Preface To Afraid: I'm Afraid It's The 1400th Post!

1400 posts!  Oh my gosh!

Time to do the meth!  I mean, math!

Blog start date: 09/12/16.
Post 100: 03/07/07 (176 days later).
Post 200: 08/12/07 (158 days later).
Post 300: 01/09/08 (149 days later).
Post 400: 05/26/08 (138 days later - my previous best time).
(If this were a race.)
(It isn't.)
(It would be weird if it was.)
Post 500: 10/14/08 (141 days later).
Post 600: 03/25/09 (162 days later).
Post 700: 09/23/09 (186 days later - my worst time).
(I moved that summer out of Texas.)
(It's my best excuse.)
Post 800: 02/19/10 (149 days later).
Post 900: 07/23/10 (154 days later).
Post 1000: 12/12/10 (143 days later).
Post 1100: 05/21/11 (158 days later).
Post 1200: 10/12/11 (147 days later).
Post 1300: 03/12/12 (149 days later).

Now, it has been just - if my meth - I mean, math - is right - it has just been 131 days since the 1300th post.  Can that possibly be true?  Nineteen weeks, at five posts a week, does almost equal 100 posts.  But, as usual, I feel I probably got the math wrong.

Still, I average around 150 days per 100 posts, & that makes sense.  This last 100, which may include the least informative & interesting of anything I've ever written (I know, how can tell?), could very well have been a fluke.  I'm certainly not writing any more than I used to.  Maybe I am just making sure to write five days a week.

We're leaving shortly for Nashville but I'm bringing along all the possible afraid songs for the show this week.  I won't be afraid to listen to them on the road!

To Nashville!

Going to Nashville tomorrow to see Marc Maron do stand-up comedy.  Will probably catch up on the latest episodes of the What The Fuck podcast as we drive.

Nashville is a nice city, though I haven't spent much time there.  I am genetically predisposed to like bigger cities, since they generally have more stuff.  For example, Nashville, which is more than three times the size of Lexington, has seven Ethiopian restaurants.  Yeah, seven!  That's seven more than Lexington has.

Why stay in Lexington, then?  I mean, besides WRFL, I mean?  I dunno, man.  Ask the wife.

Down The Road Apiece

I'm not going to say anything about my dumb Twitter account, which is @SelfHelpRadio.  I don't spend enough time on the Twitter to actually make connections & don't feel nearly witty enough to compose memorable tweets day in & day out.  & I never did that "I am at the donut shop with Bob!" sort of Facebook update, so why would I do it on the Twitter?

I am going to say that my wife has returned from five weeks in Costa Rica where, hanging around with howler & capuchin monkeys, she was attempting to find better company than myself & our six dogs & cats.  The fact that she returned makes me wonder if she were hanging out with the wrong kind of capuchin & howler monkeys.  Surely our beagles & kittens are less interesting than such creatures!

Speaking of, I don't think I mentioned that the past five weeks I've been living the bachelor life, as my wife was in a foreign country.  It's because I don't really talk about such things.  It has nothing to do with a radio show, but even more than that, I don't think anyone cares much what I'm doing day-to-day.  Seriously, it's hard enough to convince people to care about the radio show that takes up all of my time.

I'm rambling, I have nothing of value to say.  There are two radio-show-related things to mention, though.  One is that this October - which is of course three months away but sure, I'm trying to plan ahead - is the tenth anniversary of Self Help Radio.  Last year I celebrated the ninth anniversary with tee shirts - this year I think I'll make some Self Help Radio coffee mugs.  Well, not make.  Have made.  You know what I mean.

The other is that, on Saturday, I'll post my 1400th post on this blog.  I know.  Insert joke here about how someone who has nothing to say has said so much.  Is there something special I can do for the fourteen hundredth post?  I mean, I'm driving to Nashville to see Marc Maron.  I may make him lemon bars.  Other that that, though - what can I do for you?

-Less & -Less Of A Show

Helpless. Weightless. Careless. Breathless. Timeless. Effortless. Meaningless. Loveless. Hopeless. Heartless. Reckless. Tactless. Wireless. Senseless. Artless.  All these words & more may have been used to describe Self Help Radio.  How would I know?  No one tells me anything.

Please enjoy a show which is gormless, feckless & maybe even ruthless.  It's available uselessly at the Self Help Radio website.  Needlessly I divide the show into two parts: part one & part two.  Blameless, I put the list of songs below.

I thank you for your selfless listening.

(part one)

"Helpless" Sugar _Copper Blue_
"Weightless" Blue Aeroplanes _Swagger_

"Careless" The Go-Betweens _Send Me A Lullaby_
"Breathless" Momus _Timelord_
"Restless" The Bangles _All Over The Place_
"Timeless" Zolar X _Timeless_
"Effortless" Athletico Spizz 80 _Do A Runner_
"Meaningless" Magnetic Fields _69 Love Songs_

"Loveless" Lloyd Cole _Lloyd Cole_
"Helpless" Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds _The Weeping Song_
"Restless" Tanya Donelly _Sliding & Diving EP_

(part two)

"Hopeless" Future Bible Heroes _Memories Of Love_

"Breathless" X _Beyond & Back: The X Anthology_
"Helpless" Kim Weston _A Complete Introduction To Northern Soul_
"Heartless" Martha Reeves _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 9: 1969_
"Restless" Sonny Burgess _Hittin' That Jug! The Best Of Sonny Burgess_
"Reckless" Tilly & The Wall _Wild Like Children_
"Careless" Cinerama _Torino_

"Tactless" The Band Of Holy Joy _Manic, Magic, Majestic_
"Wireless" Kleenex Girl Wonder _Sexual Harassment_
"Senseless" Aquadays _Airpop: An Apricot Records Compilation_
"Artless" Peter Himmelman _Unstoppable Forces_

Ever So Slight Delay

Would it bother anyone if it took me longer than a day to put today's episode of Self Help Radio up on the Self Help Radio website?

Oh, you didn't know there was an episode of Self Help Radio today?  Yeah, it's on Mondays.  Since when?  I guess it's been over a year now.  Yeah, sometimes I don't make myself very clear.  What?  It's on in Lexington.  Lexington, Kentucky.  No, you see, I haven't lived in Austin for over three years.  What's that?  You didn't listen to the show when it was on there, either?  Then please, don't let me ruin your happy life!

Okay, since no one cares either way - by which I mean, no one cares - I will edit the show & put it online tomorrow.  Tonight, I battle evil wearing long underwear!

Whither -less & -less?

Self Help Radio may be artless, but it isn't boundless.  Doubtless there are those who find it charmless, & that doesn't make me speechless.  Indeed, the show is the very opposite of effortless - sometimes senseless, other times lifeless.  (Hardly ever tuneless, though.  Unless...  Well, you'd probably find it all worthless anyway.)  Regardless, though spineless at times we try to be selfless, & change the facial expressions on the emotionless & smileless & cheerless.  We're not fearless but we're also not entirely dauntless - it'd be useless to have any sort of breathless attitude like that.  In reality, we're far more gormless & feckless - which may explain why we're loveless.  We wish we're weren't so thoughtless - we wish we left you breathless - instead, we're rather witless.  We know.  We know.


Still, should you find these charges baseless, you can listen to the show tomorrow - Monday the 16th - from 7:30 to 9:00 am EST on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington.  You can listen online at wrfl dot fm & I'd be careless if I didn't put the show up tomorrow at the Self Help Radio website.


Mindless fun!  Perhaps?

Preface To -Less & -Less: A Deficient Understand Of Suffixes

I've never done a suffix show before.  I have thought of doing an adverb show.  I am fond of adverbs.  In typical fashion, I hadn't paid any attention to adverbs until someone I was crazy about pointed them out to me.

It was a girl named Lauren, whom I now refer to as "the second love of my life."  I know, it's a complete misunderstanding of the term.  But I like to pretend I got three chances at love, & while I blew the first two, & fouled a couple of times, I made sure to get a base hit for the third time.

Lauren was number two.  There's a Billy Bragg line that comes to mind: "She should've been the last, but she was just the latest."  Ah well.

Anyway, Lauren liked adverbs.  So crazy was I for her that I decided, one weekend, that I'd make her an entire dictionary, just full of adverbs.  I sat down with a real dictionary - this was right before the internet was popular - I didn't even have a computer! - & I started to make a list of adverbs for her.

I didn't get very far.  There are just too many adverbs.  Just like there are too many adjectives that end with -less.  But I am not trying to be complete here!

People I Know Who (I Assume) Are Doing Well, Part III

For the past couple of weeks I've been subbing the RFL show El Tren Latino, which means "the Latin train," & which, if you search for it on the internets, you'll first find a restaurant in Irving, Texas, which is now closed, & not a radio show on Saturday nights in Lexington, Kentucky.

I know next to nothing about modern Latin music.  I know almost next to nothing about Latin jazz, which is what I've been playing on El Tren Latino when I subbed, & what little I know about Latin jazz, I owe to a show that aired on KOOP radio roughly around the same time that Self Help Radio was on the station, & that show was called Soul Sauce.

Soul Sauce was the love-child of a fellow named Dan Shiman, or, as he called himself on the air, Little Danny.  Danny called me up - this is how we met - when he found out that someone had promised the timeslot he had been promised (by someone else) to me.  KOOP in those days had a kind of screwed-up method of giving & getting shows, I should talk about it some day.  We chatted - I have a feeling he thought I'd be more intractable - & we came up with a happy solution for the both of us.  We presented our compromise to a body called the Programming Committee, which really (at the time) had no real power, & they rubber-stamped it.  He was eminently agreeable & we were always friendly with one another, if not ever friends.

He disappeared - I can see from the Soul Sauce link above - a year before I did, & seems to have landed in Marfa, Texas.  I know that because his musical curiosity - & his love of vinyl - led him to create the blog Office Naps, wherein he shares & writes about "45 RPM curios."  He also has a show on public radio in Marfa - he's one of those people you meet in radio who seem to need to be on the radio.  Sort of like me, except he's better at it.

I've been thinking about him because I couldn't sub this El Tren Latino show if it hadn't been for the education Little Danny gave me with his radio show - & I'm glad to see that he seems to be doing quite well out there in Marfa!

(I'll be subbing El Tren Latino one last time tomorrow from 6 to 8pm Lexington time.  You can listen on 88.1 fm in Lexington or online at wrfl dot fm.  It's nowhere near as good as Dan's show, though.  Listen to that on Wednesday nights on KRTS in Marfa.)

Dash Hyphen Hyphen Dash

Over on my Facebook page, a listener asked me why doesn't "Self Help Radio" have a hyphen?  After all, pretty much every time you see the phrase "self-help," like in this Wikipedia entry, there's a hyphen between "self" & "help."

My response was a little glib & I wasn't really trying to answer.  I said, "Because it's not a self-help radio show.  It's Self Help Radio."

The "real" answer is pretty dumb.  Obviously my show isn't a self-help radio show, & even more obviously, it's not a parody of self-help radio shows or self-help anything.  (Although I have tried to do that - & am just not funny enough to pull it off.)  (Though I've never tried to take calls or things like that, to dispense ridiculous advice.  I always imagine someone will take it seriously & I'll be put in the same circle of hell as televangelists when I die.)

(I know, I'm too self-important.)

The reason the show is called Self Help Radio is that, when I started the show, I honestly didn't know you were supposed to put a dash between "Self" & "Help."  Did you get that?  I just didn't know.

However, I am pleased that it does separate me from "self-help radio" shows.  I can say I do a show called "Self Help Radio" & it does appear, at least in writing, to be different from "self-help radio."  Also, I guess, it's capitalized.

It's interesting that the listener noticed that the show's name doesn't have a hyphen, because other people not only don't notice, they don't care.  In this article from my time at WMUL, the writer (who doubtless got his or her information from the Station Manager) not only uses the hyphen but also puts the show's name in quotation marks.  Like it's the type of show I do, not the name of the show.

Or my friend Hayden, who quoted me on the Fall, over at his blog.  (I asked him to correct it but he didn't.)  (Yes I asked him to correct it!  It's not what my show's called!)

I know, self-important much?

This Week's List

√ 1. Do a show about lists.
√ 2. Try not to fuck it up.
√ 3. Apologize a lot when you fuck it up.
√ 4. Go home & beat yourself up about fucking it up.
√ 5. Get some sleep.
√ 6. After waking, put the shows up on the Self Help Radio website.
√ 7. Divide the show into two parts, part one & part two.
√ 8. Make a list available of the songs in each part.
√ 9. Pretend people are going to download the show, &, if possible, pretend they also might enjoy it.
√ 10. Thank them for listening.
√ 11. Drink to forget.

(part one)

"I've Got A Little List" Eric Idle _Mikado (English National Opera Cast Highlights)_
"List" Kanda _All The Best Meetings Are Taken_
"Favorite Things" Me First & The Gimme Gimmes _Are A Drag_

"I've Been Everywhere" Johnny Cash _American Recordings: Unchained_
"Wanted Man" Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds _The Firstborn Is Dead_
"Who By Fire" Leonard Cohen _New Skin For The Old Ceremony_
"A B & C" Death By Chocolate _Bric-a-Brac_
"My Year In Lists" Los Campesinos _Hold On Now, Youngster_

"The Ten Commandments" George Carlin _When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?_
"Thou Shalt Always Kill" Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip _Angles_

(part two)

"Reasons To Be Cheerful (Part Three)" Ian Dury & The Blockheads _Reasons To Be Cheerful_
"Bob" Weird Al Yankovic _Poodle Hat_
"The Elements" Tom Lehrer _The Remains Of Tom Lehrer_

"Endless Art" A House _The Way We Were: The Best Of A House 04.85-02.97_
"The Booklovers" The Divine Comedy _Promenade_
"Bluestocking" Momus _Hippopotamomus_
"Hot Topic" Le Tigre _Le Tigre_

"Irk The Purists" Half Man Half Biscuit _Trouble Over Bridgwater_
"Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend's Too Stupid To Know About" Tullycraft _The Singles_
"His Indie World" Mary Lou Lord _Mary Lou Lord EP_
"Scottish Pop" Spearmint _A Different Lifetime_
"88 Lines About 44 Women" The Nails _Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits Of The 80's, Vol. 3_

Whither Lists?

1. This show was not really my idea.
2. Someone emailed me(*) & said that she liked songs about lists & thought it was a good idea for a show.
3. I did too.
4. I did ask, did she mean songs about lists &/or songs that were basically lists?
5. She answered back, "Yes."
6. I took that to mean "and" not "or."
7. The show will be on tomorrow morning from 7:30 to 9:00 am on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington.
  7a. It appears the website is down & may not be back up till later tomorrow.
  7b. That means only Lexingtonians can listen to it live.
  7c. But you can try to listen at wrfl dot fm.
  7d. I'll archive the show tomorrow on the SHR site.
  7e. So you won't miss it.  If you might miss it.
8. It occurs to me this list could repeat every week.
9. It's pretty much the same, though probably not really.
10. Oh, & even though there are ten items on this list, it's not a "top ten" list.

(*) You can email me with theme ideas too.  This is where you can find the email address.

Preface To Lists: My "To Do" List

Do you keep a list of things to do?  I never used to.  I thought I had a great memory (& perhaps I did) (before age & alcohol started messing things up) & rarely did I have to write things down.  (I probably misremember all the times I forgot to do something or be somewhere.)  But late in life (within the past couple of years) I've discovered the joys & frustrations of keeping a list.

The joys, mostly, are involved with a process called "check things off."  Some people "cross things out."  Since my list is electronic, I just check things off - or sometimes I erase them entirely.  (Though I do have a master list of things I need to do every day.  It's true.  & one of the things on that list is:

Write in SHR blog. (Thursday through Monday).

Because I do sometimes forget.

These are called "to do" lists (for things you have to do) but the show this week won't have many of those.  I don't think I have a song at all that's a "to do" list.  Which is a shame, because, like I said, they are full of joy.

The frustration is when you don't finish what's on the list.  In general, my "to do" list is tasks I hope to complete every day.  I never do even half of them.  That does concern me.

But not enough to give up on the list or try harder to complete it.  Because even though my list could easily turn out to be very judgmental, it hardly ever is.

People I Know Who Are Doing Well, Part II

If you're in Dallas, you should stop by the place above - it's a bar but it's also now an art gallery - to have a drink & to look at the art of another old friend - the artist, Scott Lackey.

I met Scott over twenty years ago when he was in a class with my girlfriend at the time.  She raved about his art.  He stayed friends with me even after she dumped me, which was nice.  I needed all the friends I could get back then.

We drifted apart over time & he wandered the world in search of adventure, but thanks to the magic of Facebook, we've become friends again, & I wish I could go to this opening.  It's at least as hot here right now as it is in Dallas!

It's fun to see how excited he is by this exhibit - it means a lot to him.  I wonder if he has a web page for it?  Well, he has a Yelp page.  Good luck to him!

People I Know Who Are Doing Well, Part I

This book - pictured above, linked over there - which I own but have not read - was written by a fellow I have known since I was six or seven years old.  His name is Dale Smith & I seem to remember considering him my best friend in first grade.

One day, after we had talked about his collection of fully posable action figures - this would have been before Star Wars, so they were probably super heroes - he invited me over to his house after school to see them.  I was quite impressed!  I remember that his mother was quite young & pretty - she might have been as young as twenty-five.  When I was seven, my mother was forty-five.  It seemed a delight to have a pretty mother.

As I walked home, I was stopped by a police car.  I had neglected to tell anyone I was going to Dale's house after school, & my mother had called the police.  I don't remember if I was punished, but I do recall being scared by the police car.  I don't think I rode in it, though.

Dale & I knew each other all through elementary & middle school, but were never quite as close.  His family moved from Garland after ninth grade was over.  In that curious way that life has of making coincidences seem portentous, we actually had lockers next to each other in that first year of high school.  He didn't come back to our school for the tenth grade year, & because we weren't really friends at the time, I didn't take much notice.

We became reacquainted in 1988 or 1989 in an English class at the University of Texas.  His family had moved to Austin, & we both happened to be English majors.  As the teacher called roll that first day, in alphabetical order, I turned around when I heard the name "Dale Smith."  He must've wondered when he heard my name.  We talked after class.  We would, again, become good friends.

Now he's an actual perfesser at a college in Canada & I just do an obscure radio show that's not really as good as most of the programs on my wonderful radio station.  I think at a different time I might have been terribly jealous, but I am just so happy he's where he is - I know that's where he wanted to be, teaching people, writing books, writing poetry.  That sort of happiness destroys even the seed of jealousy in me.

Swanning About

You might be thinking, "Is this show a reaction to those weird stories we were told as children about gods turning into swans to rape women?"  If so, you had the same reaction I did.  Maybe not as badly as the whole shower of gold thing - christ that would have hurt - but still, a swan?  Gods have a sick sense of humor, in general, but horny gods are the worst.

No, no, the show's not about that.  Nor about the time I caught the whooping cough from a whooper swan.  It turned my neck black & I was mute for a month.  All of my breaths sounded like trumpets & my throat was as dry as tundra.  But I digress.  (Ha ha, swan humor!)

The show about swans, which includes me swanning about, is now available in its own habitat at the Self Help Radio website.  It's in two parts: swanshow part I & swanshow part II.  & all the swan songs are listed below.  Please note: the show features several songs about swans but four actual swan songs, three more than is legally allowed.  My bad.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"You Swan, Go On" Mount Eerie _Lost Wisdom_

"The Swan" Julee Cruse _Floating Into The Night_

"The Swan (from 'Carnival Of The Animals')" Camille Saint-Saëns _Classical Comedy: Wagner's Rinse Cycle_

"Swan Blues" King Pleasure _Moody's Mood For Love_

"La Cigona (The Swan)" Honeybus _She Flies Like A Bird: The Anthology_

"Swans & Butterflies" The Green Pajamas _Seven Fathoms Down & Falling_

"Clang Of The Concrete Swans" Comet Gain _Howl Of The Lonely Crowd_

"Swan Lee (Silas Lang)" Syd Barrett _Opel_

"Ride A White Swan" T Rex _Ride A White Swan_

"Lovely Little Swan" Close Lobsters _Headache Rhetoric_

(part two)

"Badge" Cream _Goodbye_

"Swan Pond" Julie Doiron _I Woke Myself Up_

"Swans" Camera Obscura _The Blizzard EP_

"Black Swan" Nina Simone _At Carnegie Hall_

"Blue Swan" Cleaners From Venus _The Wayward Genius Of Martin Newell_

"Imagine The Swan" The Zombies _Time Of The Zombies_

"Here Come The Swans (Acoustic)" Kitchens Of Distinction _Capsule (The Best Of Kitchens Of Distinction 1988-94)_

"My Swan Song" Dave Frisberg _Honky Soul, Race Music, Hard Bop & Anachronistic Jazz_

"Swan Song" Marc Almond _Varieté_

"Sing Swan Song" Can _Ege Bamyasi_

"Swan Song" Tall Dwarfs _Stumpy_

Whither Swans?

I was listening a few weeks back to a record by King Pleasure called Moody's Mood For Love & enjoying very much this song called "Swan Blues."  In that funny way one's brain works while one is doing something else, a note was scribbled in my head which read "you should do a show about swans."

It was only after I thought about it later, when I had begun to gather songs about swans, that I realized there aren't really any swans in King Pleasure's song.  It's just the title.  Oh well!  I'll play it anyway, since it was my inspiration.

The show is very swanny & it'll be on tomorrow morning from 7:30 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington.  You can listen to it online too at wrfl dot fm.  & I'll archive it later at the Self Help Radio website.

No jokes about the show being an ugly duckling wishing it could be a swan!

Preface To Swans: These Swans, Not Those Swans

There are a few rules that I've followed from day one with Self Help Radio, & those rules are as arbitrary as the show, & they're not rules I've publicized or otherwise written out - I've just known I would do the show this way & I have.

One of them is this: the themes are about the songs, not the bands.  Or, to put it another way, I don't allow the name of the band (or any of the people in the band) to qualify for a show's theme.  For example, there was a fellow in Austin who always wanted me to do spectacularly easy themes - he once said I should do a show about "cars" - & he called in when I did a show about zombies.  "Are you going to play the Zombies?" he asked.

If the Zombies did a song about zombies, I would play them, I told him.  It seemed just too lazy to say, "Since this show is about the living dead, here's an unrelated band that happens to have the same name as today's theme, let's listen to 'She's Not There!'"

Which is my long-winded way of saying I won't be playing the band Swans during the show.  Unless they have a song about swans I don't at this moment know about.

I did one time want to do a show about songs about bands.  You know, people singing about the Beatles or what-not.  It turns out that another show the day I thought of it had just completed that show.  That was in 2002.  I am still trying to make sure there's a safe enough distance between our two shows so that it won't seem like I am copying the other show.

Oh, & I also one day will do a show about bands who have songs that are the band's name.  Like, you know, Belle & Sebastian have a song called "Belle & Sebastian."  I have hesitated because I am unsure whether I can count songs like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream."  Can I?

Boom! goes the Boomslang

I happened to be in the WRFL offices today just in time to overhear (that's a nice way to say "eavesdrop on") a discussion about the station's annual music festival, which is called Boomslang (not this boomslang - that would be scary, but this Boomslang), & there are some exciting things happening when the event takes place in September.  Maybe I wasn't supposed to overhear  & therefore I shouldn't talk about the "unconfirmed" guests, but I can say you should keep an eye on the official Boomslang website because there might be a reason to visit in September.  I got an extra room.

If anything, one contributing factor to a visit has to be the weather.  It's been really hot (by Kentucky standards) the last few days - over 100 degrees Fahrenheit today, & I don't think it's been that hot in this region in the three years I've been here.  But I took the dogs for a walk just now & it feels fine out there.  For one, there's usually a nice breeze.  In Texas, the breezes get trapped by the dead trees, who suck the life out of them.  The boys were panty & I got a little sweaty, but 8 pm in Lexington on a late June day is different than Austin, even when the highs are the same - it's ten degrees cooler here than there at that time.  Although the humidity is the same.  So maybe it wasn't honest sweat.

But in September, ah!  There was a discussion about an outdoor event at last year's Boomslang & I recall it was decided not to have it at night because "it would be too cold."  Too cold at night!  In September.

That's a thing to like about living in the midwest.

Twitter Pimping

I just wrote this ("tweeted") on my Twitter account:


"That's it! If Canada gets reelected I'm moving to Obamacare!"


That is just the sort of hard-hitting political observational humor you'll get from me, as well as short sentences that mean not a whole lot, if you "follow" me on Twitter.  It's @SelfHelpRadio.  You can read my ridiculous twits here.


Oh!  If you go there, you'll see I have only a handful of "followers."  That is appropriate but it makes me sad.  Why don't you "follow" me?  I'm not really going anywhere, but, you know.  It's something to do.


I'm really bad at this, aren't I?

Pressure Suits Me

Finally!  A searing exposé into the high-pressure world of non-commercial radio!  Listen as the deejay plays music on an empty college campus!  Overhear in the background the sound of a computer idling with disuse!  Sense the horrible regret almost forming as the deejay tells the caller ONE MORE TIME that he's pretty sure No Doubt never wrote a song about pressure!  It may break you!  It may shake you!  It may take you ninety minutes to listen to it!

The pressure-filled songs are listed below.  Hurry, before the pressure gets too great - & I'm not even talking about the peer pressure - & listen to the show over at the Self Help Radio website.  If you must have instant satisfaction - & in this high pressure high stakes world, who has time for satisfaction that takes longer than an instant - you can listen to part one here & you can listen to part two here.

I can't take this pressure!

(part one)

"Pressure's On" Red C _Flex Your Head_
"The Pressure's On" Rudi _Babylon's Burning - The Rough & Ready Rise Of Punk Rawk 1973 - 1978_
"Pressure Zone" Beat Union _Disconnected_

"Under Pressure" Xiu Xiu _Women As Lovers_
"Too Much Pressure" Selecter _Too Much Pressure_
"Pressure Drop" Toots & The Maytals _The Harder They Come_
"The Pressure" A Tribe Called Quest _Beats, Rhymes & Life_
"The Pressure Of Life (Takes The Weight Off The Body)" Fun Boy Three _Waiting_

"Inna City Pressure" Dr. Israel _Inna City Pressure_
"Inner City Pressure" Flight Of The Conchords _Flight Of The Conchords_

(part two)

"How Much Pressure (Do You Think I Can Stand)" Roscoe Robinson _The Sweet Sound Of Success_
"Get Up Offa That Thing (Release The Pressure)" James Brown _Star Time_

"Pressure Suit" Adult. _Resuscitation_
"High Blood Pressure" Bobby Marchan & The Clowns _Huey "Piano" Smith's Rock & Roll Revival_
"Can You Stand The Pressure" Bobby Freeman _Double Shot Of Soul_
"Pressure" The Kinks _Low Budget_
"Peer Pressure" The Defekts _Red Snerts_
"No Pressure" Secret Cities _Strange Hearts_

"Pressure" Neil Young _Landing On Water_
"Pressure" Bram Tchaikovsky _Pressure_
"Of Pressure" Mirah _You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This_
"The Intolerable Pressures Of Modern Life" The Otto Show _The Otto Show_