3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes in the ruins

In 1961, I was born into a society and a state run by preening, fascist jackasses who weaponized bigotry and hatred as a means of governance and civic intimidation. Such was the Deep South under Jim Crow.

In middle age, I find myself living in a society and -- now -- an entire country run by preening, fascist jackasses who weaponize bigotry and hatred as a means of governance (such as it is) and civic intimidation. Such is the whole damn country under Trumpism.

Forget two steps forward and one step back. Try two steps forward, then 60 years back.

This week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth comes at the end of a particularly ugly week in American history -- this by the prevailing standards of a time in American history when every week is an ugly week presided over by a president who is the Pied Piper of Pathology. The Duke of Deviance. The Count of Cruelty.

And he has a trail of toilet paper stuck to his goddamn shoe.

Or the soiled, tattered souls of Republican senators. One or the other.

THIS UGLY WEEK featured the slut shaming of victims of sexual assault. The ridiculing of a woman who had given credible testimony that a nominee for the Supreme Court had tried to rape her when they were in high school.

It also featured a sham FBI investigation of that accusation and others against Brett Kavanaugh. Did we know enough to say for sure what happened? No.Was there enough smoke to logically assume something was fully engulfed in flame? You bet.

Did congressional Republicans care? Of course not.

Does it look like the United States is coming apart at a level not seen since 1968 -- and perhaps since 1861? Looks like it from here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.

This is the week we wish wasn't, and this is a week when we're -- somehow -- supposed to do another episode of the Big Show. Remember the Big Show? Yeah. It's easy to forget in times like these.

THE PROBLEM in doing yet another episode of 3 Chords & the Truth when shit gets exponentially weirder with each passing week is the specter of overwhelming cognitive dissonance. You start to feel like you're returning to regularly scheduled programming in Detroit as the Motor City burns around you in the spring of 1967.

Or, more in keeping with my personal frame of reference, you're the overnight man at Loose Radio in Baton Rouge, La., playing hippie, trippy rock 'n' roll music in 1971 while the rednecks from the end of Easy Rider keep circling the block, shotgun barrel pointed out the window of the pickup truck.

At you.

It occurs to me there's only one thing to do in such a situation . . . in this present situation. What do you do? What you do is give the f***ers the finger and keep playing the tunes. In the ruins.

Amen.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Nasty ugly out there. Fine in here.

What can you say?

Yeah. Well, crap.

Sums it up, because it's nasty ugly out there. You don't want to be out there too much in the nasty ugly feces-flinging match that is American life and American politics today. You just don't.

That, friend, is why 3 Chords & the Truth is here. It is your refuge; I can't do much, but I can do this. I can create a musical refuge that summons the better angels of our nature . . . while the devils run amok outside the safe confines.

I mean, it sucks out there.

SO, while the U.S. Senate is out there "boofing" and the Supreme Court is nervous, we'll just abide in the Big Show safe space where the ladies can be at peace and the gentlemen will act like . . . well . . . gentlemen. And we'll all enjoy ourselves listening to the best music on the best dang show on the Internets.

That would be this one -- 3 Chords & the Truth.

Well, that's about it. Oh . . . at the end, there may be some thoughts spurred on by Boz Scaggs.

Now that really is it.

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

Another endorsement for the Big Show

We take what testimonials we can get. Such as they are.

And "some of it might be alright, we suppose" is better than anything I could say about the state of these United States today, which I truly find too distressing to even discuss on here much anymore. Sometimes, however, the despondency lifts some, and your Mighty Favog tries to spread what light -- and music -- he can on this little thing called 3 Chords & the Truth.

3 Chords & the Truth: Start of something big

The song's right. This could be the start of something big.

Or we could just do long-distance dedications all day here on 3 Chords & the Truth.

What will it be? Could it be both? Beats me -- I just work here.

I could go on (actually, I couldn't) but the edification is in the discovery here on the Big Show, dear listener. (No . . . I have no damned idea what that's supposed to mean, if anything.)

IS THAT 500 words yet, teach?

No?

Tough. I'm done. Just listen.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Up all night with the music

Forget alternative facts. We need alternative reality.

Fortunately, you've come to the right musical place -- 3 Chords & the Truth.

This week, we're going to be up till dawn with some night-light highlights of the tuneful variety. It's late night radio the way it used to be . . . kind of. With a twist, of course.

Picture this in your mind's eye: Some fool has just given your Mighty Favog a 50,000-watt, clear channel AM blowtorch to play with, and he's appointed himself the all-night host. Radio will ensue.

So come with me on an overnight journey with the electrons, the radio waves and the music -- especially the music -- for an alternative reality where broadcasting still matters, a live body is still behind the microphone, we don't assume you're a knuckle-dragging idiot . . . and magic just might break out at any moment.

IT'S ALL here, right now, on the Big Show, brought to you by the Ambassador Cafe, alternative Omaha's all-night spot for quality eats and a hot cup of joe.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Your refuge from the s***storm

I can't stand it anymore.

I suspect you can't either.

Well, let's you and I turn up the music real loud, grab a beverage or 30, then pretend the whole s***storm out there isn't happening at all. That's the game plan for this edition of Everybody's Favorite Podcast, otherwise known as 3 Chords & the Truth.

(thud)

Sorry, I may have started a little early on the drinkin'.

Good tunes, witty rejoinders, a little fascinating info . . . and drinkin'. That about covers it this go around on the Big Show. Descriptionwise, that's all I . . .

(thud)

. . . got.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The Queen of Soul is dead.

Long live the Queen of Soul . . . Aretha Franklin. May her memory be eternal.

Thursday's horrible news came at the end of a typically horrible week in this country, and this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is dropping onto the platter a few hours late. You see, I procrastinated.

I imagine you want to know why.

Dunno. Maybe it has something to do with the news not being real -- being "fake" in today's banal terminology -- if I just don't do this tribute edition of the Big Show.

That, of course, is as silly as any of the silliness we're surrounded by these days. The sad news, sadly, is not "fake."

The proof is in the headlines. And the proof likewise is in this week's program. Dammit.

Long live the queen.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: It all starts here

It all starts here.

Right, Robin? Becky? Michaela? Carol and Ashley?

This . . . is 3 Chords & the Truth. And it allllllllll starts here.

Not there. Here. And we've put it all in a nifty Summer 2018 scrapbook to prove it.

Because the great sounds of summer all start here on the Big Show.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Musical truth

Like any product of the 1960s and '70s, I admit my fondness for the Top-40 radio of that now long-ago era. Whenever I hear a recording of that, from then, something comes over me.

Nostalgia, wistfulness, longing . . . whatever you want to call it. It's like an emotional wave crashing upon the graying sands of a middle-aged shore.

But Top-40 by definition is musical popularity, which is something quite different from musical truth. There can be truth in there somewhere . . . but my musical truth and yours isn't subject to the Billboard charts or a survey of local retailers.

Musical truth comes from the soul -- from what speaks to you and moves you, deeply and immediately. That is what 3 Chords & the Truth  is all about.

FOR ME, that's what this week's show is about, what last week's show was about and what every episode of the Big Show will be about. It's kind of like walking a tightrope without a safety net. You know the songs you play, and how you string them together, speaks to you. But will it speak to anyone else?

Good question, no pat answer.

It's an art, not a science. Science has its purpose, but this isn't one of them. Every week, I'm hoping for the best and fearing the deafening silence of the worst.

And I'm hoping for that kernel of musical truth for me and for you.

That's all anyone can do when it comes to the God's honest musical truth.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Color your world

This is the episode of 3 Chords & the Truth where we look at the whole flippin' world of radio, both on the Internets and online, and tell it to just hold our damn beer.

Because we're gonna show our true colors on the Big Show. All of 'em. Many of them in the same set of music.

This is not something you would hear on your local commercial radio station. This is something you'd hear on vanishingly few non-commercial radio stations.

This is something you hear all the time on 3 Chords & the Truth.

That's about all I have to say . . . HEY! I TOLD YOU TO HOLD MY DAMNED BEER, NOT SPILL IT!!!

Y'all, I gotta go. I have to fetch what's left of my beer. You can't trust most of the radio world to do anything.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: What was the question again?

Injury a head who knew you could from reading the news get?

Certainly not your Mighty Favog.

Scones!

Week this on Chords 3 Truth & the, think I we have a jolly show good. Fun we are having with plenty fun of music.

And . . . sure (the royal) we are that play we will some favorites of your. That's plenty reason to sit yourself down, click on the link, and listen to some music right now. The Big Show on. Is what we're saying.

Are we playing Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage"? Well, no, not this week. Why do you ask?

It's the great show. It's the best show. It's the unequaled show in all the universe.

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

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

Scones!

3 Chords & the Truth: The best sound. The greatest sound.

This show is the Miracle of Modern Sound.

The 3 Chords & the Truth, I guess I speak well. You know, we turned away thousands of people. They never say I'm a great speaker. Why the hell do so many people listen?

Why -- I don't think -- it's true, why do they come? Why? Why, oh why, do they listen to the Big Show? It's got to be something. I guess they like my policy -- maybe my policy. No, it's true. Have you ever noticed, you never hear that -- you never hear that. You never hear it.

I mean, there's got to be a reason. I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records and we beat -- and I, by the way, I don't have a musical instrument.

I don't have a guitar or an organ. No organ.

Elton has an organ and lots of other people help him. You know we've broken a lot of records. We've broken virtually every record because you know, look, I only need this space on the Internets. They need much more room for basketball, for hockey, for all the sports. They need a lot of room.

WE DON'T NEED IT. We have people in that space, so we break all these records. But really we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical, the mouth, and hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right?

The brain, more important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.

But they -- Do you ever notice? -- do you ever hear something, they say -- you know we had a case last week we were in a great place in Wisconsin? And we had a tremendous crowd and we have like the choice of a 22,000 seat arena and in retrospect, we would have packed it and they would have sent away thousands of people.

But the people said to me, very innocent people, they were great. But I hadn't met them. I said why didn't you -- they -- they filled up a 7,000 seat arena, walked away thousands of people, like over 20. and we would have filled -- and I said why didn't you use the bigger arena?

He said, sir, we knew that if you had five vacant seats, empty seats -- see vacant just because I was in the womp womp womp, I'll say use that term. If you had five empty seats, they would say the Mighty Favog was unable to fill the arena. And I said, you know what, you're right.

And I plagiarize the best people. The most unbelievable people. You wouldn't believe -- but they did.

SO . . . and you've been a great American crowd, the greatest crowd . . . almost as good at Putin's crowds . . . Putin has the best crowds because they do what he says . . . but you people are what's gonna Make America Great Again maybe . . . but we'll see.

Anyway, it's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there.  Aloha.

It's the Big Sound

Believe it! Be there!

Your Big Show does sound better on a big console.

Me and Silvertone, Christmas 1963

AND YES, I may have a history with this particular 1948 Silvertone console radio / phonograph / wire recorder.

Back in the spring of 1948, this beauty could be had at your local Sears and Roebuck store for $495. That, friend, was an investment. In today's inflated dollars, that $495 in 1948 would be a cool $5,210.71.

I still have that console today, and the actual value of it is . . . priceless.

How'd we stereo on radio before there was stereo radio?

The era of FM stereo radio began in June 1961, but the era of hi-fi stereo radio dates back to the 1950s.

But in the days before FM multiplex broadcasting, listening to stereo radio required two stations . . . and two radios, one AM and one FM. Or you could just buy a "binaural" AM-FM stereo tuner -- two dials, two tuning knobs, and in stereo mode, it would play AM and FM at the same time.

AM was on the left, FM on the right. (Unless, of course, it was the other way around. Or a complete free-for-all?)
 

What in the world would that have sounded like in, for instance, 1958? Let's take what we know about the capabilities of AM broadcasting and FM stations in the '50s, then see whether we can re-create the binaural AM-FM stereo experience.

It's November 1958. You're in Baton Rouge, La. It's 9 p.m. on a weeknight (Monday through Thursday), and you're in the mood to hear some WJBO "3-D" stereophonic sound on your new hi-fi setup.

ON YOUR NEW binaural high-fidelity tuner, your tune in 1150 on the AM dial. Left channel, check.

On the FM dial at 98.1 megacycles, you tune in WJBO's sister station, WBRL. Right channel, check.

Now it's time to sit back, relax and experience "music in three dimensions." For those of us back here in the future, the result sounds better than you would think.

Then again, so did AM radio in 1958. It's amazing what could be done with a wider AM bandwidth, owners who cared and well-engineered radios in listeners' homes.

I HOPE the following video demonstrates that, as I try to re-create what the WJBO-WBRL, AM-FM stereo pairing might have sounded like. I can't tell you how many times I redid this, trying to get the AM sound "right" . . . AM heard over excellent equipment, much better than what we're accustomed to today, from an era decades past.



I KEPT redoing this because I kept thinking, "No. This sounds too good. This can't be right."

And I kept saying this as someone who has a couple of AM-FM hi-fi tuners made in 1960 and knows that some amplitude-modulated stations, to this day, sound pretty decent on a true wideband tuner. This, despite the Federal Communications Commission -- in order to lessen interference and shoehorn more stations onto the dial three decades ago -- putting brick-wall limits on AM stations' frequency response out of the transmitter at 10 kHz.

A young person with good hearing can perceive frequencies up to 20 kHz. 

But in 1958, many AM stations' transmitters had a frequency response almost as good as FM stations. FM's big advantage was in improved dynamic range, a lower noise floor and, as Steely Dan sang, "No static, no static at all."

Below is a rough representation of the frequency response of the "AM side" -- the left channel -- of the video above.

YOU'LL NOTE that I rolled off the low frequencies, just like a typical AM signal, then sharply rolled off the high end right below 15 kHz. I also bumped up the equalizer curve here and there to "sweeten" the sound a little, as an engineer would have done with even the rudimentary audio processing of the day. I tried not to overdo it. After all, I was worried that it sounded too good; I still wonder what I missed.

Too, the AM channel is more processed -- more compressed and a bit "louder" -- than the FM track. The reason? The easy answer is "That's what AM does."

The longer answer involves an attempt to, first, mimic the lesser dynamic range of AM broadcasting and, second, reflect that AM stations were much more heavily compressed and "hard-limited," because loudness equals distance and listenability on the noisy AM band.

Oh . . . I also added some "AM noise" to the "AM side" of the recording. Not too much, I hope, and not too little, either.

On the "FM side" of the soundtrack, I frankly worry that the audio may be too processed. Alternatively, however, if I were a chief engineer or a program director in 1958 and my AM-FM combo was going to dive into the "binaural stereo" thing . . . I'd want the FM side to match the AM side at least somewhat for loudness.

THAT'S IT for the technical and audio-geek minutiae. I doubt a normal person could stand much more.

Even if you're not a full-bore nerd like me, I hope you've still found a little fascination in this esoteric inquiry into one of the more forgotten aspects of hi-fi and broadcasting.

A phenomenon that births advertising like this (from 1959, after WBRL had changed call letters to WJBO-FM) -- not to mention a moniker like Soundascope Radio -- can't have been a total bust.

Sounds just right. Not perfect, right

OK, there are better record changers out there than this 1956-vintage Zenith.

To be overly truthful, it's really a rebranded Voice of Music 1200-series unit with a "Cobra" tone arm stuck on it. There are even better changers of this vintage out there, if you're willing to pay up.

But to me, this sounds absolutely right. Just enough rumble, a wee bit of hum . . . it sounds like youth. My youth. It sounds like a console stereo in the living room, with the grown-ups playing their music on it.

You can almost smell the hot vacuum tubes burning off a thin coating of dust . . . even when your amp in 2016 is quite solid state. If you're over 50, you KNOW that smell, and you know it well enough to smell it in your mind's nose.

No, sometimes with the right album, you don't want sound that's perfect. You want sound that's right.

Merry Christmas from your local radio geek

Welcome to FM radio as it looked in 1947.

This is a vintage Pilotuner FM tuner, made by the Pilot Radio Corp., of Long Island City, N.Y. Back in the day, you'd hook this up to the phono input of your existing "standard" radio or console to enjoy the exciting full-fidelity world of frequency modulation broadcasting.

As such this vintage Model T-601 might be called the granddaddy of hi-fi tuners for your sound system. And some 67 years on, it doesn't sound bad -- in glorious monophonic sound with none of the bells and whistles of modern FM gear, but not bad at all considering.
  
SO . . . if this awakens your inner audio geek, here's a video of my mono hi-fi setup -- an 1957-vintage Realistic FM tuner and amplifier pair, along with a Zenith stereo record changer (outfitted with a modern magnetic cartridge) which has seen better days and likely will be replaced soon . . . and the vintage 1947 Pilotuner I just found via eBay. The Pilotuner is what's playing here, with only a length of wire for an antenna.

The speaker , which you've seen (and heard) before here on the blog is a newly built Gough speaker enclosure from the original 1960 plans and outfitted with a 1962-ish Electro-Voice "Wolverine" 8-inch triaxial driver.

Eventually, the Pilotuner will live in our bedroom, paired with a 1951 (or thereabouts) Bell amp and a 12-inch Electro-Voice Wolverine speaker kludged into a vintage Wharfedale speaker cabinet.

No, my geekery knows no bounds. I have a loving and tolerant wife, thanks be to God.

This was an entertainment center

Did you know there were wireless remote controls in 1940?

There were -- for your top-of-the-line Philco radio-phonographs.

Did you know there were phonographs that worked kind of like modern CD players?


IN 1940, there were -- on your deluxe Philco radio-phonographs. The electronics giant's Beam of Light record players were as easy on your 78s as they were hard on your bank account at the end of the Great Depression.

When you dialed up the phonograph on your radio-frequency remote, the tone arm would come down on the record, a lightweight sapphire stylus with an attached mirror would lower onto the record and reflect a light beam off of the moving mirror to a photovoltaic cell, which would modulate electric current into electrical impulses that would be amplified and . . . voila!

Music.

If you love old electronics like I love old electronics, it doesn't get much cooler than this. The miracle of modern technology -- 70-something years ago!

And the glowing tone-arm head just looks cooler than hell. The whole thing is just cooler than hell.

Because there's one born every minute

I'm an audio geek.

OK, I'm an audio geek who likes to look at this kind of stuff on eBay. Anyway, I know a little about what old hi-fi equipment is worth -- particularly the stuff that's so coveted that folks will pay insane prices for it.

But a starting bid of $650 for a Sherwood tuner and amplifier? That strikes me a a little bit, shall we say, outrageous. Then again, a sucker really is born every minute, and there are people out there for whom price is no object.

A VINTAGE McIntosh tuner or amp is fairly valued at an astronomical figure because that's what the market will bear based on quality and popularity. A mid-1950s REL Precedent is fairly valued at an insanely astronomical figure because it's even better than a McIntosh and many times as rare.

But for pretty much anything else not a vintage Marantz amplifier or tuner, not so much. You can buy a lot of good stuff for the $650 you'd be spending on this "good but, oh, come on" tuner and amplifier.

Money doesn't grow on trees, you know. When it does, you can pay that kind of money for this kind of vintage hi-fi-gear.

This has been your Revolution 21 Geek Minute for today, March 19, 2014.

A what player? Porno player? What? Pono?

An old friend sent me an email to ask my thoughts on Neil Young's Pono Player.

My first thought was that the last thing I ever want to see is Neil Young nekkid.

My second thought, after a second look, was "Oh. Pono Player. That's completely different, then. Never mind."

I actually hadn’t been paying attention to the Pono Player in the slightest -- I guess when you get off the what’s-new-in-music bus, you get off the bus. I guess that was a bad thing for a guy who does a music podcast to admit, wasn't it?

Oops.

Anymore, I find that I inhabit the old-fart universe where we daydream about how good the buses used to be before all those little pimp-wannabe a-holes got on and ruined it with their f-ing hip-hop crap. And I frankly find little contemporary music that excites me enough to run out and buy it, either in the store or online.

About half of that dwindling amount is either a new jazz recording I fancy . . . or the latest Rosanne Cash record. Hell, I haven’t even bought the new Springsteen record yet.

I guess that was a bad thing for a guy who does a music podcast to admit, wasn't it?

Oops redux.
  
What I do now is scour the used-vinyl bins at Homer's and at  Goodwill, looking for treasures. Usually, those are albums that my generation's parents would have liked, back from when our parents were much younger than us . . . and often from before there was an us.

One advantage of this kind of record-picking is that “old people” took care of their LPs; teenagers didn’t. Unless the teenager was geeky ol' me. Anyway, I find that a pristine LP from 1962 -- say, on RCA Victor before they began to cheap-out on material and quality control in the late ‘60s -- is a sonically transcendent experience, and that’s an all-analog deal from the vintage ribbon mic in the studio to the vintage tape recorder in the control room to the turntable right next to me.

OH . . . right. About that Porno . . . uh, Pono Player thingy.

I’m probably the target audience for the Pono Player -- me and some wealthy audio freaks (all 487 of them), along with some hipsters who just discovered vinyl and have deemed it hip, happening and now. I -- we -- already have our Pono Players. We call them “records.”

Often, we also call them CDs Not By Rock Bands, who all have turned the compression and hard limiting up to not 11 but instead to 479 in the mastering studio.

Right now on my iMac's hard drive, I have 18,585 songs. That probably represents less than a third of what I have on LPs, CDs, 45s, reel-to-reels, cassettes and 78s. A not-insignificant amount of those hard-drive music files came from iTunes. But I digress.

Anyway, my default quality for the MP3s on the ol’ iMac is 320 kbps, which maxes out that encoding scheme. One might reasonably ask why 320 kbps MP3. The reasonable answer is that the MP3 format is ubiquitous and that, at 320 kbps, I can’t tell the difference from a CD. And to be so honest as to be completely unhip, unhappening and very un-now, a well-recorded, competently mastered CD (as allegedly compromised as it is in the geriatric-rock-star ears of Neil Young) sounds really good, though a little less “warm” than analog.

AND THAT, basically, is what Young, Bruce Springsteen and all their Kickstarter investors are betting millions on with the Pono Player -- absolute subjectivity. Really, once you manage to transcend low-bitrate MP3s of music that’s been so compressed, limited and clipped that the audio file looks like a green 2-by-4 on your digital audio workstation, “better” is as much in your imagination as it is in your sound system.

Remember SACD players? Better still, remember the studies showing that “Super Audio” CDs didn’t really sound better than regular CDs? All the “technical superiority” in the world really doesn’t matter if studio microphones can’t achieve it and, at any rate, only your dog could hear it. 

So my worth-what-you-paid-for-it verdict is this: If you bet the farm on the Pono Player, don’t be surprised if you end up feeling quite (ahem) “Helpless” as your investment gets Zuned.

Old-school high fidelity geekery

The speaker: A mid-'60s Electro-Voice "Wolverine" 8-inch, full-range driver in a new Gough speaker enclosure built by a friend who has a custom furniture business from the original 1960 plans sold by Jabez Gough of Cardiff, Wales.

The hi-fi: A 1956-57 Realistic amplifier and FM tuner. The glory of vacuum tubes!

The result: Pretty dadgum amazing . . . and all in glorious monophonic sound, being that stereo was awfully new-fangled in 1957.

Now, what you can't feel is the floor shaking -- all from a 10-watt tube amp. What you can see is that our house is undergoing a never-ending remodeling. This dining room here is due for a new floor next week . . . then on to the painting and whatever else.

I'm sure there will be "whatever else."