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.


Wednesday, March 26, 2014

What it looks like when newspapers give up

   
The local newspaper, just in time for March Madness, got the bright idea of having a championship bracket for "the Nebraska-est Nebraska celebrity."

Put aside our culture's idiotic obsession with "celebrity" for a moment. Forget even the apples-vs.-oranges stupidity of pitting William Jennings Bryan and Willa Cather against has-been alt-rockers 311 and "the Maroon 5 guy."

No, consider instead that when you start out with an unserious premise that elevates celebrity over all else, then put it all to a vote by those readers (and given how the voting's gone, "readers" might be too generous a description) who didn't think this was just too dumb to take seriously. . . .  

Well, let's just say you're going to get what you get.

Good and hard.

SO BRYAN and Cather and Malcolm X and Ted Sorensen are s*** out of luck. As are Gerald Ford, Johnny Carson, Fred Astaire and Marlon Brando. And Bob Devaney, Tom Osborne, Bob Gibson and Scientology nutbag L. Ron Hubbard. (Actually, I was counting on Scientologists stuffing the virtual ballot box on this one. I was wrong, alas. The sheer inanity of the Omaha World-Herald exercise must have fried their E-meters.)

Hell, Henry Fonda didn't even make the tournament. "Yours, Mine and Ours" must have totally screwed his RPI. 

Well, either that . . . or this:


NO, facing off for the "the Nebraska-est Nebraska celebrity," we have 311 and investing guru Warren Buffett, whom we all love for having craploads more money than we do. That, friends, is "journalism" today.

Good and hard.

I hope 311 wins. Not only would that be the most absurd outcome possible, but the World-Herald would mercifully be spared having to explain why the boss won.

Between this sort of thing and its steamin'-hot love affair with "charticles," I wouldn't be surprised if some day soon, the hometown daily becomes the first American newspaper to break through the Pictogram Barrier and become wordless altogether.

And to think that we thought in 1982 that USA TODAY was as dumbed-down as newspapering could get. There are none so naive as those who think things can't always get worse.


Huh. Huh-huh-huh.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Because there's one born every minute


I'm an audio geek.

OK, I'm an audio geek who likes to look at this kind of stuff on eBay. Anyway, I know a little about what old hi-fi equipment is worth -- particularly the stuff that's so coveted that folks will pay insane prices for it.

But a starting bid of $650 for a Sherwood tuner and amplifier? That strikes me a a little bit, shall we say, outrageous. Then again, a sucker really is born every minute, and there are people out there for whom price is no object.

A VINTAGE McIntosh tuner or amp is fairly valued at an astronomical figure because that's what the market will bear based on quality and popularity. A mid-1950s REL Precedent is fairly valued at an insanely astronomical figure because it's even better than a McIntosh and many times as rare.

But for pretty much anything else not a vintage Marantz amplifier or tuner, not so much. You can buy a lot of good stuff for the $650 you'd be spending on this "good but, oh, come on" tuner and amplifier.

Money doesn't grow on trees, you know. When it does, you can pay that kind of money for this kind of vintage hi-fi-gear.

This has been your Revolution 21 Geek Minute for today, March 19, 2014.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Sign of his times


The foremost proponent of divine hatred of "fags," America, Israel, Catholics, Ireland (no, really) and the rest of the world, too, reportedly is about to leave this accursed coil for an encounter with divine justice.

I wonder what the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church might think of finding one of his own signs at the end of the glory road.

After all, if God hates me, what would keep the Almighty from hating Fred, too? To presume otherwise would be the height of false confidence, don't you think?

And if God is the enemy of thee, what's to say he's not also the enemy of me? To presume otherwise is . . . presumption.

The two things we know about God are the two things we just can't keep straight about Him -- first, that the Almighty is all-merciful and, second, that He is perfectly just. We tend to presume upon one characteristic or overemphasize the other.

IN THAT RESPECT, the theology of God Hates Fags, America, etc., and so on isn't that much more screwy than what we hear about the supreme being from the rest of our culture, media or Father Feelgood. It seems to me that the theology of Fred Phelps -- the one he's about to have to defend under the glaring spotlight of Divine Truth -- is just more concentrated . . . and consistently negative.

If I'm Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., I'm worrying that I just might be screwed even if I'm right, because my God is a God who's spoiling for a smite. And I'm about to be in the crosshairs of the Holy Flamethrower. If I'm Fred Phelps, I'm thinking "I made myself and everybody else miserable for a God I can't even trust?"

What the hell kind of god hates everybody and everything? The answer lies in the question -- the "god" of hell.


And the problem Rev. Phelps will find himself hard up against is not the seething hatred of God for "fags," America, Israel, Catholics, Ireland, the world or . . . if the bad reverend has miscalculated . . . him. God does what He must and what He will, but hatred of his children isn't in the divine equation. God hates sin; God loves sinners.

NO, the problem Rev. Phelps soon will confront is that one of his scary band's whacked-out signs might actually be spot-on . . . and that it will be the one marking the end of his road.


This one.

Lord, have mercy.

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.


Thursday, March 13, 2014

A what player? Porno player? What? Pono?

An old friend sent me an email to ask my thoughts on Neil Young's Pono Player.

My first thought was that the last thing I ever want to see is Neil Young nekkid.

My second thought, after a second look, was "Oh. Pono Player. That's completely different, then. Never mind."


I actually hadn’t been paying attention to the Pono Player in the slightest -- I guess when you get off the what’s-new-in-music bus, you get off the bus. I guess that was a bad thing for a guy who does a music podcast to admit, wasn't it?

Oops.

Anymore, I find that I inhabit the old-fart universe where we daydream about how good the buses used to be before all those little pimp-wannabe a-holes got on and ruined it with their f-ing hip-hop crap. And I frankly find little contemporary music that excites me enough to run out and buy it, either in the store or online.

About half of that dwindling amount is either a new jazz recording I fancy . . . or the latest Rosanne Cash record. Hell, I haven’t even bought the new Springsteen record yet.

I guess that was a bad thing for a guy who does a music podcast to admit, wasn't it?

Oops redux.
  
What I do now is scour the used-vinyl bins at Homer's and at  Goodwill, looking for treasures. Usually, those are albums that my generation's parents would have liked, back from when our parents were much younger than us . . . and often from before there was an us.

One advantage of this kind of record-picking is that “old people” took care of their LPs; teenagers didn’t. Unless the teenager was geeky ol' me. Anyway, I find that a pristine LP from 1962 -- say, on RCA Victor before they began to cheap-out on material and quality control in the late ‘60s -- is a sonically transcendent experience, and that’s an all-analog deal from the vintage ribbon mic in the studio to the vintage tape recorder in the control room to the turntable right next to me.


OH . . . right. About that Porno . . . uh, Pono Player thingy.

I’m probably the target audience for the Pono Player -- me and some wealthy audio freaks (all 487 of them), along with some hipsters who just discovered vinyl and have deemed it hip, happening and now. I -- we -- already have our Pono Players. We call them “records.”

Often, we also call them CDs Not By Rock Bands, who all have turned the compression and hard limiting up to not 11 but instead to 479 in the mastering studio.

Right now on my iMac's hard drive, I have 18,585 songs. That probably represents less than a third of what I have on LPs, CDs, 45s, reel-to-reels, cassettes and 78s. A not-insignificant amount of those hard-drive music files came from iTunes. But I digress.

Anyway, my default quality for the MP3s on the ol’ iMac is 320 kbps, which maxes out that encoding scheme. One might reasonably ask why 320 kbps MP3. The reasonable answer is that the MP3 format is ubiquitous and that, at 320 kbps, I can’t tell the difference from a CD. And to be so honest as to be completely unhip, unhappening and very un-now, a well-recorded, competently mastered CD (as allegedly compromised as it is in the geriatric-rock-star ears of Neil Young) sounds really good, though a little less “warm” than analog.

AND THAT, basically, is what Young, Bruce Springsteen and all their Kickstarter investors are betting millions on with the Pono Player -- absolute subjectivity. Really, once you manage to transcend low-bitrate MP3s of music that’s been so compressed, limited and clipped that the audio file looks like a green 2-by-4 on your digital audio workstation, “better” is as much in your imagination as it is in your sound system.

Remember SACD players? Better still, remember the studies showing that “Super Audio” CDs didn’t really sound better than regular CDs? All the “technical superiority” in the world really doesn’t matter if studio microphones can’t achieve it and, at any rate, only your dog could hear it. 

So my worth-what-you-paid-for-it verdict is this: If you bet the farm on the Pono Player, don’t be surprised if you end up feeling quite (ahem) “Helpless” as your investment gets Zuned.

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.


Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Old-school high fidelity geekery


The speaker: A mid-'60s Electro-Voice "Wolverine" 8-inch, full-range driver in a new Gough speaker enclosure built by a friend who has a custom furniture business from the original 1960 plans sold by Jabez Gough of Cardiff, Wales.

https://books.google.com/books?id=VSEDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA168&dq=popular+science+nov.+1961+gough&pg=PA168&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
The hi-fi: A 1956-57 Realistic amplifier and FM tuner. The glory of vacuum tubes!

The result: Pretty dadgum amazing . . . and all in glorious monophonic sound, being that stereo was awfully new-fangled in 1957.

Now, what you can't feel is the floor shaking -- all from a 10-watt tube amp. What you can see is that our house is undergoing a never-ending remodeling. This dining room here is due for a new floor next week . . . then on to the painting and whatever else.

I'm sure there will be "whatever else."

Saturday, March 01, 2014

U.S. to Putin: Do as we say, not as we do


"What?" people across the Western world are asking today. "Is Putin nuts? Has Russia gone mad?"

Well, when you've been pushed to the breaking point, you usually don't act in a rational manner. This is just as true for nations and presidents as it is for Joe Schmoe.

But I remain to be convinced that Vladimir Putin is acting irrationally. It depends on how far he takes it in Ukraine.

The United States, NATO and the European Union have pushed Putin and Russia up against the wall -- not in East Germany or Poland, but right on its own border -- twice in recent years, first in Georgia and now in Ukraine. But Ukraine is no far-flung Georgia; you can drive from Kiev to Moscow (530 miles) in a day. That's hitting close to home.

Then there's this from a remarkable piece in The Nation by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University:
But the most crucial media omission is Moscow’s reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia. Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it—not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy—is deceitful. The EU’s “civilizational” proposal, for example, includes “security policy” provisions, almost never reported, that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.

Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup.

WHO ARE the imperialists here again?

Under these circumstances, if I were Putin, I'd probably invade the historically Russian regions of Ukraine, too. Certainly, I'd forcibly repatriate the Crimea, which was "given" to Ukraine by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s, when. But is it really "forcibly" if the inhabitants are happy as hell you're there?

That's what we kept pointing out when we rolled into Baghdad, after all. In Iraq, they were happy . . . until they weren't, because we were both foreigners and "infidels." In eastern Ukraine, it's not the Russians who are foreigners, it's the folks in western Ukraine.

Ukraine not only isn't our fight, hell, I don't even think we're necessarily right or that Putin is necessarily wrong. Check that. I think we're absolutely wrong for meddling in a sovereign country on the border of another nuclear-armed sovereign country that has every reason to be paranoid about our meddling.

The United States' "because freedom" act has grown old over the decades, mainly because it's always been more "because market capitalism." We've always been, globally, sort of like that fella who first gets religion and makes everybody's life miserable with all the ham-handed proselytizing, just like the old Soviets were in trying to spread their communist ideology.

MORE AND MORE, though, we look less like the sincere, overeager Bible-thumper and more like Elmer Gantry. Don't think Putin doesn't see that much more clearly than we do -- being a saint often is a hindrance in spotting hypocrites and con artists.

Or as one Russian legislator aptly put it:
But the parliamentary session roundly dismissed western criticism in advance. Senator Nikolai Ryzhkov said Russia should be prepared for the west to "unleash their dogs on us". "They ruined Yugoslavia, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, all in the name of western democracy. It's not even double standards, it's political cynicism."
ALLOW ME to paint the broad canvas of American hypocrisy with a historical brush: If the Russians had their own Monroe Doctrine, we'd all be soooooo H-bomb vaporized right now.

Really, it would all just be so much more honest if President Obama would call regular press conferences to threaten the Rogue Nation of the Day with annihilation if they, for whatever reason, fail to do as we say, not as we do.

Because Cuba 1898.

Because Dominican Republic 1965.

Because Vietnam.

Because Grenada 1983.

Because Panama 1989.

Because Iraq 2003.

Play realpolitik if you must -- though I really wish you wouldn't play it while drinking . . . or with John McCain on your team -- just dispense with the moralistic bullshit.