Preface To Quite A Show: No More Non Sequiturs For Me, Thanks

Back when I used to smoke - I used to smoke - I quit smoking a while ago, I think it must be over ten years now, although my smoking heyday was from 1995-2005 or so - about ten years as a moderately heavy smoker - a pack a day - more if I were out drinking - I remember one night hanging with my friend Molly I ran out of matches & so I kept lighting a new cigarette with the one I had been smoking & she said, "Gary! You're chain smoking!" - until then I don't think I knew what chain smoking meant - anyway, I quit around 2005 or so - it was Halloween, I remember - maybe 2006 - it was uncomfortable but after a couple of days I was fine - but I still kinda longed for a cigarette - & I took it up again in the summer of 2008 - at that point I was a "secret smoker" - I found quiet places to smoke & only told a few people I smoked - of course I smoked at home - I guess I was a smoker when I moved from Austin to West Virginia in 2009 but I don't remember smoking on the drive - I had to quit smoking for good in the fall of 2009 because of my health - so I suppose I smoked for eleven years? - I had a couple cigarettes since then - probably the last in 2012 or so - usually when I was drinking - if I smoked a cigarette sober I'd do two things immediately: I'd get incredibly nauseous & I'd really, really need to take a shit - I remember I had a cigarette in Atlanta in 2013 - I bummed it off a cute girl at a bar - it was something awful, like a Marlboro Light - I was drinking but the cigarette really fucked me up - my hands got numb - anyway - back when I used to smoke - as I was saying - what was I saying? - I was going to say something about what my life was like when I smoked - but the memories came flooding back & I can't remember now (ironically) what I was getting at when I wrote "back when I used to smoke" - there was a time when everyone smoked - I grew up in a haze of tobacco smoke - my mother smoked - nearly every one of my siblings smoked - it was stupid of me to take up smoking when I did but in a way - I suppose I might not be saying this if I had a condition like lung cancer or COPD caused by smoking - in a way I'm glad I was a smoker -  something about the experience is nice to have under one's belt - but I am far more glad that I no longer smoke - it's not worth the cost, financially & to your health - & I never feel like a non-smoker - I feel like an ex-smoker - it's funny, or maybe it's sad, it's funny & sad, near KBOO is what I think is a halfway house for women & children - there's no sign that says that, but that's because - especially if they come from violent homes - they usually don't advertise such places - anyway, they obviously don't allow smoking on the premises - so the women will find a place just outside the boundaries of the complex & they'll smoke there - sometimes it's like an open air cocktail party (without the cocktails) there are so many women just standing there smoking - & I try to not bother them - I will cross the street instead of having to walk through them - but there's a woman I've seen twice - none of these women seem older than thirty - there's a woman who I've seen standing there, smoking, looking at her phone, & she looks seven or eight months pregnant - & it bothers me but I have a confession to make - I was outside my work sometime earlier this century smoking & a woman stopped me & asked for a cigarette - I was never greedy, I always shared, what a merchant of death I was - & when I was lighting her cigarette, she told me she was three months pregnant - I know I should've knocked the cigarette out of her mouth & told her to go elsewhere - but instead I just said, "I guess I'm going to hell" - she tried to make me feel better but I felt awful - & I remember my mother telling me she never smoked when she was pregnant - & I don't know if I believe her - one of my brothers is so addicted that even after he had a stroke he continues to smoke - but what the fuck do I know about pregnancy, maybe it makes you have strength to do such things - in any event - I thought I'd remember what I was going to say but it doesn't look like I will - but I used to smoke - if there's anything to take away from this, it's that I used to smoke - & another thing - I don't miss it at all.  Not anymore.

Just Watched Tonight's Real Time With Bill Maher

& now I know I'm going to have nightmares about the coronavirus.

Yep, I'm going to spend the rest of night sipping whiskey & reading too much about this disease.  I'll try to stay away from alarmist websites.  But I make no promises.

Another thing: I need to clean the boards & the mics & the stuff I use at radio stations starting now.  That's what I will do.  Good lord.

Three Possible Flavors (Mostly Unpalatable)

Early Tuesday morning, when I was doing the show I do on XRAY, I came to a weird realization.  It may not seem like it, because all the shows I do have me in them, but I think there's three different (not wildly different, but perhaps demonstrably different) kinds of me who host the shows.

Take Sugar Substitute, the XRAY show.  I mainly just play music, but I jot down notes about the bands & will mention them (that band is from Philadelphia!) when I back-announce.  But more often than not, I'm not making much sense in a stream-of-consciousness style, somewhat like I used to do at KNON.  Basically, I won't stop talking.

This stands in direct contrast to The Dickenbock Report, which, since it's supposed to be a kind of newscast, is pretty scripted.  I ad-lib a little, but mainly I'm reading during airbreaks.

Self Help Radio is a mix of both - there's not always a lot of time to completely off the rails like I do on Sugar Substitute, but I'll sometimes find myself doing that.  But since there's usually some information I'd like to convey, I do have notes I have taken, which I attempt to read.  But a lot of it is me clumsily riffing.

That was a weird thing to come to terms with - the fact that I have different approaches for different shows.  My brain just said to me, "If I ever get a fourth show..."  & then there was just screaming, screaming from everywhere, inside & out.

Self Help Radio 022420: Bees Revisited

(Look at that beauty.  Original image here.)

This was a bittersweet show to do.  It was by request from Freeform deejay Jaxxmaster Kevrock - the fellow whose show has followed Self Help Radio for the past six months - & it turns out it's his last show for a while.  He's taking six months off (that's the length of the Freeform schedule).  He will be missed!

So I'm glad I did the show when I did!  I wish I had recorded his first airbreak - Kev is actually a beekeeper & he said some powerful things about bees.  Instead, all you get is my silliness & lots of songs about bees.  By the way, for the record, the show is about 33% new.  I suspect if I hadn't relied so much on the original show, I might have found many more new bee songs.  As it happened, there are ten songs I didn't play on the original, & I think that's grand.

Listen to the show now at Self Help Radio dot net - pay attention to the username & password info (it's SHR & selfhelp).  See what you'll hear on the show below.

& for fuck's sake save the bees!

Self Help Radio Bees Show Revisited
"Why Does A Bee Buzz?" Marais & Miranda _More Nature Songs_
"Busy Bee Boogie" Hal Serra & Carol Mark _Animal Hootenanny_
"Buzz Buzz Buzz" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Back In Your Life_
"Honey Bee" Mountain Man _Made The Harbor_

introduction & definitions

"Flight Of The Bumble Bee" Harry James & His Orchestra _Swingin' The Classics_
"Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee" Julie London _Swing Me An Old Song_
"Honey Bee (Keep On Stinging Me)" Diana Ross & The Supremes _Love Child_
"Bee Sting Stings" Tullycraft _City Of Subarus_
"Honeybee" Girlfrendo _One_

interview & performance by beetronica musician Oscar Maize

"Me & The Bees" The Softies _Holiday In Rhode Island_
"Like A Honey Bee (Honey Bee)" The Carousel _abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_
"Bees" The Hepburns _In The Mean Time_
"One Bee At A Time" Negativland _True False_
"A Sleepin' Bee" Nancy Wilson & Cannonball Adderly _Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderly_

interview with millennial experts Alyssa & Jason

"Beehive" Boss Hog _Boss Hog_
"Taster Of The Honey (Not The Keeper Of The Bee)" The Jones Girls _The Music Merchant Story_
"Bee Kind To The Bugs" Culture Abuse _Bay Dream_
"The Bees (The Bees)" His Name Is Alive _Stars On ESP_
"Honey Bee" Johnny Johnson & The Bandwagon _The Golden Torch Story (A Collection Of 18 Classic Northern Soul Shakers)_

interview with Rev Dr Howard Gently (replay)

"Honey Bee" Jon & Robin _Elastic Event_
"The L.S. Bumble Bee" Peter Cook & Dudley Moore _We Can Fly, Vol. 1_
"Beeswing" Richard Thompson _Mirror Blue_

interview with master beekeeper Lana "Swarmy" Swarms

"Beestung" Kristin Hersh _Hips & Makers_
"Tumble Bee" Karl Blau _Shell Collection_
"Humble Bee" John Wesley Harding _The Confessions Of St. Ace_
"I'll Be The Bee" Ruth & Al _Crescent City Soul: The Sound Of New Orleans 1947-1974_

conclusion & goodbyes

"Sweet Honey Sucking Bees" W. H. Auden _An Evening Of Elizabethan Verse & Its Music_
"Queen Bee" John Lee Hooker _The Classic Early Years 1948-1951_
"New Bumble Bee" Memphis Minnie _Queen Of The Country Blues: All The Published Sides 1929-1937_
"Beehive (feat. Tony Allen, Akenya Seymour, & Isaiah Oby)" Chicago Afrobeat Project _What Goes Up_

Whither Bees (Again)?

(Image from here.)

The reason why Self Help Radio's show this week is about bees is very simple: someone asked me.  Yes, someone said, "I hear you on the radio all the time saying if I'd like you to explore a theme, just ask, & so, I'd like you to do a show about bees."

But there was a twist!  I had already done a show about bees, back in 2016, on a station in Kentucky!

But there was another twist!  That show was done nearly four years ago & over two thousand miles away.  The chances of anyone in Portland ever having heard that show were infinitesimal.  (The chances of anyone having heard it at the time were also vanishingly small.)  So why revisit the theme?  Update it, if you will, with some new songs & new interviews!

& that's what will happen.  Tomorrow morning, Monday, February 24, from 6-8 am, on Freeform Portland, 90.3 + 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org - a show about bees.

You know, I could've done a show about honey or something - made it somewhat new.  But nope!  I wanted to revisit the theme!

Preface To Bees Revisited: Why Revisit Bees? Or Any Theme At All?

In the ridiculous set of rules I laid out for myself for Self Help Radio, one of them was, "Don't repeat themes."  I'm sure this was initially a challenge, to myself certainly, but also to other deejays who repeated theme-based shows - especially on holidays.  One deejay in Austin would play the almost exact same show every Thanksgiving.  I said to myself, even if I did do a show for holidays - like Valentine's Day - I would pick a different theme based on the holiday each year but never repeat that theme ever again.

Except - yeah, there are always exceptions - I decided in 2008 I would, around the time of the show's anniversary, revisit an old theme then & there.  & I have - sometimes I almost forget, but I've managed to do that.  (I also have used episodes of Self Help Radio in other radio shows I've done - like with the Dickenbock Report, where for example the last show I did, I played songs from the Self Help Radio episode about kissing, which for some reason I didn't do on Valentine's Day.  Although I mostly used songs from the KNON Tuesday Morning Blend show I did in 2018 around Valentine's Day which used the old Self Help Radio show about kissing as its base.  The point is, I'm not averse to revisiting themes in other contexts - especially when I am doing three different radio shows on three different stations.)  I simply didn't want to re-do shows on Self Help Radio, it was a rule, except during anniversary shows.

Except - & this wasn't an exception I thought about until it happened - what if someone requests a show you've already done but couldn't have heard it?  For example, someone in Portland who likes bees who asked you to explore bees but you already did a show about bees?  It seems like that would be a good reason to do another version of the theme.  & why not?  The people who did the same shows over & over did them in Austin, & whatever reason I decided not to do that - envy, perhaps, or spite - shouldn't apply in another place in the future.  I don't archive all my shows.  They're not always accessible.  (That's mainly because who would want to listen to them?  The last year of shows I've done is always available on my website & nobody ever listens to them.)  & sometimes someone wants to hear a show I've already done.

Except - this is perhaps a rule about re-doing shows that I've never articulated - I'm doing new interviews & I'm going to play songs I didn't play on the previous show.  Because there have been new bee songs in the past four years, either recorded since or discovered by me since.

That's what's happening this week, & why.  I guess I should've saved this for tomorrow.  Oops.

Something I Wrote About Bees

This week's show - next week's show - whatever - is kind of a rerun.  I'll do it live, but I once did a show about bees, four years or so ago.  More on why I am re-doing a show tomorrow.  But I never really re-run things I've written on this blog because, well, one, they're not that memorable, these things I write, & two, there's hardly ever a reason to repost them.  But here's something I wrote about bees in May of 2016

_________________________

In a couple of the fake interviews for this week's shows - these are parts I might have edited out, because I tend to edit out my own contributions, whittling them down to more or less pertinent questions for my funny friends/guests* - I mentioned that I was allergic to bees.  But I have a confession to make: I don't know if I am.  I have never been stung by a bee.

Why would I say, & actually believe, that I am allergic to bees?  Because once my mother told me I was.  That was it!  I'm sure she was telling me that I had a dangerous allergy because she wanted me to be safe, & not to fuck around with bees, creatures that might sting me if I stupidly put my hand into their hive or something.  My mother is pretty much afraid of everything, & that fear was quite easily passed down into all her children.

& you know what, it worked!  It worked so well that I have never been stung by a bee.  I remember watching in awe as a middle-school friend not only got stung by a bee (I was so freaked out I almost cried) but calmly took the stinger out of his skin.  He looked briefly at it as if it were as threatening as a splinter & tossed it away.

As threatening as a splinter!  My mother once told me I absolutely had to get splinters out of my skin as soon as possible because otherwise they'd continue traveling downward, get into the blood vessels, & make their way to your heart, where one tiny splinter could stab & stab & stab you until you fucking died.

If she felt that way about a splinter, imagine what horrors a bee sting could inflict!  Honestly, I don't even know if my mother knew about allergic reactions or going into anaphylactic shock or any of that shit.  She just erred on the side of being terrified of the entire world & made sure to burden us with her suspect wisdom at every opportunity.

The weird thing is how long it took me - well into adulthood - to figure out how bogus it was.  Take, for example, fire ants.  Fire ants would bite you until you died, said my mother, & that's why you should be careful walking around them.  Only, my little brother once stood in a fire ant hill, got bitten all over his legs, was in a lot of pain, was covered in calamine lotion for a night, & didn't die.

It's a testimony to how much a child relies upon the parent that I didn't call my mother out after my brother lived.  Because when I saw those ants crawling all over him, I thought he was going to die.

Anyway, bees.  I'm still afraid of bees, & actually most insects that are larger than a dime.  & who knows?  Maybe I should carry an EpiPen with me.  For all the hell I know, out of the thousands, if not millions of things my mother told me that turned out to be hysterically wrong, she might be right about this.**

* I am only replaying one of the old interviews from the original show, so this might not come up at all.
** I've still never been stung by a bee.

These Times Without Radio

There was only, for me, one radio show this week - Self Help Radio.  On the way to the show on Monday morning, I got an ominous warning in my Prius & it turned out our battery had died.  This is apparently exceedingly common in Priuses, although no one ever told me, & I took it to a nearby dealership after the show to deal with it.

It would take a couple of days to diagnose the problem which meant I couldn't get to XRAY to do Sugar Substitute the next night/morning, so I didn't get to do that show.  A different XRAY show ran in repeat instead of mine.  Sad face emoji.

This left me resigned to only doing one radio show this week until!  Look!  There's a 4 to 6 am slot on Freeform open!  I think I'll do that!

Tomorrow morning, 4-6am, me just playing music & talking about nothing on Freeform.  I'm saved from just one show a week!

Good lord, how did I do this a year ago?

Self Help Radio 021720: Intent

(Of course, this is based on the title card of this television show.)

Boy, this show felt like a mess.  Was this show a mess?  I'm very sleepy.  I feel like I'm about to go to sleep after unleashing a mess upon Portland.  This was not my intention.

Something I learned from this show: it's better when I have guests.  Terrible guests are better than just lots of Gary.

Something else I learned from this show: intent & intention kinda mean the same thing.  They are both used in each other's definitions.  That seems lazy of dictionaries, doesn't it?

One other thing I learned right before this show: you can be driving along in your Prius listening to Kinky Friedman & an alert will flash & tell you CHECK HYBRID SYSTEM STOP THE VEHICLE IN A SAFE PLACE IMMEDIATELY.  & you might say, fuck it, I need to get to a radio station to do a show & if the car explodes or catches fire you'll want to be close so you can abandon it as close to the radio station as possible.

Maybe that makes a radio show a mess?  I felt like I compartmentalized it pretty well.

Anyway, for all intents & purposes, the show as it happened is as it happened.  It's over at the Self Help Radio webpage as we speak.  You can see what you might hear below.  Remember: username SHR, password selfhelp.  It wasn't my intention to make such a mess.  But I have no intention of cleaning it up!

Self Help Radio Intent Show
"Intent" The Creeping Nobodies _Stop Movement Stop Loss_
"Intent" Lunch Duchess _Nervous Breakthroughs_
"Pure Intent" Empath _Active Listening: Night On Earth_

introduction & definitions

"Intentions" Ed's Redeeming Qualities _Big Grapefruit Cleanup Job_
"Intentions" Bill Ding _And The Sound Of Adventure_
"Intentions" Film School _Brilliant Career_
"Right Intention" William Hope _Buddhism Plain & Simple by Steve Hagen_
"Signal Your Intention" Hodges, James, & Smith _Incredible_

let's watch a YouTube video on the radio!

"Letter Of Intent" Ducktails _The Flower Lane_
"Statement Of Intent" Bis _Intendo_
"Statement Of Intent" Chris Knox _Seizure_
"Almost Unintentional" Alistair Hulett _In The Back Streets Of Paradise_

idiom time

"Good Intentions" Kitty Kallen _Warm & Sincere_
"New Emotion, Good Intentions" Mondial _The Sound Of Young Sweden Vol. 2_
"Good Intentions" The Dudes _Brain Heart Guitar_
"Good Intentions" Marika Hackman _I'm Not Your Man_
"Good Intentions?" Rocketship _Here Comes... Rocketship_

Ned Dry interrupts!

"Get Up Off Your Good Intentions" Charley Pride _She's Just An Old Love Turned Memory_
"Good Intentions" Ex Norwegian _No Sleep_
"Best Of Intentions" The Spook School _Could It Be Different?_
"Introducing John Stanley Hart/He Entered The Bar With The Best Of Intentions" William S. Burroughs _You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With_
"Good Intentions Heal The Soul" Mansun _Kleptomania_

producer Bob interrupts!

"You've Got Bad Intensions" Bobby "Blue" Bland _I Pity The Fool: The Duke Recordings, Vol. 1_
"Bye Bye Badman" The Stone Roses _The Stone Roses_
"Cool Intentions" Islands _Taste_
"Cruel Intentions" Shlomo Franklin _Apt. 16_

conclusion & goodbye

"(Do You Intend To Put An End To) A Sweet Beginning Like This" Fats Waller _1935, Vol. 2_
"I Don't Intend To Die In Egyptland" Joshua White _Goodbye Babylon_
"Gran Intento" Monica Giraldo _Putumayo Presents Cafe Del Mundo_

Whither Intent?

(Image from here.)

It wasn't ever my intent to make a radio program about intent.  It was never intended, I should say.  I didn't have the intention.  & yet, here we are, less than a day from a Self Help Radio about intent.  How in the world did that happen?

It had been so long since I had been in a tent.  It must've been years, actually.  A tent, you know, a camping tent.  Not a giant tent-like structure that might house a farmer's market or a religious revival.  & yet there I was, in someone's tent.  & by the way, it was in a camping situation, not in a houseless person situation.  Here in Portland you see a lot of tents, often on sidewalks, or along the highway.  It's a big problem here, how to deal with them.  This was not that.  I was in someone's tent, somewhere where they were camping.

Oh shit, I forgot to mention, this was in a dream.  Yeah, I wasn't just wandering around some natural area, saw a tent, & went in.  No, this was a tent in a dream.  That was important, I'm sorry.  Yeah, I was dreaming I was in someone's tent.  But whoever's tent it was, that person wasn't someone I knew.  Just someone who had, previously in the dream I guess, invited me into their tent.  & like you do in dreams, they were talking to me about my radio show.

"Have you ever done a show about tents?" this person in my dream asked me.

The truth is, I couldn't remember, so I tried to look up my website on my phone, to see what themes I'd explored before.  But my phone couldn't find the website.  This happens to me a lot in my dreams, I try to find out information that I honestly don't know so I try to use a computer & because my brain doesn't know the information, it makes my computers not work.  In the dream I was embarrassed I didn't know if I had done a show about tents, & also that my web page didn't seem to exist, so I said, "I might have."

The person in the tent - & I couldn't describe them, I don't even know if I saw them, their tent was tidy but there was only one light, a Coleman lantern, just hanging in the center, illuminating camping gear & an unrolled sleeping bag - the person said, "In tents!  Intense!  In tent!  Intent!"

Perhaps sensing I might be harmed, I started to leave the tent.  The person said, "Do a radio show that's in tent in tents!  Intent intense!"

& I can't tell you how I knew the person wasn't just say "intense" or "in tents" over & over - somehow I figured out they were playing with the words.

When I woke, I tried to explain the dream to my wife, who was immediately bored by it, because it was, frankly, a boring dream.  (At some point in the dream I got to feed a deer, but that's not important to this story, but gosh! what a thrill!)  But there was a part of me that thought my mind was daring me to do a radio show that would be weird to do, so I decided - without looking around for songs - to do a show with the theme "intent," as a way to answer the challenge.  You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see how that worked out for me.

Yes, tomorrow - Monday morning - 6 to 8am on Freeform Portland, 90.3 & 98.3 fm, freeformportland.org.

Listen, as I may never let my dreams dictate a show theme ever again.

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!