She Reassured Me with an Unfamiliar Line: Transmission 478, 2019 August 9
I'll begin by saying that we experienced the sublime in this episode. It was fleeting, but you have to take positivity when you get it. Somehow I made Johnny Cash fade into Roni Size gracefully, so there's at least one reason to listen to this episode. Other than that, maybe the set with The Clash and Linton Kwesi Johnson was ok.
Otherwise this episode was pretty close to the nadir. When I wasn't incoherent (I should have just said that I thought the Wanda Jackson CD was from 2004 or something) I was more or less un-PC (I should have kept my mouth shut about the origins of Coil's record and don't know why I didn't). And where I wasn't either of those things I was trampling King Sunny Ade's music (I always seem to) and ruining Lefty Frizzell segues (though I don't know if that's avoidable). I feel like I was visibly and audibly upset here, and this might be rock bottom. I'm think maybe I even scared Lady Catharsis, who is well accustomed to my negativity.
I am a little reassured to find that at this time last year I was doing terrible shows as well. What is it about summer? Wait, I know. Hopefully that is changing soon. At least I can tell you that Lady C and I have done programs since this one, and they've been better.
BOMBAST playlist, 2019 August 9, 2100-2300:
- "Longshot Kick the Bucket / Liquidator / Skinhead Moonstomp (The Skinhead Symphony in Three Movements)" | The Specials | The BBC Sessions | EMI
- "Shakin' All Over" | Wanda Jackson | The Party Ain't Over | Third Man
- "Dawning (Version)" | 23 Skidoo | Beyond Time | Les Disques Du Crepuscule
- "Blue Flower" | Mazzy Star | She Hangs Brightly | Capitol Records
- "Secret 77" | Bad Brains | I Against I | SST
- "Black Heart" | Keith Hudson & Soul Syndicate | Heavyweight Sound: A Blood and Fire Sampler | Blood & Fire
- "Mo Beru Agba" | King Sunny Ade | Juju Music | Island Records Ltd.
- "Train to Glory / The Whip" | The Ethiopians | The Original Reggae Hitsound Of The Ethiopians | Trojan
- "Tondibama" | Amadou Balake | Bar Konon Moussou Bar | Kindred Spirits
- "The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea" | Johnny Cash | Love God Murder | Columbia / Legacy / American
- "Ballet Dance" | Roni Size | The Rebirth of Cool Seven | Island
- "Bankrobber / Robber Dub" | The Clash | Black Market Clash | Epic
- "Reality Poem / Wat About Di Workin Claas?" | Linton Kwesi Johnson | In Concert with the Dub Band | LKJ Records
- "Run 'Em Off" | Lefty Frizzell | The Best of Lefty Frizzell | Rhino
- "Lunar Baedeker, Odious Oasis" | Parviz | Zerzura | Omena
- "Summer Wine" | Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood | Fairy Tales & Fantasies: The Best Of Nancy & Lee | Rhino
- "Theme From The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex" | Coil | The Gay Man's Guide To Safer Sex + 2 | Musique Pour La Danse
- "El Harb" | Aisha Kandisha's Jarring Effects | Shabeesation | Rykodisc
Havin' the tremors in the thighbone
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https://twitter.com/KidCatharsis
Since the last program, big things had happened in my life and in the world. Toni Morrison had died, and to be honest I could not mourn her properly. I had been assigned Beloved in some undergraduate literature class, and I had read it, but I was so scattered at that stage of life I could not take it in. I was not living authentically and I was stretched to my limit even then. And, to be honest, I haven't been a reader of fiction for a good 30 years now. But her quote about racism being a distraction, something that pointlessly eats up time in your one precious life, resonates with me, so I feel like a light has gone out. Then of course there was the Walmart shooting in El Paso, a place where I lived briefly and miserably. So an act of literal white supremacist violence followed my summer of figurative, linguistic and behavioral white violence. I apologize if I am not making sense of this here, but I promise you it made sense to me at the time and still does even now. To articulate this here is kind of a duty but also a distraction.
The three-week hiatus that preceded this program didn't do me much good, and at the time of this broadcast I wasn't living my best life. My therapist had been telling me for weeks that my "power" was increasing, but she must have been referring to some other power than "competent radio hosting." It is true that I had stepped into a leadership vacuum at work and perhaps had made an awful summer better for some people, but to say that severely underestimates how awful the summer was and glosses over the toll it took on me. I'm trying to be as specific as possible about my feelings and as general as possible about certain other people. Surely you've seen online "defenses" of "the humanities" in this age of STEM and neoliberal rationalization of everything that higher education tries to do. One common defense is to gesture toward Venture Capital and Silicon Valley and say, "look at how racist and sexist and exploitative and generally non-empathetic these things are--this is why people should study literature and philosophy!" Let me tell you something. I've been studying and working in the humanities for three decades, and, specifically over the last three years at this "theory camp" that is a sort of finishing school for future (or would-be) "academic rockstars" in these fields. I could talk to you all day about how immersion in "the humanities" or "the arts" is no inoculation against racism or classicism or narcissism or sociopathic indifference to suffering. We'll leave it at that.
It's a shame that I wasn't even drunk at the time of this broadcast. Such a state might have explained utterances like "I'm out of sorts" and "I'm all messed up." These were true statements attempting to excuse my sloppiness and unpreparedness, but in keeping with the times, I was upset about things outside the studio. The situation at "theory camp" had deteriorated further, branching out into ableism and just generally bad academic and leadership practice with what I will only refer to here as "the Hegel incident."
"Sometimes it gets ragged," I say to Lady Catharsis in the introduction. Whatever I might have thought I meant in the moment, listening back it sounds like I was critiquing the shows that she co-hosts. Surely, deep down, I was doing that. I critique all of my shows, as a glance at this website will tell you, but I could have been more appreciative. On this night I didn't have the energy.
[GUEST POST]
The previous program may have been opportunistic; this one was deliberate and low-key angry. "I like this thing I've started doing," proclaims our host; while I referred to the "interstitial" music by Laraaji, I could have meant the whole transmission.
