Self Help Radio 040414: The Way Out Show

Self Help Radio this week is way out!  It's way out in Kentucky.  Way out on a planet called Earth in the outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy.  & it's got no way out.

But there are doubtless way out songs on the show you might enjoy.  You can listen to it here: Self Help Radio website.  Or you can listen to it directly here: part one & then also part two.  Way down below here is the list of songs I played.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Way Out Willie" Mickey Hawks _Bip Bop Boom_
"She's Too Way Out" Tony Dangerfield & The Thrills _Freakbeat Freakout_
"Way Out Love" The Four Pennies _Trouble Is My Middle Name_
"Way Way Out" The Girls _New Rubble, Vol. 5: Scratch My Back_

"We've Got A Way Out Love" The Originals _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 9: 1969_
"Hey Little Way Out Girl" The Construction _The Wigan Casino Story Continues_
"Way Out Love" The Isley Brothers _Between The Sheets_
"Way Out" Yeah Yeah Yeahs _Show Your Bones_
"Way Out" April March & Steve Hanft _Magic Monsters_

"When There's No Way Out" Guitar Slim _Atco Sessions_
"No Way Out" Joyce Harris & The Daylighters _The Domino Records Story_
"No Way Out" Clarence Reid _Eccentric Soul: The Outskirts Of Deep City_

(part two)

"No Way Out" The Chocolate Watchband _Love Is The Song We Sing (San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970)_
"No Way Out" Thee Headcoats _Heavens To Murgatroyd, Even! It's Thee Headcoats! (Already)_
"No Way Out" The Legends _Up Against The Legends_
"No Way Out Of Time" Robyn Hitchcock _Spooked_

"Way Out There" Chuck & Bill (The Kentuckians) _Oh Boy! The Brunswick Story_
"That's Your Way Out" The Pandoras _It's About Time_
"The Old Way Out" The Go-Betweens _Spring Hill Fair_
"Way Out Of Reach" The Manhattan Love Suicides _Burnt Out Landscapes_
"Way Out" Bass Drum Of Death _Bass Drum Of Death_
"I Found A Way Out" Bill Cosby _Talks To Kids About Drugs_

"Way Out West" Big Star _Radio City_
"Way Out West" Angel Corpus Christi _The 80's_
"Way Out" The La's _Callin' All_

Whither The Way Out Show?

Holy crap, I'm at this point where I don't really know what I can talk about during a show in which the theme is "way out"!

Why do you have to talk about anything?  Why not just let the music speak for itself?

Damn it!  It's me in italics!

Howdy.

You go away.  You're never helpful.  You pretend to be a more laid-back version of me but your ideas are stupid.

Oh, dude, that's harsh.

Let's take for example that last one: "let the music speak for itself."  It does.  I don't have a problem with that.  But I don't usually talk about the music I play.  I talk about the themes.

Wow, I guess I didn't know that.

You didn't know that?  You're ME for fuck's sake!

I don't listen to your show, though.  I tried once.  It was kinda boring.

Arrgh!

Wait.  Did you really just write "Arrgh"?

Yeah, it's a noise I make in frustration.

But you didn't actually say it, did you?

No, of course not.  Because I'm writing on a computer screen.  Anyway, when someone is talking to themselves, they usually don't make noises unless they want passers-by to think they're crazy-pants.

Writing "arrgh" is like the 20th century way of texting "LOL."

I hate you.

I know!

Preface To The Way Out Show: Frames Of Reference

I might have explained the way I find themes to explore on the show, before, on this blog.  But I will repeat myself.  It's not an interesting or mysterious or inspired process, but it is a process.  I think of something, usually at random moments, & I create a folder on my computer with the name of the theme & then start to fill it in.

A friend calls this "letting the universe talk to you."  I don't believe that coincidences mean anything, but if I am listening to three records in a row, & they all have songs about soap on them, my brain will tell me, "You should do a show about soap."  So I'll create the folder & let my brain work on it in the background.

At some point I decide there's enough songs to do a show.  I take a little more time to do more direct searching for songs, but the bulk of the show is already there.

Sometimes it takes years to get a theme covered.  In my "folder of themes" (which for some reason is labeled "extras" on my computer), I have folders that go back to 2008.  This is true!  Some ideas don't get much exploration.  They just lie there.

In any event, coincidences happen, & although I have left WRFL, I am still aware of the show schedule, & since last fall there's a show called "The Way Out" on the station.  It wouldn't bother me if that show's name (not necessarily its content) inspired this week's show, but I am here to say, it didn't.  The "way out show" folder was created in 2012, when Matt, the show's host, was still doing "Burning Sensations."

I toyed with the idea of contacting him to see if he wanted to record a disclaimer for me ("The program The Way Out is not involved with nor endorses the program Self Help Radio"), but I didn't want to bother him.  I can only say that he does a fine show, & it's on Thursdays at 2pm at wrfl.fm or 88.1 fm in Lexington.

I hope he doesn't think my show is a comment or rip-off on his!

Combatting Sunrise With Hate

This is true: I had an argument last night with someone in a dream in which we were talking about the New Testament's attitude toward homosexuality.  It wasn't even someone who was a friend, or is a Christian, or a homophobe - it was an old acquaintance's wife.  It was in a suite of apartments in which I have never lived but in the dream was my home.  My brain did this wonderful thing it does which confronted with the request for information it did not have: it didn't let me get to my computer to access that information.  I think my brain is clever to do that.

This is also true: The wife got a cable phone for us, but no one knows the number.  That doesn't keep it from ringing several times a day.  At least twice I've received calls from the Kentucky Prison System or whatever it's called.  It asks me to press one to accept the call & to press another key for more information.  There does not appear to be a number to refuse the call.  I don't want want to be rude but I also don't want to waste an inmate's time, so I just hang up.  Then I have the feeling I've broken someone's heart.

This is not true: I am a six foot tall dragonfly who has forgotten how to fly.  But I have not forgotten how to be a dragon.  It's difficult to get my jittery damn wings through doorways so now, out of frustration, I just breathe fire on them & burn my way through.  This has caused me to destroy my own home & also I am not invited to anyone else's houses anymore.  The novelty of having a friend who is a six foot tall dragonfly is made negligible by the property damage I inflict with my awkwardness & impatience (also, fire).  This in turn has caused me to plunge into deep despair but has not, alas, resulted in any real soul-searching or attempts to improve my character.

Five Inches Of Hair

"Is that all it will take?" I asked.  "Yes," he said.  "Just five inches of hair."

He had shifty eyes.  Night shifty eyes.  More comfortable with cold, uncomfortable fluorescent light.

"That's not a lot of hair," I said.  "It's enough," he said.

I looked around his office.  The place was untidy, like a teenager's room.  It smelled of coffee stains & unfinished tuna salad sandwiches.

"What're you looking for?" he asked.  "A ruler," I said.  "If you don't have a ruler - or a tape measure - there's no way to know if it's exactly five inches of hair."

Being exact was important to me at that time in my life.  It was a kind of mental punctuality.

"An inch is about as big the length from knuckle to tip of the average finger," he said, pointing one finger at me & using another (from the other hand) to demonstrate.

I hadn't looked at his hands yet, & now I wish I hadn't.  They looked like they'd been broken at least twice in the past, & repaired by an arthritic doctor.

"I guess that's fair," I conceded, pushing his hand out of my way.  "Five inches of hair is fair."

He clapped his malformed hands together & it made a pathetic noise.  He was happy, & I saw him reach into a desk drawer & remove a pair of scissors that could have doubled as shears.

"No, no," I said.  "Not now!"  "Not now?" he repeated as a question.

I made strange gestures over my head that I initially thought might be self-explanatory, but instead looked like I was trying to clumsily mimic a fashionable dance popular with trendy commercial music.

"I'll need to grow it first!" I finally explained.

Self Help Radio 032814: Ants

Ants! Ants everywhere! Where the hell did all these ants come from? Holy crap I'm covered in ants!

Save me from all these ants!  Listen to this show at the Ant Help Radio website!  Or you can listen to directly by clicking the two parts: part one covered in ants! or part two in the anthill!  All the ant songs are being carried away by a line of ants below!

Ants! Ants! Ants!

(part one)

"Army Ants In Your Pants" Bruce Haack _Listen Compute Rock Home: The Best Of Dimension 5_
"The Ant & The Grasshopper" Leon Rosselson & Roy Bailey _That's Not The Way It's Got To Be_
"Il Grillo E La Formica (The Ant & The Cricket)" Unidentified _The Italian Treasury: Abruzzo_

"Ants In My Pants" Bo Carter _Them Dirty Blues_
"I Can't Dance (I Got Ants In My Pants) (Louis Jordan, vocals)" Clarence Williams & His Washboard Orchestra _1933-1934_
"Make Me Dance, Little Ant" Joe Hughes & His Orchestra _I Dreamed I Was Elvis_
"I Got Ants In My Pants, Part 1 (Reverb Version)" James Brown _The Singles, Volume 8: 1972-1973_
"Idiosyncratic Ant Blues" Pagiins _Good Things Take Time EP_

"High Hopes" Frank Sinatra _The Complete Capitol Singles Collection_
"Ant Music" OK Go _Get Over It_
"Ants Invasion" Adam & The Ants _Kings Of The Wild Frontier_
"Red Ant" Smack Dab _Majestic Root_

(part two)

"Ant Corridor" Robyn Hitchcock _Luxor_
"Ant" They Might Be Giants _Indestructible Object EP_
"Exploding Anthills" Boston Spaceships _Zero To 99_

"Ant Man Bee" Captain Beefheart _Trout Mask Replica_
"Ants" Stephen Wright _I Have A Pony_
"200 Million Red Ants" The Majamood _Circus Days Vol. 6_
"Raft Ants" Wire _Read & Burn 2_
"Ants In My Hands" Modey Lemon _Thunder + Lightning_

"Ant Farm" Eels _Electro-Shock Blues_
"Hopi Ants" Lida Husik _The Return Of Red Emma_
"Mister Ant" Psapp _The Camel's Back_
"Ants On A Log" Randy Travis _Full Circle_

Whither Ants?

Radio shows about insects prove immensely popular with entomologists everywhere, who make up roughly 0.005% of the listening population.  This difficult demographic can only be made happy by songs about insects.  Therefore, the United States Radio Commission For Radio requires people who make radio type shows to occasionally cater to the demands of entomologists &/or weirdos who enjoy insects.  This is what Self Help Radio is doing this week.

We'll return to non-ant programming next week.

New Sponsor!

I'm very proud to announce that Self Help Radio has a new sponsor for this week's show.  It's Ant Monthly, the number one magazine about ants in North America.  We're glad to have them aboard!

There Is A Rant & It Never Comes Out

I am not one for complaining about a lot of stuff - except for snow!  It's snowing today!  It's sunny for a second & then it's snowing today!  What the hell? - but I have a rant building up & I'm wondering if it's possibly going to explode all over this blog at some point.

But I don't know if I rant too effectively these days.  I used to be better at it when I was younger - people would describe my airbreaks on KVRX as "rants" - but nowadays I feel weird expressing my own opinion in that manner.  One, I don't think anyone cares; & b, I confess I worry about offending people, which leads me to, who the hell am I & what right do I have to express an opinion (angry or otherwise) about anything?  Isn't it bad enough that people have let me on the radio?

But seriously, SNOW?

That's not what I want to rant about, or discuss, or whatever.  It's just weird.  It's not sticking - it's above freezing - but it is snowing, which is weird, because it's not spring anymore.  Or is it?

That's what I thought.  Here's a picture from downtown Lexington today:

Damn it!

Ant Obsession

This week's show is about ants.  From time-to-time I wish, instead of doing my show, I could just say, "Here's someone doing something better than I ever could, please watch/listen/experience this instead."

In the fourth season (or series) of Monty Python, there's an episode called Michael Ellis, which is fixated with ants.  It's a must-see - & here's an example why: Romantic poets writing about ants:



(Sorry about the Spanish subtitles.)

Self Help Radio 032114: Cheap

Egads! The date is wrong! This show should have happened yesterday! But that's what it gets for being so cheap.

Please enjoy another shoddily put-together Self Help Radio, now available at the Self Help Radio website or directly (it's in two parts) here for part one & here for part two.  A cheap list of cheap songs is below.

Thanks for listening, cheapskates!

(part one)

"Cheap" Seasick Steve & The Level Devils _Cheap_
"All About Cheap" The Homosexuals _Astral Glamour_
"Talk Is Cheap" Heavy D & The Boyz _Blue Funk_

"Cheap Thrills" Frank Zappa _Cruising With Ruben & The Jets_
"Cheap Tragedies" Avengers _Avengers_
"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" Hayseed Dixie _A Hillbilly Tribute To AC/DC_
"Cheap Lovin'" Barbara Randolph _Lee Hazlewood Industries: There's A Dream I've Been Saving (1966-1971)_
"Talk Is Cheap" Sandy Gaye _Eccentric Soul: The Tragar & Note Labels_

"Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room" The Fall _The Infotainment Scan_
"Cheap Beer" Fidlar _Fidlar_
"Junior's Little Sister's Dropped Ta Cheap" Alan Vega _New Raceion_
"Cheap Little Bitch" Raymond & Peter _Shut Up Little Man!_

(part two)

"Born To Be Cheap" Divine _Born To Be Cheap 7"_
"Too Cheap, Cheap" Los Brincos _Mundo, Demonio Y Carne_
"Don't Play Me Cheap" Louis Armstrong _The Complete RCA Victor Recordings_

"Money's Getting Cheaper" Johnny Moore's Three Blazers _Charles Brown 1947-1948_
"Cheaper's Discount Store" Bob & Ray _Bob & Ray's Classics: Volume 1_
"Cheapskate" The Clash _Give 'Em Enough Rope_
"Cheap New-Age Fix" Julian Cope _Interpreter_
"Welcome To The Cheap Seats" The Wonder Stuff _Never Loved Elvis_

"Cheap Like Sebastien" Apostle Of Hustle _National Anthem Of Nowhere_
"Cheap Cuts" Liquorice _Listening Cap_
"Cheap & Vulgar" The Styrenes _It's Still Artastic_
"Cheap Local Talent" Battery Boys _Kilt By Death: The Sound Of Old Scotland_
"Cheap Music" Handsome Furs _Sound Kapital_

Whither Cheap?

I live with possibly the cheapest person alive.  She grew up in an upper middle class household, & her father is "rich" in a sense that I will never understand.  Once, we ate with him at a terrible Chinese restaurant (why?) on the San Antonio Riverwalk.  The bill was nearly a hundred bucks.  He left a dollar tip.

The service wasn't bad - but he just didn't tip much.  I'm sure that's how he felt he stayed rich.

I grew up very poor, but not in poverty.  I didn't even know how poor we were, really - I was a dumb kid, & I spent a lot of time playing with Star Wars figures.  One day, some time in sixth or seventh grade, my mother asked me, "You're not ashamed that we're so poor, are you?"

Well, I wasn't, Mom - until then!

This Cracked article is pretty spot-on about the bad habits one gets when one grows up poor.  I watched my brothers be extravagant on payday & then hit people up for money the rest of the week.  I can be extremely generous myself, although I don't think I've gone too overboard.  But for my wife - who has kept her maiden name, Skinflint - it can be unbearable.  I often tease her about giving money away to charity - & it can enrage her.

She's getting better now.  She has actually been more free & easy with her money from time-to-time.  This show, then, is kind of a backhanded homage to her.

Sorry it's so late.  I hope it's up by noon tomorrow!

Preface To Cheap: Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurants In Asheville NC

They ain't cheap. But I am eating some damn good vegan food.

Eating at Plant now. Ate at Rosetta's Kitchen this morning. Had dinner at Laughing Seed Cafe. Too full, too full of good food.

Remember! No new Self Help Radio tomorrow! It'll happen Saturday!

Vacation

Does A Late Show Mean…?

That there won't be a lot of long blog posts this week?  Yeah.  It means that.

Maybe I'll post some pictures from the short vacation?

We'll have to wait & see.

Spring Broke

Ack! It snowed again here last night. It's so exhausting to wake in the morning, look out the window, & just see white. It's like living in a Dallas suburb.

We're getting away from here for a little while this week so I'll be out of town on Friday. But don't worry! (Okay, you weren't going to worry.) Self Help Radio will have a new episode on Saturday at noon. It's better than nothing! (Maybe nothing would be better?)

If you have a spring break this year, I hope it's somewhere where there's actually the possibility of spring!

Self Help Radio 031414: Melt

"I'm melting! Melting! Oh what a world!"

Self Help Radio melts today, as hopefully all the ice & snow of this intolerably long winter have finally melted & will not bother us again until - well, with the way things are going, September - but let's hope it's over for now & the sun will warm us for a few more months.  The show therefore is an ode to the melting of the world that follows winter.  Or something.

Hey!  You can listen now & feel a little melty too!  It's up now at self help radio dot net!  You can also listen to the show directly from these here links: part one & part two.  Songs with low melting points are listed below.

Thanks for listening, solids!

(part one)

"Melt!" Siouxsie & The Banshees _A Kiss In The Dreamhouse_
"Melt" Guitar _Sunkissed_

"Melt Me" Lily & Maria _Lily & Maria_
"Melt Close" Section 25 _Always Now_
"Melt Against Yourself" Straightjacket Fits _Melt_
"Melt Away" Galaxie 500 _This Is Our Music_

"Summer's Melting My Mind" The Go-Betweens _78 'Til 79: The Lost Album_
"I Melt With You" The Rondelles _In Their Eyes: 90s Teen Bands Vs. 80s Teen Movies_

(part two)

"Melted Crayons" Fog _You Don't Know Ninja Cuts_
"Melting Arthur" Robyn Hitchcock _I Wanna Go Backwards_
"Let it Melt" The Mayfair Set _Young One EP_

"Melted Pat (live)" Guided By Voices _Hardcore UFOs: Live At The Wheelchair Races_
"Jennifer Meltdown" Ed Hines Band _Girls; Their Hearts_
"The Melting Wall" Golden Triangle _Double Jointer_
"Melted" Ty Segall _Melted_
"The Great American Melting Pot" Lori Lieberman _Schoolhouse Rock: America Rock_

"Ice Melts" Matt & Kim _Sidewalks_
"Ode To Janice Melt" Army Navy _The Last Place_
"Melting Ice" Ladytron _Gravity The Seducer_

Whither Melt?

Above is the Schoolhouse Rock video for "The Great American Melting Pot," a lovely ode to immigration & its role in populating America.  It's one of the songs I'll play on tomorrow's Self Help Radio, though I don't think I'll talk about it much.

I still love it, as I love much about Schoolhouse Rock, although this particular one has some troubling elements to think about once you grow older.  (Not as much, thankfully, as the one about manifest destiny.)  For one thing, the rosiness of the song is bittersweet when you take high school American history & learn about nativist movements (not to mention just watching the news today with regards to "illegals" from Mexico).  For another, it completely ignores two important groups (although one of them is mentioned in the "recipe" that Lady Liberty thumbs through during the chorus) & those are the enslaved Africans who didn't want to come here in the first place, & the natives who were already living on the North American continent, & who were killed to make room for the predominantly white Europeans who arrived.

That's a funny thing, isn't it - how children are taught almost-mythic history until the time they can presumably grasp more complicated subjects.  I am reminded about learning about World War I in middle school - we just glossed over it - but it baffled me.  The Germans, like in the easier-to-understand World War II, were the bad guys, but they weren't Nazis yet.  For example, though they sank the Lusitania, they did it because we were supplying their enemies.  I couldn't wrap my head around why America would go to war simply because an Archduke was assassinated a couple of years before.

Chances are, no one had yet been allowed to broach the subject of "imperialism."  Nowadays it's understood that World War I was a war between imperial powers, & America chose sides when it finally (against popular support, & breaking Wilson's campaign pledge) decided to join the fray.  Nothing good came out of it, & it directly led to Hitler coming to power.

I think it's the same thing with the Schoolhouse Rock video.  You want to make children believe that this America was a remarkable place that not only welcomed people looking to make a better life, but also that America regularly celebrated them.  Never mind how the Irish & Germans were treated in the mid-19th century, or the Italians & Russians in the late 19th century, or the Chinese pretty much all the time, or the Vietnamese in the late 1970s, or the Mexicans ever since I can remember.  That'll come later.

It's a lovely little myth that I wish everyone grew up with, because it's certainly colored how I've felt about immigration.  "What good ingredients, liberty & immigrants."  Lynn Ahrens wrote that, & it's a nice (almost) rhyming couplet.

My wife tells me it used to make her happy because the grandmother in the animation has a "Kiss Me, I'm Polish" button, & her parents & she are Polish.  That's the magic of the short - it made people who were already here proud of their country, & people who identified as the children of immigrants proud of their parents.

One of the Youtube comments says that children are now taught that America is less a "melting pot" than a "salad bowl."  I wonder if that's meant to help people preserve their own cultural identity, since the components of a salad are more readily identified singularly; things in a stew do tend to mush together.  I don't know.

Children don't like salads all that much, though.  It seems a metaphor that may have some problems.

SNOW.

It is snowing as I write this.  It's March 12 & it's snowing.  Winter officially ends in a week & it's snowing.  & it's not so bad here - glad I'm not in Chicago - but come on!

Here's a graphic that pretty much sums up my feelings about this overlong winter we've been having:

It's from the person who has this web site.  & she lives in Massachusetts.

I posted this to Facebook the other day:

(It was something I found on Tumblr, so I don't know who originally made it, sorry.)

A friend in Austin said, "Invert it for Texas."  It's true!  I don't know how it happened, but I went from a place where it's hot most of the time to a place where it's cold most of the time.  Is there not some place where there's a sensible winter AND a sensible summer?  It's maddening!

Oh, Tuesday

I kinda forgot about you.

My apologies.

No really, I mean it.

It was a lovely day.

You would have ignored me, too, if you had the chance.

Sorry.

Really.  I mean it.

Sorry!