First, I ain't young. I started in radio -- long before the Internet and 3 Chords & the Truth -- during the age of cartridge machines, big studio consoles with round knobs, turntables and reel-to-reel tape decks. Editing was done with a grease pencil and razor blade. The computer was the Heathkit they built in electronics class, which was where it stayed.
And the thing about being Not Young is that I've seen some things. And I remember most of them.
SECOND, I ain't never seen what I'm seeing now. Enter the 2024 presidential race -- 81-year-old Joe Biden, who's had a pretty damn good run as president vs. 78-year-old Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, convicted felon, federal defendant, Georgia defendant, word-salad aficionado, and all-around reprobate.
And the felonious reprobate, running on a flat-out authoritarian platform, is winning. I was born in the Deep South in 1961. What we'll get under a second Trump Administration, I've seen. It was called Jim Crow. It was horrific.
No wonder that I felt the need to bang my head on this week's edition of the Big Show.
I am old enough to have seen a lot of good music. This is it. Trust me.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
If you can't laugh, you'll end up sticking your head in the oven.
Yeah, I watched the presidential debate pitting a bad debater who's lost a step . . . and a pathological liar who aspires to be Short-Bus Hitler. Couple that with a thoroughly broken journalistic infrastructure (I'm looking at you, CNN), and if cannabis were legal in this state, I'd be snarfing pot gummies like Raisinettes in a freakin' movie theater.
Thus, the importance of good music on 3 Chords & the Truth . . . and the ability to laugh at this s***.
I'm hoping I achieved the good-music and humor goals on this week's edition of the Big Show. I am betting heavily that you are, too.
Well, I guess you'll just have to see, now, won't you?
This has to work. I have an electric oven. Ouch.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
I've been in a contemplative mood but, unfortunately, that hasn't readily translated into something in particular to actually say on this week's3 Chords & the Truth. Guess the music will have to do the talking.
Thomas Paine opened his essay "American Crisis" with that sentence in December 1776. The revolution against Great Britain wasn't going so well at that point.
Two hundred forty-eight years later, with a country riven as much as it's been since the Civil War, with a deranged authoritarian commanding the loyalty of a good 40 percent of Americans -- with American democracy itself teetering on the sharp edge of oblivion -- these are the times that try people's will to get out of bed in the morning.
SCRATCH MILLIONS of average Americans, and you're likely to bring forth a flood of existential dread. It's been that way for much of the past nine years.
And here I am doing a music podcast. You may have heard of it -- 3 Chords & the Truth. And the Truth is, we don't know how much more of this mess we, and the United States, can take. Think of the 3 Chords part as a pleasant refuge from the encroaching dread.
Ninety minutes' peace a week from existential dread ain't nothing. Well, that's one way to market the Big Show.
The quintessential 2024 way to market a music program.
Fortunately, that 90 minutes a week of musical refuge are 90 quality minutes of musical refuge. An absolute dread-free zone.
Thank God.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This is where I'm supposed to be clever or funny -- or something -- as I say something that's vaguely about this week's episode of the Big Show.
And perhaps you've noticed that I'm rather late posting this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.
Truth is . . . clever, funny or saying much about this week's show isn't really in the cards this early Saturday morning. I'm posting the show because it's been in the can since early Friday morning, but hyping it would be, in my reckoning right now, kind of vulgar.
Maybe you've heard on the news that Omaha (a.k.a., Omaha, by God, Nebraska) was hit hard by tornadoes Friday afternoon. The biggest one, out in far western Omaha, was massive and powerful -- perhaps an EF-4 or EF-5. That has yet to be officially determined, but it was really big, really powerful . . . and there are many homes and a few neighborhoods that no longer exist.
ON THE OTHER side of town, just north of downtown Omaha, a tornado tore through our airport, heavily damaging the general aviation section. My wife and I saw that happen on live TV.
The monster tornado missed our house (a.k.a., the Culture War bunker) by about 9 miles or so. The other one missed us by about 7 miles and change. We were lucky.
Not so for folks in a ruined path through western Douglas County, the western suburbs of Omaha and up through Bennington and well into Washington County. Also down toward Lincoln, Neb. And across the river in Iowa, tornadoes leveled huge parts of a few small towns, as well as some areas in Council Bluffs.
This area hasn't seen anything like that since the Tornado of 1975, an EF-4 monster that ripped through the middle of Omaha and was the United States' first billion-dollar twister.
Yes, this week's Big Show is as fine as ever. It's just that that seems rather unimportant now. As is the self-serving social-media hype one is expected to do these days.
I mean, "Too bad about the devastation across town, but now let's get back to the bitchin' tunes!" just doesn't cut it.
The show's done, and I didn't want to junk it, and that's about all I feel like saying about it. So I suck at modern marketing. Whoopee.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Listen. Or don't.
In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important, actually.
I sit here at the keyboard, naked before you, telling and playing the truth.
Well, not naked naked but figuratively naked. And certainly not nekkid. As any Southerner will tell you, there's a difference between naked and nekkid. Naked is clothesless. Nekkid is naked while up to something. There's a 3 Chords & the Truthnaked truth for you.
I'll tell you the naked truth of why Linda Martell's debut country album was her last album. It is not an easy path for Black women in Nashville today. It was exponentially harder in 1970 and, indeed, it didn't work out -- for obvious reasons five years past the technical end of Jim Crow.
Back then, the miraculous apparently was all used up on the great Charley Pride's stardom.
HERE'S ANOTHER naked truth for this edition of the Big Show: Great music encompasses all genres, and they all can coexist on a single program. You know. like this one. And yet another one: Too many people are too parochial to embrace that fact.
Having grown up before the culture splintered into microcultures, it was pretty easy for an old guy like me to realize that at a relatively early age. It got even easier when I aged out of any concern for being "cool."
And the nakedest truth for me right now is that, in writing this, I'm just all over the place. Like, are people going to think I'm an idiot when I say The Who's "Naked Eye" is on Who's Next? Well, if you have a later CD re-release, it is.
Another version is on Odds and Sods (1974). The naked truth is that digital re-releases of classic albums make one's musical-geek life confusing. Bonus tracks good; bonus tracks kinda bad if you nerd out on who released what when.
Like I said, all over the place, I am. No, I am not Yoda. I just write like him.
Perhaps I'd better stop now. That's the naked truth, but not the nekkid truth. Nekkid truth, you would not want to see.
And there goes the thread, which I have lost.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Perhaps you've rolled your eyes through a less-than-stellar production put on by not-so-good high school thespians.
Well, if you sat through U.S. Sen Katie Britt's response to the State of the Union address, you certainly have had that experience. Alabama's got some 'splainin' to do.
Well, this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is not that. If it ever is, I'm hangin' it up for the public good.
But the proof is in the listening, and I guaran-damn-tee that there's not a cringe in the entire 90 minutes. I play music on the Big Show; you decide.
That is all.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Right now, my mind has drifted back 45 years, to the strictly analog age of radio.
I'm picturing the old control room at WBRH, the FM voice of Baton Rouge High School. When we'd do the rock show after school let out, student announcers like myself liked to turn off all the lights in the studio, save for one lamp right over the audio board -- just enough to see what we were doing and read what we had to read.
Then we'd crank it up. The music, that is.
WE WERE "setting the mood." If I knew then what I know now, this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth would have been perfect.
Perfect.
I would have been sitting there at 2825 Government St., and my target listener would have been sitting in a bedroom, stereo cranked and the lights off . . . except for the dial light and one of those flickering bulbs mounted in an old 7-Up can.
If you're under 60-ish, you had to be there.
Man, it'd just be you, the music and your thoughts. Yeah, this week's Big Show would have been perfect for that. It would be the next best thing to hopping on a cross-country train to Somewhere Else.
I bet you might know the feeling. This show just might bring it back . . . even if the only escape lies in your thoughts and in your dreams. All aboard.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
"Sir, I turn on the radio, and all I hear is crap. Where is this fixing you talk about?"
I am glad you asked that question. And I will answer it while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for your insulating . . . insurance? Impotence?
I will tell you the suppressed truth while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for being a Smart Ass.
THE TRUTH is that Deep Radio wants this program to fail. The big men at Big Companies are censoring the programming genius -- a very great genius -- that is the Big Show. They won't put it on the air . . . something about "formatics." And that shows you what kind of Bird Brains make up Deep Radio; the show has nothing to do with countertops.
They don't have a clue. They don't have a clue.
And I have very wonderful countertops. The best countertops. I also have the best Music Show on the Internets, but it's not a countertop. I guess you can put your computer or smartphone on the countertop -- maybe put some speakers up there, too.
It would look wonderful. It would, I think, work out very nicely. But 3 Chords & the Truth is not a countertop, but who knows? We have some Very Great Scientists . . . and I could have been a scientist, a Very Great Scientist, very much like Fat Albert Einstein . . . now that's a guy who could make the show also be a countertop, and we're working on that now . . . we're trying to get Einstein in on the project as I speak.
And we'll get there. We'll get there. Because I alone can fix it, and the fix is in; we're Fixing right now.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Covfefe.
Placing the right players in the right positions on the right team? It's everything.
Hiring the right coaches? Everything.
Placing the right people in Congress, while placing the wrong people far, far away? As we have seen the past few years . . . everything.
Placing the right man in the White House? Everything.
Placing the man with 91 criminal counts pending before a jury -- and definitely not placing him in the presidency again? Everything.
Here at 3 Chords & the Truth, it's an undisputed canon of life that placement is everything. And that covers everything, including the music you hear. If the wrong song is in the wrong place, it will not be pleasant for anybody.
If a totally unexpected song is in just the right place, it can be magical. On this episode of the Big Show -- every episode, actually -- we go for the magic. Thank your lucky stars for good placement.
You see, as I've said previously, placement is everything.
Now, if you would be so kind as to place yourself in a comfy chair and place your favorite high-fidelity audio device on "loud," we can commence with some musical magic.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
This is 3 Chords & the Truth. We don't do fences here.
There's not much to keep the easy listening out of rock 'n' roll's business. Nothing separating jazz from classical. Or country from the blues, punks from mods, the secular from the sacred.
On the Big Show, it's always a free-for-all. What you know you'll get next is not knowing what you'll hear next.
World affairs have not improved in the last week. There was another spasm of mass murder via assault rifle in the United States. And MAGA Ned Flanders is the new speaker of the House.
It's still time to be desperately worried about . . . well, everything.
Good thing there's 3 Chords & the Truth to elevate the mood around here. Fine pieces of music, expertly crafted into an eclectic, yet coherent, whole can do that for you even in the darkest of times.
That's not nothin'. And that's the Big Show -- though I'm not sure "not nothin'" is the best slogan one could craft.
It's a good thing I'm not relying on myself to be the advertising guy. Oh, wait. . . .
Well, shit.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Welcome to 3 Chords & the Truth. Some weeks, I feel like I'm playing music in the darkness and hoping for the best. This week, I feel like I'm playing music in the darkness inside an insane asylum.
SUCH IS LIFE in the United States -- and inside a red state in the United States -- these days. And here I am doing a freeform radio show on the Internet. Congress is paralyzed, thanks to the Rabid Weasels Eating People's Faces Party . . . now engaged in eating one another's faces.
Normally, the sight of that would be highly gratifying. But we really could use a legislature right now, when Hamas terrorists are beheading Israeli babies, and the whole Middle East is a powder keg in the middle of a bonfire.
All I need to do is not f*** this thing up as badly as House Republicans f*** up everything. That should be easy enough.
And what am I not f***ing up? Basically, playing what the hell I want. All I have to do is make sure that makes some sort of sense.
Again . . . way ahead of the House GOP.
Freeform in the 21st century. That's exactly what 3 Chords & the Truth is, and this week's program is about as freeform as it gets. Minus the Tuvan throat singing or Bulgarian folk songs.
This time.
The Big Show. It's a little of the 1960s in the 2020s. It's a little vintage big-city, freewheeling FM radio behind red-state lines.
What it is, is 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
Perhaps it depends on the context. In America today -- or is it Amerika? -- there's a chasm. And hate is all around. Fascism is on the rise.
This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we take a musical look. The subject matter is harsh, but the music goes down easy.
I'm biased, but I recommend you give this edition of the Big Show a listen. The devil you try to ignore will kill you even faster than the one you acknowledge.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It was Friday, Sept. 22. It was gray and damp in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. I was working the night watch out of the 3 Chords & the Truth culture-war bunker.
My
partner's Belle the Dog, the boss is Mrs. Favog. My name is Favog. A
powerful new podcast capable of producing strange and mind-expanding auditory phenomena had found its way onto the Internets. It had
fallen into the hands of listeners in several places. We had to try and keep the party going, man.
We had to get further out, man. We had to get further out.
MAN, IT WAS a blast having half your head in rock and half your head in the space-age bachelor pad. But, man, you have to get further out. You have to get further out.
We could give you something on a sugar cube or in a little capsule, man. But that requires some bread, you dig? But, man, this thing cats call the Big Show, that don't cost nothin'. It don't cost nothin', man. And it'll get you further out.
Way far out, man.
MAN, it's groovy. Trippy. You'll go into orbit, man.
Forget Coca-Cola, man. 3 Chords & the Truth is the real thing. It's a happening all by itself.
Man.
And it's real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real.
Can you dig it?
I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it. Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?
We live in a country -- hell, a world -- of limited horizons.
Cynical people more accustomed to sitting in the front row of class, of sucking up to teacher and all the "right" people, make their money by foisting the mediocre off on those who sat in the back of class, more interested in spitballs than scholarship.
That assessment may strike you as cynical as all get out. You may be right. But I would argue there's more truth in it than any of us are comfortable with.
IF YOU DON'T believe me, turn on the radio. Hell, follow country music today.
Six words: "Try That in a Small Town."
3 Chords & the Truthain't about that. Thus, our putting out a little Big Showfrom the cramped confines of a culture-war bunker, somewhere behind America's Ironic Curtain somewhere in Flyover Country.
But did you ever consider that the leavening in what's left of our culture just might be the work of the unknown and unheralded -- the presence of extraordinary anonymity in our midst? That's a big part of the program this week.
Extraordinary talent doesn't always, or even usually, lead to fame and fortune in our society. When you zoom out for a wide-angle look at things, extraordinary talent probably more often leads to a lifetime of being overlooked. Remaining relatively unknown . . . or completely unknown.
Consider the Unknown Dorm Singer, circa 1967. At the University of California, Santa Cruz during the fall following the Summer of Love, we had a guitar-toting hippie hitchhiker in need of a place to crash, a freshman-dormitory room, a young man with a decent tape recorder . . . and magic.
TO THIS DAY, no one can figure out who wasthat girl. So, for now, we have no choice but to let the mystery be.
But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the music -- the magic -- 56 years hence. On 3 Chords & the Truth, we will.
Today, that isn't something likely to be tried in a small town. So they say.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
I shall share with you a scene from the week's hiatus of the Big Show. It starts with a stroll through City Hall Plaza in Chicago, a resumption -- after a 41-year delay -- of my Great Blues Brothers Tour.
Picture a walk-by of the site of Jake and Elwood’s last stand — along with its iconic Picasso sculpture.
A healthy (or perhaps, medically speaking, not) gathering of Big City Pigeons attracted my attention for a bit before I turned back to the Picasso. After a while, I was distracted by the sound of what only could be described as a pigeonado. This is similar to a sharknado, only oddly more impressive.
I entertained the possibility that this phenomenon might be even more impressive than what greets you weekly on 3 Chords & the Truth.
Likewise, I entertained the alternate possibility that this might be Armageddon, defying centuries of end-times Cassandras by starting in the Windy City. In fact, after witnessing this Avian Apocalypse, I considered this might be where Chicago got its nickname.
I will not pussyfoot around. There was a whole lot of flappin’ goin’ on.
IN THE CENTER of the maelstrom was not a cosmic cage match between the Son of God and the Prince of Darkness, but instead a little Asian lady tossing the last of a sack of rice into the whirlwind. Then, as suddenly as she appeared, she faded into the mists of time.
OK, that was hyperbole.
Instead, she crossed the busy street and vanished into the evening hubbub.
Mrs. Favog and I struck up a conversation with a nonplussed bystander who explained what we had seen was, alas, not Beelzebub but instead the "Crazy Asian Pigeon Lady," a figure as determined as she is reviled by Chicagoans sick and tired of scraping pigeon crap off of sidewalks, downtown structures . . . and themselves.
ANGRY CITIZENS, exasperated property mangers and pissed-off members of Chicago’s Finest apparently are helpless against a determined woman and a bag of rice.
It's kind of similar to how radio and musical convention are helpless against the mind-blowing experience of this humble . . . ish . . . podcast, the Big Show.
Anyway, the fellow we talked to said the pigeon lady comes to feed the city’s flying rats every evening at 6 sharp. Also, pigeons can tell time. He noted, though, that she was a few minutes late that evening.
I blame climate change.
There is no word on whether the city of big shoulders will get serious about ending this crap — literally — once and for all with full deployment of the Chicago PD SWAT team, the Illinois National Guard, a sizable contingent of state police . . . and the fully strapped ghost of Carrie Fisher. (I told you this was a Blues Brothers tour.)
There also was no official confirmation that the dude who was way too happy to be considered of sound mind (or permanent address) as he danced amid — and perpetuated — the pigeonado, is, in fact, Da Screwtape.
Film at 11 on WBBM-TV, fortuitously positioned right across North Dearborn Street from the coming manifestation of the End of Days.
As you may be able to tell, Chicago is one of my favorite cities ever.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
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