Saturday, June 27, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Whatever works


How are you getting by this week in this time of disease and woe?

Me, I've found that the best method for coping is . . . whatever works.

A big part of "whatever works," we at the Big Show hope, is the Big Show itself. A weekly dose of good music helps a lot when you're afraid to turn on the news for fear of what fresh hell awaits.

But while you're listening to the program -- listening to the finest in recorded music from the vast 3 Chords & the Truth library -- might I suggest sitting in a comfy chair with a refreshing libation. It might just be the shot in the liver you need.

PERHAPS A Skyball would do the tri . . . tri . . . hic . . . trick.

This classic 1960s bit of alcoholic nostalgia is sort of like a spruced-up highball, only made with vodka, lemon juice and lemonade. And I'm sure it's healthier than sitting on the stoop with a Lieutenant Dan cigar and muttering the F-word a lot.

Like I said, whatever works.

Of course, if you happen to be under 21 -- or if you just don't like booze -- I'm sure a nice refreshing glass of no-octane lemonade would work just fine, too.

Listen to me, I was pre-med in college. Wait, I was a journalism major.

Hell, what's the difference?

Good music and good libations -- that will help you get through this time of pandemic and pan-idiots. And helping you get through it all is our special mission on 3 Chords & the Truth.

S'alright? S'alright.

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


Saturday, June 20, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Doing what we can


First, the pandemic. Then, the reckoning.

Hell of a spring you're having, America.

Amid a double-barreled storm -- a double-barreled world of hurt -- what then are we to do? The answer is both complicated and really simple. Being a simple sort, I'll stick to the latter with this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Now, the envelope, please. And the answer is . . . what we can.

We do what we can. That's certainly what we're doing here on the Big Show -- what we can. It involves (one hopes) not being dumb, not saying dumb things (at least not extraordinarily dumb, which seems the fashion for American society today) and playing the best music available here in the Apocalypse Bunker.

MANY MIGHT know that better as "the studio."

That pretty much sums up this week's show -- playing good music to soothe your soul and not saying or doing anything extraordinarily dumb. Don't worry, we'll still have plenty of the ordinarily dumb.

Just ask my wife.

I suppose that's all there is to be said -- he says as the smartphone and iPad keep dinging and lighting up with the latest Fresh Hell Alerts. (Would it be appropriate to change the alert tone to something more appropriate to these times . . . like an air-raid siren?)

Ponder that after you rebalance yourself by listening to the show.

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


Friday, June 12, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: No. 1 in the heart of . . . something


When life has become a slog and the world around you is in turmoil, sometimes you just need to self-medicate . . . with music.

This may or may not preclude self-medicating with other things. It's that kind of year.

This week on the Big Show, we're self-medicating with a lot of hit records -- and records that, in your Mighty Favog's humble opinion, should have been hit records. Or bigger hit records.

It beats crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Which, again, may or may not preclude also crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Because 2020.

But for right now, you can try coping by listening to the hits and shoulda-been-hits on this here edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

I guess that covers it. So give it a listen and escape the suck for a while.

That is all.

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


Saturday, June 06, 2020

3 Chords & the Truth: Please do not adjust your set


Please do not adjust your set. 2020 is experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

(Cue the peppy, yet soothing instrumental music to accompany the "technical difficulties" slide on your screen.)

Please stand by -- perhaps that ought to be the new motto of the United States as the country staggers between a pandemic, economic collapse, civil unrest and a president who manages to be deeply evil and barking mad, too.


God knows "E Pluribus Unum" just isn't cutting it anymore.

If you have any answers beyond "Just hold on, and do the best you can," the Big Show would like to hear them. Address your reply to 3 Chords & the Truth, Apocalypse Bunker, Omaha, by God, Nebraska, Oh-What-the-Hell-Is-the-Point-Anymore?

AT A TIME when the president sets federal agents and troops upon peaceful protesters just so he can walk unbothered by the hoi polloi to a boarded-up church to stage a phony photo op with a Bible he doesn't read, just holding on and doing the best we can seems to be about all we can do right now.

Just hold on. We'll do the best we can to play some good music to distract you from your aching fingers.

That's about all I can tell you right now. God help us.

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


Friday, June 05, 2020

Amerika, a pictorial study









Here's a scene from Saturday's protest in Salt Lake City.

If this is how Amerika's storm-trooper cops treat a 67-year-old leukemia patient who walks with a cane, how the hell do you think your average able-bodied black man gets treated by police in the 'hood?

The old guy's crime? He was taking pictures when the cops swooped in to "dominate the battlespace."

“I thought they were just coming down the street and all of a sudden they came charging at me,” he told KTVX television. “Ten minutes before the armored vehicles showed up that’s when I got there,” said Tobin. “When I went down there to take pictures there was no mob scene. It was just a bunch of people standing around taking pictures. I was at the end.”

Afterwards, Tobin says a group of people then came to his aid trying to call an ambulance, but one couldn’t get through.

“They stayed with me,” he said. “Bandaged up some of my cuts on my arms.”

Frustrated, Tobin went home. The next morning, he says he received a call from Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

“He said that’s not the way the police are supposed to act, and he was going to look into it with internal affairs and the review board, and take action,” said Tobin. “I told him whatever you’re going to do is fine with me.”

Tobin, who has Leukemia, has a visible scratch on his head from his fall.

“My shoulder still hurts a little bit,” he said. “My rib on the back is still sore, but the main problem is my knee.”

If given the chance, Tobin shares what he would tell the officer who knocked him down.

“I’d just say, I hope you don’t do it again.”
I DON'T KNOW exactly at what point your average cop in the United States became your average Nazi storm trooper, but here we are. In the last 10 days, we have heard -- and seen -- story after story after story after story of ordinary, peaceful folk being brutalized by "(fill in the blank's) finest" while "boogaloo bois," vandals, looters and arsonists run amok as America recoils in civil-disobedient horror at . . . well . . . the kind of crap you see here. And a lot worse.

Repeatedly, murderously worse.

But it's OK. The police chief is going to look into it. The trouble is, America's police chiefs have been "looking into it" for the last 55 goddamn years. Maybe the mayor will appoint a commission.

Or maybe not. President Caligula probably would fire off some mean tweets calling him a pussy.





IT SEEMS we live in a land where "pro-life" politicians -- like Donald Trump, "the most pro-life president ever" -- just can't satiate their blood lust, and now your average, unarmed African-American just doesn't hit the spot anymore. Now we have cops pointing weapons at the heads of toddlers.

In that case, the Long Beach, Calif., police have promised to launch a "review." Don't hold your breath.

Meantime, maybe some cops will take a knee or do a silly dance with the early shift of protesters. Hell of a great way of getting limbered up for the main event.


* * *

P.S.: Judging by his apparel, it seems that the Utah victim of wanton police brutality is a Nebraska fan. Haven't Nebraska fans suffered enough?