Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Friday, November 20, 2015

3 Chords & the Truth: Le fleuve de la vie


This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is rather like life, which flows like a river. It goes where it will, swelling and ebbing, its current carrying us on its journey toward destiny.

Today, the music ebbs and flows. It goes where it will, and we're just along for the ride.

Just like every time, the Big Show is a trip worth taking. The mighty flood of good music breaks through every barrier, and it goes where we do not anticipate it going. We listen in wonder.

Just listen.

ALSO this week, we stand in the shadow of Paris, pushing back against the darkness of hatred and violence. We fight terror with joy.

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes tous français. Nous prions pour la paix de Paris.

The river of life -- le fleuve de la vie -- she sometimes carries us into darkness. She will carry us back into the light soon enough. We must have faith in the journey. . . .

And in the music. Musique joyeuse.

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


Saturday, November 14, 2015

I have three words for this


As I write this, 129 people are dead and 352 lie wounded in Paris after coordinated terrorist attacks attributed to ISIS -- the Islamic State in Syria, Etc., Etc., and So On.

Apparently, some delicate flowers out there are upset this is taking away from the coverage of the "terrorist attack" at the University of Missouri, where rednecks wielding AR-15s and hand grenades slaughtered hundreds of students of color and left hundreds more grievously wounded. . . . Oh, wait.

Redneck idiots yelled the N-word, and somebody drew a swastika in poop.

As bad as that is, and as much as that needs to be dealt with, it's not the wanton slaughter of 129 people and the wounding of 352. And I have three words for those hysterical and solipsistic nervous Nellies who are demented enough to think it is.

Unfortunately, this is a family blog.



HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Friday, December 13, 2013

What kind of world would it be sans la France?

 
 
There is no more after
In Saint-Germain-des-Prés
 No more day after tomorrow
No more afternoon
There is nothing but today
When we meet
In Saint-Germain-des-Prés
There is no more you
There is no more me
There is no more yesterday

Friday, October 12, 2012

3 Chords & the Truth: Quand ça balance



Quand ça balance, you're in for a hell of a show on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Quand ça balance?

Mais oui, mon ami.

Quand ça balance -- or translated from idiomatic French, when it balances . . . when it's right, when it's all good, when it rocks -- the Big Show is gonna knock your socks off. This week especially, ça balance.

FROM AN exploration of travelin' music to a set featuring the glories of France, 3 Chords & the Truth . . . ça balance.

But that's what you've come to expect from our little weekly podcast, isn't it?

Let me put it this way: If you're not up dancing and having your own private disco-a go-go during large chunks of this week's edition of the Big Show, you may want to have a medical professional check your pulse and respiration.

Is what I'm saying, cher.

It's all about quand ça balance, and that extends to you, too.

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

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Vive la France!


I had a religious experience Tuesday. It involved neither religion nor sex.

Let me explain.

My favorite used-record shop in Omaha is closing, and I’ve made a couple of trips so far to buy everything I could. With all vinyl half off and CDs for a buck, I’m taking the opportunity to buy some vintage jazz by artists I’ve heard of well enough but haven’t really explored yet.

Sunday's haul of old LPs included a French pressing of jazz singer, pop legend and movie-music composer Michel Legrand’s “Chante et s’accompagne,” released in 1965. The American version’s title is “Sings,” but that's one you're not gonna find on iTunes.


ANYWAY, I put the Legrand album on the turntable last evening, and when the needle dropped. . . .

Transcendence. That might be the word for it. The result of it was a middle-age man being blown out of his chair and onto his butt by a rapturous gale of Gallic jazz magnificence.

Lord have mercy on me, I dearly wish I could have such a transcendent experience at Mass every week. But no. In a church that really has no excuse, given 2,000 years of culture, hymnody and all, worship of the transcendent God usually involves descending into the Haugen-Hass fever swamp of dreary dinner-theater ditties and calling it liturgy.

This is why we must take our religious experiences wherever we can find them -- in this case, France, via the used-record bins of a dying music shop. Vive la France! Vive l'Antiquarium!

Et vive M. Michel Legrand, chanteur transcendant.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Toujours fidèle


As this 68th anniversary of D-Day comes to a close, please take some time to watch these On the Road reports from CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman.

William Faulkner once famously -- and truthfully -- wrote "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The past two nights on the
CBS Evening News, Hartman has shown us, heartbreakingly, how the Second World War may be over for a Texas widow and a French town, but it is anything but past.

It is a wound as fresh as today. It is an old debt still being repaid by a little town and the grateful Frenchmen who inhabit it.

It also is the story of how government incompetence and the malfeasance of a Texas congressman and his staff prolonged an old woman's heartbreak. And it is the tale of how her grace and forgiveness exposes how inconsequential can be the powers and principalities that possess our nation's capital.


Ne jamais oublier. Never forget.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

3 Chords & the Truth: Vive la France!


Irresistiblement.

Ir-res-sees-TEEB-la-mon. That is what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth happens to be -- irresistible.

In fact, this week's edition of the Big Show --
le Grand Spectacle en français, s'il vous plaît -- you may be tempted to hunt me down and me donne un bisou. Zou, bisou bisou!

THAT would be fine if you are:
a) My wife.

b) Jessica Paré, of Mad Men viral-video fame.

c) Sylvie Vartan, French "yé-yé" girl supreme from the 1960s and '70s.
ARE YOU getting an idea about this week's episode of the Big Show. I hope you are because I will cease making sense in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . .

Mairsey doates and doesey doates and littlelambsydivey. A kiddledy divey, too. Wouldn't you?

Wouldn't you???

C'est tout. Va t'en! Vite! Vite! Tu vas et écouter au grand spectacle!

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