Self Help Radio 050115: Los Angeles

(Original image here.)

& that's it!  My last Self Help Radio at WRFL.  I am leaving soon for Los Angeles - the City of Angels - La-La Land - & so I did a show about Los Angeles.  I am guessing there were more anti-L.A. songs than pro-L.A. songs - but the town appears to be a place people love to hate.  For me, well - it's time for another adventure!

At the end of the show, I thanked a bunch of folks & it makes sense for me to do it here, too.

I thank WRFL for letting me play on the air for the time they did - I came to the station in July 2010 - & never was I made to feel unwelcome.  I met so many great people.  I had so much fun.  It's a marvelous place & I will miss it a great deal.

I thank the listeners of WRFL.  This town is full of people fiercely loyal to the station - & full of old timers (heck! people my own age!) who remember the struggle to get the station on the air.  It makes them feel like the station is one of their own.

I thank the funny friends I have who help me out with fake interviews.  David, Russell, & Mark have been my mainstays for a long time - it's easy to do a radio show when you have people way funnier than you to "interview."  I hope they'll continue to play with me when I'm in Los Angeles!  There have been other folks - my wife Magda was awesome as Werful, the monster who lives under WRFL.  & people like Allen, Nick, Suloni, Macy & Maria have at one time or another filled in & had fun.  They're all invited to L.A. with me!

I hope I can find a suitable radio station there to do my dumb show.  I love to play music that most of the world hasn't heard & I love the artists that I play for being so great despite the horrible monolithic music industry.  I wish that industry would go away already.  Wasn't the Internet supposed to destroy it by now?

The show is available any time you want to listen to it at the Self Help Radio website.  From here to L.A. & back!  You are required to enter a username & a password - those are available on the site.  The songs I played are below.

Thanks for listening!  There'll be a new Self Help Radio in June, I promise!

(part one)

"Los Angeles Blues" Peggy Lee _Blues Cross Country_
"Take Me To Los Angeles" Jimmy Soul _Jerk! Shake! & Vibrate!_
"L.A." Jackie De Shannon _Laurel Canyon_

"Hello L.A., Bye-Bye Birmingham" John Randolph Marr _Country Funk 1969 - 1975_
"Funky L.A." Paul Humphrey _Paul Humphrey & The Cool-Aid Chemists_
"L.A. Blues" The Stooges _Fun House_

"The World Began In Eden But Ended In Los Angeles" Phil Ochs _Rehearsals For Retirement_
"L.A." Neil Young _Time Fades Away_
"Men's Room, LA" Kinky Friedman _Old Testaments & New Revelations_
"I Love L.A." Randy Newman _Trouble In Paradise_
"L.A., L.A." Translator _No Time Like Now_

"L.A. (My Town)" The Four Tops _The Complete Motown Singles, Vol. 12: 1972_
"Los Angeles" The Egyptian Lover _One Track Mind_

(part two)

"Drinking In LA" Bran Van 3000 _Glee_
"Everyone Is Someone In LA" Felix Da Housecat _Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever_

"Goodbye You Lizard Scum" Bill Hicks _Arizona Bay_
"L.A." The Fall _458489 A Sides_
"Los Angeles" Lewis Black _The White Album_
"Los Angeles, I'm Yours" The Decemberists _Her Majesty_

"First Of The Gang To Die" Morrissey _You Are The Quarry_
"Moving To LA" Art Brut _Bang Bang Rock & Roll_
"Ode To L.A." The Raveonettes _Pretty In Black_
"L.A., CA, USA" Stereo Total _Monokini_

"L.A. Woman" D.O.A. _Greatest Shits_

Whither Los Angeles?

It's so easy!  I'm moving to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks, & so I'm doing a show about Los Angeles.  Duh!  It'll be on for the very last time on 88.1 fm WRFL here in Lexington, & it'll be online at wrfl dot fm at the same time.  Seven till nine a.m.  That's 7-9am.  If you're not up early enough, I'll archive it on the Self Help Radio website some time tomorrow.  I hope I don't cry during the show.

---

I want to say a couple of things.  The fellow I wrote about here, John, his memorial service is tomorrow.  I don't think I'll go.  My wife will go.  I'm not sure I can take it.  I think that makes me a flawed person.

----

Also, I went to Louisville last night - probably the last time I'll ever be in Louisville - to see Peter Hook & The Light.  It was subtitled "A Celebration Of Joy Division," & I was happy the audience had youngsters & old fucks like me.  I was genuinely thrilled to see Peter Hook, though he came out in washes of synth music & promptly did a New Order song I don't much care for ("Thieves Like Us").  I didn't realize there was an "opening New Order set," as it says on his website; I had heard he was going to do Unknown Pleasures & Closer in order, so that confused me.

Peter Hook does not do a good Bernard Sumner.  Except for "Ceremony," which of course Ian Curtis co-wrote, & sang first, most of the songs sounded off.  & too long!

The crowd didn't care.  They were happy.  They ate it up.  My wife very much enjoyed herself.

By far the strangest thing is that Peter Hook came onstage with a bass guitar & played it from time-to-time - but there was another bassist on stage, & he kept playing when Hook stopped.  It seems pretty obvious that Hook, who hasn't really fronted a band before or, if you count Revenge, not for two decades, can't sing & play bass at the same time.  Luckily the music was really loud - he occasionally seemed to remember he had to project his voice into the microphone to be heard.

After a break, the band returned to do Joy Division songs.  But something had been broken in me.  Yes, I know Hook sang when Ian Curtis was ill on some Joy Division dates.  Yes, I know he sang on Movement (although none of those songs were played last night).  But he's not a strong vocalist.  I sat through "Atrocity Exhibition," "Isolation," "Colony," a few more, but I came to feel like I wasn't seeing a show with one of the founders of a band that means a lot to me (Joy Division, not New Order), but that I was at a very loud Joy Division karaoke night & that one old guy in a football jersey was hogging the mic.

It also didn't help that I didn't want to force my way to the front, & was therefore around the chatty people with the giant Bud Light cans who were there socially.  But I was so disappointed.  It was such a let down.  I wanted to get home - it's an hour drive - where my pets were waiting to be fed.  The wife was sympathetic, so we took off.

Later I read Hook's Twitter feed & saw so many people had a great time.  Some seemed so moved by it.  Some just felt grateful they could experience it at all.  I kinda wish I had decided not to go.  Then I could feel I had missed something great, instead of being as bummed by the experience as I was.

Is it because there's something sacred to me about Joy Division?  That the music has just meant so much to me for so long?  I hate to feel this icky, & I also hate to be this negative.  But I did need to get it off my chest.

Sigh.

Preface To Los Angeles: Twelve Things

1) I haven't watched David Letterman in years.  But I'm going to miss David Letterman.

2) That has nothing to do with Los Angeles, I just read that article & started to feel sad.

3) I think I've done this list thing on my blog before - you know, number sentences that seem like a list but really aren't a list.  I probably got the idea from a short story by Donald Barthelme.

4) Here's a crazy thing: when I first discovered Barthelme, he was not only still alive (though dying of throat cancer) but just a hop, skip, & a jump away from where I was living, in Austin.  He was living (& teaching) in Houston.

5) I had a girlfriend whose parents lived in Houston at the time.  I went there with her a couple of times.  I might even have driven by his home or a hospital he was in.

6) I haven't read a Donald Barthelme story in a long time, either, but I am sad that he is gone.  He would have written some amazingly creative shit.

7) I don't mean to be equating David Letterman with Donald Barthelme or anything.  I thought of writing down things I was interested in/worried about/excited for in Los Angeles, where I will be living in less than a month, & before I started to type, someone on Facebook linked to that article, & it waylaid me.

8) Or derailed me.

9) Another interesting coincidence: I'm leaving Lexington around the same time the Letterman does his last show.

10) Wouldn't it be cool if it were around the same time Donald Barthelme had been born or died?  But that's not the case.

11) I'm certainly not lucky enough to have something like that help me tie up one of my dumb blog entries.

12) You know?

The Beginning Of The End

The beginning of the end is still a beginning.  & every ending does seem to sprout some kind of beginning.  Unless it's the final end.  Then - well, I don't imagine there's anything after that, but lots of people respectfully & disrespectfully disagree with me about that.

Damn, this got dark quick.  That wasn't my intention.  It's hard not to equate the end of one part of one's life with death.  There is a chance I'll never see Lexington again, just as there's a great chance I'll never see Huntington again.  I know I'll never live in this house again, even if fortune returns me to Kentucky.

You wonder how much of your memory is your senses.  For example, I am usually cold here.  As I sit at my computer, when the day is sunny & the weather outside is 58 degrees, I know (because I checked as I walked through the house moments ago) that it's only a little warmer in here: 63 degrees.  I can't bring myself - not when it's sunny outside, when it's spring - to turn the heater on.  So I sit at my computer, my hands colder than my body, but all of me quite chilled.

I noticed this first five years ago in West Virginia.  I'd be sitting at my computer & my hands would be cold as ice.  I actually went & purchased what my friend Suloni calls "hobo gloves" - the ones that look like this:

Because I couldn't type with gloves on, & I couldn't type with them off because my hands were frickin' cold.

I have a feeling that this won't be a problem in Los Angeles, as it wasn't a problem in Austin.  Not ever.  Not even when it was winter, & it does get cold for a little while in Austin.

Will I remember this?  Will my body remember this?  My wife put all her winter clothes in a box she marked "Fuck-You Winter Clothes."  She doesn't want to remember this.

I'm already planning new episodes of Self Help Radio, but it will feel weird not doing the show at WRFL.  My body does have sense memory of doing it at KOOP & at WMUL.  If I close my eyes, I can even see the respective boards at waist level, can almost reach out to where the CD players or the turntables or the computers or the other components were.

I open my eyes, they're nowhere to be found.  At least three places I've deejayed no longer exist - one of them has actually burned up!

The spring here has been so lovely, it might fool me about how cold it usually is here.  But my hands don't lie.  I will go put a long-sleeved shirt now.  & realize - in three weeks, I will be leaving this safe & happy home I've lived in for almost four years.  I will leave it forever.

A Neighbor Story

I was going to write something today about the countdown to my last show.  But then, life happened.

We moved to Lexington in the summer of 2010.  We rented a house on the south side, the area called Rosemill.  One of the things I did almost immediately is pore over the neighborhood map for a dog-walk route.  We try to walk the dogs every day - &, weather permitting, we do.

A year later, we bought a house in the Picadome neighborhood (not far from where we had been renting) & I had to come up with a new route.  This route took us across Southland into some of our old walking area, but it was near the high school where we met John.

John was a plain-spoken, skinny fellow of an older age.  I thought he was over sixty; the wife thought he might be younger.  He had a house he was literally re-building my himself.  As we walked by, he'd say hi, then he introduced himself, & then we'd stop to chat.  Our dogs came to love him, & wanted to always come up to him.  He'd climb down from his ladder, or he'd wander from over where he was chopping bamboo, & he'd take off his gloves, as our dogs would whine for him to pet them.

John told us he'd been married once.  He said he used to surf, & had spent time in Australia & Hawaii.  He still loved reading surfing magazines.  He operated a concession stand at Grand Canyon for a time.  & he worked in Lexington, where his family is from, usually in the restaurant business.  The house he constantly worked on was purchased from his parents.

He was funny, irreverent, & thoughtful.  He loved to laugh.  If we walked the dogs on summer evenings, when the sun set late, he'd be out in front of his house, chatting with the neighbors, or he'd be working on a flower bed set in the middle of the street, something he took upon himself to take care of, when it was probably the city's responsibility.

We talked about having him over for dinner.  We thought, frankly, he'd be there for as long as we lived here.  We even imagined that he'd never finish the house - the house where he, in the last couple of years, set a new porch & even raised the roof, all by himself - as that was kind of the thing he did.

I remember he was friends with one of the former hosts of WRFL's classic rock show.  He regretted missing his friend's last show, but because I was involved with WRFL, I was able to get a copy of the show & burn it to CD for him.  He was always so generous with his time, it was the least I could do.  He was a kind man.  Such a kind man.

We didn't see him much during this past winter.  Even if we could walk the dogs, it would be too cold for him to be out working on his house.  Another neighbor told us a few weeks ago that he had been diagnosed with cancer - it was very serious - John hadn't been to a doctor in years - & that he was already in hospice care.

I dedicated a song to him on my March 27th show.  His favorite band in the world was Midnight Oil.  I don't think he ever heard it - it was exactly a month ago - but I didn't expect him too.  His family had taken him in.  Another neighbor, a good friend of John's, Bill, kept us apprised of John's condition.  (We walk by Bill's house every dog walk, too.)  He saw John often, & invited us to go see him, but my wife & I never got around to it.

We never got around to it.  We never invited him over for dinner.  We never got around to that.  We thought he'd be there forever.  As long as the house needed work, John would work on it.

I found out that he died this afternoon.  I don't think he had any regrets.  He had been married once, for a short time, & it ended.  He lived simply, & alone.  But he had so many friends.  He would go to the neighbor's to watch television.  He was so friendly.  Everyone in the neighborhood knew him.  Everyone in the neighborhood was so glad they knew him.  So glad & lucky to know this man that Thoreau might have admired.

My wife & I, we're so glad we knew him.  As we talked about him, after we found out the news, she summed him up in a way he'd smile at.  She said, "He was rad."

Self Help Radio 041415: Indiepop A To Z # 47

Kahimi Karie, Las Kellies, Kenickie

The next-to-the-last Self Help Radio on WRFL was… nothing special.  It was a regularly scheduled indiepop a to z episode that managed to cover Kar - Kind.  I don't even think I'll finish the letter K the next time I do this.  It was a lot of good music, though!

I've left a lot of radio stations, & each time I do, I do it with as little fanfare as possible.  My time had ended at KVRX in the summer of 1999, & my last show was nothing special.  For KOOP, I did do a Season Finale, which you can still listen to, & of which I am a little proud.  (It was kind of the precursor to the fake interviews I do these days.)  I realized my time was up at WMUL back in 2010, right before we moved to Lexington, & didn't think anyone listened to me, so I didn't make a big deal out of it.  But next week - well, I hope to say goodbye to WRFL & Lexington in style.

But the penultimate episode?  I put as little effort into it as possible.

Kidding!

The show is now available for listening any time at the Self Help Radio website.  Pay attention to username/password information please.  The songs I played are below.

Please enjoy! Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Gregorian Spring" Karibean _Love, Tears, & Spiritual Blessing_
"Vogue Bambini" Kahimi Karie _I Am A Kitten: Kahimi Karie Sings Momus In Paris_
"Mon Coeur Balance" Katerine _Mon Coeur Balance_

"Little Sister" Katie Goes To Tokyo _My Naked Heart_
"Kate" Katie Smokers Wedding Party _Kate_
"What Color Are You?" Katie The Pest _Homemade Hits, Vol. 1_
"Gifted" Katrina & V Twin _Rough Trade Shops: Indiepop, Vol. 1_
"Miss Misery" Katydids _Katydids_

"Happy People, Scary Planet" Kawaii _If It Shines, We Have It_
"Looking Up" The Keatons _The Beige Album_
"Sea Wave" Keen On Girls _Between Two Waves - The Second Wave_
"Flamingo" Kellarissa _Flamingo_
"Hit If Off" Las Kellies _Las Kellies_

"Head Full Of Steam" Dan Kelly _Write Your Adventures Down: A Tribute To The Go-Betweens_
"Down Fall Down" Kennedy _Neurotica EP_

(part two)

"Fizz Pop" The Kennedy Pill _Knowing Where It All Leeds_
"In Your Car" Kenickie _At The Club_
"Nothing At All" The Kensingtons _Hope Corner Lane EP_

"Away From Home" Klark Kent _Music Madness From The Kinetic Kid_
"Ya Ya Ya" Kester & The Kitchenettes _Yay 4 Cuteness_
"You Still Make Me Smile" Dan Kibler _Capsule_
"New Day, Fresh Start" Kicker _Our Wild Mercury Years_
"Lucky" Kicking Giant _Julep: Another Yoyo Studio Compilation_

"New Year's Day" Kickstand _Pop American Style_
"Pillows & Blankets" Kid Auto Races At Venice _Summer Escape_
"The Cradle Born" Kid Sinister _The Sound Of Leamington Spa, Vol. 5_
"It's In My Blood" Kids On A Crime Spree _We Love You So Bad_

"Hooligans On E" Kill City _Hooligans On E_
"What Comes After" The Kill Devil Hills _What Comes After_
"Tyme Machine" Kincaid _Plays Super Hawaii_
"Disdain" Kind _Split 7" with The Cudgels & The Dufflecoats_

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 47?

Yes, tomorrow will be the last time my ridiculous attempt to play a song from every indiepop artist from a to z will air on Lexington radio.  So I have to complain about what people today think "indiepop" means a few more times.

Though I took a week off from my regular tomfoolery, I promise to have yuks & sentiment galore for the final RFL show, which will be about Los Angeles, which is where I'll end up in a month of so.  I can't even begin to think about it though - I am still working on tomorrow's show!

It'll be from 7 - 9 am on 88.1 fm in Lexington + online at wrfl dot fm at the same time.  Also, I'll have it up on the SHR web in no time after.

Sorry if I seem exhausted.  I had to mow the lawn today.  I hate to mow the lawn today.  Now I am stinky, there are leaves in my hair, & as I gaze into the backyard, I see a ridge of grass just mocking me.  Bastards.

Preface To One Last Indiepop A To Z On WRFL: Expectations

People ask me all the time (no they don't), they say, "Hey Gary, with only two shows left on WRFL, are you going to make them both so spectacular that you'll blow a giant hole in the schedule that the station will take months, even years, to fill?"

& I always say (or would say, if anyone really asked me something like that), "Gosh no!  When people expect anything of me - or when I myself set expectations I am supposed to live up to - I naturally choke & self-sabotage in the most predictable way possible."

Hm.  That dialogue that never happened may be why no one really wants to talk to me.

As I've explained before, I started the silly Indiepop A To Z more than a decade ago (& I'm currently on the letter K) & used to do it whenever I felt like it.  But now I do it every four months.  It was scheduled for the end of April.  So why put it off?

Why put it off?  Because you will never finish it!  Shut up!  You shut up!

Beyond all that, I am wondering when I will be sufficiently unpacked to re-start the show, most probably as a podcast, once I'm in Los Angeles.  On the Self Help Radio web site, I'm suggesting I'll have an episode for June 6.  That gives me five weeks.  But a lot can happen in five weeks!

I'm only sorry the show this week will be without my usual ridiculous bells & nutty whistles.  The music is great, however.

I've Had A Weird Day

Sorry I am writing this so late.  Something wonderfully strange happened to me today that I can't at this point go into.  My wife also appears to have found a place for us to live in Pasadena, which is right next to Los Angeles, but which she found nicer homes to rent when she went house-hunting this past weekend.  I'm sorry I wasn't there to help her but I'm not sorry that I missed the experience.

The application to rent was insane.  She got off the plane last night & spent two hours filling it out.  She thinks, actually, that one of the reasons we may get the house is that no one else actually took the time to finish the damn application.

I think it'll be a month - or four weeks, really - from today that we'll be loading the animals into a car & leaving Lexington.  I've talked about the crazy four-day trek we're going to make, but as I sit here working on Friday's show, I worry more about the weeks I won't be doing Self Help Radio.  It's such an integral part of my life that not spending days listening to & gathering songs about a particular topic will feel odd, like I'm missing out on something.

& what the hell will I do in Los Angeles?  I've contacted a couple of radio stations but have so far gotten no replies.  I haven't pitched them anything - I tried that once & got a terse response from a person who obviously hadn't read my email & who replied, "We don't accept syndicated shows" - I just asked general questions about volunteering.  Non-commercial radio stations, where nearly no-one gets paid unless they're an NPR affiliate, are notorious for lack of follow-through.  I will visit them in person once I am in the city proper.  Or improper.

Look at me, writing about the future!  This week's show won't be anything special, so I'm taking it easy.  I like to ease out of places.  Next week's show will be more fun.  I will pack it with jam.  Did I use that phrase properly?  What?  Oh!  I meant to say it'll be jam-packed!  With jam.

The Jam?

No, jam!

It'll be delicious!

Sorry, I'm getting silly.  My day was surreal.  I will write about it soon!

I Forgot To Mention! Also, A 4/20 Story

Aw, rats.  It was just too early.  I subbed a radio show this morning from 10 am to noon, a show on WRFL called the Bindle, which also covers different topics, & because it was April 20, I thought I'd do a show about grass.  Not marijuana - that was the show's joke.  I'm not going to put it up, but I'll try to put the playlist up on the SHR website before I do Friday's show.

I've never been a fan of pot.  I used to always say this when people - when the large mass of people I've known in my life - who all enjoy smoking pot - this is what I would always say as to why I don't enjoy marijuana: "I never got past the point where it just turned my brain into a block of wood."

But this is true.  I might've only smoked the dreaded ganja ten times in my life.  Unlike that moment when I had a beer & it tasted really, really good, I never got to the point where I enjoyed myself while high.  Mainly the guys I worked with at the video store in Austin would make me smoke it to level out my drunk so they could go do cool things & I could close the place.  Being high would make it really hard to walk home.

The first time I smoked pot, I was 24 years old, & there's even a picture of it, it was such a momentous occasion:

I was with my friends Russ, Scott & Suloni, & we were at a chick named Karen's house.  (I think that's Karen's hand in the picture.)  I don't remember getting very high.  Everyone else did, though.  They were all giggles.  I didn't do it again for years.

Initially, I had a reluctance to do anything that might be mind-altering.  My father was an alcoholic, & while I didn't see him enough as a child to understand what that entailed (he was a very functional alcoholic, it seemed, most of the time), the hatred my mother had for his destroying their marriage & their family obviously rubbed off on me.  I was happy to see him, because when I was a kid, he'd bring gifts (or take us places, driving while intoxicated, & buying us comic books & Slurpees), but I naturally sided with my mother, who freaked out when she came home from work & Daddy had visited us that day.

As far as I know, my father never tried pot, but I had two older brothers who did*.  They tried it all the time.  All through my childhood.  At some point in high school my brother Ralph (the younger of the two) tried to use my love of the Beatles to convince me that marijuana was a kind of sacrament.  It was a weird conversation.  He was insistent, for example, that John Lennon was singing "Everybody smoke pot" at the end of "I Am The Walrus."  I had read by that point as many interviews with Lennon as I could - it may have bothered them that I knew much, much more about the music they grew up with by the time I was thirteen than they ever did - I told my brother that Lennon insisted he was singing, "Everybody's got one."**  My brother said, "Of course he'd lie!"  I confronted him with the fact that Lennon said this in 1980, right before he died, & he talked openly about his heroin use, among other things; why would he want to be coy about advocating pot in a song?  To this, my brother Ralph had no reply.

Ralph did, for a time, replace the word "drugs" for the word "love" in songs he would sing when he heard them on the radio.  For example, "All You Need Is Love" became "All You Need Is Drugs."  It was very funny, to him.

My brothers resembled the stoners at school, who weren't part of my world, & who seemed to have given up giving a shit for the sake of getting high.  I didn't enjoy school much, but I did well there, & it seemed that it might lead somewhere, & I couldn't see turning into my brothers as much of a future.

By the time I tried marijuana, I was will to do anything.  I would do acid for the first time in the coming months, for example, & I had become a social drinker.  The fact that marijuana held no charm for me is distressing on this Cannabis Day because I'll soon be living in a state where medical marijuana is plentiful.  If you've read anything I've written here, surely you must know I am an anxious sort with all kinds of obvious nervous conditions, which I'm certain marijuana could help with.  What will happen, I wonder, in the future?  Can you recommend an understanding medical professional in the Greater Los Angeles area?

Because I haven't ruled it out on anything.  It's just that whiskey tastes better.  Maybe you can get marijuana whiskey in California.  Couldn't that be a thing?  & if it is, would it be at all interesting?

* My oldest brother, as far as I know, has never done a drug, had an alcoholic drink, or smoked.  Interestingly, my younger brother - the two of them are nineteen years apart - has a similar resume, although I think he's had a beer in his life.
** In the Playboy interview, when pressed about this, Lennon said, "Everybody's got one, a penis, a vagina, whatever."  I am paraphrasing my memory.

Self Help Radio 041715: My Favorite Radio Show

(Original image here.

One day I'd love to do a radio show about my favorite radio shows.  Wow, that would be fun!  There have been so many - I could spend so much time on each of them.  Some of them I learned from.  Some of them I marveled at.  Some of them were so much fun to listen to.  Some of them I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  Most contained all parts of that.

However.  Today's show is using that title to give me an excuse to play songs in which the musicians talk about their favorite things.  (Even the band My Favorite gets a song because in the song they say "you're my favorite.")  You can see what songs I played below.  People are not shy talking about their favorite things!

The show is available now at the Self Help Radio website.  By now I don't need to remind you about the username/password (SHR/selfhelp) situation.  Oh wait.  I just did.  Uh.  All right!

Thanks for listening.  You are my favorite!

(part one)

"My Favorite Things" The Hi-Lo's _Only The Best Of The Hi-Lo's_
"My Favorite Dream" Jan & Dean _Jan & Dean: Surf City + Folk 'N' Roll_
"Love's My Favorite Color" Dick Glass _Love's My Favorite Color_
"Alice Long (You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend)" Boyce & Hart _I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight?_

"My Favorite Song" Kaygee's _Keep On Bumpin` & Master Plan_
"That's My Favorite Song" Dramatics _Any Time Any Place_
"My Favorite DJ" The Headboys _The Headboys_
"My Favourite Films" The Gifted Children _Whaam! Bam! Thank You Dan! A Whaam! Records Compilation 1981-1984_

"My Favourite Girl" The Hit Parade _With Love From... The Hit Parade_
"My Favourite Buildings" Robyn Hitchcock _I Often Dream Of Trains_
"My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon" The Siddeleys _Scared To Get Happy: Story Of Indie Pop 1980-1989_
"My Favourite Dress" The Wedding Present _Tommy_

"My Favourite Pastime" Boyracer _Welcome To The Wetherbeat Scene 1988 - 1991_
"My Fave Ex-Wife" The Bartlebees _Twen Beat_

(part two)

"My Favourite Jumper" Ampersands _The Long Secret: A Harriet Harriet Records Compilation_
"My Favorite Cuppa" The Shermans _Casual_
"Working Class Jacket" My Favorite _Love At Absolute Zero_

"My Favorite Kind Of Day" Laura Watling _Winter EP_
"Brown & Beige Are My Favorite Colors" Acid House Kings _Mondays Are Like Tuesdays & Tuesdays Are Like Wednesdays_
"My Favourite Fool" The Ethnobabes _Stargazer_
"My Favourite Shadow" The Haircuts _It's Always Better When We're Together_

"My Favorite Dream" The Smittens _A Little Revolution_
"My Favourite Songs" Dylan Mondegreen _While I Walk You Home_
"I Only Wear My Favorite Clothes At Home" Dangerous Ponies _Dangerous Ponies_
"My Favorite Topping" Charles Edward Cheese Band _Let's Eat Pizza_

"My Favorite Angel" John Wesley Harding _Who Was Changed & Who Was Dead_
"My Favorite Dude" Tania & Dyan _My Favorite Dude_

Whither My Favorite Radio Show?

You might have guessed that this week's show is really not about my favorite radio show.  It's just a conceit that will let me play songs that have names or talk about "my favorite ______."  That's all.

I've had a lot of favorite radio shows, & many of them are on WRFL.  In the past, I've felt that I was in some way competing with them, which is a terrible way to feel.  I can be very critical of things, & a lot of that probably comes from some insecure place in me.  Once I find myself putting those feelings aside, I very happily find that I like what I am listening to.  In a real sense, good radio is not something I compete with, it's something I try to add my own radio show to.  Too often I fail.  That's my fault, not theirs!

This will be the third-to-the-last Self Help Radio on WRFL.  My gosh!  It'll air from 7-9 am of course, on 88.1 fm in town, online at wrfl dot fm.  Later on I'll put it up at the Self Help Radio website.

It's going to be a lot of fun.  & there are only three episodes of Self Help Radio on WRFL left!!

Preface To My Favorite Radio Show: What Is My Favorite Radio Show?

I'm amazed that a whole generation or two of young people have grown up without radio.  I know most  radio is terrible (probably including my dumb show), but I have such happy memories of growing up with radio.  & when I discovered community radio, it was the gateway into the world of music I love now, most of which doesn't get (& has never gotten) played on commercial radio.

But I'll tell you one story about radio being important to me.  It was probably when I was in eighth grade, so I was twelve or thirteen or maybe fourteen.  My mother had given to me & my little brother two radio/tape recorder units that weren't quite boomboxes, but very handy, because I was taping music from the radio by holding a little cassette recorder up to a speaker.  I would record television shows the same way before VCRs.  The sound quality was awful.

We got these sorta-boomboxes for Christmas, & it wasn't long after we got them that, because it was retractable & we didn't remember to do retract it, the antenna bent & broke off.  Which meant it could be used as a kind of dueling implement.  Which meant the other antenna was promptly broken off so it could be used to duel the other dueling antenna thing.

During the summer I would sleep on the sofa so I could watch television late into the night, & I would often have my radio/tape recorder right next to me.  One of Dallas's two classic rock stations at the time - I believe they were Q102 & KZEW "the Zoo" - would, at eleven o'clock each night, play an entire album all the way through.  If I were smart enough to catch it on time, I could get a record I couldn't afford to buy & get it on my own tape.

I was obsessed then with the Beatles.  I had taken from my older brothers the Beatles records they had - Sgt. Pepper, the Blue + Red Greatest Hits releases, Let It Be - but of course I knew I hadn't heard all their songs yet.  I would tape Ringo's Starr's show Ringo's Yellow Submarine on Sundays & I was amazed there were songs I didn't even know existed.  My friend Russell had told me that his favorite record was called The White Album.  I so wanted to hear it in its entirety.

One night, they played it all the way through on that eleven o'clock spot!  I had my tape ready.  But there was one snag: because the antenna had been torn off, I had to put my finger on the space where the base of the antenna had been in order to hear the station without static.  This meant that for as long as the record played - & the station played commercials in-between sides - I had to leave my finger on that spot.

It was worth it.  That record blew my mind.  I didn't know you could do such a thing as that record, & of course nothing had prepared me for "Revolution No. 9."  I listened to the tape constantly, & for years, after I had bought the record myself, & then the CD, I would expect to hear the static from when, because my arm was tired, I shifted my finger.  I also never got the hear the entire ending of "Long, Long, Long" because the deejay put an ad in way before it finished (it has a long, long, long fade).

Later on, I would discover KNON in Dallas, & then a late-night show on KUT in Austin which, in the mid- to late-1980s, played college radio type music.  KTSB, the precursor to KVRX, started around that time, but they only broadcast on cable FM, & of course no one knew what that was.  I did my first show on KVRX on cable FM & I still don't know what that is.

But as much as I loved the radio up until the end of high school, when I discovered music that was never played on commercial radio, it wasn't inevitable that I would actually one day become a deejay.  I sort of daydreamed about it, like one does, but even when I went to KVRX in the summer of 1994, I wasn't thinking about going on the air.  I was thinking about finding new music, & I left there with a handful of CDs to review.

Hmm - I guess I didn't say what my favorite radio show was, did I?  Well, rest assured, it's not Self Help Radio!

Nerd Stories

A friend asked me yesterday if I were enjoying the new Daredevil series on Netflix.  I had only seen the first seven episodes, but I was liking it a lot.

It shouldn't surprise you, but I am a comic book nerd.  What hadn't occurred to me until yesterday was that other people might not have grown up with comic books the way I did.  I see every damn comic movie & I watch every damn comic television show because that mythology has grown inside me as I have grown.  An example: I am probably the only non-teenage-girl who watched all ten seasons of Smallville.

It doesn't mean I like everything out there - nerds have standards! - but I like more movies & shows than my friend does, & something made me ask him when he started reading comics.  When he said he was in his teens at the time, it somehow explained his significant lack of interest compared to mine.  I'll bet if you asked me at five years old what Daredevil's secret identity was, I would've said, confidently, "Matt Murdock."

Comics were around the house all through my childhood.  My older brothers worked at the same convenience store, called Orchard Hills Grocery, as my mother, & they brought comics home.  (I'm almost certain they didn't pay for them.)  Orchard Hills Grocery, by the way, still exists in Garland, Texas, & today it looks like this:

I don't think there were poles to stop cars in the front, nor bars on the windows, when I was a kid, but otherwise it's the same damn building.  My mother worked there in the mornings, & the elementary school I went to was a block or two behind the store, so we often stopped there to say hello to her (& get candy for lunch) during my fourth & fifth grade years.

Anyway.  Lots of comics all the time.  I read them constantly, but I think, by the time I was in seventh grade, I had started to outgrow them.  I had come to like science fiction (like Star Wars) (although not the Star Wars comic book) & movies better, & certainly had begun to read classic literature like Dickens & Jack London.  Comics didn't seem childish or anything to me, I just felt like they weren't as interesting as when I was younger.

(I can't say for sure.  I was twelve years old.  Who reflects on their life like that when they're twelve?)

Then something happened.  My littler brother had a classmate named Gus who, out of the blue, contacted me because he knew I had a lot of comic books.  He asked me if I knew who John Byrne was.  (Who is John Byrne, you may ask?  He was an artist who came into his own on The X-Men comic, making it the most popular comic at the time, in the early 1980s.  Here's his Wikipedia page.)

I had no idea who John Byrne was, which probably bothered me.  I could identify Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, John Romita, Curt Swan - pretty much any artist from before 1980.  Who was this upstart?  & why was he making a kid who not only was younger than I was but who was also a sporty type (Gus played football) talk to me about comics?

It turns out that John Byrne's X-Men comics were in such high demand that back issues started to be "worth something."  The same thing happened later with baseball cards.  Gus's interest wasn't in the content, but I - I was a reader.  I recognized that something different was happening in comics.  & I was sucked back in.

While I don't think I would have abandoned comics entirely, I am glad I got back into them in the early 80s, because I probably would've been in the middle of high school & hearing about a comic book called The Watchman & paying lots of money I didn't have to find copies.  (Collecting them in graphic novels was not a thing yet.)  One of the things I was fortunate to discover is Frank Miller's Daredevil.

Frank Miller has become something of a polarizing figure these days.  He is criticized for his somewhat anachronistic tough-guy protagonists in stuff like Sin City.  I confess to not liking or following a lot of his later stuff, but I did like his Daredevil & his Dark Night Returns.  Again, I might have not come to them at the time if a kid who knew my little brother hadn't daydreamed about getting extra cash by buying & selling funny books.

My re-entry into that world was pretty quick.  I had discovered a book store on Shiloh road that sold used comics pretty cheap & was about to start selling the new "direct market" releases.  But I didn't ignore the classic newsstand comics.  Around this time, my mother worked at a convenience store down the street from Orchard Hills - this one was called the Time Saver - & one day she let me take off the rack (when the boss wasn't there, my mother assumed that things were free) an issue of Daredevil - I think it was this one:

This is from 1981, so I was 13.  I grabbed it, I took it home, & I read it - & what Chris Claremont & John Byrne's X-Men suggested was confirmed by Frank Miller: something new was happening in comics.  I rode my bike around town to find small, independently owned convenience stores, to see if earlier issues were still available.  (They left comics on the rack far longer than stores like 7-11.)  I was able, with the help of the comic shop, to get all of Miller's entire run that way.

(The Time Saver is not there any longer; a different convenience store was built over its ashes.  The used bookstore that also had comics closed some time in the 1990s, after I had left Garland for Austin.  According to Google Maps, what's there now is a medical supply place.)

Frank Miller's run on Daredevil highly influenced the Netflix series.  Characters he created are prominent, as is Daredevil's adversarial relationship with the Kingpin.  Much of this is why the show thrills me so.  My wife, who did not grown up with comics like I have, is not in the slightest interested in the show.

Which brings me back to my discussion with a pal about the series & comic book movies/shows in general: one reason I do things like watch ten years of Smallville is because my attachment to these creations is deep.  In a real sense, they were friends of mine when I was young.  When I rediscovered comics in my teen years, I became an object of ridicule to my peers.  I would wear a Walt Simonson Thor t-shirt in gym class, & to the others in the class that was grounds to mock me.  But I was fine with the things that I loved.

When I watch a show like Daredevil, I'm doing it to be with an old friend.  When it turns out to be as good as it is, I'm as thrilled as when someone I love has done something wonderful with his or her life.

When it isn't all that good, well: I'm still pretty supportive.  Because we're very old friends.

Timetable Change!

Remember about a week ago when I made an announcement that I was moving away from Lexington & that there would be only five more episodes of Self Help Radio on WRFL?  Well, you know what the Close Lobsters said, right?  "Let's make some plans 'cause they can go wrong."

Because of renovations in its current space, WRFL is moving.  It's a massive undertaking & I don't envy the students there that run the station.  But because of the move - which is happening the first week of May - there's a chance that my last show, which I had scheduled for May 8, might be pre-empted.  Since I will be leaving the city very soon after that, I might not have a chance to do an actual last show in Lexington.  That's probably not important to you, but it is to me.  I need closure, damn it!

So the timetable has changed.  My last show on WRFL will be my May 1st show.  Which means there are only three (3) episodes of Self Help Radio left on WRFL.  Oh no, I may get a little emotional here.

But wait!  I will be subbing another of WRFL's shows, the one called The Bindle, which is also theme-based, on April 20.  For some reason, people at WRFL told me I should do a show about "grass."  Something about April 20 suggested grass to them.  Maybe because spring is in full flower?  Anyway, even though it isn't an episode of Self Help Radio, I'll still do the show pretty much the same way I would do any theme-based show.  As a technicality, then, there will be four (4) more episodes of Self Help Radio sort of.

When will Self Help Radio return?  Ha ha!  I don't dare to set a date for that just yet!

Self Help Radio 041015: Laundry

(Original image here.)

I brought my laundry up to WRFL this morning.  There wasn't much dirty laundry - surprisingly - but I did have a lot of stuff to iron & fold.  Then I ran out of quarters!

I had a couple of people help with the laundry.  I talked to author David Fruchter who, in his book You're Doing It Wrong!, says I've been washing my laundry wrong all these years.  & I chatted with Our Fellow In Hollywood, Mark Miller, who attempts to air some dirty laundry of his own.  & Self Help Radio's own Alexander Spincycle talks about the history of the washing machine.  All of this plus tons of great music - how much great music? - look at what I played below!

The show is of course now at the Self Help Radio website.  If you want to listen, please note the username/password information on the page.  If you don't want to listen, can you at least fold your own laundry?  Do I look like a maid?  A washerwoman? A musician with a washboard?

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Washboard Blues (with Paul Whiteman & His Concert Orchestra)" Hoagy Carmichael _Timeless Historical Presents (1927 - 1939)_
"Washboards Get Together" Washboard Serenaders _Sounds Of Suprise_
"I'm The Laundry Man" The Five Breezes _Blues A Dixon: The Songs Of Willie Dixon_

"Wash Machine Boogie" Bill Browning & His Echo Valley Boys _Rock-A-Billy Dynamite_
"I Got Caught In The Washing Machine (& I'm Gonna Twist All Night)" John Shur _I Got Caught In The Washing Machine (& I'm Gonna Twist All Night)_
"Leader Of The Laundromat" The Detergents _The Many Faces Of The Detergents_
"Clothes Line Saga" Bob Dylan & The Band _The Basement Tapes_

"Washerwoman" Cliff Richard _Finders Keepers_
"Washday Blues" Dolly Parton _The Hits Of Dolly Parton_
"Laundromat Blues" Martin Mull _Days Of Wine & Neuroses_
"At The Laundrymat" Broken Bow & Idabell _Broken Bow & Idabell_
"Laundromat" Rory Gallagher _Rory Gallagher_

"Batman In The Launderette" The Shapes _Wot's For Lunch Mum? EP_
"Laundramat Loverboy" Active Ingredients _Laundromat Loverboy 7"_
"This Kind Of Music" Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers _Jonathan Sings!_

(part two)

"Laundromat Monday" Joe Jackson _Mike's Murder (The Motion Picture Soundtrack)_
"Velvet Launderette" Poison Girls _Statement: The Complete Recordings_

"The Laundry" Lilac Time _& Love For All_
"Laundry" Say Hi To Your Mom _Discosadness_
"Marlon Brando's Laundromat" Pony Up! _Pony Up!_
"Dirty Laundry" Cayetana _Nervous Like Me_

"Launderette" Vivien Goldman _Girl Monster_
"Laundromat" The Haywards _Side One/One Side_
"Clean Sinks & Folded Laundry" Ghost In The Water _Tooth_
"Laundromat" Bombadil _All That The Rain Promises_

"Laundry" Tania & Juan _Laundry_
"Dirty Laundry" Bitter:Sweet _The Mating Game_

Whither Laundry?

The show was kind of inspired by this song:



I had heard the Lilac Time had a new album coming out & so I went back to listen to stuff from when I first discovered them over twenty years ago.  The song above stood out.

Apparently there's a video for that song but unfortunately it's not available on the interwebs (sad face).

I remember getting a collection of songs from their first three albums - maybe it was a promo? - from a friend who volunteered at KUT.  This would've been in 1990 or 1991, a few years before KVRX, & when, because of school & being in my first real relationship with a woman, I wasn't paying much attention to music.  Despite the advent of "alternative radio," there weren't many new sounds out there. The fact that one of the few non-commercial stations in Austin at the time was giving away great English indiepop is indicative of how hard it was to find something if you weren't actually looking.

The Lilac Time were a band I would return to from time-to-time but I didn't always keep up with them, & I have missed a lot in the intervening years.  The general opinion does suggest those first three records, which I have since acquired, are their best.

A few weeks back, when I was re-listening to the Lilac Time, I did happen to hear two Jonathan Richman songs, almost one after the other, in which he mentioned laundry.  When that happens, I think to myself, "Okay, that means I should see if there are enough songs about the laundry to do a dumb radio show about that subject."

There are!  I will!  Tomorrow at 7am to 9am!  On 88.1 fm in Lexington, & online at wrfl dot fm!  & later at the Self Help Radio website!  After that, on the line, drying in the lovely spring breeze!

Preface To Laundry: When Moving, Laundry Is The Least Of Your Worries

For real.

To move from Lexington, Kentucky, to Los Angeles, California, is already no mean feat.  To do it with seven animals (besides the two humans involved) is almost too overwhelming.

I've been planning the four-day route.  We'll drive over two thousands miles, in two vehicles (one of these some kind of moving truck), & I figure we can probably handle eight-hour-a-day drives.  That means covering over five hundred miles a day & then stopping to find a place to close our eyes for the night & maybe even find vegan food to eat.

The last is going to be tough, when the places we'll stay are, in order, Springfield, Missouri; Amarillo, Texas; & Flagstaff, Arizona.  I wish we could just hit bigger cities - the hotels would probably be cleaner, & there'd be a better chance places like Whole Foods stores where you can get pre-packaged vegan food.

& the hotels!  I guess I'm glad to be living in a world where you can read hotel reviews online, which wasn't something I could do when I started driving around the country over twenty years ago, but the reviews are marvelously inconsistent.  & why not?  Everyone has different levels of tolerance.  Remind me one day to tell you of the fight the wife & I had when she booked a very cheap hotel in Piccadilly Circus in London.

The pets - the pets whom I love so much & without whom I couldn't live - the pets are the biggest concern.  Four cats in tiny cages in a fast car (or truck) eight hours a day is hard enough.  Two of them have health issues (as I have written about before) that concern me in my everyday world; the two of them also eat throughout the day, which they won't be able to do in a car.  How I will worry.

Traveling with pets means pet need to stay in motels.  The worst motels are usually the ones that don't mind pets.  & why not?  Everyone & everything is welcome in the worst motels on earth!

I just told a neighbor that we'll basically be on a kind of autopilot the entire way - we'll be exhausted, we'll be on edge, we'll be anxious.  But we'll also be determined.  It's a trip we hopefully only have to make one time.  At least for a while.

Dirty Laundry

One song I won't play this week on my show about laundry is the Don Henley hit "Dirty Laundry."  It's not just that it was a number one hit single for Don Henley, & I usually stay away from the hits.  I actually found a serviceable cover, by a band called Harlan, but I might not play it either.

I'm not even refusing to play it because I loathe the Eagles, a group of which (as you know) Henley was a member.  I tell people all the time part of the reason I dislike the Eagles is just that I've been overexposed to them, almost without my consent, for my entire life.  I joke that on my deathbed I'll not be able to remember the names of my best friends, the woman I've loved, or my dearest pets, but I'll be able to recite the lyrics to "Hotel California."

The truth is, in the days before I discovered the gigantic & far more satisfying world of music hidden behind what's now called classic rock radio, I quite liked Don Henley, & specifically the album Building The Perfect Beast.  ("Dirty Laundry" is off the previous record, I Can't Stand Still.)  If you were a teen in 1984, & you listened to FM radio or you watched MTV, the song "Boys Of Summer" was seared into your brain.  Just writing the name makes the song start in my head - & if you're my age, it happened to you, too.

Why, then, if I like the song, don't I play it?  I mean, besides the fact that at any given point in time, somewhere on the planet, there is at least one media outlet playing Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry"?  & by playing it, even on a station like WRFL, you can watch precious dimes & nickels flying out of needy people's pockets into Don Henley's obscenely large pile of cash?

Besides that - I have two reasons.

One, it's not really about laundry, but about "dirty laundry" as a metaphor, meaning people's private stuff, which, if "aired," might bring them shame or embarrassment.

But that's not enough.  I don't play big hits, sure, but certainly I do play songs with metaphorical riffs on my themes.  I might not have any songs otherwise!

This is the kicker:

Reason number two: I'm not sure if I like it, after all.

I haven't listened to any Don Henley since I discovered that there was a world of music outside what was being played on commercial radio.  That world of music resonated in me so completely that I pretty much left the commercial rock/pop world behind.  That's been over thirty years ago now.  While I can look back fondly at myself for liking a song like "The Sunset Grill," there's no denying that bands like the Cure, the Smiths, Joy Division, the Chameleons, on & on & on, they speak to me far more than someone writing in the classic rock idiom, like Don Henley, ever could.

I therefore have no real way of judging whether I like it.  There are songs from my childhood that I love not because I really love them, but because when I was eight I jumped around the room listening to them on the radio.  I can't communicate entirely with the me from nearly forty years ago, but I most certainly can appreciate that that's a connection we share.  Whether I like that music or not, I did like it at one time, & that's a part of me.

Listening to the song "Dirty Laundry," by Don Henley, for the first time in decades, it seemed overlong & didactic.  The synths got on my nerves.  I annoyed myself by remembering a lot of the lyrics.  It wasn't even a pleasant nostalgic experience.

Oh who knows what I'm trying to say here.  I pride myself on doing a radio show that plays music I hope most people haven't heard.  But sometimes the best songs for a theme are well-known songs.

Still, I don't think I'll play the Don Henley song - or even the cover.

I hope you appreciate how stupid conflicted I am about the whole thing.

An Announcement

I made this announcement on my show on Friday, but maybe you didn't listen, which is eminently reasonable of you.  But perhaps you'll read this - I'll do my best to get your attention & point you here.

Here's the big news: there are only five (5) more episodes of Self Help Radio that will air on WRFL.

Why so?  Because after that, I will no longer be living in Lexington.

Does this mean the end of Self Help Radio?  Of course not!  I couldn't stop doing this dumb show if I wanted to!  It's almost guaranteed that there are two things I'll do immediately once I'm in my new city: 1) I'll start looking for an unsuspecting radio station at which to program my show; & 2) I'll do the show as a podcast until such time as I've found it a new home.

It does mean the end of Self Help Radio live on the air on Friday mornings at WRFL.  I am sad about that.  The station is a wonderful place full of nerds + weirdos & they've always made me feel at home.  If you live in Lexington, you know this; & you also know that there are plenty of better shows on the station than mine so I won't be missed even slightly.

Where am I going?  West!  West, where the water isn't!

I hope you'll keep up with Self Help Radio on this here blog or (if you want) on the Facebook or the Twitter pages.  Because the show will only be gone for a couple or three weeks before it's back & more annoying than ever.

I promise!