Fedoras: Is there anything they can't do?
If you could boil down the latest edition of 3 Chords & the Truth to a single, pithy sentence, that might be it. And right about . . . now . . . you're saying "HUH?"
Let's just say that on the Big Show this week, there's a lot of stuff dating to back when men wore hats. Hell, there's even a song on the program about "When Everyone Wore Hats." Music sure was good when hats were way cool.
Speaking of way cool, French pop music from the '50s and '60s may have been equaled from time to time, but never bested. Yeah, we have some of that this week, too.
Just listen to the gol dang show, will 'ya? In your heart, you know I'm right.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Happy . . . Thanks . . . giving . . . from . . . W . . . K . . . R . . . P!
Or 3 Chords & the Truth. Whatever.
And as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
And as God is my witness, when the fambly starts to bug the crud out of you this long weekend, you will have a place to escape and chill with some fine music.
That place would be the Big Show. Naturally.
Just stay the hell out of the parking lot when you make your musical escape. The gobblers are hitting the pavement like sacks of wet cement. Oh, the humanity!
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
A funny thing happened on the way to this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.
About half past noon this afternoon, I turned on the CBS News web stream of its coverage from Nov. 22, 1963 -- that day. Uncut, real time, starting at the moment of the first bulletin that shots had been fired at the president's motorcade in Dallas.
Within an hour -- live on TV -- America was forever changed. Over the next three days, television news grew up, making up how to cover the unthinkable, live and non-stop . . . as it covered the unthinkable, live and non-stop.
It did so, by today's technical standards, primitively and without formatic bells or whistles. Television also did so powerfully and occasionally artistically -- and without a surfeit of hairspray.
OF COURSE, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a powerful blow to a country -- to a people. The death of our young president and the images of his grief-stricken widow -- as well as television's reflection of our own grief -- hardly could fail to affect. Powerfully.
Let me put it this way. When President Kennedy fell victim to Lee Harvey Oswald's deadly aim, I was four months shy of my third birthday. I have memories of that day.
The sense of overwhelming sadness and loss endure after five decades. It comes storming out of the mists of time, as raw and fresh as yesterday. And it wasn't just the loss of what was; it was the loss of what might have been.
Too, maybe it was the loss of what might not have been. We are a greatly changed people from what we were Nov. 21, 1963. In some ways, that is a good thing. In more ways, I fear, that has been a bad thing.
We are a more cynical people since that day.
Great tragedy, should you survive it, can make you stronger. The aphorism to that effect did not come from nowhere.
Great tragedy, however, is just as likely to break you, too. That is a proven fact. Fifty years ago, I think, we were broken -- at least partly. I am 52, and I have lived my life watching the wheels come off a society. Not uniformly, but enough.
I've unfortunately done my part to make that so, Lord knows.
THAT'S WHAT is washing over my mind and through my soul as I find myself unable to pull myself away from CBS-TV, circa 1963. When Walter Cronkite once again -- through the time machine of videotape -- read the flash from Dallas confirming the death of the 35th president of the United States, I reflexively crossed myself.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In retrospect, that's not a bad reaction, even half a century hence. In that spirit, this sad anniversary isn't the time for jazz, rock 'n' roll or even blues in the night. That's what happened today on the way to the Big Show -- there won't be one. It just didn't feel right.
Stay tuned for a few days for a pre-Thanksgiving edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
God bless us, every one.
Long ago and (seemingly) far away -- during a time when vinyl ruled the world and the Internet was the Inter . . . WHAT? -- we had things called "music listening rooms," found in college unions and public libraries, and sometimes these things we called "record stores."
There, you'd find a central file of LPs, phonographs and speakers or headphones in little rooms with comfortable chairs . . . and people. Listening to music. Discovering music. Enjoying the latest sounds or rediscovering old favorites.
These were happy places -- relaxing places -- filled with music and the joy thereof.
I'D LIKE to think that's exactly what 3 Chords & the Truth is, only online and digitized for modern times. Pandora and the like are kind of like that, only on the Big Show, you have someone -- an actual human and not a computer server -- curating the whole thing for you. Turning you onto things you might not have thought about. Putting music together in ways that might not have occurred to you.
Or anyone. Because your Mighty Favog marches to the beat of a different drummer. Preferably Gene Krupa. Or Ringo Starr.
Maybe Buddy Miles.
AS LAGNIAPPE, I'm sort of like the "fun" uncle your parents warned you about. "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood."
There's a rock song for everything, you know. Or at least close enough for government work. Let the reader understand.
Anyway, that's what 3 Chords & the Truth is all about, this week and every week. This week, likewise, you mind is liable to be blown. In a good and educational way, of course.
So, ignore what your parents have told you about me and the Big Show. They're probably listening to that Foreigner album for the umpteenth time. Or the Worst of Fabian album they ordered after watching that K-Tel TV commercial in 1974.
Your Mighty Favog, he uses vinyl for good and not for evil.
IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It's time for "Name It and Claim It" on the Big Show!
If you're the first caller at Dickens 2-411 who can tell me the song featuring the following lyrics, I'll hook you up with a free episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- free . . . absolutely free.
That's
all there is to it, and if you buzz me off when you hear the busy
signal, you will be the big winner of the latest episode of the Big Show.
You ready?
Here we go! Mr. Music, please -- the lyrics to our mystery song on 3 Chords & the Truth!
I know a guy who's tough but sweet
He's so fine, he can't be beat
He's got everything that I desire
Sets the summer sun on fire
I want candy, I want candy
Go to see him when the sun goes down
Ain't no finer boy in town
You're my guy, just what the doctor ordered
So sweet, you make my mouth water
I want candy, I want candy
Candy on the beach, there's nothing better
But I like candy when it's wrapped in a sweater
Some day soon I'll make you mine,
Then I'll have candy all the time
I want candy, I want candy
I want candy, I want candy
REMEMBER, if you're the first to give me a shout at Dickens 2-411, you will be the big winner on Name It and Claim It . . . and the proud owner of a brand-new episode of this program. Good luck!
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
What do you get when you love music?
A station with a pin to burst your bubble,
That's what you get for all your trouble,
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
What do you get when you want some tunes?
You get enough crap to fertilize a garden
You're in it hip deep but can't grow a begonia
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
DON'T TELL me what it's all about,
I've switched off FM, and I'm glad that I'm out
Out of that junk, that junk that slimes you
That is why I'm here to remind you
What do you get when you give your heart?
You turn on the radio, and your mind gets battered
That's what you get, your ears are shattered,
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
Out of that junk, that junk that slimes you
That is why I'm here to remind you
What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get noise and pain and sorrow
So for all my tomorrows
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
I'll try 3 Chords & the Truth!
IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
The things I could tell you about this edition of the Big Show.
But I'm not. That would ruin it all.
Like, there's this one set on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth, and I'm telling you -- this is funny -- that when . . . nope. Not gonna get into that.
Quit asking.
Listen, I'm not telling you. You know that half the fun of the Big Show is that you have no idea what's coming next. Oh, the joys of freeform radio.
Even when it's not on the radio. By the way, cool radio in the picture, huh?
But there is this other stretch on the show. . . . No, I'd better go before I spill the beans.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Due to the government shutdown, no information is available on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
No attempt may be made, under penalty of federal statute, by this post's authors to inform of the exceptional quality of the latest edition of the Big Show.
Refer all queries to the originator of the program, 3 Chords & the Truth.
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Words are starting to fail me in trying to give you the lowdown on each week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
I like the Big Show. I think lots of people do. It's eclectic . . . full of surprises.
That's all I got here.
So I decided to turn to the Omaha World-Herald's new advice columnist, the Sad Hipster, for help.
"Sad Hipster," I says, "why do you look like Ron Burgundy in a dirty-book store? I mean, that doesn't seem very hip to me. That seems rather '70s . . . and possibly kind of sticky."
"WELL," says the Hipster dude to me, "if I have to explain to you the style I'm going for here, the answer would just go over your head."
"It looks like you're going for 'creepy' to me. Possibly with polyester overtones."
"Oversimplification," he attempts to riposte. "It's about, ugh, whatever."
"Ugh about covers it," I parry. "But I digress. I came here to ask you to describe my podcast, 3 Chords & the Truth."
"Is that the new Desaparecidos album?"
No, it's my music show, I tell him.
"Is it like when we get really high and listen to River City Folk on public radio?"
"No, it's completely different," I explain, getting a bit sad myself. "Screw it. Just listen to this." I hand him my tablet computer. He recoils, having expected an iPad, not a Surface. I lie that it's really a fair-trade iPad made by Bolivian villagers. He takes it.
He listens to the Big Show. At first, he is confused by the hack of Tibetan throat singing. But then something happens.
The Sad Hipster smiles. And it's not because he's just won the Pulitzer Prize.
I think that about covers it. 3 Chords & the Truth: Recommended by 9 out of 10 doctors as an effective cure for sad hipsterism.
Yes, it's that good.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
On this edition of the Big Show, you got your planes.
You got your boats.
You got your trains.
You also got your Memphis blue-eyed soul, the Queen of Soul, some Otis soul and all kinds of soulful music from almost every genre. I mean, on 3 Chords & the Truth this week, you got happy songs, sad songs, rockin' songs, French songs, jazzy songs and absotively luscious songs.
What you don't have is any zeppelin songs, Led or otherwise. My bad.
LOOK at it this way, though. If the only thing you're missing on your favorite music podcast is a lack of zeppelins, you're doing pretty dang good, aren't you? And so, I would posit, is 3 Chords & the Truth.
So there's that.
And there's this: 90 minutes of great music on the Big Show. If you don't believe me, just listen.
Just don't expect any zeppelins, Hindenburgian or otherwise. Is what I'm sayin'.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
In music, nobody dies if you suddenly swerve across the center line.
Furthermore, on 3 Chords & the Truth, it's OK to be all over the road. Staying in just one lane is so . . . confining.
This week on the Big Show, we're feeling particularly unconfined, and we're driving all over the road. Better yet, nobody's going to jail for it.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Except for "Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth. It's good." Why? Because we're having a swervingly good time all over the road.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It was 99 degrees in Omaha today.
It was hot. Dang hot. And humid, too. It was so hot that . . . well, you get the picture.
In fact, it's so hot -- and so hot in this studio where now I sit, typing and perspiring -- that I have deemed it too much so to write much about this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.
Anyway, how many different ways can I tell you it's good, it's eclectic and that you ought to give it a listen . . . right now? I don't know -- I'm still coming up with 'em.
But you know what? It's too hot to try to come up with another, at this juncture. Wouldn't be prudent.
Besides, you know it's good already. So here's what I'm a gonna do -- I'm a gonna just say that the music on the Big Show today is as hot as the weather in these parts. Look! Another reason to listen.
Imagine that.
But it's still hot, and I'm still sweating, so I'm done convincing you. Let the music do the job for me, OK?
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
One thing always has puzzled me about the South, where I was born and raised.
It's the whole race thing, including the region's checkered past in that regard -- what with slavery, a war fought to defend slavery, Jim Crow after the war thing didn't work out, segregation, freak-outs over miscegenation, freak-outs over integration, nullification, racism, state's rights and a lack of civil rights.
With all these skeletons in our Dixie closet, you get the impression that black folk and white folk can't get along. All too often, that was -- and is -- true.
What's ironic about this -- and this is something we demonstrate a little bit on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth -- is that Southern white folk are, without a doubt, the blackest white folk on Earth. And to all this country's African-Americans who have qualms about their ethnic and racial cohorts "acting white," I just want to say that it's quite all right.
WHITE Southerners like me and mine have been acting black for ages -- even when that went against the official Jim Crow party line. Irony, thy name is Dixie.
We survived, and indeed, I think, prospered culturally for it. From what, exactly, do you think the Big Show emerged almost fully formed? From me playing my white parents' black R&B records (and their white country ones, too) as a young kid in the segregated South.
Irony. Complexity. Music. Life.
That was and is the South, and that pretty much is what you get, too, on 3 Chords & the Truth. Let's just say you'll be amazed at how much in common Ruth Brown has with Jerry Byrd & the String Dusters' hillbilly assemblage.
That's pretty much where I started on this show post, and I guess that's where I'll leave it, too.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This show is as crazy as buying a brand-new organ when you live out on a vast sea of prairie grass and not much else. Except for cattle.
Just nuts.
But like a new pump organ on the Plains, the 3 Chords & the Truth musical craziness of the week can be a riot of contrast, color and a lot of fun amid an unending expanse of sameness, world without end. I'd tell you how bat-crap bonkers the third set is on the Big Show this go around, but you wouldn't believe me.
You absolutely wouldn't.
And all the experts of Radioland would snort and tell you it couldn't be done, and if it could, it would be an unholy mess.
BUT WE DID, and it ain't. So there. It's called creativity. Original thinking, as it were. There used to be a lot of it afoot in the music industry -- and on the airwaves -- but today, not so much.
That's why Al Gore had to invent the Internets. So there could be a 3 Chords & the Truth.
Really, today's show is just . . . what does Guy Fieri say on the Food Porn Channel? Right. "Off the hook."
So live a little. Tune in the Big Show right here on this Internet channel.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Of Omaha indie artists of a certain age, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes fame is the angst-filled young troubadour who escaped the shackles of the central Plains to become the toast of music lovers of a certain conceit.
He is the next Next Dylan. It was on the cover of the Rolling Stone or something.
Matt Whipkey -- of Anonymous American and Whipkey Three note locally -- still works his day job teaching guitar at Dietze Music. Playing gigs, recording albums and releasing them himself, he does on his own time.
And dime.
"Working Class Hero is something to be."
But here's the thing: Oberst, the next Next Dylan, might -- just might -- someday write a song as damned good as "Sunshine" if one day he gets over himself. Or gets a hold of himself -- one or the other.
She wants the sunshine, summer 1989,
Oh, not the half life, a second husband's second wife
"SUNSHINE" is the last song on Whipkey's new double-album, a pink-and-turquoise vinyl masterpiece, Penny Park: Omaha, NE: Summer 1989. And we're featuring that and "Waterslide" -- the Alpha and the Omega of Penny Park -- on 3 Chords & the Truth this week.
Penny Park is the mysterious beauty every 17-year-old lusted after (and was intimidated by). The story, and the LP, begins in the summer of 1989 at Omaha's historic Peony Park amid the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Galaxy, the Royal Grove and the massive swimming pool.
The story ends years later, with a drunken Penny crying in her car in the supermarket parking lot where Peony Park once stood. Life has been no thrill ride, and Cass Street at 78th has become just another boulevard of broken dreams.
She was the sunshine,
She was the sun
NOT MANY songs move me to the point of tears. This is one. We all have regrets, and none of us get out of this world unscathed.
Sometimes, though, a good record can help. Listen to this week's Big Show, and then go buy a double shot of memories, emotion and perspective. The 17-year-old within will be glad you did.
And did I mention you should listen to 3 Chords & the Truth? I did? Good. My memory's not what it was 35 years ago . . . or what it was in 1989, either.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Sometimes, life's a bitch.
Can't be helped; it just is. And sometimes you just feel like . . . you feel like . . . you feel like. . . .
Well . . .
Well, you feel like you might as well go out of town and dig a ditch. And that's when you need to escape into the music.
3 Chords & the Truth is here to aid in your getaway. I mean, sure is somethin' slick goin' on, sure is somethin' slick. I hate it when that happens.
And the Big Show is here to help. Because we understand. 'Nuff said.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
No.
If you think about it, in this life we never quite get "there." We've booked till-Kingdom-come passage on the journey of life, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
You see, our journeys, if we do them right, are ones of unending discovery -- we're always being surprised by life. We're always learning something new . . . even if it's old.
This week, like every week on 3 Chords & the Truth, is kinda like that. Because we're trying to do the Big Show right.
Like life.
LIFE BRINGS, this time on the program, a world of "grown-up music" from grown-ups' radio out of the mists of memory and middle-age musing. Your Mighty Favog gets in those moods sometimes. This time on the Big Show, the Royal We are wondering what if we took all this old stuff from back in the day -- the stuff Mom and Dad listened to and toward which idiot kids like me turned up our snot-noses -- and brought it to the present, throwing in a little contemporary stuff and a lot of jazz.
Just another musical milepost on the 3 Chords & the Truth journey of discovery . . . and fun.
I mean, if discovery can't be fun sometimes, you just as well crawl under a rock. But I digress.
Let's just say this part of the journey is learning that when former snot-nose kids have to eat some record (and radio) crow over the succeeding decades, it ain't bad once you get used to it. And this edition of the Big Show not only ain't bad, it's pretty dadgum good.
Enjoy!
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
As if getting to listen to a classic song from Hawaiian legend Alfred Apaka wasn't enough reason to listen to the Big Show today, I have 23 other good reasons for you.
Of course, there are the other 22 bits of musical excellence on this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. And then you have your witty, charming and thoroughly brilliant Mighty Favog.
OK, you have 22 other wonderful songs on this edition of the Big Show. We promise that Favog doesn't talk all that much . . . concentrate on the music. It's as eclectic as the host is, uh . . . uh . . . uh, eccentric. Yeah, that's the word.
FOR EXAMPLE, in just this edition of the epitome of eclecticism on the Internets, you'll hear bands and artists like:
- Creedence Clearwater Revival,
- Chuck Prophet
- The Avett Brothers
- Mimi & Richard Fariña
- The Allman Brothers Band
- Rosanne Cash
- Bruce Springsteen
- Billy Bragg
- John Prine
- Glenn Miller & the American Band of the A E F
- Frankie Carle
- Les Elgart and His Orchestra
- Eddie Heywood
- Al Hirt
- Crystal Gayle . . .
. . . AND MUCH, MUCH MORE! If you act in the next 24 hours, you also will get other episodes of 3 Chords & the Truth absolutely free!
So you get the most recent edition of the Big Show for free, and then the extra added bonus of several other gems of freeform programming at no additional cost. Act now!
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Rockin'
it really old school in the Revolution 21-slash-3 Chords & the Truth studio tonight. Jazz in the night from a 1960 Voice of Music tuner hooked up to a 1962 Pioneer stereo multiplex converter, and it's all being recorded by a TEAC reel-to-reel deck,
circa 1969.
The Crown monitor amp is new, but what you gonna do? They're damn fine amplifiers.
For what it's worth, I shot the video with a Microsoft Surface tablet, which has decent-sounding microphones that also are prone to being overdriven. Sorry about that.
As a public service to our listeners everywhere, the Big Show is happy to pass along the following advice from Irving Berlin.
Per the usual procedure, it is strongly advised that you do the following while listening to 3 Chords & the Truth for maximum musical enjoyment. And now, our free advice:
As you listen to the band don't you get a bubble?
As you listen to them play don't you get a glow?
If you step out on the floor
You'll forget your trouble
If you go into your dance
You'll forget your woe
So:
Come
Get together
Let the dance floor feel your leather
Step as lightly as a feather
Let yourself go
Come
Hit the timber
Loosen up and start to limber
Can't you hear that hot marimba?
Let yourself go
Let yourself go
Relax
And let yourself go
Relax
You've got yourself tied up in a knot
The night is cold but the music's hot
THIS MUSICAL advice has been brought to you by the Big Show, the happy home of your Omaha friends on the Internets. Listen early and listen often -- a rich menu of musical goodness awaits!
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
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