3 Chords & the Truth: Daisy . . . Daiiiisy. . . .

Eight years past the dawn of 2001, we find that radio has morphed into HAL 9000, and its soon-to-be-former audience is doing a pretty credible impression of Dr. Dave Bowman.

Any more understaffed, uninspired, unmanned shenanigans coming from the erstwhile Empire of the Air, and we're going to pull the plug. Hell, we are pulling the plug, because the mad accountants who put HAL 9000 in charge of the airwaves long ago ceased giving us any reason to listen.

A NEW DAY is dawning. We have no more time -- or patience -- for monoliths.

That's one of the things we're meditating over, in a most musical fashion, on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, an audio service of Revolution 21. What comes after radio? Or, perhaps more precisely, what will be the new radio for the post-radio generation?

We're hoping 3 Chords & the Truth will be part of it, whatever It might be.

AS USUAL on the Big Show, we have a wildly diverse lineup of music this week -- from Joni Mitchell to Dr. John, and from Norwegian rockers to late American jazz greats. We even have a long, strange trip thrown in for good measure.

For radio, the dying medium, today's show would be wildly unusual. For us, it's all in an episode's programming. Isn't that a good enough reason to listen right there?

It'll expand your mind. Legally, and without those lingering unpleasant aftereffects.

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

Revisiting Revolution 21's premise

Every now and again, I like to revisit what Revolution 21 is all about -- if for no other reason than to remind myself.

SO, here we go:

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's media provider. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is a website and music program that aim to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 -- that is, the Blog for the People and 3 Chords & the Truth -- realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog (your host and the master of dysfunctionality) live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent "radio" . . . and a stellar show.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 -- all of it, text and audio -- is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. Well, you get the idea.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch.

We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your master of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio and blogging and . . . whatever . . . like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

WELL, THAT'S pretty much the foundational vision of what this enterprise is about -- trying to come up with a new model of being a person of faith, of being a Catholic, in media.

Catholic media shouldn't have to be all about preaching and, frankly, staying in the Catholic ghetto. It should be about more than non-stop apologetics and, sad to say, some really bad "contemporary" music.

Of course, there needs to be a place for all that -- well, except for the bad music -- in Catholic radio, webcasting and podcasting. But there needs to be more. The Catholic media message, especially at this time in history, needs to be multidimensional.

There needs to be a cultural-support system for faith . . . and a space where Catholics can be intelligent, fun, culturally attuned beings while paying mind to the Permanent Things. If you listen to Catholic radio at all, for instance, you know that just isn't happening there.

IF ANYTHING, you start to wonder how such a church ever could have produced a Flannery O'Connor or a Walker Percy. Hang on a sec. Walker Percy was a convert.

You also start to wonder why most of the musicians and authors whose work you consider to be the most "Catholic" have achieved that while walking out the door of the church. You know, the whole "I was raised Catholic" thing.

You wonder whatever happened to whatever in Catholicism produced so much of the Renaissance. Whatever kept so much of Western culture alive during the Dark Ages.

I mean, how in the hell did we get from there to a culturally retarded institution which oftentimes has nothing better to offer the Almighty than the liturgical equivalent of this:


SO, HOW DOES ONE expect to get anywhere with something like, for example, 3 Chords & the Truth in this milieu?

You don't.

As the general manager of a Catholic radio station once told me about an effort far less "out there" (at least from a religious-radio perspective) than 3 Chords & the Truth, "Catholic radio's not ready for that." That, of course, begs the question, "When the hell will it be, then?"

Not now. Not when Catholic culture -- and let's face it, Christian culture in this country -- isn't any smarter than what it's supposed to be transcending.

So, what I think I need to face up to is that what I'm doing has no prospect of success within "the church." I don't know that I'd change a word of the above "mission statement" (for lack of a better term), but I know I can't force proselytizing or overt evangelizing into what is more properly the realm of culture and art.

Music -- art -- is more than just a tool for chalking up souls. It's more than the ol' evangelization bait and switch. And most importantly, it's not being true to the fullness of who I am or what I'm trying to accomplish here . . . whatever that might ultimately be.

WHAT I'M DOING, I guess, is "Catholic media" in the sense that it's media done by a guy trying to be a faithful Catholic. Just don't expect that it's "Catholic media" in the sense of being a shill for the institutional church, or merely a utilitarian "hook" for convincing you to be Catholic or to do as I say God says.

You are welcome here even if you think I'm full of it, and that that goes double for my religion.

If there's anything wrong in my foundational vision, it's that it is too formal -- as informal as it is, relatively speaking. The institutional church, for all I know, probably would be actively hostile to what I'm doing . . . at least if its name had to be on it. And I damn well know most Catholics just don't "get it."

Our church is a timid church.
It fears how some things might look.
There is no room for this.
Our church is a timid church.

SOME OF YOU will know the tune to put to that. Expect 3 Chords & the Truth to change accordingly, starting this week.

3 Chords & the Truth: Refuge from the suck

As I write this, Hurricane Ike is giving the Texas coastline a good thrashing. God knows what's happening to poor Galveston.

God knows what's about to happen to the price of a gallon of gas for the foreseeable future.

MEANWHILE, the Republicans have restarted the culture wars -- because, frankly, that was the only way they could win -- and the far left of the Democratic Party has taken the bait. Enthusiastically.

And observant Catholics like me hear "We hate you. We really hate you." (And, by the way, I am the last New Deal Democrat standing.)

The Republicans, of course, are counting on that. Because that's the only way they can win this year. Did I mention that?

Back to the storm front, my Louisiana hometown is still a shambles from Hurricane Gustav a couple of weeks back, and my mother only has electricity to half of her house. Go figure.

Up here in Nebraska, it's been raining all week . . . and God knows what we're going to be paying for a gallon of gas in a few days. (You can't mention that one too much. All God's chillin need gas. Or for the city to instantly build a decent mass-transit system.)

TIMES ARE TOUGH; times are ugly, and they're getting uglier.

There's only one thing for us to do in times like these: Crank it up! That's where this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth comes in.

In the impersonal and the abstract, you might hate my guts, and I damn well may have had it with you -- and the politicians might be clapping with glee at the spectacle -- but it seems to me there's one thing we can agree on.

That would be good music. Again, that's where this week's edition of the Big Show comes in.

Good music. Diverse music. "Oh my God, he can't be as big an effing redneck as I thought" music.

And -- Whadda you know? -- if you're hip to the cool sounds, too, you might not be half bad yourself. (God, I sound like I'm sporting a pocket protector or something. Geez!)

I GUESS THAT'S what this week's 3 Chords & the Truth ultimately is about. Unity through a shared quest for sweet diversion from a world o' suck.

Works for me. How about you?

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

Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Falling for September

Mrs. Favog and I love September.

September starts with the Labor Day weekend and a trip to the Nebraska State Fair, rolls right into college football, then glides into the first signs of nippy weather and -- finally -- segues into October with those autumn leaves.

SEPTEMBER IS a month of hustle and bustle, new beginnings for schoolkids and old memories for former schoolkids. September brings out the comfortable old sweatshirts and ushers in the realization that Thanksgiving and Christmas aren't that far off.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth love fall . . . and we love September. September is something to celebrate, particularly in the Midwest. In the Midwest, September is the month that's juuuuuust right.

That's one of the joys of living on the civilized edge of the barely tamed Great Plains. September becomes a celebration -- sort of like a monthlong meteorological Carnival season before the strict and unforgiving Lent of winter on the prairie.

Really, you haven't lived till you've experienced 25 below zero the week before Christmas. Or until it's so cold that yours is the last car running . . . until your battery cable gets so brittle it snaps. And your fingers still get frostbitten through your thick insulated gloves.

Nebraska isn't a place for sissies. But we'll always have September.

And this week on the Big Show, that's what we celebrate -- September. And fall . . . both the seasonal and arse-over-head varieties.

We at 3 Chords & the Truth are funny that way.

Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Taking the holiday off

I've made an executive decision: 3 Chords & the Truth is taking the Labor Day holiday off.

I'll still be at the blog, but the Big Show is on the back burner this week.

Because it's a holiday.

Which means you don't work. Not that I consider 3 Chords & the Truth work. Despite the effort going into it.

Anyway, we're out of here to recharge and refresh . . . and to doodle around on the blog.

That . . . is all.

3 Chords & the Truth: It's about the journey

I usually like to surprise people with what I play on 3 Chords & the Truth.

SOMETIMES, THOUGH, I just like to throw up the week's playlist to demonstrate that the Big Show ain't exactly what folks are used to nowadays -- at least not when it comes to radio . . . or even to most webcasts or podcasts.

3 Chords & the Truth is not about a format, and it's not about a subculture or a niche. What it's about is the music. Good music. And good music can come from a lot of places, just as righteous mixes can cover a hell of a lot of musical ground in one set.

When it comes to this show -- like they say, whomever "they" might be -- we're all about the wonder of the journey. The actual destination is lagniappe.

So, that being said, here's this week's playlist:

Must Get Out
Maroon 5 (Songs About Jane)
2003

Your Heart Is Breaking Down
Choo Choo (Choo Choo)
2008

Should I Cry (alternate take)
Jackie De Shannon (The Definitive Collection)
1964

Six Days on The Road
Dave Dudley (Country USA - 1963)
1963

Straight Eight
Spencer Bohren (Born in a Biscayne)
1984

Boris the Spider
The Who (My Generation -- The Very Best of the Who)
1966

Real Love
Cretones (Thin Red Line)
1980

Lost in the Supermarket
The Clash (London Calling)
1979

You're Lost Little Girl
The Doors (Strange Days)
1967

Innocence Lost
Steve Taylor (I Predict 1990)
1987

Lost My Mind
Matthew Sweet (100% Fun)
1995

Departure / Ride My See-Saw
The Moody Blues (In Search of the Lost Chord)
1968

Handshake Drugs
Wilco (A Ghost Is Born)
2004

Brightly Wound
Eisley (Room Noises)
2005

Sole Salvation
English Beat (Special Beat Service)
1982

I Do
J. Geils Band (Monkey Island)
1977

Easy Does It
Count Basie & His Orchestra (The Essential Count Basie, Vol. 2)
1940

Do You Love Me
The Contours (The Classic Rhythm & Blues Collection: 1958-1963)
1962

Baby Workout
Jackie Wilson (The Classic Rhythm & Blues Collection: 1958-1963)
1963

I Saw Her Standing There
Beatles (Meet The Beatles!)
1964

You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
The Silkie (British Invasion Gold)
1965

Everything Gonna Be Everything
Don Covay (See-Saw)
1966

She May Call You Up Tonight
The Left Banke (There's Gonna Be A Storm - The Complete Recordings 1966-1969)
1967

Frankenstein
New York Dolls (New York Dolls)
1973

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Diversity and all that jazz

When I was in college, LSU's campus radio station, then called WPRG, had what I considered a great format -- pretty much the full spectrum of album rock and college-y alternative fare, plus a minimum of one jazz cut an hour.

SOME DJs BALKED at the jazz thing, but I thought it was brilliant, and it made WPRG sound a sophisticated cut above your average college-radio fare. And isn't it funny that -- almost three decades later, during this age of "diversity" -- most areas of our lives aren't very "diverse" at all?

What we have is an age of Balkanization, not "diversity." Focus groups of the pathologically self-segregated.

Minds closing shut all across the land.

ME, I'VE ALWAYS been a freak. I even grew to like a lot of my parents' music, back during a time when there was a wide gulf between "our" music and "theirs."

I like rock. I like alt. I like country.

And I like jazz.

So, today's show is a little like that old WPRG college-radio format. Only more so.

If you like real diversity, you'll find it here. And here. And even at the top of this page, in the player window.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog's Zen garden

I didn't expect organic gardening to be this Zen thing for me.

ALL I WANTED TO DO was to grow some vegetables in the name of greater self-sufficiency (Take that prepackaged consumerist culture!) and saving a few bucks -- or more -- at the grocery store. And I wanted to accomplish that without putting 47 pounds of MiracleGro and 87 cubic yards of Sevin dust on everything.

I also determined to reuse what dishwater I reasonably could to hydrate said garden. After all, that would certainly make getting rid of coffee grounds and grease easier -- dump it all in the pot the dishwater goes into, then dump it all in the garden.

Putting organic material back into the earth . . . good. I've even got a little countertop compost box that really, really needs to be transferred into a legit outdoors compost pile. I'll get to it.

Anyway, Mrs. Favog calls my horticultural methodology "Nazi death-camp gardening." She'd rather I just unreel a hose pipe to where the tomatoes and pepper plants are, turn on the water, turn on 3 Chords & the Truth and have a cold beer.

Let me amend that. She could care less whether I have a cold beer. The missus just doesn't particularly care for carrying a stock pot (or three) full of water across the back yard to the garden, then unloading the H2O into the rows.

Heinrich Himmler am I. Or is it Heimlich? I have trouble keeping my genocidal Germans straight.

WHATEVER. I GUESS I CAN'T blame her for not having a Catholic Buddhist vibe going when it comes to tomatoes and peppers. Beans, too. If I get them planted in the next week, I think I can get in a crop of pole beans before first frost.

For me, carrying pots of recycled water out to the garden -- and hoeing out the weeds and touching up the rows every couple of weeks -- is the Southern Boy Catholic version of raking a big rock bed or tapping sand out of a straw to make a beautiful mandala. The advantage of my Catholic Zen thang over the eastern Zen thang hinges on one thing:

You can't eat sand. Or rocks.

Tomatoes and peppers are tasty, however. And good for you.

What does this have to do with this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth? I frankly have no idea.

Maybe it has something to do with crafting sets of songs into something with some meaning -- whatever the meaning happens to be with any grouping of music. Maybe it has something to do with music soothing the savage breast.

Maybe it has something to do with being gaga for Joan Jett since I was 16. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth, the worldwide music service of Revolution 21 -- it's Zen radio. On the Internets.

Just go here -- or to the player at the top of this page -- and achieve a higher consciousness. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: The defining lie?

What if everything you were supposed to believe about yourself -- and where you are from -- was a lie?

That's the gist of our centerpiece musical exploration on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.

What if the glorious "heritage" you were taught to take pride in was, instead, a more compelling case for intense shame?

WHAT DO YOU MAKE of that? If you -- if your region and culture -- have been held captive by a defining historical lie, how do you make peace with the present and move on to the future?

If you have any good answers, contact me at mail@revolution21.org.

Intrigued? You should be. It's a hell of a question, and we meditate upon it through some great -- and diverse -- music this week.

Of course, in addition to the seriousness, we have a lot of fun, too. That's because the Big Show is the place where you never know what's going to be thrown at you next. Every song an adventure, I say.

And you'll be saying that, too.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, and you can listen right now, right here.

Be there. Aloha.


UPDATE: You did know that the show is available on iTunes, right? Just go to podcasts and search for 3 Chords & the Truth. It's as simple as that, and you can become a subscriber.

A wee hint about the Big Show

Just a hint for you in advance of this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth: This video has something to do with the show.

Joan Rivers isn't it.

Tune in in about 21 hours . . . or so.

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.

Lust, license and the pursuit of stuff

Happy Fourth of July!

It is on this day we celebrate the Continental Congress' adoption of the Declaration of Independence and the birth in 1776 of our independent American nation, which actually occurred on July 2 but forget that, we're on a roll.

AND WHEN Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British army to George Washington's American forces and their French allies, it was pretty much all over. The infant nation grew and prospered and, by the 1940s, had become the most powerful the world had ever known. It presided as hegemon of much of the earth, and its people -- through the dual blessings of freedom and prosperity -- dedicated themselves to the pursuit of license and excess.

Secure in our attainment of what we needed, we therefore relentlessly pursued what we wanted. And what we want is stuff. More and more stuff. And bigger places to keep all our stuff.

And governmental policies to help us accumulate that stuff.

Our money says "In God we trust" but that's only constitutional if we don't really mean it. Which we don't, thank God. (And, to be safe. we don't mean that either.)

No, this July 4, we give lip service to self-evident truths and "nature's God" and "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," but we all know what's important, don't we?

Stuff.

The pursuit of stuff is what makes us happy. Until we decide we still don't have enough stuff.

Or a big enough McMansion way out in the 'burbs to keep our stuff. Or enough gas-guzzling horseless carriages to haul our fat asses and our stuff from place to place.

Which requires us to invade hapless Middle Eastern despot states like Iraq under the pretense of self-evident truth and letting freedom ring -- and Mom, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet -- to keep is in enough oil and gas to sate our need for speed.

And stuff.

So, I can't think of a better way to celebrate the birth of our nation than by exercising the God-given right to spit in the eye of America's modern mountebanks who sell us snake oil in the name of "freedom."

And in that spirit, I give you the late, great George Carlin, who really had our number.

NOTE: Video contains some profanity. Funny profanity, but blue nevertheless.

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.

Twittering the night away . . . or something

Hey! Revolution 21 is now part of Twitter nation.

Now we can give short-and-sweet updates about what's new on the blog, or the website . . . or when the new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is available. (And the new episode IS available, you know.)

Anyway, thought you might want to know . . . and that you might want to sign up to stay closer in touch with the Revolution 21 media empire. Here's our Twitter address (registration required): http://twitter.com/Revolution_21.

As always . . . be there. Aloha.

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.

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.

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.

Snapshots! We got snapshots!

Well, OK. Snapshot . . . singular.

It occurred to me that I've never posted a current snapshot of myself on the blog, so I thought I'd remedy that today. Here's one of me taken downtown recently by Mrs. Favog.

Lovely city, Omaha is. And a regal god, if I do say so myself.

Not the God, mind you, but a god, to quote from Groundhog Day.

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.

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.