHR) & a password (selfhelp) to listen.  What was played on the show is listed below.

Oh all right, let's lean into this nonsense!

Self Help Radio Lean Show

"Lean Baby" Frank Sinatra _The Capital Years_
"Lean Jean" Bill Haley & His Comets _The Essential Bill Haley & His Comets_
"Long Leanie Woman" Lightnin' Slim _Rooster Blues_

introduction & strategy

"Lean On Me" Maurice & Mac _Windy City Soul_
"Lean On Me (When Heartaches Get Rough)" Eddie Jasper Daye's Four Bars _Rare Soul Heaven, Vol. 2_
"Pimping, Leaning, & Feaning" The Watts Prophets _Things Gonna Get Greater: The Watts Prophets 1969-1971_
"Lean On Me" Aretha Franklin _Rare & Unreleased Recordings From The Golden Reign Of The Queen Of Soul_
"Lean On Me" Bill Withers _Still Bill_

interview with Professor Etta Mology

"Lean Woman Blues" T.Rex _Electric Warrior_
"I Leaned On A Man" Connie Francis _Fallin' - Best Of The Early Years_
"Don't Lean On Me" Corrina Cord _The Laurie Records Story, Vol. 3 Girls & Girl Groups_
"Lean In When I Suffer" Speedy Ortiz _Twerp Verse_
"Demon To Lean On" Wavves _Afraid Of Heights_

Ned Dry shows you how to make a lean-to

"Lean-To" O'Death _Broken Hymns Limbs & Skin_
"She's Long & She's Lean" Mallard _Mallard_
"Lean On Me" Harry Nilsson _Knnillssonn_
"Lean On Me" The Housemartins _London 0, Hull 4_
"Lean On Me" Telekinesis! _Dormarion_

interview with president of the Lean People Leaning Society Karl Selzer

"Lean Period" Orange Juice _Coals To Newcastle_
"Leanin' On You" Joe South _Games People Play_
"Leaning In Chelsea" Eugene Mirman _En Garde, Society!_
"Lean In" Golden Daze _Golden Daze_
"Leaning On A Lamp Post" Herman's Hermits _The Best Of The EMI Years (Volume 1: 1964 - 1966)_

interview with self-help writer Buster Roll

"Lean" Archie Powell & The Exports _Black In Black_
"Leaning On The Backline" The Popguns _Pop Fiction_
"Lean Lanky Daddy" Little Ann _Dave Hamilton's Detroit Dancers_
"Leanin' On The Old Top Rail" Smilin' Billy Blinkhorn _Bushland Yodel_

conclusion & goodbye

"The Leanover" Life Without Buildings _Any Other City_
"Leaning On A Cane" The Delgados _Domestiques_

Whither A Lean Show?

("Lean Folks Leaning" by V. Chamberlain.)

What in the hell?  "A Lean Show"?  Good lord, have we run out of ideas so quickly?

You do know there's a place on the Self Help Radio web page where all the previous themes the show has explored are indexed, don't you?  Anyone can look at that page, you know, & get some idea of subjects for future shows.  Heck, look at the list of Bob Dylan's radio shows & crib some ideas from there!  Baseball, trains, cars, dreams - Self Help Radio hasn't bothered to explore these themes which you have to admit are quite fertile ground for thematic-based radio shows!

No, instead, we have "a lean show."  Here's the thing: I haven't been lean a day in my life.  No, mostly been hovering on or near "fatty."  Is this some kind of torture?  "Lean Radio"?  Radio with no fat?  Don't skinny people already have everything?  What is wrong with this show?!?

Whatever, it's on tomorrow (Monday) morning from 6-8am.  I'm gonna eat a lot right before the show so I feel stuffed.  That'll show me.  It's on Freeform Portland, 90.3 + 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org.  You think it'll be a fat-shaming show?  Damn it!

Preface To A Lean Show: Lean Or Lean? (Definitely Not Lien)

This is the truth: I had hoped to find lots of songs in which the subject of the songs was, explicitly, someone described as "lean."  But you know what happened?

Yes, there were far more songs about the verb "to lean."  Including, incredibly, over half a dozen songs called "Lean On Me" that were not covers of the Bill Withers tune.  What to do, what to do.

What is "a lean show," anyway?  Am I supposed to be trimming the fat off the show?  But that's me!  I am the fat of the show!  Without me, the show would be quite lean indeed.  How could I do that?

This will take some thinking.  Some deliberation.  Some puzzling over.  I'll have to get back to you.

What, you wanted more than four paragraphs today?  So sorry.  I will share with you the most famous use of the word lean in the English language.  You know this, right?

Jack Sprat could eat no fat
His wife could eat no lean
But, together both
They licked the platter clean.

What was Jack Sprat's wife's name?  Dolores.  Dolores Keen.  She kept her maiden name.  Very progressive for a Mother Goose character, I know.  In fact, the poem was less famously told this way:

Dolores Keen could eat no lean
Her husband could have no fat
But they shared their every meal
& ate it all, & that is that.

Swoon

That's a nice word, isn't it?  I was thinking if someone asked me what my reaction to Picard was, I'd say, "I swooned."

It seems like a word I'd use a lot, but I actually have only used it twice before on this blog.

The first time was when I found out Leonard Cohen died.  It was in a memory about seeing Leonard Cohen live in concert, & how my girlfriend at the time reacted to the women there who were much older than we were obviously lovestruck by LC.  I wrote, Lauren remarked about how strange it was that there were all these women her mother's age who were swooning like teenagers over the Beatles.

That was in 2016.  It's hard to believe he's been gone that long.  But for me - not to be disrespectful to Leonard Cohen - I am surprised that it took me that long to use the word swoon.

Besides today, the only other time I've used the word "swoon" was when I played a song on a show with the theme the color green by Prefab Sprout from their album entitled Swoon.

Really, Gary?  That few "swoons"?  I gotta do better than that.

Or maybe I don't swoon as much as I think I do?

Missing A Milestone

This past week I was so caught up remembering my sixteenth year I didn't even notice we passed 3300 posts on this blog.  Every time this happens, I want to go back & see what I was writing about way back when, but Blogger doesn't number the posts, so it's nearly impossible to see what I was writing about 30, 300, 3000 posts ago.  Or am I overthinking it?

This post here purports to be my three thousandth scribble on the blog.  It was written in November of 2018, when I couldn't have imagined I'd be living in Portland a year later.

My three hundredth post - which I did not identify as such - was written over a decade earlier.  It's called "First Podcast" because I did an episode of Self Help Radio despite KOOP having been shuttered briefly due to arson.  It mentions that I was questioned by fire department investigators.  That was true.  It was a surreal experience.

The thirtieth post was written in 2006, right before a Halloween show.  It just goes to show that I've been trying to explain why I explore the themes I do from the very beginning, although there is rarely any good reason.

Anyway, I am terrible at anniversaries & other milestones, so it's only natural that I forgot this one.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go watch Picard now.

Self Help Radio 012020: 1984

(All record covers found on Discogs.)

Wow, it's just after noon & I'm exhausted.  Is this what being 52 is like?  I did wake up a little early to strategize - how could I fit three hours of music I love from 1984 into two hours of radio?  I stole a couple minutes from the deejay before me - DJ Otto - & I kept the airbreaks to a minimum.  & there still wasn't enough time.

Do you know, I could do a radio show called "The 1984 Show" & it would takes months to exhaust all the great music that came out that year.  It's extraordinary.  It seems to me, anyway.  Not that I need another radio show right now.  But if you want to do that show, I will totally help you.

The 1984 show - it's almost all music, very little me - can be listened to now & whenever at Self Help Radio dot net.  Please remember you'll need a username - SHR - & a password - selfhelp - to listen.  The songs I played are listed below.  The songs I didn't play will one day make it on The 1984 Show.  Seriously, so much music.

Also, I won the victory over myself.  I loved Big Brother.

Self Help Radio 1984 Show
"Kangaroo" This Mortal Coil _It'll End In Tears_
"Withered & Died" Elvis Costello _Goodbye Cruel World_
"Lions" Tones On Tail _Pop_

"Reel Around The Fountain" The Smiths _The Smiths_
"From Her To Eternity" Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds _From Her To Eternity_
"The Killing Moon" Echo & The Bunnymen _Ocean Rain_
"Church Not Made With Hands" The Waterboys _A Pagan Place_

"Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)" Eurythmics _1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother)_
"Partyline" Shriekback _Jam Science_
"Uncorrected Personality Traits" Robyn Hitchcock _I Often Dream Of Trains_
"A New England" Kirsty MacColl _A New England_
"Dark Streets Of London" The Pogues _Red Roses For Me_

"Upside Down" The Jesus & Mary Chain _Upside Down_
"2 X 4" The Fall _The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004_
"Love Gets Dangerous" Billy Bragg _Brewing Up With Billy Bragg_
"Bachelor Kisses" The Go-Betweens _Spring Hill Fair_
"Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" The Smiths _Hatful Of Hollow_

"The Unforgettable Fire" U2 _The Unforgettable Fire_
"Wonderland" Big Country _Wonderland_
"Nobody Told Me" John Lennon _Milk & Honey_
"The Law" Leonard Cohen _Various Positions_
"What A Day That Was" Talking Heads _Stop Making Sense_

"Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" Cocteau Twins _The Spangle Maker_
"The Caterpillar" The Cure _The Top_
"Perfect Skin" Lloyd Cole & The Commotions _Rattlesnakes_
"Heaven" The Psychedelic Furs _Mirror Moves_
"I Guess I'm Just A Little Too Sensitive" Orange Juice _The Orange Juice (The Third Album)_

Whither 1984?

(Image from here.)

Wait!  No!  The show this week isn't about the book (& film) 1984, it's my favorite music from the year 1984.  Although...  I suppose I could just play Bowie's Diamond Dogs & the Eurythmics album 1984 (For The Love Of Big Brother) all the way through...  No!

Tomorrow is my birthday & every year on my birthday I explore my favorite music from a year of my life.  The first time I did this, I started the year I was born, 1968, & now, yikes! I'm up to 1984.

It's important to know that I wasn't so hip that I was actually listening to all the music you'll hear on this show.  It would be a couple of years before I discovered what we now call "post-punk," for example.  So it's safe to say that much of what you'll hear tomorrow on the show is much that happens to have been released in 1984 which I discovered sometime later - although much sooner than the music I loved in 1968.  During my first year on this planet, I didn't get a chance to go record shopping much.

It's tomorrow!  On Freeform Portland, 90.3 + 98.3 fm in the city, freeformportland.org everywhere!  You have to listen because it's my birthday!