3 Chords & the Truth: The Viral Load Boogie

So . . . I just got back from the neighborhood (loosely speaking) Hy-Vee, where I waited for about an hour to pick up groceries. You think I went inside -- on a Saturday?

From how full the parking lot was, and how few people were wearing the now-recommended masks, it's clear a lot of folks haven't gotten the coronavirus memo. Nope, staying in the car, where I know all the germs.

Still, it was out of the house for a bit. Speaking to someone not my wife, who is an excellent, witty conversationalist, I hasten to add.

Such is life today in COVID-19 Nation, where disease is rampant and we're all on our own.

THAT'S THE mindset behind today's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. If I'm stir crazy and living in a stay-at-home fog, I'll bet your are, too.

At least you better be -- for your own health.

We're going to try to bring a little musical sunshine into your cloistered existence this week and every week for the duration. I mean, we do that every time on the Big Show, but in a world with an increasing viral load, it's time to double down.

Or something.

Don't miss one of the program's patented boogie sets, by the way. You've got to get your butt off the couch and move a little, you know?

And that's about it. Just listen, OK? You'll be glad you did.

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

The records that made me (some of 'em):The contradiction of Mama and Daddy's 78s

The album-cover challenge continues, Part 4. The thing is, this ain't an album. It's a few 78s, ones that I've been playing since I was old enough to work a record player, which was age 4-ish.

First, behold this influential record of my youth -- Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up," on glorious shellac.

In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.

And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.

Now I have brought much of my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess, preserved on not-so-glorious hard drives these days. (Don't worry; I still have the records.)

"All Shook Up." I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.

In 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it still was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it still is today.

Me (age not quite 3) and the Silvertone . . . and the records

THAT GOES as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it sitting on a 1952 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.

And you know what? After half a century and more, the Elvis records still sound pretty much like new. Hell, I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. I mean, some of these old 78s sound great.

RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.

Now let's turn to a couple more 78s that more fully became touchstones when I hit my 50s -- Walter Brown's "Fine Brown Baby" / "My Baby's Boogie Woogie" and The Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away From Me."

In 1946, when my parents were still newlyweds, they were buying "race" records and hillbilly blues records from their favorite Baton Rouge music emporiums.

LOW-DOWN BLUES. R&B. Along with pop, jump and country twangfests like the Delmore Brothers.

"She's got what it takes, make a preacher lay his Bible down," sangeth Mr. Brown. You should hear the flip side.

If you want to know the music of my soul, my folks' old 78s will get you close.

If you want to know what was it that made me the musical creature that I am -- if you want to hear the records I was playing when I was but a lad, just old enough to get into my folks records and operate a record changer -- here you go. This and Fats Domino . . . and Ivory Joe Hunter . . . and Fats Domino . . . and Hank Williams . . . and Louis Jordan.

This is about as personal as it gets.

This is who I am. The music of my parents' young adulthood (and my record-geek childhood) sounded like the world -- the Deep South -- I was born into damn near six decades ago.

It was eclectic, the Louisiana . . . the South of my youth. It was seemingly at odds with itself if you didn't look any further than the surface of things. It was also rich beyond measure.

Take Brown, the blues shouter who once sang with Jay McShann's orchestra. In the particular culture I entered into during the spring of 1961, black shouters like him could sit next to white twangers like Ernest Tubb in the record cabinet in the bottom of the old Silvertone console -- even if they couldn't sit next to each other at the Woolworth's lunch counter.

AND NO ONE thought twice about either peculiarity.

This explains my parents' music-buying habits of the 1940s and '50s, long before I came along and, a few years later, started raiding their music collection. It also explains the complex and contradictory inner lives of these people -- formed by the Southern society that brought us Williams, Louis Armstrong and Jim Crow -- who could in 1946 buy racy records by blues shouters, then in 1971 yell at me about my expletive-deleted "n***er music."

People who thought Dick Clark was a communist, probably because of the fatal combination of "beatnik music" and race mixing on "American Bandstand."

Those George Wallace and David Duke voters.

A couple more of the blackest white people on earth -- as Southern Caucasians surely are -- who may have found it just cause for homicide if you had told them that back in the day.

Go figure.

The South: It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, tucked away in an enigma and fueled by contradiction. These records give you a peek under its hood a little bit . . . its and mine.

You might not completely understand either of us, me and the South, but it will be a start.

3 Chords & the Truth: Hello in there

Fall just fell, the heat is running, the coffee's on . . . a great time for you to pop in and say "Hello in there!"

Or maybe the Big Show will just drop by your place to say hello. Either way is fine.

Well, while we're saying hello, we just as well have some pumpkin spice stuff -- coffee, treats, booze, air freshener, whatever. Apparently it's required.

And we at 3 Chords & the Truth do what's expected of us.

Uh . . . once we did. I think.

Anyway, say howdy, grab some kind of pumpkin stuff and settle in for a bunch of really good music. As is our custom.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Watching the world go by

We're sittin' in the bunker, watching the world go by.

DUCK!

It's that kind of world these days, and 3 Chords & the Truth is here to help you cope with it. Good music helps with everything.

When you have a president who, in just one day, called on the Chinese communists to investigate the former vice president of the United States -- a potential electoral opponent of said president -- and then run a network television commercial accusing congressional Democrats of plotting a coup against him . . . well, we need all the help we can get.

AND THAT was just a couple of days after he quoted (in a tweet, of course) a right-wing preacher who said there'd be civil war to pay if the Democrats impeached him. Listen to the music, folks. Listen to the music.

Listen to the good music and soak in the good cheer -- we're not that far away from killing one another. Like I said, hold on to the good music . . . and the better angels of your nature. We need all the help we can get.

The Big Show is fun, yes. It's musically enlightening. It's, on its better days, informative without boring the crap out of you or sounding like a college lecture. (A not good one, that is.)

But this here little music program is as serious as a heart attack, too. 3 Chords & the Truth also is, one hopes, a reminder that we're better than the worse of the headlines on the evening news. That we're better than our politics. That we're better than the dysfunctional man-child in Washington who keeps trying to drag us down into the muck -- to pit American brother against American brother, and American sister against American sister. To pit America against the rest of the world.

Call the show not just "music for the people," but also "music for we the people."

Love your brother and listen to the damn music. Please?

'Cause no one's listening to anything if we've all done one another in.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Crank it up(ish)

Crank it up!

Ish.

Sorry, but this week on the Big Show, I don't feel like being a fanatic about it. So instead of turning the show up to 12, I'm settling in at just about 9 and a half.

That said, 3 Chords & the Truth is as worth a listen as it is every week. Really worth a listen.

You'll be amazed! You'll be entertained! You'll be eclecticized! And you might even be edified!

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera and so on. Ish.

Just listen, OK? And tell everybody you know . . . or don't know. Ish.

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

Words to live by

Good advice is good advice.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: No, this ain't ordinary

It's the glory of, the power of "No."

In Washington, it can make bullies fold like a newspaper. Here, it can banish the stale and the ordinary -- "No, we're not doing what we're supposed to do. No, we're gonna do something way beyond the ordinary."

And then the "nos" lead to yesses. "Yes, this is something that will blow your mind."

"Yes, 3 Chords & the Truth is something that's extraordinary."

"Yes, we're throwing away all the labels."

"Yes, we recognize only two kinds of music -- good and bad."

AND THEN,  and then . . .  we're right back to another "no." No . . . the bad, we don't mess with.

That's the glory of, that's the power of the Big Show. Dig it?

I knew that you would.

See, that's the story of this here little podcast. We embrace the power of "no." And that's a great big "YES!" for you.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Plumb out of clever

This is your head.

This is your head when it's plumb out of clever.

This is your head when you embrace the void, and just play some s*** and call it . . . good, actually.

That's where we are today on this, the latest episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. We're absolutely, positively out of cutesy, clever or anything vaguely resembling thematic.

You know what, though? That's OK. As it turns out, the Big Show doesn't particularly need cutesy, clever or thematic. What it needs is good music, and that we got plenty of.

OH . . . we also got this nifty picture of a vacuum tube from a 1928 RCA Radiola 18. That's a radio -- remember those?

After 91 years, it still works fine. I seriously doubt your big-screen TV, your laptop, your smartphone . . . or your government will still be functional in nine decades.

Hell, your government isn't functional now. But I digress.

The show. Music. Good. Getting by without big theme or cleverness. Check.

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

It's magi-sounda-what?

Don't know what to make of 3 Chords & the Truth?

That's OK. Sometimes, neither do I. Then again, that's kind of the point of the whole thing.

It's the Big Show, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: All in all . . . .

All in all, we're just another brick in the wall.

Or another bollard in the steel-slat, fencey-wally thing to keep the brown people out.

As we post this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, a quarter of the U.S. government still is flat-lined because Someone wants his big, beautiful border wall, and Congress won't fund it. Some 800,000 federal employees aren't being paid . . . whether they've been furloughed or are being forced into "essential personnel" involuntary servitude.

Slave labor is real, people. Still.

It's another fine mess we've gotten ourselves into.

OR, IN THE topical Big Show universe in which your Mighty Favog produces this particular podcast, it's (as is regularly said in the Omaha, by God, Nebraska studios as a show theme percolates its way into reality), "Another week, another clusterf*** we have to address."

Well, let's just say that 3 Chords & the Truth endeavors to make America's national clusterf***s as entertaining as possible. And dat's da name of dat toon.

Yeah. Amusing and thought-provoking clusterf***s. Such is life these days in these here United States. And on this here program.

You can be assured that this latest cock-up is being made the most of. Dangling preposition and all.

I personally think it's well worth a listen. But that's just me. You're welcome to agree, however.

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!

Save some for us

We've all been there the past year and a half.

Hell, who are we kidding? We're all still there.

This may help some.

3 Chords & the Truth: Chillin' in the city

Ever have one of those days where, let us say, your get-up-and-go got up and went?

Sure you have.

Well, that's about how it's been going around the 3 Chords & the Truth studios here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. So on this episode of the program, we're just chillin' the hell out.

Oh, the music's as good as always . . . but we're all just listening and, well, you know.

It's also been a stormy day around these parts, so there's that. And that's all I have to say about that.

Or much of anything at this juncture.

Just listen to the Big Show. You will be so glad you did. Peace . . . out.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes for a clown-car commute

Life is a three-ring circus. Now more than ever.

And what we all are is stuck in the slow lane of a clown-car traffic jam. Rogue elephants up ahead have just shucked Peter Peanut (may Chuckles the Clown rest in peace) and a Flying Wallenda has just done a bug impression . . . all over your teeny-tiny windshield.

That's right, ladies and germs, Ringling Bros. is no more because it no longer could compete with the United States of Big Top, which has the advantage of scale.

Oooooh, watch your step there, pally. Elephants eat a lot of peanuts.

But I have got a deal for you. Step right up, and I will show you the great deal 3 Chords & the Truth has got for you.

Right over here, I present to you the Big Show, a fine program of musical erudition -- one this week that features an excellent set of tip-top, Big Top music for the times in which we find ourselves this fine day.

IT'S A CIRCUS out there, gents . . . and ladies . . . and, boy, do I have the music for you.

Right here, and for an unlimited time only, I give you the best in musical programming -- three full rings of musical bliss -- for the low, low price of absolutely nothing. That's right! Absolutely nothing. And all I require from you is . . . your undying devotion.

That's it! No catches, no regrets . . . just the finest music on the Internets for the low price of zilch! Zip! Nada!

Squat!

And if you stay tuned to this here episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, you will witness something too dangerous to ever hear on the regular, pedestrian radio airwaves! You will see -- somewhere in the middle of the show -- the death-defying segué that mere mortals dare not attempt at your crappy corporate radio station!

WILL your Mighty Favog live? Or will . . . he . . . die . . . in the flaming wreckage of a musical transition gone terribly . . . horribly . . . wrong?

You must stay glued to -- transfixed upon -- your high-fidelity listening device to find out the answer to that perilous question. Yes, indeed!

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, ladies and gentlemen! Be there. And let the show begin!

3 Chords & the Truth: Hello! Hello? Hello?!

Hello?

Is this thing on?

Hello! Hello! Hello???

Echo echo echo echooooooooo!

Hello! Hello! What's goin' on? This week's 3 Chords & the Truth is comin' on strong.

This one is 401, that's the number, it's true. And we just wanted to say hello . . . not to do so is wrong.

Hello! Hello! Can you hear me out there? Sometimes you just wonder. Sometimes, it's a bear.

This week's Big Show -- boy howdy, it's fun! The music's wonderful . . . there's joy in the air!

Hello! Hello! There's no more to say. So I'll just tell you "Ta-ta!"

The show's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there. Aloha!

3 Chords & the Truth: The Now Sound @ 400

It all started in a 5,000-watt radio station in Fresno, California -- a $65 paycheck and a crazy dream.

Now 3 Chords & the Truth has just released its 400th episode, and while the dream is still crazy, the paycheck is down to $5.32. Working in the media is not for sissies.

Or, actually, for people who like to eat.

So, what can I say on this occasion of the 400th program of the Big Show?






















OK, I got something.

This 400th episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is one more than 399. And it's 399 more than episode No. 1 back in January 2008.

Thank you.

Oh . . . and the music's good. Real good.

Is this long  enough to turn in now, teacher?

Is anybody in here?

ECHO! ECHO! (ECHOOOOO! ECHOOOOO!)

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

3 Chords & the Truth: 57 candles, and there's somethin' on

Kyrie eleison, down the road that I must travel.

Christe eleison, it's my birthday.

Kyrie eleison, I am freakin' old.

Lord have mercy, if I have to turn what I'm turning, the Big Show is gonna party like it's 1979. Or 1980.

Perhaps, 1985.

WHATEVER. No matter the particular year, this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is going to rock.

Hard.

Christ have mercy, the old farts will rock. Yes we will. And so will you, Cap.

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

It blowed up good. It blowed up real good.

Click for full-size image

Listen to the Big Show. It's a (CLUNK!) blast.

If you don't get the joke . . . ask your parents.

3 Chords & the Truth: Colliding subcultures, or . . .

. . . radio at a time far, far away.

You know the spiel. It's the standard 3 Chords & the Truth spiel: We've subcultured ourselves to death. Almost literally.

In the radio sense, that's a boring thing. Do you like just one kind of music? Do you only want to know anything about one kind of music . . . or about only one tiny, tiny segment of the population that looks suspiciously a lot like yourself?

I didn't think so. If you were that unbelievably narrow of taste and of mind, you wouldn't be here.

The Big Show is the place for the inquisitive and the easily bored. It's the place where cultures collide constantly -- as we've said this week in promoting the program. And -- again -- it's freakin' glorious.

NOW, I'm not sayin', but on this edition of the show, Sinatra and Steppenwolf may well coexist on your Internet connection. Might even collide.

That'd be something to hear. But I'm not sayin', you understand.

I am sayin', however, that this here program is all about what radio, at its best, used to be. It's about starting there and pushing forward.

So, forward.

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

Coming up on the Big Show

Click on the picture for large version

What could it be now?

Kind of like radio once upon a . . . GAAAAAH! Still trite.

OK, let's put it this way. Some of you will recognize it. Others will have their minds blown -- as usual.

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