3 Chords & the Truth: We need a lot of Christmas

The bigger the show, the less I'll write about it. And the Christmas edition of the Big Show is a big, big show, indeed.

In fact, it's the biggest Big Show we've done in more than 11 years of doing the program. There isn't a little Christmas in this week's 3 Chords & the Truth; there's a lot of Christmas.

There's a simple reason for that, pally.

These days, we need  a lot of Christmas. Every single minute. We need a lot of Christmastime.

In this case, 3 hours and 13 minutes of Christmastime. You're welcome. Actually, thank our sponsor, What? Do a Shot . . . the drink America drinks when it needs to black out.

So there you have it, big Big Show, small post about the holiday music marathon.

It's A 3 Chords & the Truth Christmas, y'all. Be there. Alo-ho-ho-ho-ha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Resistance is futile

There are a lot of entities and ideologies, nay, powers and principalities, out there waiting to assimilate your ass.

The vast majority represent bad, nay, weird ass, stuff. Feel free to substitute a more colorful noun than "stuff."

If you wonder what I speak of, you haven't been paying attention to our sorry and strife-filled times. But this isn't about that.

This is about being assimilated by something good and interesting and, nay, something good for your brain and your soul.

THIS . . . is about 3 Chords & the Truth. We're like the good Borg, and we only require to assimilate a modest and reasonable portion of your mind to the hive.

And maybe your feet, with which we will guide you to use for dancing and tapping.

Apart from that, there's just another exceptional edition of the Big Show to alert you to this week. Good music and a few great Christmas songs as we lead up to the giant Ho Ho Ho Extravaganza next week.

That . . . is all.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Power of tunes

The power of tunes is . . .

Three minutes of Christmas joy that makes you forget about a world of hurt for just a bit.

Songs that make you think, reminding you of the important things in life.

Music that lets you scream and rage at the insanity of this present darkness . . . without actually screaming and raging and getting carted off to the nearest psych ward.

THAT SOMETHING beyond words that touches you inside in a way beyond description.

The force multiplier of twist and shout.

Not caring whether "the force multiplier of twist and shout" actually makes any sense. You know what you mean.

"She loves you, yeah yeah yeah!"

Now, komm gib mir deine Hand, and I'll lead you to a magical place. We call it the Big Show.

We call it 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there.

Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: A broken radio

There's a hole in Donald's head where all the crazy goes.

And America died for nothing, I suppose,
Little minds have big mouths.
Don't stop to count the cost,
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios.

(Apologies to John Prine)

THAT'S US. We're a broken radio, and the sweet songs -- our democratic heritage -- can't last too long. Not when we're going like this.

The Big Show will do what it can. We will play our sweet songs as long as we can. But if our national -- our cultural -- hatred of the truth, of the rule of law . . . of one another . . . doesn't end, the sweet songs will fade into static.

What cannot go on, won't.

That is the message of this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. We're here in the 3C&T apocalypse bunker beneath Omaha, by God, Nebraska, and we're doing what we can.

Mainly, that's to play the best music we can, to remind you -- briefly -- of some basic, important things, and to keep alive the better angels of our cultural nature for as long as we can.

That's what the Big Show can do. You have to do the rest. Now to the music.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: It's all we got

Some years back, when LSU football was going through a meh stretch, and the Tigers had lost in agonizing fashion to one hated rival or another, a fellow native Louisianian was in despair.

My wife, trying to be encouraging, said something platitudinous on social media . . . you know, like "The sun will come up in the morning, and this, too, shall pass. So count your blessings, bucko."

Midwesterners. They're so frickin' earnest.

My fellow expat friend was having none of that bullshit.

"You don't understand," she said. "Football. It's all we got."

We Louisianians damn grew up in Trumpworld -- we just didn't know what to call it then. It's not like anyone was going to spend the money or give two shits enough to build a world-class university the Tigers could be proud of.

IT'S NOT LIKE, magically, government would generally work and voters would generally care.

It's not like the K-12 school system wouldn't always rank somewhere around dead last in the country.

It's not like the poor wouldn't always be with us, always be killing one another, always be hopeless and always have Bubba -- who had a union job at the chemical plant and would die of cancer in about 20 years -- blame the poor for their mean estate.

But goddammit, the LSU Tigers always had a shot. Except when they didn't.

It's all we got.

Folks in places like Nebraska don't get that. If the Nebraska Cornhuskers were magically transported to my home state, along with all their fans, in their present losing condition . . . well, "Nebraska" would supplant "Jonestown" in the Grim Reaper's thesaurus.

SO, YOU ASK. What's this have to do with the Big Show, with 3 Chords & the Truth?

Well, Cap, we all live in Trumpworld now. And we're all learning that, no, it's not darkest just before the dawn. It's darkest just before it gets even darker.

It's suckiest just before the president gets all jiggy with his Twitter account and commits witness harassment against one of his own ambassadors who -- at that very moment -- is testifying at his House impeachment hearing. And then things get even worse.

And then you learn to hang on to what you got. For as long as you can.

In the Gret Stet, that's football. And great food. And a rich culture. And a world-class musical tradition.

Being educated, having long lives and a minimally functioning government, with good roads and shit . . . not so much.

Louisiana will always have gumbo, Russia will always have great vodka, Catholics will always have the Sistine Chapel (I think), and America will always have what was the most amazing patrimony on earth -- until it all went to shit.

ME, I'M CLINGING to 3 Chords & the Truth. I look on the program as a flashlight in the darkness, a nod to musical truth, a tribute to what we had . . . and a hope that this present darkness just might be the precursor to dawn after all.

I guess that Pollyanna-ish Midwestern optimistic crap might be starting to rub off on me after 30-something years.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Music, music, music

We live in a world where people like to spoon feed you both kinds of music.

You know, country and western. Rap and hip-hop. Classic rock and classic hits. Classical and orchestral.

Here at 3 Chords & the Truth, we play one kind of music -- good. The bad, we don't mess with.

So, in the course of one show -- like this week's -- you're apt to hear The Young Rascals followed by Leonard Cohen. Mama Cass followed by Sarah Vaughan. Charlie Byrd followed by Squeeze.

ANDY WILLIAMS followed by Nazareth. I'm pretty proud of Andy Williams followed by Nazareth.

It all works. It all expands your mind and your horizons. It all makes up the rich musical gumbo you know as the Big Show.

Screw radio homogeneity, and screw the programmers and corporate suits who sell you short on an unending basis.

We don't roll like that. We're 3 Chords & the Truth, dammit.

Be there. Aloha.

ok gen z

This is from the year of my Boomer birth (note how I capitalize here -- try it sometime), 1961.  This exemplifies what some might call a "high-functioning culture."

When y'all look up from your TikTok videos long enough to consider how to write a piece of music in 7/4 time -- much less how to dance to a piece of music in 7/4 time -- come get me so I can see what you've come up with. I'll be having a cocktail . . . legally.

3 Chords & the Truth: The smart choice

Style and substance -- the Big Show has both. Always has. Always will.

In radio today, I'm not sure what's the rarer thing, style or substance. Some stations and programs have some degree of style. Others -- not a bunch -- have substance. Few have both.

Actually, having both is a good way to not be on the radio. Having both, come to think of it, is a good way to be totally screwed in lots of ways in our culture today. Such are the times in which we live.

The blessing and the curse of 3 Chords & the Truth is that it's the program that doesn't give a damn.

Bad news: This sort of thing is a horrible way to make any money. Good news: We've no money to lose from not being dumb-ass enough, so you're gonna hear some wild sh . . . stuff on this here little podcast. (Gotta watch the language. "Style," don't you know.)

Style and substance. Boy is that happening on the Big Show this week.

And, boy, do you need to be listening to the Big Show this week.

Really, aren't we all tired of the dumb and the artless? Time for a change.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: It's late

It's late.

And I'm afraid we have no idea how late it is . . . says someone who is a member of a group of tens upon tens upon tens upon tens of millions of Americans just deemed "human scum" by the president of the United States of America. Just because we happen to oppose the mean-spirited, disastrous misgovernance of said president and his band of craven partisan enablers.

The words "human scum" made it possible to kill 6 million Jews. Made it possible for Hutus to slaughter between half a million and a million Tutsis in Rwanda. Allowed the Turks to butcher about 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I.

"HUMAN SCUM" on American lips gave permission for Southerners to enslave millions of blacks and egged them on as they declared war on their northern brethren in defense of the indefensible. Nearly 700,000 Americans were dead by the time the carnage played itself out in 1865.

This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is predicated upon the lateness of the hour in these United States. This edition of the Big Show also harbors a musical prayer that it's not too late.

Sorry to get all serious on you but, alas, these are serious times. But at least we work plenty enough fun and tuneful enjoyment around the seriousness . . . in my humble opinion.

But don't take my word for it; I'm just "human scum." Why don't you just listen for yourself instead?

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

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: The Now Sound?

The Now Sound?

This week, not so much. The newest selection is from 21 years ago. Old happens.

No, this edition of the Big Show is the "then sound," with music from wildly varying genres and several different "thens." Frankly, I like it that way. Increasingly, "now" is not something to which a sane man wishes to aspire.

"Now," we're at one another's throats. We as an American nation . . . aren't. We are as divided as we've been since Vietnam, and maybe since Fort Sumter. "Now," we are dry kindling, and we have a president splashing gasoline around and lighting matches.

TO "NOW" -- especially at the end of this particular Week of Pending Impeachment and Ongoing Denial and Excuse-Making -- 3 Chords & the Truth says "F*** that s***."

Pardon my pessimism and rejection of "now" this week. I came down with a nasty cold amid recording this week's edition of the Big Show, and I may have just had a toddy with orange juice, lemon juice, honey, Tabasco sauce . . . and three shots of grocery store bourbon.

If I can't get well soon, at least I won't care. But you have to endure my dark bluntness amid the damned fine music. Which definitely isn't "now."

It's from "then," when folks hated each other a bit less and hoped for the future a bit more. Good night and good luck.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Wafting across the aether

This week, 3 Chords & the Truth wafts across the aether, which has much more class and aesthetic value than the oh-so-pedestrian "ether," into your ears and your very soul.

We become one with the magic of the night . . . the wonder of the music.

The Big Show defies the insanity surrounding us with beauty, joy, eclecticism and some small measure of intelligence. This week, as every week, our humble little program stands as a sign of contradiction to the stupidity that seeks to engulf us.

There is a fungus among us. You know what I mean.

Screw that; listen to this.

The music of 3 Chords & the Truth surfs the aetherial waves. It inhabits the mystery beyond the last golden rays of sunshine. It defies conformity and convention.

Tune in for an eclectic happening, curated by your Mighty Favog. It's here, in the night . . . in the aether.

Or something.

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

Same thing, different particulars

Baton Rouge (La.) State-Times, Sept. 18, 1969

I like to look through old newspapers, which to me is a much cheaper way of revisiting my long-lost youth than combing my remaining hair over the bald spot, buying a flashy convertible and having an affair with a nearsighted woman much younger than myself.

Which brings us to the nearsighted, much-younger woman part.

I remember what a media sensation it was when arch pop-culture weirdo Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki . . . on The Tonight Show.


MISS VICKI, otherwise known as Victoria Budinger (or "the pretty New Jersey teenager"), was 17. Tiny Tim, otherwise known as Herbert Khaury, was 37, but everybody thought he was a decade older. In 1969, "Me Too" was more like "Me Can!"

As I said, it was a media sensation.

At this juncture, your woke-ass, under-50 self might be thinking "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

Exactly.

You see, we westerners -- particularly we Americans -- always have been all about the weird shit. 1969's "Isn't that cute? Kinda weird, but cute" has become 2019's "Lock him up and cut his nuts off! Then sue!"

On the other hand, we fail to bat an eyelid at believing there are something like 73 genders today, that "men" can have babies and that we all must state our preferred pronouns. (Mine is "My Lord and Master / My Lord and Master." If you don't think that's an actual pronoun, you are a hater, and you're making me feel threatened.)

AMID ALL the suckage of middle age and aging, the one benefit is having developed (at least one hopes) a finely tuned bullshit detector and an appreciation for the waves of bat-shit crazy that periodically roll through -- and roil -- what's left of our society. So, if you're just floating through postmodern America right now, and you think everything looks pretty normal to you, boy is your old self gonna be embarrassed by your young self in about 50 years.

Assuming, of course, we survive the absurdity that is President Donald Trump. That right there is a big-ass assumption, so we'll see.

3 Chords & the Truth: Still the same . . . or something

I feel like the Big Show is a Bob Seger thing . . . still the same.

Forget that. We actually don't have any Bob Seger on the show this week. We are, however, still the same -- in that we're rarely the same week to week.

Which, conversely, makes 3 Chords & the Truth still the same in programmatic non-sameness. Or something like that.

I am starting to not make sense. Which might make me president of the United States, and no one wants that. Then again, nobody wants the present president of the United States, either.

So I'll merely say that this current edition of the Big Show is the same as every other in its eclecticism and high quality. And your host is what he is.

That is all.

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

The abomination of desecration

Like millions of Americans, I watched the towers fall in New York City -- live -- on my television set.

Before they fell, I saw people leap to their deaths.rather than be burned alive.

I watched the Pentagon burn. I heard the stories from Flight 93, which gave us "Let's roll!" as a battle cry after Sept. 11, 2001.

Looking into the Omaha sky that day, I saw fighter jets and an AWACS plane. And no other aircraft for days.

I saw my country changed forever, and not for the better, in a single morning. That day, 2,996 people died. People are still dying -- many of them New York first responders -- because of that day.

Wikipedia

TO THIS DAY, I get a pit in my stomach whenever I see old pictures of the twin towers of the then-World Trade Center.

And this is how the Omaha World-Herald has chosen to commemorate that terrible day -- with a 9/11 coupon section. If there's a more telling embodiment of the America of  Donald Trump, who infamously called a New York TV station to brag (falsely) that his Trump Tower now was the city's tallest, I don't know what that would be.

Thousands die. Hey, that's a killer opportunity to make a buck! Right, Warren Buffett? Right, Lee Enterprises?

I can't wait for what the World-Herald has planned for Pearl Harbor Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, when Todd Beamer told his fellow passengers "Let's roll!" as they fought to foil the plane's hijackers, little did we know how America would be rolling nearly two decades later.

It's enough to make one wonder whether our worst enemies are the ones who just might know us best.

Great Satan, indeed.

3 Chords & the Truth: Really?

There was a hurricane.

And, like, it moved north, you know, and wasn't. . . .

Not headed anywhere near Alabama.  But then the president tweeted. And. . . .

Then . . . then . . . he was wrong. But truth is a casualty when he's wrong and reality must be bent to make lies into something like the truth in this crazy, mixed-up land.

I swear to God, what's a poor music show to do in the middle of a loony bin? I'm talking about 3 Chords & the Truth here.

PITY THE Big Show that just wants to have fun when an apocalypse calls. No, not the Apocalypse, just an apocalypse.

But Donald Trump's trying hard, you know?

So tune in for 3 Chords & the Truth in full underground, rebel radio station mode. Because someone has to tell folks they're not the ones who are crazy.

Oh . . . the music's damn good, too.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: And it's all right?

We all, I think, had a close call with apocalyptic crazy last week, and it's all right.

For now.

I think.

The sun has continued to rise, and it appears we will make it to September. I think. That is, hurricanes and Washington willing.

Anyway, we're counting our being here to do yet another installment of 3 Chords & the Truth as a victory, which we're celebrating in the usual manner -- with really great music, eclectically presented.

IT'S THE BEST music. Unbelievably beautiful music. You would not believe how beautiful the music is on this week's edition of the Big Show.

And that's no fake news. Or is it Fake News?

The new rules for capitalization still kinda throw me. You know?

That said. . . .

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

Wigged out

July 28, 1970: This. Just this.

It would be a decade, roughly, before I figured out what a deeply, deeply weird place I came from. It would be another decade or so before it dawned on all of us what deeply strange times in which we Baby Boomers came of age.

Aug. 27, 2019: All the incentive anyone needs to open a saving account (assuming we had any money to save) would be . . . interest on our deposits.

I missed all the big events

July 24, 1970: The Antichrist takes up residence at a Baton Rouge, La., appliance store. And I freakin' missed it.

I had no idea that the malevolent ruler of the world had such a fascination with color TV. He and the 9-year-old me would have had something to talk about.

I bet he could have gotten me an RCA AccuColor set long before 1975, when the Old Man finally relented, succumbing to non-stop bitching by me and my mother and admitting that color television was not, alas, a fad. We did not get an RCA from McLeod's, however.

My father was a Magnavox man.