I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity. Edgar Allen Poe
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. - H. L. Mencken Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so -Bertrand Russell What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ... -James Branch Cabell
October 07, 2015 - 11:01 a.m. Last time I was a guest DJ at WFDU I was a total idiot and left the charger for my computer there. I was there again last night and guess what. I left the charger for my computer there. So I'm racing to finish this before my battery dies. I really hate not having a brain. Is leading with the idiot story the right way to go? Doing that means I didn't get the slow buildup to what I did, now you know I'm going to write about being on the radio. Of course I told you that on Monday so you already knew that if you were paying attention. Were you paying enough attention to realize didn't write yesterday? I was supposed to prepare for the show this weekend. I tried to but of course I procrastinated. I ended up staying up to 1:30 AM on Monday night deciding what I was going to play and putting the CDs in my bag to bring with me. But I still hadn't sequenced it. Yesterday, Tuesday I had to be at WFUV at 10 AM but I knew I might be a little late. I woke up at 8:30 which meant I should have been out of here by 8:50 but somehow didn't leave till closer to 9:30. It then took me forever to get to the station. I don't know why. The train might have just been slow. I got there a bit after 11. It wasn't that busy and that's where I sequenced the show. Ended up spending several hours on t. Of course I didn't work straight through. I couldn't listen to the music as I worked, I had to go by memory. I think I did a fairly good job. This is what I played. Song ~ Artist For the most part it was artist that I've seen the last month or plan on seeing in the next month and albums that have been recently released. You might have noticed that there was a repletion, the Young Novelists followed by M Shanghai twice in a row. That was a technical glitch. I had planned what I called my "geek set;" Gentle Arms of Eden, Entropy then Palindrome but the M Shanghai and Young Novelist CDs end up in the wrong CD players so we played the wrong tracks off both albums. We then had to play the right tracks. I tried to make the songs be related to each other. I made sure to point out things like Efrat's violin could be heard on the Spuyten Duyvil and Bobtown songs while Katherine and Jen from Bobtown could be heard on Efrat's track. And because it's me I actually went to see some of these musicians in the company of others they played, for instance I've seen M Shanghai with both Dan from the Lords of Liechtenstein and Katherine from Bobtown. It's a small incestuous world. Damn, I forgot to mention that Pete Kennedy could be heard on Tara O'Grady's song and she and the Kennedys have a Christmas show together in December. I guess I can't think of everything. That was past m my event horizon, I had a list of upcoming shows that I gave. But now I'm all ahead of myself. Let's get back to WFUV. I did take calls while I was there, Jim for the most part did the supervising. OK I supervised a lot too. There are still some procedures we have not worked out for taking pledges on the computer. I have one big suggestion for how to handle something in the future. I had a weird eating day. I thought I'd get there too late for breakfast so I grabbed a breakfast sandwich at Dunkin' Donuts. But when I got to the station there was still one breakfast wrap left so I was a good hobbit and had breakfast and then second breakfast. I figured I'd skip lunch but they had really good cold cut sandwiches so I had lunch then second lunch. I skipped dinner. So had all my food for the day squeezed into a few hours. I then took the Ram Van, the intercampus shuttle to Fordham's Lincoln Center campus and the subway down to the Port Authority to catch the bus to Teaneck. WFDU is located on the campus of Fairleigh Dickenson University. Last time there was a lot of confusion about which bus to take there. The information people at the Port Authority could not get their act together. This time I looked at my blog from the last time I was there and saw it was the 155. The guy who sold me the ticket set the next bus was 7:17. I went up to the gate and found people lining up for the bus. He was wrong, there was a bush leaving at 6:44. Good thing I didn't believe him. I was worried that I was on the wrong bus as it left from a different gate than last time but it was right. The one person I could trust is myself. Yes I'm an idiot but a reliable idiot. Brian met me when I arrived. We had a lot of time and went to Boston Market just to get soda and talk and relax. They have Wi-Fi so I could transfer all the files that needed playing and the playlist to the dropbox folder we share. That makes things much easier for us. When we got to the Station I put all the CDs in the right order. See I actually prepare in advance. This way I could keep handing him the CDs in the right order. And I have it coded on the playlist what songs are on CD and which on files. The show started with a glitch, my mic wasn't working. Nobody heard me when I explained what I was going to be playing and talked about Rebecca Loebe. Sorry Becca. There was a loose wire and jiggling it fixed it. Oh notice the first song listed is "Gordon?" That's the famous Red Molly song that just consists of singing my name. That really is the greatest lyrics ever written. I also had my radio musical debut. After playing the Bumper Jackson song that features kazoo I took my kazoo out and played Goodnight Irene; yes I have absolutely no shame. The DJ that follows Brian, is that Tony? I think so, gave me and my kazoo playing a shout-out. I'm now a famous musician. The show ends at 1 AM, I think we got out of there around 1:10. Brian drove me to Secaucus where I just caught the 1:44 train back to Penn Station. Then I had to take two trains both running local to get home. I didn't get back to 3:30. That is the one thing I don't like about doing Brian's show. Maybe next time I'll just crash with him, we'll see. OK today I have to get my phone fixed. Remember when the guy fixed the charging port on Sunday he broke the orientation sensor. I went back there on Monday and he wasn't in. Hopefully he can fix it today. Then tonight I'm off to Kat Quinn's CD release show on Rockwood. She sent the digital version of it to me so I could play it last night. Efrat did the same thing. My guess is that I'm the first one to play either of those songs on the radio; I'm a pioneer. I know what a lot of you are thinking, "Damn I missed Gordon on the radio!" No worries for the next two weeks you can hear it on the archives, just follow this link, Brian Norton's It's All About the Music for 10/6/15. It starts with Brian playing a song before it gets to me so don't worry that you don't hear my not so dulcet tones. I'm listening now and hear some tech glitches I didn't notice when I was there and the archive actually starts with the last song by the previous DJ. I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge: please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
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