A New Year! A New Decade! Same Old Self Help Radio!

Teams of experts paid untold amounts of money taken surreptitiously from your pocketbooks & wallets worked "around the clock" (actually, during regular business hours with a liberal amount of smoke breaks) to determine what you, the Self Help Radio listener, would like to hear on Self Help Radio in the year of 2010 (which, as you probably know, is supposed to be pronounced "twenty-ten" not "two thousand ten" because someone said so & gave some specific reasons for it) (although the monkeys in the office are very fond of "two oh ten"). Extensive surveys were taken, phones were tapped, the pulses of America & certain parts of the world where it was considered safe were taken, many other things were done in the passive voice, to gather copious amounts of data to put in shiny new computers with embarrassingly large hard drives strangely filled after only a few days with lots of porn & illegally downloaded mp3s (although, to be fair, the porn was probably also illegally downloaded), & that data over too many to count long liquid lunches, brunches, & afternoon teas was analyzed, categorized, amortized, plagiarized, simonized, looked straight in the eyes, checked, double-checked, triple-checked with a cherry on top, & sent out to get some more booze because stocks were dwindling.

Self Help Radio is proud to announce that the data showed one particular insight that can't be ignored: no one's really listening to Self Help Radio!

So the show will continue on the same way it has since its inception. Since no one will mind.

Happy new year!

The Last Thing I'll Say All Year

It's true, I won't write in this blog again until it's a new decade. Or will it be? I forget who gets to decide that.

However, you may enjoy this week's Self Help Radio along with this week's Sugar Substitute which contain three hours of indiepop music because they continue my "indiepop a to z" project which is still at letter "e" & will never make it to Sesame Street now. The shows are available at selfhelpradio.net & are waiting patiently for you to play them at your New Year's Eve party. I would rather you invite me. But if you just want my radio show, I totally understand.

Please have a safe & happy New Year & don't be a weirdo & get yourself hurt. That would make me angry. & I look stupid when I'm angry.

Thanks for reading & listening in 2009! See you next year!

Friends In Town A-Visitin'

...so there's no time to write anything in this blog that no one reads. Still, I feel obliged to say:

TOMORROW!
SELF HELP RADIO!
1PM on 88.1 fm WMUL!

followed by
SUGAR SUBSTITUTE!
2:30PM on 88.1 fm WMUL!

both shows CONTINUE the INDIEPOP A TO Z!
(we're in the E's!)

both ARCHIVED LATER
at SELF HELP RADIO DOT NET!

SEE YOU THERE!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 23?

Yeah, yeah, more indiepop - three hours of it in fact - as Self Help Radio starts & Sugar Substitute continues the countup of indiepop bands/musicians with the letter 'e' starting their names (in the case of musicians, their last names) (I should have been a librarian).

But look! A decade review that I can wrap my head around! Hooray!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/collections/classic-jon-stewart-videos

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 23: The Top Ten Decades Of The Decade!

Even though the Self Help Radio shall for all intents & purposes continue its doomed-to-failure-&-irrelevancy indiepop countup/countdown this week, it also intends to jump onto the end-of-the-decade bandwagon by announcing as many end-of-the-decade lists as it can possibly stuff down everyone's throats without really having to really think about it, much as in every other end-of-the-decade list out there. Here are some of the lists the Self Help Radio shall explore in the coming last few days of the year:

• The Top Ten Whoopsy-Daisies! of the 2000s!
• Ten Trends In Trend Forecasting Of The Last Ten Trendy Years!
• Top Forty Or So Times You Were Fucked Six Ways To Sunday By Your Government &/Or Its Corporate Masters Since 2000!
• Celebrity Zombies - How They Outpaced Celebrity Lycanthropes in the 2000s!
• The Most Shameful Acts Of Ignominy & Chagrin Each Embarrassing Year From The Mortifications Of 2000 To The Indignities Of 2009!
• The Dead Gods Of The 2000s!
• The 21st Century: Ninety More Years Of This Shit?!
• Who Hit What & How (But Never Where Or Why) In The 00s!
• Fifteen Strange Things Tom Selleck Did Or Had Done To Him This Century!
• Tackle A Pope, Throw A Shoe At A Dickwad: A Small Guide To Successfully Assaulting World Leaders From This Decade!
• Was This The Decade Of The Self Help Radio? Of Course Not!
• Cover Me! I'm Going In! To Take Pictures Of Celebrity Corpses & The Women Who Love Them!
• You Gained Weight This Decade! So Did We!
• Hush Hush! The Thirty-Seven Secret Stories Of The 00s Which Were Completely Missed By Conspiracy Theorists Because They Are Actually Plausible!
• They Didn't Die: A Comprehensive List Of People You Thought Died Sometime Between 2000 & Now, With Pictures Of Them Holding Recent Newspapers To Prove It, & Angry Emails From Them To You Because They Find The Whole Thing Rather Insulting!
• Pain Pain Sadness Pain: Ten Years Of Unsettling Memories!
• Can It Get Any Worse? A Special Prognostication!
• & Probably A Lot More Because We Want To Make A Lot Of Annoying Lists!

Do join us as we say goodbye to another decade arbitrarily cut-up & assigned a meaning which we'll have to live with the rest of our days. The nostalgia is just being born!

What Did You Get For Christmas?

I got a rock.

Twas The Night Before The Night Before Christmas...

& I just got an email that had the subject "she tugs the shit out of his cock & he fucking loves it!" Ah, 'tis the season!

Well, you can listen to "A Very Self Help Radio Christmas" & a Christmas episode of Dickenbock Electronics with you & yours (or alone, like I will, with a loaded gun & bottle of Jameson) now on the Self Help Radio website. It's guaranteed to clear the house of family visitors when they're outstaying their welcome.

Please have a safe & happy season & thanks for listening to Self Help Radio. It's the best gift I get all year round.

X-Must

Do you remember the first time you were strangely yelled at for referring to Christmas as "X-Mas"? I do, actually. I was working in a 7-11 on the late shift (11-7, if you must know) during my third year of college (so, twenty years ago) & there was a very tall, very cute, frizzy-haired hippie girl who'd come in to shoot the shit with me (& get free stuff, because she flirted with me), & her name was Monet. For reals! I think I even once asked to see her ID, & it was her real name.

I don't remember working there past Christmas of 1989, but at some point I surely must have been behind the counter when there was something - a plea for donations on a plastic container, a magazine, some sign from the management - that read "X-Mas," & Monet came in, like she did, late at night, quite drunk, wanting some soda from the soda fountain or something, & she saw the "X-Mas" sign & went ballistic. "They're trying to take the Christ out of Christmas!" she yelled at me. "I hate that!" & in that drunken way drunk folks have when they're pretty drunk, Monet expounded on her theory, surprising me because I just didn't know that tall, frizzy-haired, cute hippie girls who came into 7-11s on weekend nights as drunk as priests could be religious as well.

Did I tell her that the X really means Christ as it is based on the Greek spelling of the name? Nah. I didn't know that then. I didn't really care. Even though I was madly in love with the woman I was dating at the time, I appreciated cute chicks spending time with me, even under ridiculous circumstances.

Maybe I'll tell this story & others equally goofy tomorrow at 1pm on WMUL - 88.1 fm in Huntington - & later on of course archived on selfhelpradio.net - for my annual Christmas show, called (of course) a Very Self Help Radio Christmas. Do tune in. You know Monet won't be.

Whither A Very Self Help Radio Christmas 2009?

Indeed. At this point in the festivities it's important to stop & take stock. Ask a few questions. Digest & commiserate.

The young lady with the bulldog in the back wants to know what she will be getting for Christmas. While this is certainly not within the purview of this discussion, the panel might agree that if she is so impatient at this point, the chances are she will not be satisfied with what she does get, even if it's of equal or greater value than her bulldog.

The oblique triangle on the left side of the auditorium asks how one can reconcile the birth of one religion's savior with the ritualistic murder of another religion's children for Satan. If you'll recall the earlier lecture by Professor Gobble about the nature of cognitive dissonance, I'm sure you can draw a valid or possibly relevant conclusion.

The aging blues guitarist in the second row has not apparently asked a question, but suffice it to say that he was born into poverty, & sometime during his hardscrabble life he became infected with a chronic disease which was diagnosed as the blues, some of the symptoms of which are being betrayed by the women he's loved, possessing an unquenchable thirst to ramble, & witnessing depressing imitation by slightly overweight middle-class white men with questionable facial hair arrangements.

Ah, the jolly fellow in red with all the reindeer is reminding us to get home to listen to Christmas music on the radio. Very well. Thank you for attending & please leave your badges with Sheila at the door. Good night.

Preface To A Very Self Help Radio Christmas 2009: The Last Christmas Show Ever?

I'm an old dude, in the middle of my middle age, & I don't have children unless you count dogs & cats which you shouldn't because they think I'm one of their pets. Also important is that I'm not a Christian, & the wife & I don't really exchange presents even on birthdays (sometimes we do, though - I bought her a Wii for her birthday this year & her reaction was "Damn! Now I have to buy you a birthday present!" - so it's a dodgy proposition in any case). I point out all this to underscore something big - I don't really celebrate Christmas. Haven't for a long time - except on Self Help Radio, where I've done a Christmas show since the first year I was on. So why continue to do a Christmas show?

I dunno. I still love Christmas music - I especially love it when it's weird or non-traditional. I also like when artists I like write their own Christmas songs. But I do feel like a hypocrite - I don't want to celebrate the birthday of an imaginary space god's son & I don't want to open presents with nor buy presents for a family I don't have. Is loving the music enough? It doesn't seem like enough... What do you think?

Or are you too busy on the chatty blogs arguing about health care reform? Bastards!

The Novelty Wears On

People tell me I'll get tired of it, but the snow fell for a second time in Huntington (it started falling last night & as of this morning it hasn't stopped), & it's kinda dreamy & lovely. Here, you can see for yourself:



There might even be a white Christmas here this year. I think I may go walk around & fall down in it in a little while.

The Final Death Of The "Best Of" List

Oh don't I wish. It might be a more honest world if people listed their "favorites" but then what would the music snobs do? Besides continue to talk about how much better music sounds on vinyl, I mean.

Hey! This week's show is my favorite indie music, etc., from 2009. You can listen to it at the usual place, which is selfhelpradio.net. Compare it with your own list of favorites, if you make one. When you make one. Will you make one?

On a sad note, this week's Sugar Substitute, which kind of continued my favorites, didn't make it into the recording device I use to save my shows for posterity. I think it was user error, with me being the user. & the error. Sorry about that.

Did you know - did I tell you - you can become a fan of Self Help Radio on Facebook? If you didn't, I'm glad I told you. If you did, I'm embarrassed I said anything. Oh when will this nightmare end?!?

Know What I Hate? Know What I Love?

I could write a daily blog about the "joke of the day" service I subscribe to. They try so hard to be non-offensive that they have a special word (which I can't remember, but it's a made-up race/nationality/belief system) they insert instead of saying, you know, as they would at UT, "How many Aggies does it take..." My brain keeps telling me it's "archon," but I think that's a race in Star Trek. It makes it doubly adorable when the occasional racist joke oozes through. However, what annoys me is the jokes that involve some kind of pun. Whenever there's a joke like that, they SPELL OUT the pun. For example, if the pun is "Eileen Dover" they'd write "(I leaned over)" next to it. As if their subscribers might just go "Heck, I don't git it!" & angrily unsubscribe.

Here's today's so-called joke: "The olympian skier Picabo Street now works in the Intensive Care Unit at a hospital. Unfortunately, the administration told her she can no longer answer the phone, because this is what she said, 'Picabo ICU' (Peek-a-boo, I see you)."

I had never heard of Picabo Street so I probably wouldn't know how to pronounce the name (I might pronounce it pick-AH-bo) but I would probably have guessed from the ICU that it was supposed to be a pun. But they fucked up the punchline! It's more funny if they say something like, "She kept answering the phone..." Bad grammar AND they spell the dumb joke out. Ak! I hate that!

Okay, that's what I hate. What I love is of course doing Self Help Radio, which, I remind you, airs as it normally does tomorrow on 88.1 fm WMUL but at the afternoon hour of 1pm rather than in the morning. There's a reason for it & I might already have explained it, but anyway, it features my favorite indie music of 2009, & Sugar Substitute, after that, features the spillover, so it's basically three hours of awesome 2009 music.

Aren't it Huntington? No problem! It'll be on selfhelpradio.net later in the day. We take care of you. Silly.

Whither Gary's Favorite Indie Music 2009?

I said a mouthful yesterday. It stands. It was a nice year for music - I am happy with crazy nice discoveries, like the Wave Pictures, plus continuing excellence like Bearsuit. Also, what a year for my friends in Luxuriator! An appearance of KVRX's Local Live as well as a debut single. In not too long, they'll be riding around in limousines & throwing burning money at me.

It's Monday evening & I'm still reviewing records from the year - I am a little fearful that I'm leaving something out because I don't have enough things in my miserable life to stress out about. Hey! Last year I missed a Guild League record & a Secret History EP that would easily have made my best of. Think I'm going to let that happen again? Okay, I might, but can I at least let it happen while I'm trying as best I can to keep it from happening? I mean, I know I'm inept, but it's easier to be actively inept than simply lazy. Y'know?

I'm not going to give you any hints about what'll be on the show, no, but I suspect you have a sense of what the show will contain. So be patient. It's less than forty-eight hours away.

What? Less than forty-eight hours? Holy fuck, I've got to go listen to music!

Preface To Gary's Favorite Indie Music Of 2009: What Kind Of Man Reads Year-End Lists?

Oh yes, & it's not just the end of the year. It's the end of the decade, which means a cottage industry in "best of the 2000s" lists, though I'm not going to link to them, because frankly virtually none of the songs & musicians that end up on these lists can be seen or found on my lists. You might think it's because I simply have different tastes than the makers of these lists, who are generally the people who are paid to be critical of music. But that's not true. Listen:

Most of these lists are made by people who are paid to be critical of music. Where do the people who are paid to be critical of music get the music they are paid to be critical of? Record companies, of course. For free. They're not clicking on myspace pages to find "the next big thing." They spend less on music than your average illegal downloader, these people who are paid to be critical of music. So it's only natural that they review & choose from the records they get for free. Do you think small record companies - not to mention bands that don't have labels or maintain their own - can afford to send every person who is paid to be critical of music a free record? & can you imagine how those people who are paid to be critical of music treat the records that come in a plain wrappers as opposed to those which come in lavish, expensive packages?

Ah, but don't these people who are paid to be critical of music also review live bands? Sure. But generally if they go out to see a band somewhere it's usually a band they've been introduced to by a record company, or it's a band there's a "buzz" around or that's been "recommended" by someone (perhaps a record company representative). People who are paid to be critical of music don't really have the time to listen to as much music as possible to make an informed decision. So you can bet that they haven't heard 99% of what's been created & released in any given year.

They also need to pay attention to what the listeners are listening to. This, it turns out, is worse than simply choosing from the best of the pile of the less than 1% of what's been released that year which is given away by record companies to the people who are paid to be critical of music. Because the majority of people who listen to music, for good or ill, listen to music they hear on commercial radio, which is owned by the media giants who also own the record companies, so are geared to selling as much as possible of the artists (the term used loosely) who can make them the most money possible. Many of those artists, of course, are the same artists they've "invested" in, with expensive laser concert shows & videos, & for whom they've spent millions on fancy producers & fancy studios in which to record. It's only natural that, at best, a couple dozen of these rise to the top & make a splash. A few even hang on.

In any event, most "best of" lists are basically popularity contests, & that popularity (like with the Grammys) is often based on units sold. The majority of the "voters" (ie, the listening public) buy the stuff they hear on commercial radio, & the people who are paid to be critical of music review the stuff sent to them by the record companies which are controlled by the same people who own the radio, & each "best of" list is corrupted by hazily-seen forces of laziness, vanity & greed.

I prefer to instead list my favorites, since they're bound not to be your favorites, whether you actively seek out new music in the same way I do or simply listen to the radio waiting for something to interest you (which will happen, as the record companies know, when you've listened to something at least five times & it becomes familiar to your brain) or somewhere in between. You should love the music you love in whatever way you wish to love it. Just please, don't be influenced by these lists, which can't possibly be the best of anything because the majority of the people making the lists - especially the people who are paid to be critical of music - have simply no interest in listening to the spectrum of music out there. The media giants that stroke them keep them happily ignorant of the amazing musical world around them, & they make sure between them they get as close to all of the music-consuming public's money as possible.

A Brief History Of Lactation

Lactation is the secretion of milk (unflavored, & also not soy) from mammary glands. It is a process that occurs in all female mammals whether they like it or not. Usually it happens with the involvement of something that is very naughtily called the "nipple." However among platypuses it was decided at a meeting of the Conservative Platypuses of Australia (CPA) that that simply would not do & now they excrete milk primarily through their abdomen which makes perfect sense in the grand old style. By the way the excommunication of the male Dayak fruit bat for crimes pertaining to male lactation remains in full force. Scientists take note! You wouldn't want any of your precious email leaked now, would you?

Lactation as has been widely noted is a biological process & that's why it makes schoolchildren giggle. Also college students. If you really want to make them laugh, discuss in great detail galactorrhea, which isn't really a big problem but sounds enough like diarrhea to encourage mirth. In recent years however lactation has come under fire by the baby formula industry (now controlled by Halliburton & Montsanto, whose production of petroleum-based, genetically-modified-for-deliciousness infant enhancement juice will replaced mother's milk among most American mutants & zombies, & also the poor, by the year 2020) & has been discredited as an outdated practice mainly used by hippies, pagans, & the grossly uninformed. The grossly uniformed have been unfortunately implicated in this as well, but they are entirely innocent, except of course in regards to fashion crimes. Please learn to spell. Spellcheck isn't always right.

Lactation Liberation being a natural development to ridiculous forces acting in the real world, the shadowy world government under Supreme Leader Sarah Palin has begun replacing real mammalian breasts with artificial ones. To show their support, many women have chosen to support plastic surgery in any nearby mammal, which may explain where your Italian greyhound went, you know. Everyone told you to get her spayed but you were all like "But what if I want to breed her?" & now it's just too fucking bad you were such a selfish asshole & when your canine pal is returned to you she won't be the same & it's all your damn fault. No, don't whine to me. Too fucking bad for you.

What does the future hold for lactation? Only a young child nursing at his mother's teat knows for sure. By the way, is anyone out there as uncomfortable as I am when comedians talk about missing being breast-fed? I know the joke is that they enjoy breasts so much & have from an early age, but aren't they talking about their mothers' breasts? If you extrapolate it out, you know. It's like they are admitting to something incestuous, like they're attracted to their moms, & that kind of grosses me out. People get into fights about that sort of thing, right? "Dude, you're attracted to your mom." "Don't be talking about my mom like that!" Punch, bleed. It just seems like those comedians - they know who they are - are making jokes that they themselves would be horrified by if they really thought about it. Ick.

What Is Favorite If Not The Electronica?

I ask you.

I answer you: despite interesting snafu-lation (at about 6:12am, the power went off at the station for 20 seconds, leaving me a little confused & literally in the dark) & strange noises coming from my belly (what did it want? will I ever know?) there were three hours of 2009-flavored electronica on WMUL today & it was awesome.

Don't believe me? It is surely an easy matter to check for yourself: both this week's episode of Self Help Radio & Dickenbock Electronics is available for your listening to pleasure at selfhelpradio.net, where they should be. Shouldn't you also be?

I thought as much.

Time & Date Dot Com

Anyone who's ever seen me stand up & talk to people & want to plan something but be completely unaware of the date will know that I love timeanddate.com. It makes a calendar for you! It tells you what day the Landing Of The 33 Patriots will be in 2010! (It's a Monday! No school for Uruguayans!) It tells you that next year's Day Of Liberation in Norway falls on a Saturday so you know some fish will be smoked that night! & in Hong Kong (& anywhere else they celebrate it) the Dragon Boat Festival will be on a Wednesday next June, so you totally get a day off in the middle of the week! That's awesome!

One thing that would make timeanddate.com better would be if they also broke down individual days so you'd know when something cool was happening. Like, if you went to West Virginia on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, you'd see at 6am "Dickenbock Electronics" airs on 88.1 fm WMUL in Huntington, & then at 7:30am, Self Help Radio airs on the same station. Maybe if it got a little more detailed, it could predict when I played certain songs & when I did airbreaks. Wow! That would make putting the show together a lot easier for me!

But you can't. That's sad. It doesn't mean I don't still love timeanddate.com, but it does mean I don't love them as much as I could. & it's their own fault. Sad frowny face.

Whither Gary's Favorite Electronica 2009?

This is a short puzzle about Wilder, the loneliest robot. It takes place in your immediate future.

Preferably use the commercial (not the non-commercial, home-made) version of Wilder, the loneliest robot. Recommended models include: Heterosexual Wilder, Subway Token Taking Wilder, Wilder With New Bass Guitar Attachment, Senator Wilder Of Circuitsvania. Using a Plain Brown Wilder is acceptable but may not withstand the scorching heat in step seven below.

After several long conversations with your spiritual adviser of choice or, if you have no supernatural beliefs, with your bartender &/or cats, please enclose a self-addressed envelope stamp in a moderately comfortable billowy undergarment. Shake nervously. Sidelong glances, as always, are inappropriate but understandable.

With winter on the way, it's a good idea to check or change your antifreeze, not necessarily in that order.

Some women prefer wine, while some men prefer women. Seventeen revered statisticians (all with the letter 'e' in their names at least seven times) take such tidbits of data & write long, lengthy, several-paged abstracts about concrete ideas. In any given sample, then, someone is bound to use the word "literally" incorrectly, & of that a subset will use it laughably. Not a one, not even in sarcastic places like Buffalo, New York, or Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, will use it ironically.

When someone mentions bonfires, which they will at some point if precautions are not taken, & they are not, then the choices you previously had dwindle to merely several, or perhaps just a few. Stand firm, & tell the story of Timmy, the odiferous ocelot, & his above-ground adventures with the Whisker Gang. These stories get more entertaining as more gasoline is huffed, but that shouldn't be necessary unless someone wants to burn rock & roll records.

Viola! You've made Wilder, the loneliest robot, cry! & that's how electronic music was born!

Preface To Gary's Favorite Electronica 2009: Can You Give Us A Hint What To Expect?

Yes, it was a wonderful year for electronical music. I've been happily doing a biweekly show called "Dickenbock Electronics" on WMUL since late September (you can listen to those shows over at selfhelpradio.net) & it's made me focus a little more on electronica than maybe I normally would have, but I did compile a list last week of my favorite electronic records of the year & it was - shall we say - a bit unweildy. It contained the following artists:

Ametsub, Autoclav1.1, Keef Baker, Bibio, The Boats, Boxcutter, Cheju, Christ, Clark, Cybo, Demdike, The Exaltics, Exile, Falty DL, The Field, Flica, Ghosts On Tape, Jon Hopkins, Infinite Scale, Jega, Kettel, Phil Kieran, King Cannibal, Legowelt, Lullatone, Lusine, Melodium, Monolake, Nosaj Thing, Ochre, Prefuse 73, Rustie, Saycet, Shackleton, Shpongle, Stendeck, 10-20, Luke Vibert, Paul White & Zomby

Of course I still need to whittle it down - a lot of them just won't make the final cut. But wow! Isn't it nice to be able to choose rather than say "oh, golly, I need another song... what didn't suck too much?"

It was a very nice year for electronica, it's true.