3 Chords & the Truth: Squiggles in the smoke

Inspired by the unveiling Friday of the oldest known sound recording -- dating back to 1860 -- I decided to record this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth with a phonautograph, just like the one French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville used to make those first "records" of sound so long ago.

ALL IT TOOK was a functioning phonautograph, "borrowed" from a museum, and 3,000 feet of soot-covered rag paper. What you hear on the Big Show this week emanates from only the finest scratchings onto the sooty medium, faithfully reproduced by a top-secret laboratory process.

I think it came out all right, if I do say so myself.

You be the judge. It's hip, it's now, it's happenin' . . . and it's historical, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, is what it is. Be there. Aloha.