Showing posts with label folk music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folk music. Show all posts

Saturday, August 24, 2019

3 Chords & the Truth: We had a good run, eh?


The lunatic tweets like an ass.

The lunatic speaks out his ass
Remembering blame and crazy claims and gaffes
Got to keep the loonies on the path

The lunatic has cast a pall
The lunatics have so much gall
TV news keeps his crazy rants in our ears
And every day the lunatic spews more


And the crazy train is off the rusted tracks again
And if this is the end of the damn line
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I'll see you here on 3 Chords & the Truth

It's the Big Show, y'all. Let's be here while we can. Aloha.

(Apologies to Pink Floyd.)


Friday, August 16, 2019

3 Chords & the Truth: Music box


What is the Big Show?

The program, 3 Chords & the Truth, is basically an internet-enabled, really eclectic, Favogian frickin' music box. Like a radio.

I assume you're listening on something that roughly approximates a box. And that there's music coming out of it.

Voila! Music box.

And in the case of the Big Show, it's a good music box. Or a box filled with good music. However you'd like to phrase it.

It's certainly a box radiating eclectic music, carefully curated. I'm told I should use phrases like "carefully curated." I don't know why.

WE LIVE IN an age of branding, I suppose. That's fine, as far as it goes, but it doesn't equal doing. And thoughtfully selected and placed music is what we just frickin' do on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Heat up that iron in a fire and brand something with it, Cowboy.

Hell, I don't even know where I'm going with this. Hell, the veterinarian didn't know where I was going with it when I asked him whether the organizers were giving out Who's a GOOD Boy? awards at his 30-year vet-school reunion this summer.



AND, by the way, Belle the Dog is lying on the back of the couch watching Elmo on PBS Kids.

I don't know why.

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


Thursday, August 15, 2019

This breaks my damn heart


1962. It was the blackest of years; it was the most idealistic and hopeful of years.

Jim Crow refused to go quietly in the South. Communism, and the fear of it, haunted everything we were, did and said in America. Between us and the Soviet Union, we almost blew up the world.

But also in 1962, if we made it through October, the world would be a better place by springtime -- we just knew it.

Young Americans brimmed with idealism. Black college kids and white college kids risked their lives for their ideals in a peaceful assault against segregationist brutality in Dixie.

The youth of a country that 17 years before had vanquished Nazi Germany and militarist Japan found inspiration in a young president who challenged them to ask what they could do for their country.

JOHN GLENN orbited the earth three times. Next stop: the moon.

America had set its gaze on the New Frontier, and John Stewart of the The Kingston Trio could write liner notes like these above.

I was 1 year old. Hope was alive and kicking. Even in the South.

2019. A broken-down, 58-year-old music-show and blog guy sits at his iMac, typing. He wonders what the fuck happened.

He reads the hopeful, idealistic and oh-God-how-naive words of the late Mr. Stewart, and he wants to cry. He fears that there are no more tears left. Even more, he's terrified that fear will be put to the test again and again.

"So now, as never before, an age of introspection is reaching every one of us." Now our nation is becoming what we've willed within ourselves -- a heart of darkness.

"The horror! The horror!"

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The Great Society


I'll take 1964.

In 1964, folk music was a thing. A popular thing.

In 1964, hip-hop did not exist.

In 1964, the Republicans were running on "In your heart, you know he's right." Now, the GOP's running on "In your heart, you know he's Reich."

In 1964, the Democrats promised "The Great Society." Now, they're trying to avoid The Great Unraveling.

In 1964, LBJ ran the "Daisy ad," because could we really trust Goldwater with the Bomb? In 2016 . . . well, some things really don't change.

In 1964, you could buy this Brothers Four LP at Dayton's for $3.59. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $27.71 today.

Chalk up one for 2016. (And estate sales -- this cost me a buck.)

Saturday, October 18, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Eine kleine nachtmusik


This week, it's just you and me and the music in the night.

A funny thing happens when you're burning the midnight oil to get another edition of 3 Chords & the Truth in the can. Or on the Internets, as the case may be.

In the middle of the night, just like listening to all-night radio way back when, it's just different. Quieter. You're alone with your thoughts. You're alone with the disc jockey playing the music . . . assuming there is a DJ and not a computer server at the helm.

You're alone with the music. In the quietude of the night, where the world seems to give you a little more space -- a little breathing room. This can be a good thing.


It also can be a bad one.

MAYBE you're listening -- or will listen -- to this edition of the Big Show in the still of the night. This, I would recommend highly.

Maybe, though, you'll hear this 3 Chords & the Truth in the light of day. That's OK, too. A little less magical, but just fine nevertheless. But however or whenever you're listening, I hope the music both expands your horizons and touches your heart.

If you're listening in the dusky stillness, I hope it leaves you good thoughts to be alone with. I hope therein you discover magic -- the magic of you and the night and the music.


Big Show music. That's always a good thing.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Saturday, October 04, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: We got more


More.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth have "more" covered.

More music. As in about 19,500 more songs you're likely to hear here than over on Brand X.

More variety. I just came up with a phrase to beat into the ground like Brand X beats the same 450 songs into the ground -- controlled eclecticism. At the Big Show, we have quite the eclectic playlist, but it's not like we're throwing any old thing out there willy nilly. No, we have a plan.

More interesting. Listen to this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, and that will become self explanatory.

MORE STUFF you're just not going to hear anywhere else. More stuff that never got released on compact disc. More old vinyl than anywhere else.

More better, if less grammatical. See the "more interesting" item above.


Like I said, we have "more" covered on the Big Show. What more can we say?

Oh, wait. There's this:

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


Thursday, October 02, 2014

That's a lot of music


20,012.

That's how many songs are in the 3 Chords & the Truth music library at this moment. And we're adding more virtually every day.

Now, tell me. Where else are you going to find a show, radio station or whatever with a section of tunes like that?

You want to know something else? That's just a fraction of what we have here in the Revolution 21 studios, which is growing more crowded with old LPs and less-old CDs (etc., and so on) all the time.

LPs waiting to join the library
I don't think the music on the Big Show is going to be getting stale or overplayed any time soon.

So it's back to the stacks of vinyl and CDs and reel-to-reel tapes and MP3 files and 45s. Because 20,012 just isn't enough.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Buy a damn belt


If you have your "pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground" this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is not for you.

Then again, none of them really are. Goodbye, and belts are found at many area retailers.

Now, if your pants are at a proper height on your waist and you're not standing at a bus stop rapping along badly with the MP3 on your smart phone, with every other word being motherf*****, then this show might be for you. And you might be just the clientele we've been looking for here at the Big Show.

MIND YOU, not lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground -- or badly rapping profane lyrics in public -- isn't that high a bar, but you have to start somewhere.

Likewise, when radio hardly is worth listening to anymore, MTV no longer plays videos (and you're kinda thanking God for that), and our entire culture is in the throes of a massive cerebral hemorrhage, you have to start somewhere.

Welcome to 3 Chords & the Truth.

We're all about good music -- of whatever genre -- thoughtfully presented. That and having some fun in the process. This week's episode is no exception as we delve deeply into the American songbook, into jazz and into some surprises that fit in amazingly well with all of the above.

THAT'S our modus operandi on the Big Show, where we're reclaiming American culture one song at a time. Hope you'll join in the fight.

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

Be there. 

Aloha.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Awaiting hope

We've all been crucified, and we all need a resurrection, don't we?

Outside, we want people to think we're Disneyland. Inside, we're an abandoned warehouse district. You probably don't want to know what's inside the warehouse now.

It's coming up on Holy Week, the most stark, dark, horrifying and awe-inspiring week on the Christian calendar. That's the context of this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

WE ALL get crucified. We're all as good as dead. We all need a resurrection. Or a Resurrection . . . which is where this week leads. And we're exploring the subject, in a manner of speaking, on the Big Show.

It's something to think about. Music to reflect by. Time to put on the brakes and consider the point of the journey.

Maybe this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth will succeed in that and still manage to be plenty entertaining. Maybe not . . . but my money's on entertaining. Trust me -- I once worked in Catholic radio. If nothing else, I've learned how not to do this stuff.

SO JOIN ME this week in stopping, listening and considering. And have a blessed Holy Week and a joyous Easter.

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


Saturday, April 05, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Thinking of radio






We're chilling out again on the Big Show.

We're getting mellow. We're doing music best listened to in the still of the night.

Think of an old radio, vacuum tubes glowing in the dark. Think of a lone DJ in a studio across town . . . or halfway across the continent.

Think of a couple of turntables, a classic microphone and timeless music, carefully selected by the lone disc jockey.

Think of yourself in a darkened room, with the radio, the announcer and the records keeping you company through the long night.

Just think.

YOU THINKING about that? Well, then you're thinking about this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

And I'm thinking you're going to love it.

I'm also thinking it'll be good for your nerves and good for your soul.

I'm thinking this is how radio used to be -- when radio was still radio and people still cared about radio.

Some things ought not be forgotten or abandoned. This goes for radio, which is not lost but merely relocated. To the Internet.

ENJOY the Big Show. Enjoy radio once more -- radio done with a little class and a lot of love. That's what we do here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.

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


Thursday, March 27, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Freeform saves


I'd like to think that God hates both sin . . . and corporate radio. Which, of course, is in the business of devouring souls.

Corporate radio and souls is kind of like Hitler and the Sudetenland -- you can't assimilate just one. And after sucking the soul out of radio, outfits like Clear Channel have their eyes on. . . .

You figure it out.

But this isn't about Clear Channel or any others among the corporate media soul-suckers. This is about the Big Show -- 3 Chords & the Truth. You see, here is where radio has taken refuge from the corporate invaders.

Here is where freeform lives.

Here is where somebody puts a little thought into what goes into your ears, because "here" is where your Mighty Favog loves your ears like he does his own. OK, that sounded a little creepy, but you know what I mean.

LET ME be perfectly clear: 3 Chords & the Truth good. Corporate radio bad.

You're going to hear something new to you on the Big Show. You're going to experience true musical diversity. You will not experience crap. This is where radio has taken refuge from the corporate and cultural storm.

We live in a world where people now pay to have others "curate" music mixes for them -- another case of folks paying through the rear for things that once were free and plentiful. Music curators? Really?

I am old enough to remember what we used to call that -- FM radio. Pull up a chair, relax for 90 minutes and get yourself curated for free . . . right here. 3 Chords & the Truth is freeform FM radio, only on the Internet.

Don't get taken. Don't get soul-sucked. Do listen to the Big Show, which will help to fend off that other stuff.

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.


Saturday, March 15, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Stand by me



"I'll take Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Boogedy Shoop for $1,200, Alex."

Alrighty, Favog. Here's the answer for $1,200: "Although The Marcels technically put the 'bomp bomp ba bomp, ba bomp ba bomp bomp' into popular music, you would be "Searchin'" from "Spanish Harlem" to "Kansas City" to find anyone who could make a "Jailhouse Rock" more than this songwriting duo."

"Who are Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller?"

"That's right! But you lose."

"HUH???"

"Our new sponsors are Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Favog."

"I thought it was 3 Chords & the Truth."


"We USED to be sponsored by the Big Show. Tough break."

"Oh, yeah? Meet me behind Smokey Joe's Cafe in an hour and tell me that to my face. I'll open up a can of Rama Lama Ding Dong on yo' ass."

DON'T end up like Alex. Play it straight, stay on my good side and listen to this week's excellent adventure that we lovingly call the Big Show.

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


Saturday, March 08, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Don't let it go

Dit dot dit, dit dot dit dit ditta ditta! Dit dot dit, dit dot dit dit ditta ditta! Doodle oop! Doodle doodle doodle oop! Milly Freezmaz is te ta te ta ta!

And Theo Cloirk Alfred Thompseen is de do do do de da da da! That because is Milly Freezmaz wickedly talented as Adele Dazeem!
-- John  Travolta
What's all the fuss about?

Well, I guess it's about the Big Show, and apparently Hollywood is pretty excited about it.

Why is that? Well, I guess you'll have to listen to find out.

BE FOREWARNED, though. If you do, you won't be able to let it go. And if we're lucky, the attention will do for 3 Chords & the Truth what it did for Adele Dazeem . . .er, Idina Menzel.

It's Theo Cloirk Alfred Thompseen 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there.  Aloha.


Friday, February 28, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: A fool for music


Let me tell you about this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth before I succumb to sleep deprivation.

It's good. Right tasty, in fact.

 
Let me tell you something else -- it starts out with tractor punk, then moves into disco and doo-wop and '60s pop. And then the Big Show gets interesting.

THAT IS ALL. Except that there may be a little something in there from one fool to another. And if you aren't already a fool for the happeningest musical spot on the Internets . . . what the hell is wrong with you?

I pity the fool who ain't a fool for this here podcast.

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

(thud)
 

Friday, February 21, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: Beats shoveling a giant Icee


This edition of the Big Show didn't turn out too badly, considering right beforehand I was shoveling the World's Largest Icee out of our driveway before it could freeze over tonight.

The World's Biggest Icee is what you get when it snows hard when it's above freezing. A major case of This Sucks is what you get when you're shoveling slush.

Let's just say this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is a big improvement over that. I mean, what would you rather do? Shovel tons of a flavorless, melting slushie spilled across the landscape by a meteorological 3-year-old, or sit in a warm diner, listening to the best jukebox in the world?

HEY, KID! If you don't know what a jukebox is . . . come on in and get educated. The coffee's fine and the music's better.

Yep, come on in to the Big Show. It beats the hell out of the alternative.

Especially when the alternative is shoveling slush in February. (Really, the show's exceptional this week. And every week. But especially this week.)

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Pearls among the online swine


The Internet is a land of treasures and trash. Mostly trash, it seems, most of the time.

Slutty trash. Angry trash. Snarky trash. More angry trash. More snarky, angry trash.

Seems to me that living life online as we do today can be like eating Gummy Bears for breakfast, lunch and supper -- it might be rather satisfying at the time, but. . . .


WELL, this ain't that. Pete Seeger's mid-'60s, low-budget show, taped in glorious black and white at a little UHF station in New York, is a treasure lurking amid the trash. It's meat and potatoes in a Gummy Bear online world.

How can it possibly get any better than sitting around the kitchen table with Johnny Cash and June Carter, swapping stories and playing music? How can it possibly get any better than sitting in the living room with Revon Reed, keeper of Louisiana's Cajun culture and the French language when the odds were stacked against it amid a tide of assimilation at les mains des americains just as Seeger was a keeper of American culture amid a rising tide of materialism and superficiality.

And not only that. Irony also comes a' callin' in the meeting of Messrs. Reed and Seeger.

YOU SEE, one of the saviors of Cajun culture in south Louisiana was, by profession, an English and chemistry teacher. Cajun music and his weekly radio show from Fred's Lounge in Mamou, those were his hobbies. The keeper of what was most authentically American, meanwhile, was blacklisted for years for allegedly being "un-American."

Uh huh.


Eventually,  the forces of "Americanism" left Pete Seeger alone after growing bored by red-baiting. Eventually, they moved on to more fertile fields . . . like doing their part to f*** up the Internet.

Saturday, February 08, 2014

3 Chords & the Truth: The canon of Pete


This edition of the Big Show starts with a big set -- which is just a small portion of the Canon of Pete.

And the canon of the late Pete Seeger is a big part of the lexicon of American popular music . . . and American folk music . . . and American protest music.

Or, to be succinct, American music.

Period.


I knew that first long set would be good. What I wasn't prepared for was how good it is in the actual listening. I mean, you know, but then you hear what you've pieced together and . . . you know.

NOW, there's lots of other good stuff on 3 Chords & the Truth this go around, but I think I'll just let you listen to find out what that might be.

I prefer not to think of the Big Show as just a music program on the Internets. I prefer to think of it as what it really is -- and what radio ought to be, once was and rarely is anymore -- and that is an adventure.

I think Peter Seeger would have approved of that.

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

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Where have all the troubadours gone?


This is not a promising start to the week.

This is a terrible start to the week.

Pete Seeger is dead. God rest him, and God help us, for we are diminished.


From The New York Times today:
Mr. Seeger’s career carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.

For Mr. Seeger, folk music and a sense of community were inseparable, and where he saw a community, he saw the possibility of political action.

In his hearty tenor, Mr. Seeger, a beanpole of a man who most often played 12-string guitar or five-string banjo, sang topical songs and children’s songs, humorous tunes and earnest anthems, always encouraging listeners to join in. His agenda paralleled the concerns of the American left: He sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s, for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s, and for environmental and antiwar causes in the 1970s and beyond. “We Shall Overcome,” which Mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem.
Mr. Seeger was a prime mover in the folk revival that transformed popular music in the 1950s. As a member of the Weavers, he sang hits including Lead Belly’s “Goodnight, Irene” — which reached No. 1 — and “If I Had a Hammer,” which he wrote with the group’s Lee Hays. Another of Mr. Seeger’s songs, "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," became an antiwar standard. And in 1965, the Byrds had a No. 1 hit with a folk-rock version of “Turn! Turn! Turn!,” Mr. Seeger’s setting of a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Mr. Seeger was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ‘50s and ‘60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock. Decades later, Bruce Springsteen drew the songs on his 2006 album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,” from Mr. Seeger’s repertoire of traditional music about a turbulent American experience, and in 2009 he performed Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” with Mr. Seeger at the Obama inaugural. At a Madison Square Garden concert celebrating Mr. Seeger’s 90th birthday, Mr. Springsteen introduced him as “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along.”

Although he recorded more than 100 albums, Mr. Seeger distrusted commercialism and was never comfortable with the idea of stardom. He invariably tried to use his celebrity to bring attention and contributions to the causes that moved him, or to the traditional songs he wanted to preserve.

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.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

3 Chords & the Truth: Here's to the 'squares'

 

The New York Times said Andy Williams was "hopelessly square" . . . at least in the eyes of my generation, back in the '60s.

I wish to point out that the same people who found Andy Williams "square" in their youth have spent their middle age doing "a heck of a job" -- in the Brownie sense -- with the American family, the American economy and American politics. In other words, what the hell do the Boomers know?


Squat, that's what. Trust me on this. I am one.

So call this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth a loving tribute to contrariness. Also call it a tribute to Andy Williams, who died Tuesday night at 84. He was a hell of a singer.

LIKEWISE, being that this week's edition of the Big Show will be featuring his music, you can safely say that it's going to be a hell of a show.

That will be obvious to you shortly . . . assuming, of course, that you evaluate music -- and singers -- on individual merit and not one's particular geometry. Remember, the young, hip trendsetter of today is the totally discredited investment banker of tomorrow.

But Andy Williams is now forever.

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