3 Chords & the Truth: Don't be a monster

We're going to go places -- musical places -- during this edition of the Big Show. Not that that's surprising by now.

I am hopeful it will take us far, far away from the ugliness, strife and hatred enveloping everyday life in these Disunited States of America.

At a time when the worst of us is on full display, as it has been for a while now and keeps getting worse, it's all the more important to keep sight of the best of us. It's important to hear the best of us.

THAT'S what 3 Chords & the Truth is all about.

Yesterday, someone told me he could have sworn I was a Jew. It wasn't a compliment. Amid my visceral sickness at the exchange, I nevertheless took it as a backhanded one.

The past three weeks or so, we've been getting a master class in how the "friends of the oppressed" left can be just as awful as the MAGA right. And when you can't bring yourself to condemn terrorism, regardless of the perpetrator, you are demonstrably awful.

You are not the best this country or world has to offer, and that's a profound understatement.

Things here are ugly, and people ain't playin' anymore. I can't single-handedly stop that; I can remind people of the beauty surrounding us instead. Without that, we become inhuman.

Without that, we become monsters.

Don't be a monster. Do listen to the Big Show.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: It's not nothin'

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.

3 Chords & the Truth: Can I even?

It's been a couple of weeks.

Last week, I couldn't even.

This week, I'll give it the ol' college try.

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.

I can't even. But I'll try here on the Big Show.

For so many reasons, I can't even. For so many reasons, I have to try.

Shalom.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: That's freeform for ya

I have a new minimum standard for the Big Show.

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.

3 Chords & the Truth: Love and hate

It's a thin line between love and hate.

Or is it a chasm?

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.

3 Chords & the Truth: Further out, man

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?

I thought that you could.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Walk on by?

Some of the most vexing questions in our daily lives revolve around a single vexing question.

Walk on by, or don't walk on by? That is the question.

3 Chords & the Truth cannot answer that for you, but we do have a strong suggestion in one particular case. A strong suggestion.

Another strong suggestion for you right now is not to walk on by this week's episode of the Big Show. It's another good one.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Just let the mystery be

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 Truth ain't about that. Thus, our putting out a little Big Show from 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 was that 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.

3 Chords & the Truth: Fly, pigeon, fly

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.

 

3 Chords & the Truth: Uh . . . well . . . um. . . .

You know the old saying, "When you have nothing in particular to say, just shut up and play the music"?

You don't?

Well, you do now. See, there's a reason you listen to 3 Chords & the Truth.

Maybe it's because I'm preoccupied with taking a week off next week. Mrs. Favog and myself are celebrating our 40th anniversary (Yes. I am old. She, however, has not aged a day.), and we plan to revel in goofing off and doing fun stuff. For a whole week.

Listen, would you want to be stuck with me non-stop for four decades? The woman has earned at least a week of goofing off and doing fun stuff. At least.

So, I'm talking about pretty much nothing, and I'm letting the music do all the heavy lifting. (As if that weren't the case already.)

It's gonna be great.

Naturally, the lack of things to say extends to describing the episode of the Big Show where I have nothing much of importance to say. So . . . so . . . so . . . so. . . .

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The knowing

You have to admit there's one thing about American life that's easier today. It's easier to be a depressive.

That, I think, is a sane reaction to . . . American life today. And all you have to do to get there is pay attention.

But that's not healthy, you might say. You likely are correct. But tell me this: How healthy is it to check out from the world around you, to no longer pay attention, to live in a world faux-sanitized for your peace of mind?

Does balance exist? Where might it be?

These are the questions confronting every episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. And to tell you the truth, they're not easy questions, and it's not easy to do a music program that aims neither to ignore our reality today nor to wallow in it with no respite in sight.

PERSONALLY, I think the root cause of this country's social and political brokenness is some sort of American civilizational collapse. Try "keeping it real" amid a nationwide nervous breakdown while also trying to be somewhat entertaining.

"Keeping it real" could make you a total depressive. Being tight and bright might tend toward delusion, with a certain head-in-the-sand je ne sais quoi. If you live on this side of America's Ironic Curtain, behind authoritarian lines somewhere in a red-state enclave, it helps to do your show from a culture-war bunker.

What does this have to do with a freeform music program, this Big Show, going out over the Internet during troubled, spite-infused times? I suppose both nothing and everything. Your guess is as good as mine.

I tell myself this weekly 90 minutes is a refuge, though not one for delusional thinking. Maybe the better analogy is a sanctuary for what beauty and sanity we can preserve. Maybe it's the audio version of a candle in a dark room.

Whatever it is, I'm certain that 3 Chords & the Truth is better than the prevailing social and political ethos -- at least in many quarters to the right of me -- of burning the motherf***er down, because one's grievances (justified or no) demand it. The nihilism of the "burn the motherf***er down" crowd has no Plan B and no plan for what comes next.

The only thing left, as one stands in the ashes following a conflagration of one's own making, is "Well, f***."

"Well, f***," indeed. Maybe the truth of the Big Show is that all we can do is remind folks of what they're putting the match to -- so much beauty, so little regard for it. I don't know . . . but I reckon that's not nothing.

All I do know is that a country full of mental toddlers really shouldn't be allowed to play with matches. Now here's something to listen to by the warm light of the flickering flames outside as you recall when we were better than this.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The music, the aether and you

There's music in the air.

It's the Big Show, drifting across the aether, in the night, into your device and into your soul -- a refuge in dark and stormy times. That is kind of the niche we occupy these days.

If nothing else, the program -- if everything goes to plan and we hit the sweet spot -- can be a reminder that we can be so much better than the times we unfortunately inhabit. America has had moments when we were better than this, and we can be better than this once again.

3 Chords & the Truth music certainly points to that. Once, when we grimaced because a song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it was because it was just dumb. Now, and we're looking at you Jason Aldean, it's because the hottest song in the land reminds one of the heat coming from a flaming cross.

IT'S BECAUSE one suspects the song would at least sound better in the original German.

The Big Show doesn't play that game. We expect you're better than that. If you're not, I'm pretty sure you are not listening to this particular podcast coming from a Midwestern enclave somewhere behind America's own Iron Curtain . . . the Ironic Curtain.

What the show is . . . is diverse. That's not a popular thing in many quarters in a country teetering on the edge of fascism. What 3 Chords & the Truth is . . . is eclectic. The expectation here is that, like two things being able to be true simultaneously, you are able to appreciate -- and love -- several genres of music at the same time.

And in the same show. We're funny that way.

If you love music, period, and if your mind is capable of expansion, this is the show (and the episode of the show) for you. If not, I'm wagering you never listened to start with -- and won't in the future.

So get ready for another great episode of a great music program. It starts as soon as you click or download.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The Big (click) Big (click) Big (click)

A fair portion of the music we play on the Big Show falls into one of two categories -- stuff that's even (crackle) (pop) older than your Mighty Favog, and various records that (click) that (click) that (click) that (click) that (click) that (WRRRROOOOP!) are almost that old.

That's the beauty of 3 Chords & the Truth. That you'd be extremely hard pressed to tell that was the case, that is.

You see, your genial host works magic to make sure that's the case, to make sure even the oldest, scratchiest, snap-crackle-and-poppiest records get new life through audio science. Now, don't go getting a big head . . . you may or may not deserve it.

But the music does. The music deserves to sound just the way it did when it was new. And it deserves to make a good first impression (or 200th impression), so you'll fall in love with it, too (or fall in love with it all over again).

IS THE Brand X program on the radio -- or on the Internet -- all about love? Probably not. That right there is what makes the Big Show different . . . and better.

Sometimes, you just can't do that with a compact disc or download. Sometimes, if you already own the vinyl, why pay again to get the digital? And sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. We're not fanatics here, after all.

I wasn't sure what new to say about this week's episode, being that all of them are pretty decent. So, I just thought I needed to say this. So I did.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Sound advice

I favor playing music just the way it was supposed to sound when it came out.

I also have a soft spot for the high-fidelity miracle devices of my youth, like 1950s and '60s record changers. No, a mid-1960s LP is not going to sound as good as a well-recorded and mastered CD, but it's (first) going to sound the way it did when it was made, and (second) is going to be a hell of a lot more fun.

This is the kind of thing that makes music such an enjoyable obsession, especially for geeks like me who do shows like 3 Chords & the Truth.

AND THEN comes somebody like Jason Aldean to f*** everything up. Bad bro-country music (as if there were a good kind) with a deeply stupid, deeply bigoted, deeply deplorable message. The boy has both kinds of music -- shitty and hateful.

The music video for "Try That in a Small Town," by the way, is even worse. It manages to feature a Tennessee courthouse noted for a lynching that took place there. We won't be linking to any of it.

On the bright side, your Mighty Favog has a solution for shitty music by hateful people. We don't play it on the Big Show. At all. The farthest we'll "go there" is to warn you of its existence.

Consider yourself warned. And here's some more sound advice that has nothing to do with sound: Don't be a peckerwood who thinks it's some sort of a virtue to parade your hatefulness and ignorance for the whole world to see.

That is all. That is enough.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Talkin' 'bout my generation

This week's Big Show finds me feeling strangely groovy.

Must be that I'm into something good. But that can't be the reason for this feelin' I've been feelin'. After all, we're into something good every single week on this thing we call 3 Chords & the Truth.

And I'm not even wearing a paisley print shirt. Or bell bottoms.

Also, it's been raining, so we in Omaha certainly aren't having a sunshine day. I am seriously at a loss.

THE ONLY THING I can come up with is that, unlike Roger Daltrey's fervent wish, many of us folks who grew up in the 1960s and '70s did not, in fact, die before we got old. That's right, I'm talkin' 'bout my generation.

You can call me Boomer, and you can call me Jones. You can call me Beatnik, and you can call me Hippie. And you can call me Throwback, but you doesn't have to call me Relic. 

If you get the reference for the preceding paragraph, you may be chronologically challenged, too.

And, honestly, I have no idea where I'm going with this, apart from yadda yadda yadda Boomer. And that's suspect as well, being that Late Boomers like myself have little in common with Early Boomers, and it's been argued that we're actually a separate generation -- one called Jones.

We're kinda proto-Generation X, actually. What we started, they perfected.

But that's neither here nor there . . . which fits in quite nicely with the rest of this Big Show missive.

So, to not sum up because I never got to any point, let me just say listen to the program. Music good. Host not particularly unfortunate. Much grooviness.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Music from the bunker

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs.

Come to think of it, I ought to have played the Five Man Electrical Band this week on the Big Show.

Just as the Nebraska Legislature closed out a session where it pretty clearly put out a sign saying who's not welcome here, the skies opened, the lightning flashed, the wind roared . . . and the lights went out. Makes you wonder.

But the electricity eventually came back on, so you're thinking "Well, maybe not."

Until, as I was putting together this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth early this morning, the lights went out again. And it wasn't storming. The computer instantly went dead. The lights went off. It was early -- very early -- so I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.

So, there I was, stumbling around like a blind man without a cane, trying to find a flashlight and channeling my inner Roy Kent. And while two power outages may or may not be a sign from the Great Beyond, they certainly are a metaphor.

THE LIGHTS are going out in these parts. Darkness reigns, trying to pass itself off as light. People are always falling for that one.

And here we are. And here I am.

But here's the thing: The lights went out -- twice -- yet here's a band-new episode of the Big Show. The process took a little longer, you're kind of thinking "Now, where was I?" when the power comes back on, but nevertheless. . . .

I'm crouched down here in the culture-war bunker, in Omaha, by God, Nebraska . . . and I'm still inserting an eclectic, adventurous and stellar variety of music right onto the Internet and right into your preferred electronic device. Maybe that's a metaphor, too.

The brief version of my little story is just one short sentence: Don't let the bastards get you down.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Something stupid

Something unusual happened. The world has noticed Nebraska . . . and its politics.

 

Nebraskans long have lamented being overlooked by the world. They long have wanted a little attention. They long have wanted their props, dammit!

 

You know that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for"? Bingo.

 

This week's installment of 3 Chords & the Truth notes that we finally got some attention from the folks in the Big Apple -- a long examination of this year's dominant legislative shenanigans by New York magazine. It wasn't pretty.

 

And Omaha Sen. Christy Armendariz didn't come off so well.

 

One day, a freshman senator named Christy Armendariz led me to a bench in an empty hallway. She found it puzzling that a reporter from New York would come all the way to Nebraska to cover this affair. "I don’t watch the news or get the newspaper," she said. "Is there anything going on I should be aware of?" I mentioned that other states had passed similar bills and that a federal appeals court in the same circuit as Nebraska had ruled one of them unconstitutional. "So is it a big widespread thing?" she asked. As far as she could tell, ordinary Nebraskans did not know about the issue. "I knocked doors for a year, and nobody brought this up." She said she wished the bill had never been introduced.

 

Yet, she voted for it.
 

THE BILL was LB574 which, in its original iteration, banned all "gender-affirming" medical care and surgery for transgender minors. It ended up being amended to regulate the medical care while still banning surgeries.

 

And senators tacked a 12-week gestational-age abortion ban (about 10 weeks from conception) onto the bill after a six-week ban failed earlier.

 

You'd like to think legislators knew that all this was a big Republican Party push nationwide this year. You'd like to think that even someone as as negligent and clueless as Armendariz would've known her party was pushing all that as a grand culture-war political strategy.

 

You'd also like to think that readers nationwide might not believe all Nebraskans are that @#*$%+! dumb. Not all legislators here are, though many probably are. And, to be fair, ordinary Nebraskans elected these clods, so there's that.

 

But this is not a political column in the newspaper. This is a music show. On the other hand, the political stuff certainly informed the music show . . . and now you know that's the name of that tune on the Big Show this go around.

FRANKLY, that's why I love doing an old-school, beatnik-adjacent, freeform kind of a thing here on the Internets. One, you don't much see this kind of thing on the radio anymore. Two, when folks on the radio give you the impression they think at all, what they want to you to think they think might not be what they actually think. They just pander to what they think you think.

And those folks don't even have any good tunes. 3 Chords & the Truth, though. . . .

Anyway, perhaps the real value of the New York magazine piece is something akin to Robert Burns’ poetic wisdom:

 

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion:

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,

An' ev'n devotion!

 

It’s a hard pill to swallow when what “ithers” see ain’t so flattering. But at least you know, and knowing gives you the chance to evaluate, and evaluating gives you the opportunity to change.

Just as long as you don't change that Internet dial!

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