Saturday, February 29, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Hard times


Hard times are us.

Really, it's just one damned thing after another. Now it's a looming pandemic and a crashing stock market because of the looming pandemic, which has pretty much shuttered China and threatens to do the same to the rest of the world.

Investors also weren't exactly comforted by the realization that the president of the United States is a mentally unwell half-wit who thinks the whole coronavirus (or"caronavirus" if you're reading Donald Trump's tweets) thing is just being exaggerated by the evil liberal media and the Democrats to crash the economy and cost him re-election.

To summarize: We are f*cked.

THIS EDITION of 3 Chords & the Truth is an attempt to internalize that . . . and be as much a musical balm as we can. It may not be much, but it isn't nothing.

The Big Show also is a fine way to pass the time once we're all too afraid to venture out of our homes for fear of infection. Or are quarantined -- one or the other.

Who knew that the 3C&T Apocalypse Bunker might end up being something other than a metaphor, a mere semi-witty saying? But that's where we are in the Land of One Damned Thing After Another.

Good night, and good luck. And may all your infections be mild.

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


Friday, February 21, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Carnival in the bunker


Just because you're hunkered down in an apocalypse bunker in the Trumpian States of Amerika, that doesn't mean you can't spruce the place up a bit and celebrate Mardi Gras.

Let's just call Carnival time the bright spot between secular, never-ending Lent and religious Lent plus the ongoing secular, never-ending Lent in this national vale of moonbattery.

That's where we are on this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

But . . . the music's great, the music is fine, and the music on the Big Show (one hopes) will get us through every form of Lenten mortification.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

Period.

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


Friday, February 14, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Looking back to our better selves


Let me be direct: I often find myself looking backward, embracing the anachronism, because the present is too much to take straight up.

Sometimes, anachronistic ain't such a bad thing to be -- like less vitriolic, more accepting of grace and redemption . . . having a longer attention span.

For example, 3 Chords & the Truth is a big time throwback to another age, totally out of step with postmodernity. First off, this is a freeform music program. Where the hell do you even find such a thing anymore?

Not many places, that's for certain.

ANOTHER THING . . . the only computer that puts together any playlist for any episode of the Big Show resides inside the head of your Mighty Favog. It's somewhat larger than your smartphone, and I'm pretty sure it's hand-wired and runs on vacuum tubes.

Too, this here podcast embraces the quirky, the eccentric and holding more than one thought in one's head at one time. Talk about anachronistic.

3 Chords & the Truth has a soft spot for old music, old electronic equipment, old politics and old notions of what we used to know as "radio." We have no damn clue what the hell folks think they're doing on several fronts today.

And we feel sorrow and sympathy for those too young to remember the good things we do, too young to remember, and be wary of, the old bad stuff we've seen and lived -- and which keeps coming back around every so often.

That pretty much sums up the aesthetic of Revolution 21 and the Big Show.

That also helps to make this, in my humble opinion, a damn good radio program. Even if it's not actually on what passes for radio these days.

Try it. You'll like it, this anachronistic thing here.

YEAH, call us an anachronism. We like it like that.

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


Thursday, February 13, 2020

If you wigged out, Luzianne had you covered

Baton Rouge State-Times, Feb. 12, 1970

Maybe it's the caffeine.

Well, switching to Sanka might've been one cup over the line, so 50 years ago in coffee-loving Louisiana, Luzianne had a plan for when the ladies might get a little jacked up and tear their hair out -- buy our coffee, get wigs cheap.

Works for me. So, did they have any toupées?

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

The best thing about outmoded technology


Fifty years ago, in February 1970, Polaroid Land Cameras were a big thing.

In fact, Polaroid represented instant photography -- pull the undeveloped film out of the camera (and the film was the picture) -- wait a minute (or 2 minutes for color), and you could see what you just took. Will miracles never cease.

Oh, don't forget the flashcubes or flashbulbs if you're going to be taking pictures indoors.
 
Omaha World-Herald -- Feb. 12, 1970
THE TECHNOLOGY of my youth was much more advanced than what we have today, what with taking film-free, electronical "pictures" on one's telephone, which hasn't even the decency to be attached to a phone outlet by a long cord.

With the Polaroid and its Colorpack film, by God, you got 10 exposures, and that film wasn't cheap -- because People Smarter Than Yourself didn't want you wasting time and resources taking pictures of stupid things.

Like yourself.

In 1970, if you tried to take a selfie with a Polaroid camera, it would not go well for you. For one, you would be seeing spots -- still -- in 2020. And that's
assuming you didn't have a bad flashbulb that . . . how shall we put it . . . blew up.

Now, it wouldn't matter at all that the selfie would be completely out of focus. That's because all you would see would be the bright white of the flash bathing your now blind-ass self.

Of course, you could try taking a selfie as people did back then -- in a mirror. In a very well-lit room so you could avoid shooting a flash into a mirror . . . which, again, probably would not go well.  

FUN FACT: Did you know that until, in historical terms . . . yesterday, all selfies showed backward people pointing backward cameras much like the one in our Calandra Camera ad, a


I had a Polaroid camera in 1970, and I am happy to report there are no blurry, washed-out selfies of my Ernie Douglas-looking self. If you know who Ernie Douglas was, you remember the blessed days when taking a selfie was a process involved enough to deter people vain and unserious enough to want to take one.

History giveth, the present taketh away.

Saturday, February 08, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Easy, right?


It's been a week, hasn't it?

Seems like we've had a lot of those, right? A week. A month. Three years. We've had a three years.

It's easy to lose hope. It's easy -- and probably correct -- to think things are just going to get worse. It's even easier to not know what the hell to do.

It's really hard to see the bottom, mainly because there may not be one. The president is a deranged cult leader, and cruelty is is specialty -- which is what many, including the allegedly religious, see as a feature and not a bug.

TORMENT WHOM you will and despoil what you will, Mr. President. Just give us some right-thinking judges, and save the faith we've mocked from them what hate us. Whom we likewise hate, for Jesus said we ought.

It's in the Bible -- somewhere in the back. No? But they said on Fox News.

Three years ago, we knew this present darkness would be hard. But we thought it'd be easier.

Right.

WHAT DOES this have to do with 3 Chords & the Truth? I don't know. Nothing? Everything?

What will we do on the Big Show? The answer is . . . what we can.

We'll play great music. We'll endeavor not to be dumb. We won't insult your intelligence, and we'll try to be a light, however small, in the darkness that has overtaken this land.

It started in 2008, and it continues right now. Vive la résistance! Long live "What we can"!

And this week particularly, you're gonna love "What we can."

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