Leave it to me to be a hi-fi geek staring into the abyss of whole generations now come of age hearing the world as a low-bitrate MP3 through cheap earbuds connected to an iPod.Yes, my generation had crappy transistor AM radios we listened to with cheap earphones. But we also had stereo systems with killer tuners, wall-shaking amplifiers and loudspeakers the size of a Smart car.
And before I yell at you to get off my lawn -- punk -- I'll just say that back then, FM sounded great, AM sounded really good, and most consumer audio allowed you to hear that. Not only that, some of our "stereos" or "hi-fis" were stunningly beautiful, even. Above is the REL "Precedent" FM tuner, circa 1954 . . . some seven years before my time, I hasten to add.
Some vintage-audio aficionados say the Precedent -- in all its monophonic glory -- was the best FM tuner ever made. I don't have the expertise (or experience of it ) to be able to say. But I do think it might have been the prettiest.
My trusty old Marantz 2226 receiver, though, surely has a place on the prettiest stereo gear list somewhere. I've had it since I was 16, and that's it at left . . . aglow in the dark.
Then again, I am an anachronism. I value the spectacle, and the experience, of hearing good music nearly as much as the music itself. IPods and MP3s have their place today, of course. But for me, they are a utilitarian concession -- not the crème de la crème of a generation rendered tin-eared by a utilitarian age.
For this relic of an age long past, alas, there is nothing left but to offer a futile protest against the times in which I must live -- non serviam. Now find a jazz station somewhere on FM and crank that tube amp up to 11 for me, will you?
It's not easy going around all day, every day with your arms in the air, making every interaction a show tune -- and not only that, but performing the entirety of your life as a never-ending grand finale.
Frankly, if I could put my arms down, I would listen to some Stan Freberg as I drank a cup of Butternut coffee and gazed at the Omaha Moon.
Which, unfortunately, also shines on those hillbillies in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where the 
meth-ravaged, trailer-dwelling populace routinely tolerates gnomelike Mexican dwarfs dumping all their Butternut into the Mighty Mo and hanging the empty tins in the city's trees.
Ahamo! AAAAAAAAAAA-haaaaaaaaaaaaa-MOOOWWWW!!!
"Who wants a tape-cartridge recorder?"
Not enough people, obviously, since I'll bet you've never seen one of these things. This RCA tape-cartridge recorder is a 1959 model, and it's kind of like a cassette deck, only bigger. With better fidelity, too, because it's basically a reel-to-reel machine with the reels in a great big cassette . . . er, cartridge.
It never stood a chance when little cassettes came along in the mid-1960s.The world is filled with Philistines! Any idiot knows that Beta the RCA tape-cartridge system is better, but noooooooo! HEY! You can't argue with "four and one-half years of research."
Well, you can, but that just makes you an audiophobe. Philistine.
Dick Clark is dead, according to the TMZ website.
The cause apparently was a massive heart attack after undergoing an "outpatient procedure" at a Los Angeles hospital. The man who once seemed ageless before a stroke in 2004, was 82.
Thus, an era truly ends as another piece of 'Boomers' lives slips into the mists of time.
It was 1976, and it was a year of possibility.
I was a sophomore in high school in 1976. The Viking spacecraft first landed on Mars in 1976. The United States was 200 years old in 1976.
And I was really into Loose Radio in 1976 -- the waning days of the age of FM "progressive rock" stations and the magical world they opened up to the kids who listened. A world of possibility.
This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we'll devote an entire set to the magic, to the possibilities, to the album rock of 1976. Really, it's an "everybody wins" deal on the Big Show -- you get some really cool music, and I get to be 15 again. A much smarter 15.OF COURSE, "All Things 1976" isn't all there is to the program this go around. It's not like we're going to be slighting all the other decades of the music of our lives . . . and our parents' (and maybe grandparents') lives.
It's all good, and it's all here on the Big Show.
What's that again?
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It's the end of a long seven days, we've had some depressing news in the rock 'n' roll universe, and -- dammit -- we're just sitting back and playin' some records this week.
Well, yes, that's pretty much what we do every week on 3 Chords & the Truth, but still. . . .
We're playin' some old Monkees records in honor of the late Davy Jones, and we're putting together some intriguing sets, because that's what we do here on the Big Show. But . . . but. . . .
Come to think of it, just playin' records is rather extraordinary these days. They don't just play records on the radio anymore -- computers spit out sound files with little human input into the process.
Scheduling software doesn't "just play records." It balances parameters, which leads to underthinking things for the programmer who just doesn't want to. Think, that is.MAYBE WE should say this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is "handcrafted radio, assembled with love." Of course, we're not on the radio. Not much room on the radio for the likes of the Big Show anymore.
So we're just hanging out here on the Internet . . . with you. Just playin' records.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Today was a snowy one here at the worldwide headquarters for better music on the Internet.
It was coming down pretty good for a while, there. Got pretty wet a couple of times when I ventured outside.
All in all, though, I'm glad to be hear.
That's not a typo. I'm glad to be back hear with a brand-new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth after most of February away. That's because for a good week of this month, I couldn't hear well enough to properly put together the Big Show.
It all started with a sinus infection the first of the month. Then, I guess you might say, it went rogue.ACCORDING to the doc, a virus likely attacked my right middle ear. According to me, it was pretty excruciating . . . and really loud. The ringing in my ear, that is.
And a session with the audiologist showed that much of my hearing in that ear was gone -- "severe" hearing loss in all the mid-range frequencies. In my line of work, that ain't good.
So they shot me up with steroids to relieve the swelling and pressure in my ear (Did I mention how bloody uncomfortable the pressure thing was?), and a few days later, I got to have my first-ever CAT scan and MRI. The MRI tech assured me there was a brain in there and -- even better -- the ear, nose and throat doctor assured me the scans showed "nothing exciting."
If he's not excited, I'm happy.
Then another round of hearing tests showed my hearing had improved to "normal." Praise God.
"We fixed you," the doc said, surprised my hearing had returned so quickly -- there was a chance that it wouldn't at all. Then he paused for a second.
"God fixed you," he added.
I don't disagree. Sometimes I still feel a little dicey in the wake of all this, but hearing is wonderful. I'm going to try to hold on to it. And I heartily recommend big-ass doses of steroids -- in pills and via a needle to the hip -- and bigger-ass doses of prayer.
Both work.
AND NOW . . . on with this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. Let's just say you know it's a good one when it features A) an entire set devoted to songs penned by Liz Anderson and B) another set devoted to the Apocalypse.
You just ain't gonna get that on the radio, Hoss. But you will on the Big Show.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It's always 1949 somewhere, so Somewhere might as well be my computer monitor.
Obviously, I did not give up geekiness for Lent this year.Now back to the Johnny Carson Show. Stay tuned for Gabby Hayes at 5:15 and Captain Video at 5:30, right here at this same spot on the dial.
The show is in the can. The weather's in the toilet.
It is snowing outside. I am inside. Easy decision.
Winter . . . so now you show up?
Well, the weatherman says we're going to have roughly a foot of this stuff on the ground by Sunday, so I'm betting we're not going to be out and about much. No sleigh . . . or horse, don't you know? That's OK. We're all stocked up on the essentials, and we're good to go.
Of course, 3 Chords & the Truth is included as an essential on the snowed-in list. In fact, you can put it on your list of essentials on the not-snowed-in list, too.SEE, if it's all cold and snowy out, there's enough hot music on the Big Show to warm things up quite nicely. Alternatively, if it's warmish where you are this weekend, there's plenty of cool on the program to keep things comfortable.
No matter what, it's always nice curling up with the latest episode . . . and all the wonderful -- and wonderfully eclectic -- music.
That is all. I'm going to get a hot cup of something now.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Today is July 13, 1950. It's a Thursday.And you're just in time for Ricky's birthday party. C'mon in! All his little friends are already here.
Of course, you know that Ricky's actual birthday was last week, but the family was in Kansas City, so here we are. Make sure you say something for the record Mom and Dad are making.
Yeah, they've already been fooling around with the disc recorder -- something tells me not every kid's birthday-party record starts with "Les Toreadors" from Carmen. Ricky should get a chuckle out of that in 20 or 30 years. Can you imagine? 1980.
Make sure you enunciate for the microphone, though. Janet already got fussed at for being a mushmouth, poor kid. But you should have heard Ricky singing "Jesus Loves Me." He kind of mangled the lyrics, but it was just the cutest thing ever.OH, YES. Put a microphone in Mom's hand and she launches into her cabaret act -- "I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine" this time.Let's see, Aunt Donna and Aunt Helen are already here. And . . . ummmmmmm . . . Alice, Mildred . . . all the kids . . . there goes little Bobbie and Judy. And Danny, and Mary Lou . . . Cathy, Stevie, Diana, Jenny, Jackie, Baby . . . and Happy. Can't forget Happy.
Uh oh. Looks like the record is getting toward the end of the side. Get in there quick and say hello to Ricky. Maybe he'll be listening to you when he's old and retired someday -- way past the year 2000!
THAT IS, if the transcription disc doesn't get thrown in some box in the attic and end up getting sold at a garage sale or an estate sale in 60-something years. HELLO, FUTURE OMAHAN . . . WHOEVER YOU ARE! Ha ha!
Can you just picture that little 5-year-old Ricky when he's 66 or something?
I wonder what Omaha will be like then? I sure would like to live long enough to see Ricky's flying jet car (click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet car (click) jet. . . .
You say you want a revolution?Well, you know, we all want to change the world.
Maybe you should just stop trying. Well, you know, that's when you might change the world.
So welcome to the 3 Chords & the Truth Used Record Shop. Where we know it's gonna be all right, all right, all right.GRAB A CUP of coffee, and I'll put a record on. We'll work our way through the vinyl, and maybe you'll find a new fave song.
We'll talk and put new some stuff on the turntable, so pull up a chair. The Big Show is specializing in "being," which is when greatness just might arise. We'll make the most of these moments . . . and that just might change our lives.
It's comfy here amid the albums, and the 45s and the CDs. Just the perfect spot to settle down and just be.
On the Big Show and at the ol' record shop, vinyl lives, and radio occupies a soft spot in our hearts. The coffee's free, and we have hot tea, too.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Has anyone seen our culture?
No, not the weird gal screeching and showing the world her tatas . . . I mean the culture. You know . . . quality arts and music and literature and stuff. The anti-barbarian intellectual-engagement plan.
Yeah, that.
So, you say you haven't seen it the last couple of years?
Well, Bunkie, are you in luck today! I happen to have some of it right here on 3 Chords & the Truth. I mean, we're talking quality rock, and quality pop, and quality folk and sublime jazz -- all on one show.IN FACT, we have so much of that stuff -- the musical culture stuff -- that it can't even fit in an ordinary show. That's why this show is called the Big Show.
That's right . . . 3 Chords & the Truth has to be 52 percent bigger than Brand X to fit in all the quality musical culture and witty repartée you find at this quality spot on the Interwebs.
For example, just on this episode alone, you will find The Rubinoos, the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Neil Young, John Lennon, Jefferson Airplane, Jeri Southern, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Art Blakey, Count Basie and lots more! The leading bargain brand cannot compare to the sublimity of musical arts you will find right here on the Big Show.
No, the best Brand X can offer the listening public is generic Philistinism.
AND THAT'S why you're here . . . at the quality place in cyberspace. You know a good thing when you hear it -- the "culture" thing.
Stay as long as you like. We never close.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Hang on a second while the vacuum tubes warm up on the old Radiola, and in a minute we'll see what happens when Ray Charles ran into 10,000 maniacs.
Or was that 10,000 Maniacs?
Regardless, the result ought to be interesting.
Just a few more seconds, now, and it'll be all warmed up and ready for 3 Chords & the Truth. Rumor has it that this week's edition of the Big Show is going to be a big show, indeed.AFTER ALL, Ray Charles does run into 10,000 Maniacs. I don't know whether hilarity ensues, but music certainly does. And we're not even mentioning the Johnny Cash, Doobie Brothers, Avett Brothers and something that was going on in San Diego.
And then there's a little night music, s'il vous plait. That, we have covered. You bring the blanket, drinks and a plush chair to curl up in.
Is that Radiola about warmed up? Looks good to me. I always prefer my podcasts served up in a fine hardwood cabinet with an inner glow, so to speak. I'm funny that way.
Well, now that everything's warmed up on another winter's day, it's time to serve up the audio goodness -- maybe with a little something on the side. Settle in, curl up and lose yourself in the music. You'll be glad you did.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This week's edition of the Big Show is best heard on something running on vacuum tubes, in the dark.
This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is best heard in the middle of the night, where magic dwells.
This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth features night music -- jazz music -- the way it used to be.
Come with us to yesterday, to the night, to a faint glow in a dark room. Come with us to find where magic hides itself amid blues in the night.I HAVE THOUGHTS on this subject, and I'm not shy about sharing. Here's an excerpt from something I wrote a while back about magic, and music, and glowing vacuum tubes in the dark. Yeah, this is what this week's show is about:
Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.
I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.
Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.
And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.
But it's not magic.
Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.
But magic? No, not magic.
Magic is a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.
Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.
Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room
Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.
Made in the U.S.A.
Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.
IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
I am 50, heading fast for 51. By all rights, I ought to be 70-something, heading fast for the nursing home.
This is because I'm pretty sure I was born too late. This is because I'm pretty sure it would have been a grand thing to be a young man in New York in, say, 1961 -- the year I was born too late in a city far to the south.
One of my great joys nowadays is buying old jazz albums to play on my old record changer. And if I have to, I'll buy 'em on compact disc, too -- just not for playing on an old record player. That would be bad.
An old CD player will suffice.
This, obviously, is nostalgia, the yearning for an idealized past lost to the outgoing tide of history. In my south Louisiana hometown, 1961 was no walk in the park, and much less so for blacks.
I'M SURE that, to whatever extent, the same went for New York in '61. Or '58. But there was the music -- the wonderful jazz. The rock. The roll. The street-corner symphonies in rhythm and blues.
It seems to me that the time of my life -- the one I was late for -- was one of higher culture, if not always higher ideals. We may not have behaved better then but, by God, we kept up a good appearance, didn't we?
So live from 1958, here's the inimitable Blossom Dearie on the Jack Paar-era Tonight Show. My spirit sits in the audience, enjoying the time I was born for -- and the respite from the time I'm stuck in.
You know what kind of music my parents were buying in 1947? Walter Brown -- "My Baby's Boogie Woogie."
Low-down blues. "Race" music. Along with pop, jump and country twangfests like the Delmore Brothers (above).
"She's got what it takes, make a preacher lay his Bible down," sangeth Mr. Brown. You should hear the flip side -- and you will . . . on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
This is a special one, this episode of the Big Show. If you want to know the music of my soul, this will get you pretty close.
If you want to know what was it that made your Mighty Favog the musical creature that he is -- if you want to hear the records I was playing when I was but a lad, just old enough to get into my folks records and operate a record player -- this is it.
This is personal.
THIS WEEK'S 3 Chords & the Truth is who I am. This week's program sounds like the world -- the Deep South -- I was born into a half century ago. It's a sequel to this episode of the Big Show, only I go "there" a lot more this time around.
It was eclectic, the Louisiana . . . the South of my youth. It was seemingly at odds with itself if you didn't look any further than the surface of things. It was also rich beyond measure. So is the show today.
Take Walter Brown, the blues shouter who once sang with Jay McShann's orchestra. In the particular culture I entered into during the spring of 1961, black shouters like him could sit next to white twangers like Ernest Tubb in the record cabinet in the bottom of the old Silvertone . . . even if they couldn't share a seat on a city bus.
And no one thought twice about either peculiarity.
This explains my parents' music-buying habits of 1947, 14 years before I came along and about 18 years before I started raiding their music collection. It also explains the complex and contradictory inner lives of these people -- formed by the Southern society that brought us Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams and Jim Crow -- who could in 1947 buy racy records by blues shouters, then in 1971 yell at me about my expletive-deleted "n***er music."
People who thought Dick Clark was a communist.
Those Wallace and Duke voters.
A couple more of the blackest white people on earth -- as Southern Caucasians surely are -- who may have found it just cause for homicide if you had told them that back in the day.
THE SOUTH: It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, tucked away in an enigma and fueled by contradiction. This week, you can look under its hood a little bit -- its and mine. You won't totally understand either of us at the end of this particular installment of the Big Show . . . but it will be a start.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Stand back, people. I got my geek on.And I'm gonna show you something. More precisely, I'm going to let you hear something.
First, however, the setup. In three . . . two . . . one. . . .IT'S IRONIC that, after introducing the 45 almost a decade earlier, RCA Victor had pretty much perfected the 78 rpm record by 1957. As I told you in an earlier post that sadly lacked an audio-visual component apart from a snapshot of an old Elvis record, RCA's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was all that.
Let's once again say that like my Elvis 78s, this old Jim Reeves record -- after 54 years and God knows how many plays -- sounds better than most new vinyl today, what there is of new vinyl today, and better than a lot of CDs being cranked out today. Imagine when it was brand new. . . .
Anyway, I've been telling people how it has been all but lost to history how good 78s could sound, and now I've decided to show you. Enjoy.
AND NOW the technical notes. . . .
|geek|
The video was shot with a Nikon CoolPix L20 digital camera. Ambient audio was recorded with a Studio Projects C1 condenser microphone, while the audio from the 78 was off the Webcor record changer's phono output. Both the phono out and the mic output were fed into a Soundcraft stereo mixer, then into a professional sound card.
The audio was recorded to a WAV file with Adobe Audition software, then synced to the Nikon video. The audio track was not cleaned up in any way, just normalized to 98 percent modulation.
|/geek|
Take a 1952 Hank Williams 78 rpm record. Place it on a 1955 Webcor record changer. Watch and listen as magic occurs.
As you can hear, 78s could sound quite good. As a matter of fact, I have some that sound a lot better than this.
Before I go back to recording more of these old records onto the computer hard drive, though, I'll leave you with this bit of eerie trivia:THIS RECORD -- "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" -- was the last Hank Williams single released before the country legend died, hitting the stores in November 1952 and debuting on the Billboard country chart at No. 9 on Dec. 20.Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac early New Year's morning 1953, somewhere between Bristol, Va., and Oak Hill, W.Va. Three weeks later, "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive" hit No. 1 on Billboard the issue of Jan. 24.
Fifty-nine years later, the needle still drops onto the MGM 78. While the platter spins, Hank lives again, because it's always 1952 somewhere.
Right now, it's right here.
In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.
And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.
I've been putting some more of the records of my youth onto the computer hard drive -- bringing my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess. This is another of those, Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" (above), on a glorious 10-inch shellac platter.
I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.IN 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it is today.
That goes as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it at left, sitting on a 1955 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.
And you know what? After half a century and change, these records still sound pretty much like new. And I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. A lot worse, because these old 78s sound great.
RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.
I'm itchin' like a bear on a fuzzy tree to play this stuff on the Big Show, I ga-ron-tee.
It's late at night in the middle of the week.You're drinking beer and playing this stuff -- the original half-century-old 45 RPM vinyl records, a ritual extending the full breadth of your recollection -- and you're contemplating life and this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
In that moment of being lost in yourself, in your memories, in the music (and perhaps in the beer), you are keenly aware of two things.
ONE. You were blessed with -- by accident of time, place and class -- an amazingly good foundation in popular music.
Two. You, by God, are a Southern boy, through and through. Even if, at present, you do a passable imitation of a middle-aged Midwesterner.
In the cold light of day, other thoughts worm their way into the keyboard and onto the blog. In particular, what is the equivalent for those a generation or two younger than a fool such as I?
What today, musically or otherwise, sets in stone one's sense of place, of culture, of identity? When does it happen -- mine happened at about the age of three, I reckon -- and what does it mean in these postmodern times?
What are the things -- the sounds -- that bypass the mind of the millennial and head straight for the soul? Do they understand identity and culture in the same way as their forebears? Indeed, does a young person in Omaha understand who and what he is in anything resembling that of a 50-year-old in Baton Rouge? Or a 20-year-old in Pascagoula?
Who am I? Of what am I? What do I hold dear? Hold sacred?
Eternal questions. I suspect how we answer them only has the whole world riding on it.
Welcome to the intersection of Culture and Everything.
My trusty old Marantz 2226 receiver, though, surely has a place on the prettiest stereo gear list somewhere. I've had it since I was 16, and that's it at left . . . aglow in the dark.
