Showing posts with label Blog for the People. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog for the People. Show all posts

Monday, August 10, 2015

Putting lipstick on a . . . blog


Things may look a little different around here. Not a whole lot . . . but enough.

Welcome to the new look of Revolution 21's Blog for the People. The basic format is the same, but we've given the old girl a new set of duds and a little eyeliner and lipstick after several years. I like the new look, and I hope you do, too.

Probably the biggest thing you'll notice is that the blog now displays a lot better on tablets, courtesy of installing (and tweaking) a new Blogger template that, at long last, will keep all the elements of this thing where they're supposed to be, no matter how you size your browser window.

IT'S LONG overdue, and she'll be looking a lot less like a hot mess, all without you having to futz with the size of your browser on the computer screen. Here it is full screen on my Surface, on the right.

Before, it would have looked staggeringly weird. But you probably know that if you have a tablet and have ventured over to the blog.


So, that's all I have to say about that. Enjoy the new, more adaptable look of the Blog for the People.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Analog in a digital world


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.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

F*** Google

After a year of resistance, it's about to become futile.

I'm going to get the new, "improved" Blogger interface whether I want it or not. In fact, I'm using it now.

And I hate it.

Perhaps "hate" is too weak a word. All right, I loathe it. Despise it. 

It sucks.



OF COURSE,
some things are easier -- allegedly -- with the new interface. Adding a video, for example. But not that much easier, and you get what you get. You can't change the size that way . . . see?

You can't customize the size of your photos, either. There's small, medium, large, extra large and original size. Before -- unless you were foolish enough to try to post to your blog from the Google Chrome web browser -- you could drag a corner of a picture and make the thing as large or small as you wanted.

If you'd like to try that with the new interface, dig into the HTML code, open up your calculator program and do the math. See the "TV set on acid" above? Did the math to get it that size.

I hate math -- even the easy stuff like that. Maybe I should invent a proportion wheel marked off in pixels.

Homogenization and standardization is the way of our postmodern, corporate world, though, isn't it? You know what? I resign. I quit. I refuse to be the idiot against whom everything must be "proofed."

If you want to be a cog -- or an idiot -- go ahead. Not me. I'm about this close to going off to live in a shack in the woods.

And this blog is now officially on life support . . . not that the world would come to an end if it did. Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Monday, January 23, 2012

What kind of geek am I?


Still this kind of geek.

Still the kind of geek who needs ancient test patterns to check out his computer monitor -- adapted to wide-screen proportions, of course.

And now, our national anthem.

Friday, December 30, 2011

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow


Posting has been light on the blog this week as we perform transmitter maintenance and eat Christmas cookies.

Maybe have a highball or three while we're at it.

And play old jazz records.

Regular programming will resume when I can figure out something sane (and perhaps interesting) to say about the insanity surrounding us. But right now, transmitter maintenance seems a lot more appealing to me.


That and Christmas cookies.

And a highball or three.

Not to mention old jazz records.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Friday, October 14, 2011

The Favog is . . . out


Your regularly scheduled blog will return in about two weeks, give or take.

I'm tired, and we're taking a vacation for the first time in a while.

If you start jonesing or something, go listen to 3 Chords & the Truth. There are several episodes to keep you entertained for a while.

Catch you later. And behave while I'm gone.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Blogger, thy name is Mudd


You know that commercial where the two guys escape from prison, but keep getting such awful customer service outside the barbed wire that they end up running back to the joint?

It's a tempting thought.

In other words, "Yeah, Blogger's at it again."

In this case, unless you have a Google account, you can't post a comment to this here blog. Or any Blogger blog, apparently. I don't know what the deal is, except that it ain't just me. And that the Blogger powers that be are maintaining radio silence.

Because why don't you have a Google account? Huh?

Ve haff VEYS . . . .

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

There is none so blind. . . .


This "Holy smokestacks, Batman!" moment is brought to you by the Baton Rouge Business Report:
When the idea of taking the next Canvas trip to Pittsburgh was first suggested to Baton Rouge Area Chamber CEO Adam Knapp, his reaction was to wonder what a “dirty, northern steel town” might have in common with Baton Rouge. But Pittsburgh might have more to teach canvassers than one might think.

Friday, July 18, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Down a country road

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we're going to be thumbing our way down that folk highway, and then take a side trip down a country road.

Either way you go, you'll find some of the greatest music America -- and the world -- ever has produced.

FOR ME, country music wasn't an instant-gratification kind of thing. Growing up in the Deep South in the 1960s and '70s, it was, to a large extent, the background music of my young life, but it wasn't my background music of choice. That would have been The Who, the Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Billy Preston, the Meters, Irma Thomas and Al Green.

And even the Carpenters . . . and (ahem) the Partridge Family.

Country music was the background music of my life in the sense that I couldn't avoid it. It was the music the Old Man listened to on the radio -- and you moved the AM dial away from WYNK, WSLG or WLBI at substantial risk to life and limb.

Same deal with the Porter Wagoner Show on television every Saturday afternoon.

I yearned for "that g**damn hippie music," as the Old Man referred to my generation's soundtrack. But I also ended up knowing the likes of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, George Jones and "pretty Miss Norma Jean." One of my favorites -- albeit something of an ambivalent favorite -- was "Country" Charley Pride.

And if you don't know that it's C-H-A-R-L-E-Y instead of C-H-A-R-L-I-E, you're a damn pretender, son.

BACK THEN, however, there were two sides to life: yours . . . and your parents'. The existential question of one's young existence -- Which side are you on? -- required exactly no thought.

Whatsoever.

It's a funny thing. Though the question was simple, all kinds of stuff got mixed up in it that really had no business there. The Beatles vs. Porter Wagoner is not a fundamental question of good and evil.

"It's a big world out there," we young'uns constantly told ourselves. Our actions and our prejudices, however, betrayed our lack of believe in our own party line.

In fact, while "Which side are you on?" was -- and is -- the central question in any of our lives, we stupidly applied it to all the wrong areas. And not at all to the Right Area.

Then again, neither did our parents, by and large.

It is possible, and even quite healthy, to like both the Sex Pistols and Ernest Tubb. It's likewise possible to associate with, and even like, both Democrats and Republicans. Squares and hippies both have their virtues . . . and their vices.

The world is big. It's our hearts and minds that tend to be small.

Too small, as a matter of fact, to apprehend exactly how cosmically huge a question is "Which side are you on?"

THAT, IN A NUTSHELL, is what the Big Show happens to be about this week. 3 Chords & the Truth: It's the show where we ask the big questions and where, this week, we're playing all four kinds of music.

Rock . . . and roll. Not to mention country . . . and western.

Be there. Aloha.

Friday, June 27, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: We got the beat

Beat.

The beat. The beat . . . hey . . . the beat . . . hey . . .the beat . . . hey . . . the beat. The beat beat beat.

WE GOT THE BEAT. It's in the air. It's in your hair. It will tear. If you bear . . . the beat. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

What's the beat? I repeat. I repeat the beat.

Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

It started before time, it took off with jive, it's the heartbeat of life, and it'll cut like a knife.

Man.

IT'S THE BEAT. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

3 Chords & the Truth got the beat. 3 Chords & the Truth is the beat. 3 Chords & the Truth wants your dancin' feet.

Dancin'. Dancin' to the beat. Hey. The beat. Hey. The beat.

Man.

The beat. 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Dreaming our dreams

Didn't manage to get The Moody Blues on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, but it strikes me that the spoken-word ending to Nights in White Satin sums up well the vibe that permeates much of the show.

PARTICULARLY this week's "theme" set . . . all about dreams.

Here's the lyric:

Breathe deep the gathering gloom.
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day's useless energy spent.

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son.
Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night;
Removes the colors from our sight;
Red is gray and yellow white
But we decide which is right...
And which is an illusion.
THE SHOW IS 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Get it here . . . or here . . . or on the MP3 player at the top of the blog.

Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Away down South

The Devil is in the kudzu, and Satan has surfaced in the swamp this week on the Big Show.

Ashley, meanwhile, contentedly slips his mint julep on the front porch. Swinging back and forth as the breeze comes up off the river, he admires the moonlight and magnolias.

"Repent, sinners! Jesus is calling!" Brother Cletus is working up a full head of steam at the revival tent at the edge of town.

Cries of "Hallelujah!" emerge from the Amen Corner, as the church ladies out back prepare to serve up temptation once the Holy Ghost has put in a good night's work. Not Demon Rum but, instead, the shameless hussy Blackberry Cobbler.

DOWN THE ROAD, some good ol' boys get loaded on Demon Bud. Up the creek, somebody's out running a trot line. In the city, a banker has supper at the Club.

In the 'hood, a murder will end up as a local brief in the newspaper.

At the family restaurant out on the highway, a black server greets an old white lady as "Honey" and they embrace in a big hug. On an Internet sports board, an SEC fan complains about how the "n*****s" got Confederate flags banned from the local stadium. The Civil War wasn't about slavery, he types. Facts is facts.

On campus, the conservative college kids rail against the liberal college kids. The progressives berate the reactionaries. None of them understand their parents. And parents don't understand their kids, whose private-school educations didn't come cheap.

MEANWHILE, the angels keep watch over the neighborhood, as Miss Betty stops to chat with Miss Bertha, and Mr. Joe has a fistful of quarters for Junior to play video games while he chews the fat with Senior at the Quick Shop.

And old times there are not forgotten. Way down South in Dixie. On 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there. Aloha . . . y'all.

Friday, June 06, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: 1968 + 40

1968. What a year.

An amazing year, a despairing year. A deadly year.

IT -- 1968 WAS -- the year we lost Martin and Bobby, who died 40 years ago today . . . murdered by yet another crazy-mad guy with a gun. Sixty-eight . . . the year of the police riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

The year of the Tet Offensive, in which the Viet Cong lost the battle but won the war.

1968. A year of wonder. Apollo 8 and William Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman reading from Genesis as their tiny command module orbited the moon.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."
AS THE ASTRONAUTS read words more than half as old as civilization itself -- read from sacred scripture on Christmas Eve -- we saw the Earth rise over the horizon of the moon's surface.

I guess whether you remember 1968 as a year of strife and horror come to our living rooms every night on the evening news or, alternatively, as a year of possibility and wonder depends on whether you were a kid or not. I was a kid and, though the horror was there -- somewhere fuzzy in the background -- what stuck with me was the wonder.

The Wonder Years . . . somebody ought to make a TV show. . . .

I THINK THAT, now, as middle-aged man, is the time I really appreciate the horror on the periphery of my 7-year-old's existence during that fateful year. The gut-wrenching agony of the murdered Martin Luther King Jr. The mind- and soul-numbing senselessness and incalculable loss of another Kennedy gunned down.

I still see, in my mind's eye, the live TV coverage of the funeral train.

All the "what ifs" surrounding all the "never will bes." Possibilities thwarted. Hope denied.

Is four decades later too late to grieve?

1968. A hell of a damn year, that's for certain.

Well, at least the music was first rate. And we'll be hearing a lot of it on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Thinking about home

Home


Years I had been from home,
And now, before the door
I dared not open, lest a face
I never saw before

Stare vacant into mine
And ask my business there.
My business, - just a life I left,
Was such still dwelling there?

I fumbled at my nerve,
I scanned the windows near;
The silence like an ocean rolled,
And broke against my ear.

I laughed a wooden laugh
That I could fear a door,
Who danger and the dead had faced,
But never quaked before.

I fitted to the latch
My hand, with trembling care,
Lest back the awful door should spring,
And leave me standing there.

I moved my fingers off
As cautiously as glass,
And held my ears, and like a thief
Fled gasping from the house.



Emily Dickinson

WE'RE THINKING about home this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, the music half of the Revolution 21 media empire.

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

Saturday, May 24, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Free associatin'

Free association.

If this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth has a theme, free association would be it. As in, I start out one place, build a set around that place, but then I think of something else.

That something else would be the second set.

BUT THEN, you know, that second set ends up on a song that reminds me of something else. Third set.

And then that leads elsewhere, and I'm once again off to the races. For that matter, so are you -- being that you're along for the wild ride.

Free association. Relationships. Tangents.

That's what you're in for on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth . . . an electric, eclectic audio service of Revolution 21.

Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Why can't Catholics rock?

You ever wonder what the deal is with Catholic radio, bubbie?

Like, when you turn on your local Catholic radio station and all you hear is talk . . . and you're kind of all talked out on Catholic talk . . . and what you'd really like is some tunes?

And then you finally get a bit of music on Pope FM (or AM) . . . and all you hear is another one of Marty Haugen's greatest fits . . . uh, hits . . . or maybe the California Praisins on EWTN's Catholic Jukebox, and that's giving you intestinal distress. What about then, bucko?

ISN'T THERE ROOM for Catholic folks just to be . . . normal? Isn't there a place for good music radio done by Catholics, as opposed to "Catholic Radio"?

Isn't it possible for ordinary things to be done well for the greater glory of God . . . and for the greater good of your musical sensibilities?

Is that what you're craving, Poopsie?

Well, here's where you go:

www.revolution21.org

Revolution 21 is the home of not only the Blog for the People, but also of
3 Chords & the Truth, the best 90 minutes of music radio since Corporate America pushed freeform "underground radio" off the FM airwaves.

What, Catholics can't do that, you say?

Well, why the hell not? I ask.

And you know what? "Freeform" is even better when we're both relatively sober.

Yes, it is.


You want to know what else? The new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is up.

Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog & the Big Beat


Come with me and you will see,
All the music you can hear for free,


See and hear, hear and see,
It's got to be better than watching TV,

Agnes isn't English, but American, I'll bet,
Though English breaks in the middle of a set,

At least that's what Marianne did say,
And she wouldn't lie, at least not today,

Then there's the Doctor, and the Captain, and the Airplane on the show,
But watch out for the Prunes, or -- My! -- how you'll go!

Now, you might be tired of reading Favog's verse,
But trust me, my child, things could be worse!

So follow this link and you'll find the new show,
Or there's the player at the top o' the page, you know,

But before you accuse me of writing pure Dada,
I'll just implore you to Be there. Aloha!

Friday, May 02, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: A no-show

Alas, there won't be a new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth this week.

I'm sick, I'm tired, and that has left me rather . . . sick and tired. So I'm punting on the Big Show for this week.

On the other hand, there is a boatload of 3C&T episodes in the embedded player over there on the right side of the page, and I'll bet you haven't listened to all of them . . . or most of them . . . or even any of them. If that's the case, it's your loss.

You don't know what you're missing. Really.

That . . . is all.

Friday, April 25, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: Pretty jazzy, eh?

Back during America's previous era of stagflation -- otherwise known as the Carter Administration -- I was a teen-age disc jockey at WBRH, the FM voice of Baton Rouge Magnet High.

THE BEAUTY of working at what then was the city's only "educational" station (all 20 watts of it) was we programmed pretty much everything the commercial stations didn't. Like classical. And jazz. And progressive rock. And big band.

Once in a while, you might have an airshift that began with "Jazz Set," the name of our contemporary-jazz program, then gave way to the rock show ("Leisure Landing," named for the record store just off the LSU campus, and which provided new records every month) and finally ended up with an hour of big-band music before our broadcast day came to an end at 6 p.m.

IF YOU HAD "ears to hear," spending your time down at 90.1 on the FM dial could be quite the musical and cultural education.

Rock, most of us already liked. But discovering a growing love for jazz and, likewise, big-band jazz could be an eye-opener for a teen-ager. Realizing that you liked your parents' music could do a number on one's mind . . . not to mention wreck a few perfectly good prejudices.

What do you know? "Educational radio" actually was.

So think of this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth as an afternoon in the life of WBRH . . . back in the day. And realize that that's cool, because it's all good.

It's the Big Show, posted fresh every week for your eclectic listening enjoyment. Be there. Aloha.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

3 Chords & the Truth: This one's for Danny

This episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is for Danny -- Danny Federici, longtime sideman for Bruce Springsteen who lost his battle against melanoma Thursday. He was 58.

FEDERICI HAD BEEN a member of the E Street Band, playing keyboards and accordion, since 1973's "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" LP -- and he'd played in various bands with the Boss since the late '60s. If you've heard his accordion solo on "4th of July Asbury Park (Sandy)," you know you'll never forget it.

This episode of the Big Show, which will feature the music of Springsteen and the band, also is for the people -- the country -- he lovingly writes about. This episode of 3C&T is for the people who bust their butts chasing the promise America makes -- a promise that is looking more and more like mere national mythology -- but too often can't deliver on.

This episode is for the folks with piles of broken dreams, who wonder what went wrong as they soldier on against the odds.

This episode is for the E Street Band's America. God help us, every one.