3 Chords & the Truth: Hep to the jive

Don't be a wet blanket, pally. Get hep to the 3 Chords & the Truth Fan Club and never miss another jivin' tune again.

All you have to do to be with the swingin' crowd is become a regular listener of the Big Show. And the best thing about it is that you get the whole wide world of solid sounds for exactly nothin'.

That's right, won't cost you a thin dime, Ain't no better bargain than free, buddy boy.

So join all the cool kids in the 3 Chords & the Truth appreciation society and hear everything from the Syndicate of Sound to Southern Culture on the Skids. From She & Him to Dale & Grace.

And that ain't the half of it, Daddy-O.

SIGN ON with the Big Show, and you get some bonus Otis Redding and Shawn Mullins for a small shipping and handling charge. That would be your undying devotion, sister. Or brother. Either way, man -- it's copacetic.

Oh, the things you'll hear!

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

If you or a loved one has been hurt by Leonard Fournette. . . .

I don't care who ya' are, this is funny.

In a related class-action development, I understand that pursuers who inhale the dust in Leonard Fournette's wake also may be at high risk for mesothelioma. If you or some linebacker you love develops mesothelioma after playing football against LSU and Leonard Fournette call State, War Eagle and Orangemen at 1 (800) TOO SLOW.

Geaux Tigers!

3 Chords & the Truth: Drop the needle

 
I've got a phonograph, and I'm not afraid to use it. Don't mess with me.

Man, that kind of sums up the whole of 3 Chords & the Truth, doesn't it?

Actually, I've got more than a few phonographs, and I use 'em plenty. That's where the bulk of the music on the Big Show comes from -- musical gems I've had forever, and treasures I've dug up at estate sales, thrift shops, used-record bins and elsewhere all over creation.

A lot of it you're not going to find on the Internet or on CD. So if you want to hear a lot of this stuff. . . .

For instance, remember Lou Bega's big hit from 1999, "Mambo No. 5"? Well, this week, you're going to hear the original by Perez Prado and His Orchestra from way back in the day. If you ask me, Prado's version swings a lot harder than the 1990s iteration.

OTHERWISE on 3 Chords & the Truth this week, your Mighty Favog has . . .

A little bit of Stafford in my life, a little bit of Van Damme by her side

A little bit of Cugat is all I need, a little bit of Dusty is what I see

A little bit of the Moodies in the sun, a little bit of Nick Lowe all night long

A little bit of Root Boy here I am, a little bit of Stan Getz is my plan.

Get the drift?

No? Let me elaborate.

A little bit of Arlo in my life, a little bit of Crenshaw by my side

A little bit of Elgart is all I need, a little bit of J-Cash is what I see

A little bit of Pozo in the sun, a little bit of Seco all night long

A little bit of Prado here I am, a little bit of you makes me your man.

BELIEVE ME, you ain't heard nothing like this.

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

How your hi-fi stereo record works

Click on the picture for larger, readable view

This afternoon's vintage-LP listening comes with a technical note.

And our tech talk today centers on a question: You ever wonder how stereo records put the stereo on the record?

Well, the top photo of the inner sleeve of our 1958 release by David Carroll and His Orchestra explains how the modern marvel of stereophonic records work. And it also contains a caveat for the stereo newbie, as nearly everyone was 57 years ago -- do not play this thing on a monophonic record player.

A mono cartridge on your mono phonograph will tear this sucker up.

See the explanation on the record sleeve for why that is.

3 Chords & the Truth: Twice as nice

It's a twin-spin weekend on 3 Chords & the Truth!

That's right, you hip, happenin' and now music fans, we're staring off this week's episode of the Big Show with artists so nice, you've got to hear 'em twice. And I'm also going to play you the 1966 Petula Clark album cut that I think should have been a single, because it's that good.

Of course, there were one or two more album cuts on her My Love LP that also should have been hit singles, but you can't play 'em all. Well, I suppose I could, but I restrained myself. I'm a professional.

And that's just the first music set this go around on 3 Chords & the Truth. There's so much more good stuff on the rest of the program, you just can't imagine.

WELL, if you're a regular listener to the best musical spot on the Internet, you can imagine. But saying that doesn't work as well rhetorically, so just go with me here.

So sit down, grab a snack and a drink, and treat yourself to an hour and a half of music-media bliss. If you don't, you'll just be cheating yourself.

Trust me on this.

So, without taking up more time reading that you should spend listening. . . .

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

Vintage LP du jour

 

On the menu tonight at La Maison de Trois Chords is The Friends of Distinction's Real Friends album, a nice 1970 vintage for our listening pleasure.

Not only does it feature one of my all-time favorite songs, "Love or Let Me Be Lonely," it also sounds better than many new albums right out of the shrink wrap, even though this particular LP left its shrink wrap around 1970.

DO YOU THINK I still could get me a "Complete RCA Catalog" if I mailed a quarter to Dept. C, Rockaway, New Jersey 07866?

On the other hand, maybe I can dig out the Complete RCA Catalog that I did get for 25 cents back then.

Once a geek, always a geek.

That is all.

3 Chords & the Truth: The horror

It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times.

Aye, it is true that we see through a glass darkly. But sometimes, it is too dark to even see the glass.

That's the theme of this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. No, this isn't the kind of program that tries to fool you into thinking it's sunny all the time.

But this is the kind of program that tries to lift your soul even while we're trying to make you think about some stuff that maybe you'd rather not. Sometimes, thinking can be entertaining, too.

Nevertheless, there will be no pledge-week hard sell after the Big Show. Perhaps there would be if we had a pledge week -- but we don't. You can put your credit card away.

SO this week, events have pushed us into thoughtfulness, if not out-and-out solemnity . . . though there's a touch of that, too. As we put this week's show together, it's the 14th anniversary attacks on New York and Washington, and that's plenty of reason to reflect on a lot of things. A few of those things make it into the show, for your reflection and, one hopes, edification.

Also as we wrap up another edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, we've just finished watching the remastered, 25th-anniversary edition of The Civil War on that channel that does have pledge breaks. It seems to me that that's food for plenty of thought, too, in this summer of controversy over Confederate symbolism and monuments. Thus, a Civil War set . . . submitted for your approval.

Lest I start to bog you down right here in the description of the podcast, I'll just stop my touting right here and humbly ask you to set aside a spare 91 minutes and 15 seconds and listen to the thing. I don't think you'll be sorry you did.

And you may even be ecstatic that you did. So listen. Click the player or the link and have at it.

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

America was warned

March 4, 1963.

That was the day Frank Zappa, age 22, appeared on the Steve Allen Show and played the bicycle.

We cannot say we didn't see what was coming.

3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes from wonderland

If you're younger than your Mighty Favog, who apparently is something of a fossil, you probably don't remember when your TV picture being in living color was a pretty big (and expensive) deal.

It was a glorious entertainment development way back when, during the Age of Wonders, when the wonders of technology were spaced out just enough for us to appreciate them all.

Now, it seems, I'm always at least one wonder behind. Because fossil, no doubt.

Too, the wonders don't seem so wonderful anymore. Just kind of "meh" as wonders go. Maybe we just have too many of them too fast today. Maybe I'm just jaded in my old age.

And that, Cap, is kinda, sorta the inspiration for this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

THUS, we start the Big Show with seriously wonderful music from the time when color TV was a true wonder. And, looking back on that era, so was the music. Especially our opener this week, Lenny Dee's wondrous 1966 take on Chris Montez's fantastic 1965 take on Petula Clark's 1965 original of "Call Me."

And if it's possible, the program just might get better from there. A little trippy at times, too.

So, that's about all I have to say about that. Just do yourself a huge favor and listen. Preferably on one of those massive 1960's console stereos. Those things were awesome.

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

Let's dance!

Here's some of what's been on the old record player the past couple of days.

In 1956, Capitol Records got Benny Goodman and some of the old orchestra gang together to recut some of his classics in hi-fi. And boy do they sound good in high fidelity, pointing out the advancements in recording technology in just the decade and a half or so since the originals came out on 78 r.p.m. discs.

THE ALBUM, The Benny Goodman Story, featured selections from the motion picture of the same name that had just hit movie houses all across America.

What's interesting about this album, which just may be a first-run pressing -- given the packaging and red Capitol label, which changed to turquoise sometime that same year -- is how the cardboard LP sleeve came inside a paper outer sleeve. I don't think I've ever run across that sort of packaging before for a record album.

And that's your bit of vinyl-nerd bait for the day, all the way from the fabulous '50s.

Where Jefferson met Lincoln

Welcome to the hamlet of Colo, Iowa, population 869.

Colo, about a 20-minute drive east on U.S. 30 from Ames -- itself about 25 minutes north of Des Moines -- isn't exactly a destination these days for most folks. The little Story County town isn't a real swingin' place, though you can get a mighty fine burger and perfect fries at Niland's Cafe.

But if you're a road geek (And doesn't everybody have a little road geek in him?), Colo, Iowa is something approaching a Holy Grail of geekdom. Turn off Highway 30, head north on U.S. 65 and soon enough you'll come to County Road E41. Turn left, and you find yourself at what once was the crossroads of America.


There you'll find the Colo Motel, the cafe and a filling station that hasn't filled anything up since the 1960s. Between 1913 and 1928, though, if you wanted to get from Times Square to San Francisco -- or from New Orleans to Winnipeg, Manitoba -- you'd eventually find yourself in Colo.

There's another name for County Road E41 -- the Lincoln Highway, the first cross-country road in the United States. Likewise, what now is U.S. 65 through Colo once was the Jefferson Highway, the first great north-south road in North America, starting in 1916.
 
Jefferson met Lincoln in little Colo, Iowa.

TODAY, if you want to get from the East Coast to the West, you take Interstate 80. If you want the scenic route, you take Highway 30, which now runs about a mile south of this stretch of the old Lincoln Highway.

If you're headed north to Winnipeg, you'll need to head over to I-29, a couple of hours west.

Once upon a time, however, Colo was the crossroads of North America.

Now, Niland's Cafe is, in addition to that of a home-cooked meal, the home of a small museum dedicated to the Jefferson and Lincoln Highways. And the old gas station has been left more or less untouched since pumping its last tankful, except for the addition of three restored vintage pumps out front and some general sprucing up.

Last week, after wandering around Ames on a roundabout journey back to Omaha from the Iowa State Fair, a stop at the crossroads was a must. I live less than a mile from the Lincoln Highway's old route through Omaha. In Baton Rouge, I once lived on Jefferson Highway. The Jefferson Highway, which in many places has kept its name after it lost its official status.

Given my journey in life, it was only fitting to pay homage to the Crossroads.

Old school

Pioneer Livestock Pavilion, Iowa State Fair.

Impervious to the horror here in the heart of darkness

The Daily News slapped New York readers in the face Thursday. It slapped them in the face with a still sequence from a snuff video.

I think I know why the editors did that, and I won't outright condemn them for it because the benefit of the doubt says their motives were pure. The benefit of the doubt says  someone who thought that posting images from a snuff film made by a deranged terrorist -- a terrorist in the purest sense of the word -- would boost street sales is a terrible businessman, either that or someone who's calculated that America has reached some sort of psychopathic critical mass.

I don't know. Maybe it has.

I can understand -- maybe -- someone's curiosity getting the better of them and their watching the video. Once. Not a noble curiosity, but a human one nevertheless -- curiosity, after all, is what led Eve to the Tree of Life and a fatal taste of the forbidden fruit.

Alison Parker and Adam Ward

But gazing -- on the subway, at your office desk or over at the Daily News on your living room coffee table -- at the moment a young television reporter from Roanoke, Va., recoiled in terror as a devil with a handgun sent her to God, that is not something a normal person can stand for more than a moment. If that. Even a fleeting glance cannot be unseen.

Merely seeing the aftermath of such evil, such uncut horror, is why so many cops and paramedics end up messed up. Images like the last in the sequence the tabloid put on its front page, here for God and everybody to behold, are the pictures that combat veterans cannot get out of their minds. The moments of death that come to them in their dreams, cause them to awaken screaming in the night and, for some, cause them to blot out the terrible images with a bullet to the brain.

BUT THERE it is on the front page of the Daily News, the moment that gunshots cut down WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, 24. The moment she realized she was going to die. The moment before the gunman killed television photojournalist Adam Ward, 27, and shot a regional chamber of commerce director, Vicki Gardner, who survived.

To look into Alison Parker's eyes is to know her horror.

My hope is that the Daily News editors' intent was to force Americans to realize that the sudden horror that swept over Alison Parker as a fusillade from a Glock semiautomatic pistol began to tear into her body is, in fact, the unremitting horror of a gun-crazy -- no, an increasingly crazy crazy -- nation. An ongoing, largely preventable horror.

My conviction is that, if my hope is well placed, the Daily News editors are deeply naive. You can't argue with crazy people and bought-off politicians, and Americans today are stark, raving mad while their elected representatives, many of them, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the National Rifle Association.

I AM equally convicted that you could ambush seven out of 10 Americans and shoot them in the ass every single day for a year, then on the 366th morning, they would change the dressing on their hamburger buttocks and vow that if they had had an Uzi and eyes in the back of their heads, you never would have gotten the first shot off, you son of a bitch. Americans were not horrified by Columbine enough to insist that the Second Amendment was not drafted so that every citizen could amass an arsenal exceeding that of some small African nations.

Americans were not frightened enough by Virginia Tech to tighten up this country's firearm free-for-all one bit. Ditto for Aurora.

Sandy Hook upset folks a little bit, but it wasn't anything that the NRA and more The Bachelor and Dancing With the Stars couldn't nip in the bud.

By the time a fledgling neo-Confederate massacred nine praying African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church, an angry right-wing nut shot up a movie theater in Louisiana and a disgruntled ex-reporter gunned down his former colleagues in Virginia, we had come to the conclusion that the aftermath of yet another American gun massacre was an inappropriate time to talk about preventing yet more American gun massacres.

Just because we've become a nation of gun-worshiping lunatics doesn't mean we have to be indecorous. That is something best left to Donald Trump and late-night infomercials for herbal male-enhancement pills.

After all, this is America. The only thing we love as much as a big iron on our hip is a big iron in our pants. Fretting over the mounting death toll just distracts us from the important things in life . . . down here in the abyss.

And force-feeding deadly, intimate and graphic things we've no right to gawk at will not, at long last, cause those who live in this heart of darkness to see the light. If you ask me, The Horror is us.

* * *  
POSTSCRIPT: I watched the video, alas, because I wanted to get my facts and my chronology straight. As I write, it is either very late or very early -- take your pick -- and I fear sleep, for fear of what I'll dream. God help us all.

3 Chords & the Truth: Big show for the Big Show

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is so huge that I don't know where to start touting it.

Nice problem to have, eh?

To preserve some small semblance of mystery about this week's prompt proceedings -- yeah, the Big Show is a few days early this week -- I'll just highlight a couple of cool things and call it good. You'll have to listen to catch the rest . . . duh.

First, your Mighty Favog is proud to announce that we're unveiling the official Donald Trump campaign theme song at the top of this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. This is a Big Show exclusive of the highest order -- you'll hear the song that will frame The Donald's run for the White House (and from his creditors) right here on the web channel well before it's unveiled by the Trump campaign itself.

Really,  it doesn't get much more exciting than this on the Internet, and 3 Chords & the Truth is proud and thrilled to get this scoop to you before everybody else.

Tune in for the big news, and then stay for the rest of the exceptional music on the Internet's most eclectic corner.

Well, that's it for now, so be sure . . . wait!

YOU'RE wanting the other tidbit about this week's Big Show, aren't you?

Allow me to sum it up thusly: You can hear this little bit of heaven now, or you can wait a while, live a good life, love Jesus and die so you can experience it later. And it won't cost you a cent.

It was the turn of a new decade, the dawn of the Space Age 1960s. And in the year of our Lord nineteen-hundred and sixty, Brook Benton released a new LP on Mercury Records with a deceptively simple -- simplistic, if you will -- title. Songs I Love to Sing, though, was a Benton masterpiece. 

Somewhere in the way-out stereophonic groovage of this Space Age, bachelor-paddish, mid-century modern pop classic resides the perfect version of Rube Bloom's and Johnny Mercer's musical masterpiece. I can't listen to it enough (and, too, there's the wild early-stereo production of the track to get into), and I'm betting you won't be able to get enough of it, either.

From the production, to the arrangement, to Benton's smooth, lush voice and his masterful and deft phrasing, this version of "Fools Rush In" is . . . simply heavenly. Obviously, this is one place that fools rushed in just ahead of the angels.

A good time was had by all.

SO, THAT'S the short version of this week's Big Show highlight reel. Or demo tape. Whatever.

Whatever you do, just do yourself a favor and listen to the thing.

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

It's true! Zombie bug thrives with no food

In the news tonight, researchers across the country frantically attempt to unlock the mystery of why the deadly brain-eating amoeba is thriving in Louisiana despite a seeming lack of feeding grounds.

The latest brain-buster for top scientists is the Naegleria fowerli amoeba's appearance in the Terrebonne Parish water system. Theoretically, they say, this should not be possible with no nutrients for the organism to consume.

The baffled brainiacs cited the following article from the Houma Courier website:

Three residents are expected to address the Terrebonne Parish School Board on Tuesday about a member's racially charged Facebook posts.

Dorothy Murray, the Rev. Vernell Johnson and Ronald Williams are on the agenda to address the Confederate flag and an unspecified board member's Facebook posts.

The School Board is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. in its office, 201 Stadium Drive, Houma.

The action comes after School Board member Vicki Bonvillain's posts about the flag last month sparked concerns from the Terrebonne Parish NAACP.

On July 14, Bonvillain shared a picture on her Facebook page that said if the Confederate flag represents racism in America then so do other symbols, including the NAACP's logo, Black History Month, the Democratic Party, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the United Negro College Fund, Hispanic Heritage celebrations and the Black Panther Party.

"Our 'elected officials' want to accommodate our HISTORY to PLEASE some. WELL shouldn't ALL 'MLK' BLVDs be removed nationwide?" Bonvillain asked in a post July 9.

The posts have since been removed.

IN OTHER NEWS . . . despite making the news -- unfavorably -- for one damn thing after another, the state of Louisiana still wonders whether the rest of America is laughing with it or at it.

Film at 11.

3 Chords & the Truth: Musical peace and cooperation

In a world of strife and travail, how do these things coexist in one glorious place on the Internet?

The Temptations.

Bram Tchaikovsky.
 
Devo.

Nick Gilder.

Ray Charles.

B.B. King.

Jefferson Airplane.

Paul McCartney.

Glen Campbell.

Jackie Gleason's orchestra.

Patti Page. 

Bent Fabric.

Lou Rawls.

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

BEATS the hell out of me. But they do -- on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Why don't you give the Big Show a listen and see how this whole musical peaceful-cooperation thing works in an angry world gone mad?

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

This week's listening. So far.

Well, this is what I've been listening to so far this week.

I found a couple of cool 45 EP sets at an estate sale Sunday, along with a feast of LPs. I know, you're wondering what, exactly, is a "45 EP set." I don't blame you, really. The concept didn't stick for all that long.

A 45 EP set was an album, only on a couple -- or sometimes three -- 45s that typically had two songs to a side. They came in a little gatefold jacket that was a miniature version of a 12-inch LP jacket, and lasted as a format for about as long as there was a competition between LPs and 45s as a medium for record albums.

In that battle, the 45 r.p.m. record lost. The record industry more or less standardized release formats, with 45s being the common format for singles and 12-inch LPs being the common format for full albums. The 45 EP set largely disappeared by the end of the 1960s in the United States.

Basically, the sound quality wasn't as good as an LP record -- you're cramming a lot on music on a 7-inch record not really meant to hold that much. And, if you ask me, 45s by and large don't sound quite as good as LPs anyway. So there's that.

Then you have the "more records to mess with" factor, even if they're smaller records.

On the other hand, they are kind of cool. They're a curiosity, to be sure.

ANYWAY, the EPs we have here for my listening pleasure -- and soon yours, too, no doubt --  are the 45 version of Jackie Gleason's Music for Lovers Only, one of his 1950s albums with trumpeter Bobby Hackett fronting an orchestra "conducted" by The Great One. God help me, I love the stuff.

Jackie Gleason put the bachelor pad in "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music."

The other EP set is The Anthony Choir, a group that trumpeter Ray Anthony put together to perform with his orchestra, because somebody had to give Mitch Miller, Ray Conniff and Fred Waring a run for their money.

And, yes, your humble correspondent was born (1961) too late.



FINALLY on the agenda tonight was a little Bent Fabric.

Bent Fabric, the Danish pianist and composer born 90 years ago as Bent Fabricius-Bjerre. You know, the "Alley Cat" guy who, by Grammy logic, won for Best Rock & Roll Recording of 1962.

And, yes, Bent Fabric is still with us.

And -- once again -- God help me, I love this stuff. That is all. Nighty-night.

Screwed by the weather again

"I tell ya, the East Coast's gettin' the shaft."

The eighth-grader in me finds this AccuWeather forecast map hilarious. So did the WGN morning-news crew. Meanwhile, in other Chicago television news, Floyd Kalber is reported to be spinning in his grave.

More hump-day weather after this word from our sponsor . . . Trojans, keeping the East Coast dry since 1916.

How I spent my Friday night

This is how I spent my Friday night last week.

That would be, as you might discern from the photographs from my indispensable iPhone, spending an hour and a half or so at the Loretta Lynn concert at Omaha's Holland Performing Arts Center. Third row center.
 
As the cliché goes, "a good time was had by all." Especially Loretta, I think.
 
THE COUNTRY legend is 83 years old now, and she has more voice left than many singers 15 years younger than herself. She even fielded a few requests from the crowd of about 1,000, including one song she hadn't performed in a decade and a half.

She only struggled with a few lines. At 54, I doubt I would fare as well with a song I'd sung last week in the shower.

This was a new concert experience for me -- a show that was the stage equivalent of sitting down at your favorite aunt's kitchen table, drinking strong coffee and telling stories. That, my friend, is something that leaves you feeling blessed for the simple things in life, which turn out to be some of the biggest things of all.

Best yet, she says she's about to start on a new album with Jack White. Can't wait.

Putting lipstick on a . . . blog

Things may look a little different around here. Not a whole lot . . . but enough.

Welcome to the new look of Revolution 21's Blog for the People. The basic format is the same, but we've given the old girl a new set of duds and a little eyeliner and lipstick after several years. I like the new look, and I hope you do, too.

Probably the biggest thing you'll notice is that the blog now displays a lot better on tablets, courtesy of installing (and tweaking) a new Blogger template that, at long last, will keep all the elements of this thing where they're supposed to be, no matter how you size your browser window.

IT'S LONG overdue, and she'll be looking a lot less like a hot mess, all without you having to futz with the size of your browser on the computer screen. Here it is full screen on my Surface, on the right.

Before, it would have looked staggeringly weird. But you probably know that if you have a tablet and have ventured over to the blog.

So, that's all I have to say about that. Enjoy the new, more adaptable look of the Blog for the People.