Self Help Radio 091914: One Way

I had a radio show yesterday (sorry, I went out of town & couldn't post this immediately afterwards) with the theme "one way."  I still don't know how or why that became the theme.  But I think it turned out pretty well.  I talked to a self-help guru who believes he's discovered the one way to happiness, & I talked to a doctor who believes he's found the one way to men's health, & I talked to two civil engineers who believe that Lexington would benefit from the city having only one way streets.  All this, plus music, including a new song Tania & Juan wrote for the show, plus a report from our man in Hollywood, Mark Miller.  I guess the show went one way, & I'm glad it did.

Listen to it now!  Self Help Radio Dot Net!  The songs I played are listed below!  I think I'm going the wrong way!  Oh no!

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"One Way" Tania & Juan _One Way_
"One Way Love" Allison Weiss _Say What You Mean_
"One Way Or Another" Blondie _Eat To The Beat_

"(I'm Walking Down) A One Way Street" Guy Mitchell _The Very Best Of Guy Mitchell_
"One Way Street" Miki Smith _Trouble Doll_
"Walking Up A One Way Street" Willie Tee _Teasin' You_
"One Way Street" Sharon Tandy _You Gotta Believe It's... Sharon Tandy_
"One Way Street" The Dirty Burds _Hellbound Honeys, Vol. 1_

"One Way Ticket Home" Phil Ochs _Greatest Hits_
"One Way Ticket" Bobby Crown & The Kapers _Rockabilly Rarities, Vol. 1_
"One Way Ticket" The Nerves _One Way Ticket_
"One Way Trigger" The Strokes _Comedown Machine_

"Love Can't Be A One Way Deal" The Rev-Lons _Boy Trouble: Garpax Girls_
"One Way Love" The Innocents _One Way Love 7"_

(part two)

"One Way Love" The Damned _Don't Cry Wolf 7"_
"One Way Love" The Undertones _The Undertones_
"One Way Love" The James Hunter Six _Minute By Minute_

"One Way Out" Elmore James _The Sky Is Crying: The History Of Elmore James_
"One Way Out" Martha & The Vandellas _Watchout!_
"One Way Bus" New Birth _New Birth_
"One Way" Mighty Mighty _A Band From Birmingham_

"One Way Mind" John Cunningham _Becket House_
"One Way Or The Other" Chumbawamba _Readymades_
"One Way Track" Bill Nelson _Noise Candy, Vol. 1: Old Man Future Blows The Blues_
"One Way Spit" Debris _Soul Jazz Records Presents PUNK 45: Sick On You! One Way Spit! After The Love & Before The Revolution, Vol. 3: Proto-Punk 1969-77_

"One Way Kisses" The 4 Knights _Jivin' & Smoothin'_
"One Way Rider" Johnny Cash & June Carter Cash _Rockabilly Blues_

Whither One Way?

Who knows?  The show is happening tomorrow morning from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL, & you can listen online at werful dot fm.  I'll also live tweet like I do nowadays on my the SHR Twitter account.

But I might not be able to put the show up on the Self Help Radio website because I'm going up to Cincinnati for Oktoberfest Zinzinnati.  Specifically, the wife wants to see the Running Of The Wieners.  Because they're hounds & they're cute.

I have to ask, though - why do they hold Oktoberfest in September?  Is that just common here?  I guess I never paid attention to Oktoberfest when in Texas.  But just checking, it turns out that Fredericksburg has its Oktoberfest in October.

So maybe it has something to do with climate.  Anyway, I apologize for not getting the show up in time.  If only they had Oktoberfest in October…

Preface To One Way: No, I'm NOT Running Out Of Themes!

Why would you think that?  Is it because of that Bob Dylan show?  He would never do a show with a theme like "one way"!  He picked general themes like "cars" or "homes" or "family" or "Bob Dylan"!  Why can't Self Help Radio be like that?  Why not do a show about something that's tangible, that's a thing, that makes some kind of sense, that there are songs that we will know about & you will have to play?

Seriously, dude.  "One Way"?  All I can think about is that Blondie song.  That's it.

What just happened?  I started out with one voice & ended up with another.  I think I liked the complainer's voice better than my own explainer voice.  Anyway, it doesn't matter - no one really cares what theme I pick & very rarely is anyone excited by a theme.  Which is cool - I don't mind the anonymity.

One thing that does happen from time-to-time is that a person will call & say, "I hear you're looking for songs about [today's theme]."  I am happy when someone makes suggestions or requests a song, but it's weird to think that they'd be listening to a radio show & think, "That deejay is doing a show about [whatever subject], but of course they wouldn't have brought enough music about [whatever subject] to fill their allotted two hours, but, luckily, hey!  Me to the rescue!"

I'm never insulted or anything, but I wonder if that's happened enough to the average RFL listener that they've heard a deejay say, "I wanted to do a show about [something], but I don't have enough songs!"

It's possible.  It's just not something I'd ever do!

I didn't get a chance to do this two posts ago...

One of my favorite boring bookkeeping events passed & I barely noted it: the 1900th post on this blog!

You're not paying attention anyway, but I like to do this:

I started this blog on September 12, 2006.  Holy fuck, that's eight years ago!

I reached 100 posts on Match 7, 2007.
I reached 200 posts on August 13, 2007.
I reached 300 posts on January 11, 2008.
I reached 400 posts on May 29, 2008.
I reached 500 posts on October 19, 2008.
I reached 600 posts on April 2, 2009.
I reached 700 posts on October 4. 2009.
I reached 800 posts on May 2, 2010.
I reached 900 posts on July 30, 2010.
I reached 1000 posts on January 4, 2011.
I reached 1100 posts on May 30, 2011.
I reached 1200 posts on October 23, 2011.
I reached 1300 posts on Mach 3, 2012.
I reached 1400 posts on July 30, 2012.
I reached 1500 posts on December 23, 2012.
I reached 1600 posts on April 23, 2013.
I reached 1700 posts on November 22, 2013.
I reached 1800 posts on April 21, 2014.
I reached 1900 posts on September 12, 2014.

If you stumble through this blog - & please don't, it's embarrassing for me - you'll find that I do a celebratory "anniversary post" most of the time.  But you'll notice it's usually wrong - the blog entry entitled "The Legendary 1000th Post," for example, happened on December 14, 2010 (when it was a not-very-legendary 994th post), instead of six posts later.  There's a reason for that: I'm dumb.

Blogger very handily tells you the number of posts you've published.  It also notes when you start a post (a "draft") & then saves it if you don't finish or if you forget about it.

I'm not a "draft" writing kind of guy.  I wish I were - boy, I'd love to be able to rewrite some of my crap to make it better - but if I write something, & don't finish it, & close the window on the computer, I'll probably not return to it.  I'll almost certainly open another window & write something new.

I obviously have done this several times on this blog.  For a long time, I had six or so drafts in my draft folder, which Blogger counted toward my total.  I deleted them.  Most of them were blank pages anyway.  Now I can just go look at every hundredth post from the beginning, but back then - well, I'm dumb.  I trusted the number & I counted backwards.

Let me repeat that: I counted backwards.

I am fascinated about the time periods represented here.  From October 2002 to May 2008, Self Help Radio was on KOOP in Austin.  From May 2008 till June 2009, it existed as a podcast.  From July 2009 to June 2010, it was on WMUL in Huntington.  From August 2010 till present (excepting Spring of this year) it has been on WRFL in Lexington.  So that total is:

KOOP: five years, eight months
WMUL: eleven months
WRFL: three years, eleven months
Podcast: one year, seven months (at different times)

Does that add up to eleven years, eleven months?  Because that's hold long I've been doing Self Help Radio!

(Actually, it adds up to 12 years, one month, because I counted a couple of months, like May of 2008 & January of this year, when I have half in one place, half another.)

(I'm still celebrating my twelve anniversary next month.)

High School Daze

A friend with whom went to high school had a birthday today & we texted back & forth all up & down memory lane.  I made a joke about high school, which led us to reminiscing about those awful days.  We went to a school called South Garland High in Garland, Texas.  Our school team was the colonels, we had a modified Confederate flag as our flag (as seen above), & our slogan was "the South shall rise again!"  After my graduation, a friend attended but didn't go to South Garland asked me, "Does your school know the South lost the war?"

For both my birthday friend & myself, this seemed normal (as normal as anything in high school), but my friend didn't remember something specific I recalled: there was a giant mural in the cafeteria of a Southern plantation.  Since he couldn't bring it to mind, I looked around for evidence online.

I found, archived at the University of North Texas, a book called "School Spirit or School Hate: The
Confederate Battle Flag, Texas High Schools, and Memory, 1953-2002" by
Perry Dirickson, which, you may notice, kind of rhymes with my name.  You can see the pages I'm about to quote here.

I warn you: the book is badly written.  I have copied it verbatim, but did feel the need to note when there were egregious grammar mistakes.  Some of the commentary feels forced & awkward, but the historical part of it is eye-opening.

At South Garland High School, the students chose the Colonels & the Confederate flag because of the Civil War centennial.  The school opened in the fall of 1964.  The year before, students who would attend the school voted for the Colonels as mascot & adopted an Old South theme.  South Garland was located at the southern edge of Garland's residential area at the time.  There were few houses; mostly cotton fields surrounded the school.  This added to the Old South feel of the school.  South Garland High School released the first edition of the school newspaper on Friday, October 2, 1964, with the name "Plantation News."  In the paper, the cartoon "Colonel's Plantation" ran, displaying the paternalism implied by the school's mascot.  The cartoon presented three characters: the Colonel, Rastus, & Liza.  Liza & Rastus were portrayed as poor whites in tattered clothing whom [sic] used broken English.  The Colonel dressed in an all-white suit with a black tie & spoke impeccable English.  This reinforced the romantic view of the Old South & the class superiority implied by the mascot name of Colonels.

Other traditions reinforced the Old South theme.  The students named the drill team, Southern Belles.  The cheering section, underclassmen drill team members, named itself the Dixie Darlings, & the fight song played to the tune of "Dixie."  Another tradition that the students tried to initiate, although it did not last, was a fundraiser to earn money for student activities.  The fundraiser was a slave auction. The slaves were members of the drill team who sold themselves to male students for a day for whatever the buy [sic] wanted, such as washing his car.  The girls dressed in sackcloth, wore their hair in dog-ears, donned a beanie or cowboy hat, & wore no make-up with mismatched shoes.  The Clothes [sic] worn by the "slaves" were eerily similar to the clothes of actual slaves.  To add to the Old South theme, the school painted a plantation mural in the cafeteria with a generic white-columned mansion surrounded by fields of cotton devoid of any black slaves working the fields.  The omission of workers in the mural portrayed an understanding the workers in the field were black slaves. By leaving them out, the administration was saying in a nice way that black slaves were not important & as an extension, blacks were not important as well.

South Garland students not only developed traditions based on the Old South, they also adopted the Confederate flag as their school's symbol & school flag.  Before 1967, the school used a Confederate battle flag as its school flag.  In the fall of 1967, the 1966 seniors presented the school a gift, the South Garland flag, which was the official Colonel flag.  The flag's design included the school's crest in the flag's center as well as "S" & "G" for South Garland on the outer part of the flag.  The school called its crest the "libertas," liberty in Latin, the Garland family motto,  The "libertas" had the colonel's head on top of a shield with crossed sabers.  On the shield, the Garland family crest appeared in the upper left quadrant.  The Confederate flag was in the upper right corner.  In the lower left quadrant, the golden bugle symbolized class "spirit [sic] de corps" & aggressiveness in the future.  The torch of knowledge centered by live oak & olive branches borrowed from the Great Seal of the State of Texas.  The "S" for South was to the left of the "lbertas" & the "G" to the right.  This would remain the South Garland flag until 1991. The South Garland students viewed the flag as their flag.  The design of the flag incorporated the Confederate battle flag, but the students saw the banner as their flag & claimed pointed [sic] out that this standard was not the Confederate battle flag.  The flag's inclusion of the South Garland High's crest & the "S" & "G" separated it from the association with the Confederate battle flag in the minds of students.

I remember in the 1990s my family members griping about how the NAACP was going to sue the school & replace the flag.  ("It's not racist, it's tradition!")  It turns out the school district did it themselves (although doubtless there were some who may well have filed a lawsuit).  According to Wikipedia, "the Garland Independent School Board voted 6 to 1 at its August 1, 1991, meeting, to discontinue use of the altered Confederate flag as the school flag & to also change the color of the mascot's uniform from gray to blue & red."  The mural, presumably, is still there.  The Wikipedia adds, "Today many students still use the Confederate flag to symbolize the school's 'southern culture' with little to no backlash from students or parents. However, South Garland High School & the GISD refuse to recognize the flag. The school still uses the song 'Dixie' as the school's fight song to this day."

My friend, who I hope doesn't mind me sharing this, texted something about those years that may explain why we weren't as horrified when we were students as I imagine you are reading this.  He said, "I just recall high school as being sort of frightening & overwhelming at times & mind-numbingly tedious at other times.  I had no cultural reference points or socialization to prepare me for it."

Me neither.

Self Help Radio 091214: Magazines

Stop the presses!  A radio show about magazines?!?  This will take a special double issue!

Actually, it's mainly the same old thing - lots of songs about magazines, me talking too much, but also interviews with a Harvard professor & a special announcement from my spiritual advisor, the Rev. Dr. Howard Gently.  It's too much!  You'll need a subscription!

Please listen now at the Self Help Radio website.  Pay attention to username/password stuff.  What I played is below.

PS This is the 1900th posting on this dumb blog.  No big deal.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Magazines" Teresa Brewer _The Ultimate Collection_
"Movie Magazines" The Four Cal-Quettes _Movie Magazines_
"Little Girl In A Magazine" Jerry Channing _Little Girl In A Magazine_

"Magazine Woman" Gary Walker & The Rain _Magazine Woman_
"Magazine Lady" Spider John Koerner & Willie Murphy _Forever Changing: The Golden Age Of Elektra Records 1963-1973_
"Letters To Magazines" Paul F. Tompkins _Impersonal_
"Girl In A Magazine" The Brains _The Brains_

"Cover Of The Rolling Stone" R. Stevie Moore _Great Test Hits_
"Dream Magazine" Svensk _Piccadilly Sunshine # 1: British Pop Psych & Other Flavours 1965-1970_
"Grit Magazine" Thee American Revolution _Buddha Electrostorm_
"People Who Read People Magazine" Kinky Friedman _Under The Double Ego_

"Centerfold" J. Geils Band _Freeze Frame_
"Skingloss Magazine" Superego _Superego, Volume 3, Episode 12_
"Magazines" Tania & Juan _Magazine_

(part two)

"Letter To A Fanzine" Great Plains _Length Of Growth 1981-1989_
"Teen Magazines" Kyle Hall _Feelin' Weird_
"Magazine Theory" Darren Hanlon _Early Days_

"Girl In A Magazine" J Church _Camels, Spilled Corona, & The Sound Of Mariachi Bands_
"Star Magazine" Gigantaur _Gigantaur E.P._
"Resolve (The Complete New Testament In The Form Of A Teen Magazine)" Eugene Mirman _En Garde, Society!_

"Surfing Magazines" The Go-Betweens _The Friends Of Rachel Worth_
"Dirty Magazines" Jonas Crenshaw _Colossal Failure_
"Magazines" The Hold Steady _Stay Positive_
"Magazine" The Proper Ornaments _Wooden Head_

"Magazine" Yeh Deadlies _Magazine 7"_
"Autograph Magazine" Todd Barry _Falling Off The Bone_
"I Dreamed You In Magazines" Fred Thomas _Kuma_

Whither Magazines?

This was a hard show to put together - there aren't really all that many songs about magazines!  I am glad at this point that I spend a little bit of time listening to new stuff that people put on their Bandcamp pages.  I'm happy to preview their stuff & support them & am glad it's so easy there.

(By the way, isn't it amazing how much simpler those guys made it vs. how hard it used to be to listen to stuff on Myspace?  No wonder the latter place is a ghost town.)

I should have enough music to fill the show plus I have a couple of interviews.  It's always fun to be challenged for a show - two hours is sometimes a lot of time to fill for a particular theme!

The show will be on tomorrow morning from 7 to 9 am on 88.1 fm in Lexington.  You can listen to the show & follow along at the WRFL web site & also I have gotten into the habit of live tweeting what I'm playing on my Twitter page.

Later that day, I'll put the show up in its entirety on the Self Help Radio web site.

I hope you listen!

Preface To Magazines: Unsubscribe

I don't subscribe to many magazines anymore.  Just one, actually.  My wife has a subscription to a gossip-style magazine, but it was a gift from a friend, who hoped it would help her catch up on popular culture.  It doesn't.  She looks at the pictures & then asks me, "Who is this?  Why is this person in this magazine?"

I used to subscribe to a particular music magazine - it's probably the best one out there, although I don't know anymore - it's been a few years, since I left Austin in fact - & I enjoyed reading it, but it was weird - every feature article extolled the featured artist in such a way that I felt, if I didn't like the artist, that something was wrong with me.  Also, every third issue had a Beatle or the Beatles on the cover.  That was like saying to me, "You're old.  That's why you get this magazine."

I also used to subscribe to a left-wing/progressive news magazine.  I felt very guilty unsubscribing, because I think they do good work.  I just couldn't read it anymore.  Every story was a story of corruption & defeat.  Every truth unearthed just showed that the bad people had all the money, controlled everything, & were going to destroy the world, their comfort existing at the expense of everyone else.  The people who run the magazine however maintain a crazy optimism, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that it doesn't fucking matter - the bad people are winning.  Again, I admire their work, their courage, their spirit - it just got to be too much for me to read the depressing stories of defeat, with that little paragraph of hope at the end.  Poor, tortured hope.

The magazine I currently subscribe to is a little more cynical, but I still don't read most of it anymore.  I can't exactly say why.  I like the magazine.  It's just piling up on the table by the front door, though.

I always wanted to make my own magazine - or any kind of zine, really - but as I get older, I find I have less & less to say.  This blog, of course, is evidence of that.

A Song From Under The Floorboards

One of my silly rules about my show is that the theme can't be reflected by the name of the band or the album a song is from - so that means that my show this week, about magazines, won't feature any songs by Magazine, who unwisely chose not to write a song about magazines.  (Maybe their name is in reference to a different kind of magazine?)  But that doesn't stop me from playing them on this blog - here's one of their best songs performed live:

Yawp

I need to make a list of important lessons one stumbles upon in life that end up making life better.  The funny thing about lessons - teaching, really - is that if you're not interested in what's being taught, or you're not interested in whoever's trying to teach you, you're probably not going to learn.

I'm sure this is rudimentary pedagogy, but I am thinking also that if one comes from an environment where learning isn't valued - where the value is instead on some sense or kind of authority - that also hurts the process of learning.

& I'm not necessarily talking about facts here, although sometimes one's attitude can affect how one absorbs facts.  One of my relatives, for example, once said, "Why are they always talking about the Civil War? It happened a long time ago. It doesn't have anything to do with us now."  Believing that, obviously, makes one less inclined to learn about the Civil War.

What I'm talking about is this: I remember, it must've been early in my college career, this moment when I found out how powerful it was to say, "I don't know."

Admitting that I didn't know something wasn't a mark of weakness; it instead seemed a sign of confidence & self-knowledge.

& it did have something to do with the people - I was around people who were different from my family.

My family, in general, knows a lot of stuff.  As much as your average family that knows stuff.  But my family believes it knows more stuff than it actually knows.  What's more, it has developed a kind of behavioral mechanism - related, somewhat, to stubbornness, also a family trait - which will assert with terrifying confidence that what any member of the family says, even though you know it's wrong, is in fact right.

Here's an example.  Once I was at my sister's house, listening to the band Squeeze.  (This was a long time ago.)  She said, "I like this song, but I like the original."  I told her it was the original.  She said it wasn't.  I showed her the album, which listed the band members, & then the LP, which listed the writing credits.  She shrugged.  She said, "Someone else did a version of this, & it's better."

This was pretty soon after the album had been released.  But no amount of evidence could convince her that what she knew was right was incorrect.

It didn't just have to happen in arguments.  It could just be a reaction.  My little brother might say to me, "You didn't know that!" & I would respond, almost reflexively, "I did so!"

Yes, I developed that mechanism, too.  It came in handy, many times - there are times when, with sheer force of will, you can convince someone they're wrong.  Or at the very least throw what they believe into doubt.  I remember a long argument about evolution where I completely misunderstood the basics & yet a smarter friend, who was studying biology, couldn't convince me.  I'm not sure she left the argument as firmly convinced as she began it.  (Later on, I apologized for being so stupid about the whole deal.)

But at some point, I remember the pressure being off in regard to subjects & things about which I honestly had no knowledge, just by saying, "No, I don't know that."  It will let the person have the pleasure of discussing something they do in fact know many things about, or it will reveal that they didn't really know much either.

& what follows that lesson is this one: you don't have to have an opinion about everything.

Oh god!  What a liberating concept!

Self Help Radio 090514: Disco

A radio show about disco, but featuring very little actual disco.  Yeah, that sounds like the sort of show Self Help Radio would do.

In addition to the great music played (listed below), the show had lots of human talking guests.  I interviewed David Fruchter, who used to bartend at Studio 54; I interviewed Nick Ramirez, who has protested disco for decades; & I interviewed Nancy Gold & Mary Storm, co-discoverers of the element disconium.  & of course Mark Miller reported about Hollywood, & Tania wrote us another lovely song.

It's all available for your lighted dance floor & mirror ball at the Self Help Radio website.  Please pay attention to password/username info while you're there.

Thanks for listening!  I have to take off these boogie shoes now.  They're killing me.

(The show is in two parts at the website; below is what's in the two parts.)

(part one)

"Discotheque" Bad Dream Fancy Dress _Choirboys Gas_
"Freestyle Disco" S.I. Futures _The Mission Statement_

"Disco's Dead" The Bags _All Bagged Up '77-'80_
"Smash The Discos" The Business _Punk & Nasty_
"Disco Pope" The Prats _Rough Trade Shops Post Punk 01_
"Disco Romance" UK Decay _The Black Cat EP_
"Disco Hotline" National Lampoon _That's Not Funny, That's Sick!_
"Disco Man" The Damned _Eternally Damned_

"Changwah Disco" Chantana _Thai Beat A Go-Go, Vol. 3_
"Disco Clone" Cristina _Mutant Disco_
"How Long Are You Staying?" Bill Joy _The American Song-Poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood & Brush?_
"Red Neck Disco" Glenn Sutton _Redneck Country_

"Rock & Roll People In A Disco World" Sparks _Terminal Jive_

(part two)

"Cambia El Disco" Tania Rivas _Cambia El Disco_
"Disco Biscuit" Lung Leg _Maid To Minx_
"Disco" Backfish _It's Emily's_

"The World Is A Disco Ball" Future Bible Heroes _Eternal Youth_
"Shifty Disco Girl" Helen Love _Love & Glitter, Hot Days & Muzik_
"Indie Disco" The Lancashire Hotpots _Pot Sounds_
"At The Indie Disco" The Divine Comedy _Bang Goes The Knighthood_

"Born Disco/Died Heavy Metal" Cornershop _Hold On It Hurts_
"Discoking" The Leslies _Totally Brilliant_
"Panic" The Guild League _Romantic & Square Is Hip & Aware_

"Death Of A Disco Dancer" The Smiths _Strangeways, Here We Come_
"Disco Pop Stars" Altered Images _Pinky Blue_

Whither Disco?

Blah blah blah, it's a show about disco with very little disco, blah blah blah.

One of the things I started doing this spring - in case you haven't noticed - is regularly feature people I know who are far more funny & talented than I am.  So you've regularly heard my friends Russell, David, Mark, & Nick pretend to be "experts" weekly on the show, as well as Tania singing her songs & an occasional appearance from my wife as the monster that lives under the station.  I asked a couple of current RFL deejays - Macy & Maria, who do a show on Sundays from 2 to 4pm - if they'd also like to be experts.  They said yes!  So their "expertise" will be featured on tomorrow's show.  & - spoiler alert - they're great.

It seems pretty obvious to me that my "experts" aren't really.  But I've had a couple of calls that suggest some people who stumble onto the show don't listen carefully enough.  I keep wondering if I should have some sort of disclaimer.  What do you think?

Tomorrow's show is jam-packed with fake experts - plus lots of fun music - so I hope you'll listen.  It's on from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm in Lexington & online at wrfl dot fm.  I'll archive it later on Self Help Radio web.  Oh boy!

Preface To Disco: Neglectfulness

As I approach - what is it? - nineteen hundred blog posts on this blog of mine - that's a lot - I feel like I am neglecting it a bit.  Part of it is the general feeling, which co-exists with my lack of self-esteem & all-around self-loating, that I have nothing of value to say.  Part of it is that I spent the day (what free time I had) working on the radio show that this blogs exists to support (or whatever).

I am envious of people like Marc Maron, whose podcast I admire, because he does have something to talk about, twice a week, before his interviews.  He returns to themes - he is his most popular subject - & I'm not comfortable being as frank about myself in that manner, although I tried it for a time on some of the shows this spring.  But he still manages, between awkwardly pitching products for his sponsors, to have lively, interesting discussions about ideas & events that I can't really manage.

I wonder if this blog would benefit from small events & ideas that happen throughout my brain at any given moment.  I would probably resist biographical entries that didn't have something like a point or a clumsy punchline - for example, the wife & I just watched (& enjoyed) the first episode of the television show Please Like Me - but instead just have random train-of-thought observations. Like:

Tonight, someone made the comment that Enya never performed live.  She couldn't.  Too many voices.  But she has performed live, says the Wikipedia.  Just never had an actual concert.

That's not that interesting, but it was interesting to me at the time.  & funny!  It reminds of the time Leah at KOOP told me that Bob Marley died of toe cancer.  I thought it was such a dumb idea I bet her five bucks it wasn't true.  It was!  I paid up.

The other night we were walking the dogs & I thought I saw a shape in the sidewalk in front of us.  It was a sweet black lab whose name I later found out was Mandy.  I recognized her because she barks at us from her backyard & I've always wanted to walk up to meet her.  We banged on her owner's door for several minutes (we guessed he was in the bathroom) & finally he opened the door & we asked if she was his.  She was, but she wanted to come with us - three beagles & two sweet humans are better than a cigarette-smoke-filled home!

The next day or so he explained that the dog was not his but his ex-wife's.  He said he didn't really want her but liked having her around.  I got the impression that he would have loved for us to adopt her.

Tonight I thought, "What if he had let her out that night & hoped she went away?  & we ruined his plans?"

She's a sweet dog, & twelve years old.  I hope the situation isn't what I fear.

Would this blog be better with entries like that instead of - well, what does this blog contain, anyway?  What have I written for almost nineteen hundred entries?  I have no idea.  I have no idea.

Twits Tumble

See this?

That's a picture of my dog Ringo.  I take a lot of dumb pictures, a lot of them of my pets, a lot of them when I'm out & about with my pets.  I "archive" them (if you want to use that fancy word) on the Self Help Radio Tumblr site.  Why not on this blog?  Who the hell knows?

See this?

That's something I tweeted.  From my Tweety Account.  I mean, my Twitter account.  I don't spend a lot of time there, since I don't feel all that clever, but I do "live tweet" my shows (I hope I am using that phrase correctly) & let one know when my shows are available on the site.  Usually by linking to this blog.  Oy.

Anyway.  A friend was telling me today how well an old fogey like me uses Social Media.  (I didn't even mention the Facebook page!)  But I'm not really using Social Media all that well.  Mainly I'm clumsy & awkward about it.  Like most things in my life.

But I thought I should mention these other things (all linked of course on the web site).  So it might seem I am using Social Media well.

& not, as it feels, a little antisocially.

Short Sad Monday Poem

I have a cold.
Sore throat & sniffles.
Still I did three hours
on the radio this morning.
It's been raining all day.
I wish I could have slept all day.
My wife says,
"90% of my laundry
is Jazzercise clothes."
My teeth hurt
because I've been sucking cough drops
all the time.
Going to sleep again
after I feed all the animals.
I hope I am well enough
to do Self Help Radio
this week.

Self Help Radio 082914: Indiepop A To Z # 45

Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes

Oh man, forty-five installments of this & I'm only in the letter J.  I might finish the Js next time around - when will that be?  Probably the end of the year.  For now, enjoy all the bands I thought were important or influential or just plain indiepoppy enough to fit between the Jakpot & the Jigsaws (those bands included).

I should say a big thank you to the people at TweeNet whose list of bands forms the basic skeleton of this series.  If I just stuck to what they consider indiepop, I'd be nearly done now.  Alas, I am contrary.

The show is available now at the Self Help Radio website.  Pay attention to password info, if you're going to listen.  The songs I played - in glorious alphabetical order - are below.

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Turning Point" The Jakpot _Turning Point EP_
"Not Happy" Jale _Dreamcake_
"Town Called Malice" The Jam _The Gift_

"I Heart Labrador Records" Jam On Bread _A Railcard Adventure_
"Puppet Girl" Wendy James _Now Ain't The Time For Your Tears_
"Skullduggery" James _Stutter_
"Oh, Grateful" James Dean Driving Experience _Clearlake Revisited_
"Vote For Love" Jamie Wednesday _Vote For Love_

"It's A Fine Day" Jane _It's A Fine Day_
"Mourning Glass" Jane From Occupied Europe _Coloursound_
"Sanitized" Jane Pow _Love It Be It!/State_
"Love Has Flown" The Januaries _The Januaries_
"Cut Me Deep" Jasmine Minks _Another Age_

"Looking For Lot 49" The Jazz Butcher _Fishcotheque_

(part two)

"Nothing At All" Jazzateers _Jazzateers_
"Elemental" The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience _The Size Of Food_
"Before I Know" Jenka _Be_
"Driving Into The Sun" The Jeremiahs _Driving Into The Sun EP_

"Ordinary Sleep" Jessamine _Jessamine_
"The Rain Fell Down" Jesse Garon & The Desperadoes _The Rain Fell Down 7"_
"Just Another Fashion Band" The Jessica Fletchers _What Happened To The?_
"Flowers" Jesterbells _Rain Keeps Falling EP 7"_
"Just Like Honey" The Jesus & Mary Chain _Psychocandy_

"Sister Dream" Jesus Couldn't Drum _Ruttling Orange Peel & Blind Lemon Pie_
"Suicide" The Jesus Trip _You Can't Be Loved Forever, Vol. 1_
"Wenn Deutschland Traumt" Jetzt! _Liebe In Grossen Stadten Kassette_
"Snap Me Up" Jim Jiminee _Welcome To Hawaii_
"Camouflage" The Jigsaws _Camouflage 7"_

Which Indiepop A To Z # 45?

Who knows why anyone does anything?  Why a radio show at all?  Isn't radio dying?  What about this thing called "indiepop" (which yesterday I referred to as "obscure")?  Who pays attention?  Does anyone really want to listen to what I think it is?  & in alphabetical order?  What the hell?

So, "whither indiepop a to z number 45" indeed.

I just think it's good music.  I listen to it a lot.  Some of my favorite bands are either square in the genre definition (like the Lucksmiths) or influenced it (like the Smiths).

& it's nice to have a radio show now to share all the silly music I have - indiepop or otherwise.

& by the way - Self Help Radio is on tomorrow morning from 7 to 9am at 88.1 fm on the dial & online at wrfl dot fm.  Yes, it'll be archived at some point in the day.  What, with all this music, do you think I have time to do anything else?

Did this have too many questions in it?  Will anyone answer them?  Or were they rhetorical?  Have I done this before?  Why can't I remember if I did or not?

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 45: Keep Going, Keep Going

I've had a leisurely week - it's warm & unbearably humid in Lexington so, except for the requisite evening dog walks, I've been inside - so I've had a chance to listen to entire albums by the subjects of this installment of the "indiepop a to z" series.  It's been fun - it's such a diverse & interesting genre of music, one that for the most part is more obscure now than even when it was the opposite of punk in the mid-1980s.

Well, maybe not the opposite of punk - the do-it-your-own-damn-self aesthetic was there.  Among other things.  I'm not in the mood to theorize right now - & anyway, I'm reading Jon Savage's Sex Pistols book right now, so it's probably muddling up my thinking.

I'm in the letter J at this point, & it's the tenth letter of the alphabet.  If it takes forty-five shows to make it to J, where will I be at the twentieth letter of the alphabet (the letter T, right)?  & if I only do three of these shows a year, it'll happen well over a decade from now.  Will there even be radio then?  Will I even be alive?

Oh well.  Keep going, keep going.  The letter J.  Lots of good stuff.  I'll show you on Friday!

This Is One Of Those Times

…when you find something that would've been perfect for last week's show.

So you show it anyway.

Woke Up Early One Morning Blues, Episode Fourteen

Victoria Spivey

As mentioned previously, this was the last episode of my little blues show - at least for a while.  Lots of folks - students, mainly - return to Lexington for school in the Fall & of course they deserve a place at the student radio station.  I feel lucky I got to keep my Friday morning!  I can only imagine everyone else wanted to sleep in &/or had an eight o'clock class.

My last show featured some Texas blues greats, with an especial set on Texas blues women, & a few obscure tunes as well.  It may be because I am Texan that I love Texas blues so much - but I am surely not the only one.  It could be the subject of an entire ongoing radio program - & probably has.

This final Woke Up Early One Morning Blues (I'm glad no one complained about the clunky name!) is available now at the Self Help Radio website.  Pay attention to username/password information.  The Texas-flavored songs I played are below.

Thanks to everyone who listened this summer!

"Bull-Doze Blues" Henry Thomas _Texas Worried Blues (Complete Recorded Works 1927-1929)_
"Falling Rain Blues" Lonnie Johnson _Lonnie Johnson Vol. 1 (1925-1926)_
"Booster Blues" Blind Lemon Jefferson _The Best Of Blind Lemon Jefferson_

"Motherless Children Have A Hard Time" Blind Willie Johnson _Dark Was The Night  (1927-1930)_
"Texas Blues" Willie Reed _Let Me Tell You About The Blues Texas (The Evolution Of Texas Blues)_
"You'll Like My Loving" Otis Harris _The Male Blues Singers Vol. 1_
"Cryin' For You Blues" Sammy Hill _Texas Blues_
"Kentucky Blues" Little Hat Jones _Tex-Arkana-Louisiana Country 1929-1933_

"Big Houston Blues" Victoria Spivey _Victoria Spivey Vol. 1 1926-1927_
"Deep Water Blues" Hociel Thomas _Louis Armstrong & The Blues Singers_
"Doggone My Good Luck Soul" Hattie Hudson _Texas Girls (1926 - 1929)_
"Penitentiary" Bessie Tucker _I Can't Be Satisfied, Vol. 1_
"Shake It Down" Lillian Glinn _Lillian Glinn 1927-1929_

"Ground Hog Blues" Ramblin' Thomas _The Voice Of The Blues: Bottleneck Guitar Masterpieces_
"Blue Goose Blues" Jesse "Babyface" Thomas _Blues From The Western States 1927-1949_
"Lone Wolf Blues" Buddy Woods _Texas Slide Guitars 1930-1938_