3 Chords & the Truth: Those oldies but goodies

Those oldies but goodies remind me . . . that we used to be a much different people.

Worse in some ways. Better in others. And our hypocrisy -- the hypocrisy we're supposed to be happy we've "grown" out of in these postmodern days -- at least paid a backhanded compliment to truth . . . and goodness.

IT'S AN INTERESTING THING to ponder who we were as we try to figure out who we are now. In a way, that's what we're doing this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

I don't much like who we seem to be now. We seem to be angrier, quicker to take offense at more and more things. We're more cynical, and we're more casually violent.

Our culture is more casually violent. More blithely materialistic. More shallow. More loud. More . . . more.

We pay more attention to people on the other end of a text message than we do to the people in front of us. Our political campaigns are angry and patronizing. Folks at rallies are crying out for blood . . . and not of the figurative variety.

ON SOME LEVEL, I think I just want to escape. I'd like to flee back to a romanticized version of the past, cleansed of most of the stifling conformity and real ugliness that existed during the "Happy Days."

Well, I can't do that, and neither can you. It sucks to be us.

But we still need a psychological "time out." We need to bask, for a time, in the better angels of our nature . . . and of our culture.

I guess that what the Big Show is about this go 'round. It's a "sanity sick day" of the radio world.

OK, let's do it. Let's bask in the past . . . revel in some fine R&B and doo-wop.

Let's see if those oldies but goodies remind us of us -- at least the better parts of us. Or something.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.