Showing posts with label easy listening. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easy listening. Show all posts

Friday, October 18, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Life is a cabaret, old chum

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play
The Big Show's a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret

(Boots clicking on the pavement en masse. . . .)

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
It's time for a holiday
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow your horn, start celebrating
Right this way, 3 Chords & the Truth's waiting

What good's permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away?

(Voice on the PA speaker at the political rally down the street
rails against scum, vermin, the enemy within. . . . )

The Big Show's a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret. . . .

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

Friday, October 11, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: A beastly affair

Here's a truth bomb for you: I've kinda been dreading this show, No. 666.

Six hundred sixty-six. 666. Mark of the Beast. That's some seriously bad juju.

When you enter this neighborhood, you don't know what will happen. You do know it will not be good.

While the music on this portentous edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is just as exceptional as ever, it did not take long for the god of hellfire to show his sulfurous self. That's bad.

AS IT TURNS OUT, 6-6-6 is not the only way to spell "mark of the beast." God preserve us.

Listen and learn, my friends. Listen and learn. Do not let this happen to you, especially on Nov. 5.

Like I was telling you, the music this week on the Big Show is great -- really, really great. But I must tell you that you're going to have to endure some things to get there. I would suggest you arm yourself with some garlic, some holy water, a crucifix . . . and perhaps a Kamala Harris yard sign.

Yeah, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Thou hast been warned. Hold thy soul, and thy family, close to thy heart. The Enemy lurketh, seeking the destruction of souls . . . and nations.

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

Friday, October 04, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: How did we get here?

Dear, there's never anything on the television, just Donald Trump saying crazy things and doing his best Adolf Hitler impersonation.

Let's listen to 3 Chords & the Truth instead.

I am so old, I remember Godwin's Law -- if you resort to calling someone a Nazi on the Internet, you lose the argument. I miss those days. I miss the days when not only weren't there that many Nazis on the Internet, but there wasn't one of the two major candidates for president holding Nuremberg for Dummies rallies from sea to shining sea.

How in the hell did we get here?

Why in the hell do I feel compelled to bring this up on a show -- on 3 Chords & the Truth, where the focus ought to be fun and great music, both without limit or limitations? It's because regardless of how the hell we got here, we got here nevertheless.

In other words, if you like the Big Show, listen while you can. I wish I were kidding. I am not.

The Big Show always and everywhere is greater than the Big Lie, but it is not assured that the Big Lie won't prevail, with all that it portends for the future of this country. How this all turns out is entirely up to you. Vote.

In the meantime, enjoy the music -- it's fabulous -- and the much needed distraction.

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

Saturday, September 21, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog's little helper

Listen, we're in a little blue dot in a redneck state -- one that used to not be all that bad, actually.

But now it is. And especially this year, that can get, how do we say, depressing AF.

Still, you have to do 3 Chords & the Truth. Every damn week. Your keel has to be even.

So, sometimes, you need a little somethin' somethin'. I forget what the directions on the label said, but I figure I'm good if I take more than one and fewer than 10.

I FIGURE I'm good if I take more than one and fewer than 10.

I figure I'm good if I take more than one and fewer than 10.

Good, I am if take, I do, more than one and fewer than . . . I forget. Better take another one.

It's a good Big Show; it's a laid back show. Show. Mellow. Cool!

Good is the music. Mellow is the host. Copacetic is the vibe.

I figure I'm good if I take more than one and fewer than 10. Ten. An interesting number, that.

Because one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. The 0 makes it unlonely. Yes, it does.

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

Friday, September 13, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: If you can't laugh. . . .

Well, at least we don't have little messages before the late news saying "It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your cats and dogs are?"

Yet.

Every damn week for the last nine years or so, whenever I'm confronted with writing another little missive for another episode of 3 Chords & the Truth, I have to think of something to say amid the crazy. And You Know Who has prompted the fruitiest of the Fruit Loops in America today.

Now, it's "They're eating the cats. They're eating the dogs." You Know Who floated that bit of crazy during  the presidential debate, no less.

What in the Wide World of Sports is your average, marginally sane person supposed to do with that level of bat shit?

To maintain my marginal level of sanity, I make merciless fun of it. So we're breaking a bubbling-under-the-Top-40 future smash hit on the Big Show this week. It, unsurprisingly, is from that unfathomably popular group, The DJT Music Explosion.

They're exploding something, all right.

Let's just hope it doesn't end up being the United States of America.

That said, insert the usual description of the awesomeness of this week's show, because that generally doesn't change a whit.

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

Friday, August 30, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Remembering a friend

Did you have a friend who, in a roundabout way, is why you do what you do today?

Was that friend, by chance . . . a radio station?

As it happens, I am among that geeky subset of folks who can answer yes to that. My radio friend's name was WLCS, also sometimes known during various eras as the Big Win 910 or the Big 91. It made up a big part of the soundtrack of my youth and, sometimes, it was the bright spot during some dark days.

If you appreciate 3 Chords & the Truth, there are a small number of the radio stations of my youth in Baton Rouge, La., that you can thank. WLCS is at the front of that list.

FORTY YEARS ago today, the Big 91 faded into the mists of history. Now it lives only in the memories of those of us who are, as they say, "of a certain age" . . . and as part of the Big Show.

WLCS was, I'd argue, a higher form of social media than what we call "social media" today. Oftentimes, today's social media is downright antisocial. The radio of my youth actually brought people together. The media of today often drives people apart.

I REALIZE this might come off as the whining of an old man, a geezer complaining that things absolutely were better back in the day. I am from the Deep South; that tends, if one is honest with oneself, to immunize against silly nostalgia.

But some things were better. The Big 91 was one of those things. I have it to thank for this thing we call 3 Chords & the Truth.

And, like a friend who has slipped this mortal coil, it lives on. It lives in our memories and in our hearts, and -- in a way -- it lives on right here.

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

Saturday, July 27, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: As the Nut Cracks

Click.

You're in tune with 3 Chords & the Truth, Omaha.

(THEME MUSIC SWELLS.)

Join us for the next 90 minutes for As the Nut Cracks, the story of a country just a bit off its nut, sponsored by Planters, where every can is full of nuts, just like American politics. Planters, where nuttery is our business.

(DISSOLVE TO OPENING SCENE.)

"Bing bong, bing bing bing! Sharks! Electric boats! Shocking! Jaws! Mass deportation now! Commies! Commies!"

We will return to the Big Show after these messages.

Buy Planters. Our nuts are the good kind. Really.

Now back to . . . As the Nut Cracks!

"Doctor, is there anything that can be done? I'm afraid, Doctor, I'm afraid! That's some weird shit."

"It's a difficult case, Jane. One of the worst I've ever seen . . . but we'll do our best. But for you, dear, I recommend you start drinking heavily. After all, I'm a doctor.

"Also, you might want to listen to some good music. It will be very calming. I'll give you a prescription."

"Thank you, Doctor. Thanks for everything."

(MUSIC SWELLS.)

Can the doctor restore sanity? Or will the nut crack? Find out tomorrow on the next episode of As the Nut Cracks, the story of a country that's just around the bend.

Now a final word from our sponsor -- Planters. Our nuts won't hurt you, just so long as you're not allergic.

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

Friday, July 19, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: America today

We find ourselves living in the Age of Disunity. Now, more than ever, the mother's milk of politics is bullshit.

This applies much more to some political parties than others. Boy, does it.

Listen, I watched all of Donald Trump's historically weird acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, otherwise known as Nuremberg for Dummies. That über über gathering in Milwaukee was notable among American political conventions for the placard handouts that got right to the point -- "MASS DEPORTATION NOW."

Sieg heil, y'all.

THIS IS the American milieu from which 3 Chords & the Truth emerges every week. You sometimes wonder whether doing this thing, amid this level of ugly, every week amounts to whistling past a national graveyard.

Oh, yeah. Some 20-year-old nutter attempted to assassinate Trump last week. So there's that.

I absolutely cannot wait for what lies ahead . . . said no one ever the past few years.

Then we have the Democrats trying to force a diminished and doddering Joe Biden off the ballot. The niceties disappear when the stakes are existential, and losing may be death.

Ready for some music yet?

Ready or not, here it is, and it's damn good. As usual. In times like these, you have to keep on keepin' on -- until you can't. We'll keep the eclectic wonderfulness of the Big Show coming . . . until we can't.

It's that kind of America right now.

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

Friday, June 14, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Baby, it's you

Here's to you.

After all, without you, we at 3 Chords & the Truth are talking to ourselves and playing records for the wind.

So, musically, that's where we're starting on the show this week. But that's not where we're going to end. There is lots to love -- as usual -- about yet another episode of the Big Show. I mean, we're talking some seriously good music, intelligently presented.

Thank a seriously massive music library.

And that's about all I have to say about that. If you know, you know. If you don't -- yet -- this is as good a time as any to find out. You can thank me later.

With that said. . . .

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

Friday, May 17, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: What can I say?

What can I say?

Well, I don't know.

I've been in a contemplative mood but, unfortunately, that hasn't readily translated into something in particular to actually say on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Guess the music will have to do the talking.

Good thing the music, as usual, just says it all.

That's the Big Show for you.

And that is all I have to say.

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

Friday, May 10, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Nudge dread

"These are the times that try men's souls."

Thomas Paine opened his essay "American Crisis" with that sentence in December 1776. The revolution against Great Britain wasn't going so well at that point.

Two hundred forty-eight years later, with a country riven as much as it's been since the Civil War, with a deranged authoritarian commanding the loyalty of a good 40 percent of Americans -- with American democracy itself teetering on the sharp edge of oblivion -- these are the times that try people's will to get out of bed in the morning.

SCRATCH MILLIONS of average Americans, and you're likely to bring forth a flood of existential dread. It's been that way for much of the past nine years.

And here I am doing a music podcast. You may have heard of it -- 3 Chords & the Truth. And the Truth is, we don't know how much more of this mess we, and the United States, can take. Think of the 3 Chords part as a pleasant refuge from the encroaching dread.

Ninety minutes' peace a week from existential dread ain't nothing. Well, that's one way to market the Big Show.

The quintessential 2024 way to market a music program.

Fortunately, that 90 minutes a week of musical refuge are 90 quality minutes of musical refuge. An absolute dread-free zone.

Thank God.

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

Saturday, April 27, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Spiraling

This is where I'm supposed to be clever or funny -- or something -- as I say something that's vaguely about this week's episode of the Big Show.

And perhaps you've noticed that I'm rather late posting this week's 3 Chords & the Truth.

Truth is . . . clever, funny or saying much about this week's show isn't really in the cards this early Saturday morning. I'm posting the show because it's been in the can since early Friday morning, but hyping it would be, in my reckoning right now, kind of vulgar.

Maybe you've heard on the news that Omaha (a.k.a., Omaha, by God, Nebraska) was hit hard by tornadoes Friday afternoon. The biggest one, out in far western Omaha, was massive and powerful -- perhaps an EF-4 or EF-5. That has yet to be officially determined, but it was really big, really powerful . . . and there are many homes and a few neighborhoods that no longer exist.

ON THE OTHER side of town, just north of downtown Omaha, a tornado tore through our airport, heavily damaging the general aviation section. My wife and I saw that happen on live TV.

The monster tornado missed our house (a.k.a., the Culture War bunker) by about 9 miles or so. The other one missed us by about 7 miles and change. We were lucky.

Not so for folks in a ruined path through western Douglas County, the western suburbs of Omaha and up through Bennington and well into Washington County. Also down toward Lincoln, Neb. And across the river in Iowa, tornadoes leveled huge parts of a few small towns, as well as some areas in Council Bluffs.

This area hasn't seen anything like that since the Tornado of 1975, an EF-4 monster that ripped through the middle of Omaha and was the United States' first billion-dollar twister.

Yes, this week's Big Show is as fine as ever. It's just that that seems rather unimportant now. As is the self-serving social-media hype one is expected to do these days.

I mean, "Too bad about the devastation across town, but now let's get back to the bitchin' tunes!" just doesn't cut it.

The show's done, and I didn't want to junk it, and that's about all I feel like saying about it. So I suck at modern marketing. Whoopee.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Listen. Or don't.

In the grand scheme of things, it's not that important, actually.

Friday, April 19, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Here comes the music

Sooner or later, the Big Show's gonna get ya.

Sooner or later, friend, you got to give in.

Sooner or later, the tunes are gonna let 'cha.

Sooner or later, the music's gonna win. Music's gonna win.

IT'S JUST a matter of time before you make up your mind.

To give all those grooves that you've been hiding.

Its just a question of when, I've told you time and again. You'll get all the tunes you've been denying.

Sooner or later, 3C&T is gonna get ya.

Sooner or later, friend, you got to give in.

Sooner or later, the tunes are gonna let 'cha.

Sooner or later, the music's gonna win. Music's gonna win!

So . . . here comes the Big Show. You betcha.

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

Friday, April 12, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Nekkid truth

I sit here at the keyboard, naked before you, telling and playing the truth.

Well, not naked naked but figuratively naked. And certainly not nekkid. As any Southerner will tell you, there's a difference between naked and nekkid. Naked is clothesless. Nekkid is naked while up to something. There's a 3 Chords & the Truth naked truth for you.

I'll tell you the naked truth of why Linda Martell's debut country album was her last album. It is not an easy path for Black women in Nashville today. It was exponentially harder in 1970 and, indeed, it didn't work out -- for obvious reasons five years past the technical end of Jim Crow.

Back then, the miraculous apparently was all used up on the great Charley Pride's stardom.

HERE'S ANOTHER naked truth for this edition of the Big Show: Great music encompasses all genres, and they all can coexist on a single program. You know. like this one. And yet another one: Too many people are too parochial to embrace that fact.

Having grown up before the culture splintered into microcultures, it was pretty easy for an old guy like me to realize that at a relatively early age. It got even easier when I aged out of any concern for being "cool."

And the nakedest truth for me right now is that, in writing this, I'm just all over the place. Like, are people going to think I'm an idiot when I say The Who's "Naked Eye" is on Who's Next? Well, if you have a later CD re-release, it is.

Another version is on Odds and Sods (1974). The naked truth is that digital re-releases of classic albums make one's musical-geek life confusing. Bonus tracks good; bonus tracks kinda bad if you nerd out on who released what when.

Like I said, all over the place, I am. No, I am not Yoda. I just write like him.

Perhaps I'd better stop now. That's the naked truth, but not the nekkid truth. Nekkid truth, you would not want to see.

And there goes the thread, which I have lost.

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

Friday, March 15, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Moonglow

When does "old people's music" become your music, too?

I think that happens in a couple of ways -- when you start playing it yourself, then something happens in your head and in your heart . . . and when you encounter magic in the night. Let's just call it "moonglow."

Or, more properly, "Moonglow."

That is what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about. Let's go deeper, and I'll use my own experience to do that.

Big band was my parents' music, kind of like country, Lawrence Welk and Guy Lombardo. As a kid in the pre-digital age, I was force-fed three things on TV in the days of one or two TV sets in the house and just two channels in Baton Rouge. First, it was The Porter Wagoner Show. Second, The Lawrence Welk Show. Third, every Dec. 31, Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians counting down to the new year . . . also pre-digital.

OF COURSE, I was lucky to have grown up playing, and loving, the records bought by the younger version of my parents. We're talking jump blues, gut-bucket jump blues, Western swing, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers and Thin Elvis.

The "race music" thing and my racist parents? One of the many contradictions of the segregated South. If you try to make sense of it, you'll fail.

But . . . then came high school, and high-school radio.

Two of the shows I had to do as a student DJ at Baton Rouge High's FM station, WBRH, were the big-band show and the jazz show. I not only learned a lot (in some cases, painfully), but I also learned to love the music -- the music of the "old folks."  Go figure. Maybe the folks, in their own hidebound way, were planting seeds with all that forced viewing of Larry, et al.

And then, when I was in college at Louisiana State, I discovered Moonglow With Martin on WRKF public radio, which then was a brand-new thing in Baton Rouge -- broadcasting from a house trailer on Frenchtown Road. The late-night program was a continuation of something legendary disc jockey Dick Martin had been doing, on various stations around the country, since the early 1950s on clear-channel, 50,000-watt WWL in New Orleans.

Martin was a big-band and jazz DJ. He only played the good stuff -- the really good stuff. His show was, not to put too fine a point on it, magic. I missed out on his WWL show, and I was just a little kid when, after a stint in Kansas City, he brought it for a time to Baton Rouge's WJBO-FM in 1965. (Besides, who listened to FM in 1965? Apart from the folks in dentists' offices.)

Martin at WJBO, 1965 (Sunday Advocate)
BUT I DIDN'T miss Moonglow With Martin on public radio after 'RKF came to my cultural-wasteland of a hometown in 1980. Seriously, people, we didn't have public TV until 1975; WBRH was the city's first noncommercial radio station since WLSU-FM went under in 1957, a generation earlier. And we had only Channel 2 and Channel 9 until 1971, when we got an ABC affiliate, Channel 33.

And in the white, working-class world of my childhood, subversiveness was called SOOOOUL Train! But what about my parents' old race records? Do not try to square that circle; you will hurt yourself.

So, like my parents' old country and blues records, and the Top-40 and progressive FM rock of my growing-up years, Dick Martin's Moonglow With Martin is in most every episode of the Big Show. It is a marvelous mix of my youthful force-feedings, rebellion and . . . musical discovery.

If you want to know what 3 Chords & the Truth is, exactly, it's me. And maybe it's you, too.

Whatever the case, it's good. It's damned good. Thank you, Mr. Martin.

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

Friday, March 08, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Let's put on a show!

Perhaps you've rolled your eyes through a less-than-stellar production put on by not-so-good high school thespians.

Well, if you sat through U.S. Sen Katie Britt's response to the State of the Union address, you certainly have had that experience. Alabama's got some 'splainin' to do.

Well, this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is not that. If it ever is, I'm hangin' it up for the public good.

But the proof is in the listening, and I guaran-damn-tee that there's not a cringe in the entire 90 minutes. I play music on the Big Show; you decide.

That is all.

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

Friday, February 16, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Make radio great again

In the past few decades, radio has become a real sh*thole medium.

It's real programming and Music Carnage out there, people. And I alone can fix it.

The fix is 3 Chords & the Truth. Bigly.

"Sir, I turn on the radio, and all I hear is crap. Where is this fixing you talk about?"

I am glad you asked that question. And I will answer it while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for your insulating . . . insurance? Impotence?

I will tell you the suppressed truth while my Enthusiastic Supporters beat the crap out of you for being a Smart Ass.

THE TRUTH is that Deep Radio wants this program to fail. The big men at Big Companies are censoring the programming genius -- a very great genius -- that is the Big Show. They won't put it on the air . . . something about "formatics." And that shows you what kind of Bird Brains make up Deep Radio; the show has nothing to do with countertops.

They don't have a clue. They don't have a clue.

And I have very wonderful countertops. The best countertops. I also have the best Music Show on the Internets, but it's not a countertop. I guess you can put your computer or smartphone on the countertop -- maybe put some speakers up there, too.

It would look wonderful. It would, I think, work out very nicely. But 3 Chords & the Truth is not a countertop, but who knows? We have some Very Great Scientists . . . and I could have been a scientist, a Very Great Scientist, very much like Fat Albert Einstein . . . now that's a guy who could make the show also be a countertop, and we're working on that now . . . we're trying to get Einstein in on the project as I speak.

And we'll get there. We'll get there. Because I alone can fix it, and the fix is in; we're Fixing right now.

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

Friday, February 09, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Placement is everything

Placement is everything.

Placing the right players in the right positions on the right team? It's everything.

Hiring the right coaches? Everything.

Placing the right people in Congress, while placing the wrong people far, far away? As we have seen the past few years . . . everything.

Placing the right man in the White House? Everything.

Placing the man with 91 criminal counts pending before a jury -- and definitely not placing him in the presidency again? Everything.

Here at 3 Chords & the Truth, it's an undisputed canon of life that placement is everything. And that covers everything, including the music you hear. If the wrong song is in the wrong place, it will not be pleasant for anybody.

If a totally unexpected song is in just the right place, it can be magical. On this episode of the Big Show -- every episode, actually -- we go for the magic. Thank your lucky stars for good placement.

You see, as I've said previously, placement is everything.

Now, if you would be so kind as to place yourself in a comfy chair and place your favorite high-fidelity audio device on "loud," we can commence with some musical magic.

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

Friday, February 02, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: Mind games

If you've been watching some of the 357 channels on which there is nothing much, you may have seen that MAGA Nation is convinced that Taylor Swift and Chiefs wide receiver Travis Kelce are the center of some sort of psyops operation to ratf*ck the election against Donald Trump.

It's the Deep State, don't you know.

Now, you may be saying these people have lost their damned minds. It does look that way.

You, however, do not know the whole story. The music superstar and the future NFL hall of famer, indeed, are not the centerpiece of a CIA (Or is it the Department of Defense?) psychological-warfare operation. In a world of budget continuing resolutions in Congress, alas, the Deep State cannot afford Taylor Swift.

WHAT THE government can afford . . . is me. Your Mighty Favog. And 3 Chords & the Truth.

Unfortunately for the gummint, you get what you pay for. Make sure your passport is current.

The good news, though, is that amid the psychological warfarin' on this edition of the Big Show, there is a lot of great, great music. As usual. So that's not nothin'.

Actually, that a whole lot of something to enjoy while you're researching how to obtain resident visas for various countries not this one. So, if I were you, I'd start listening right now.

Crank it up. You'll be glad you did.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some brainwashin' to do, which is -- to say the least -- is challenging to accomplish when a sizable percentage of the population's minds are gone.

A good psyops officer wouldn't have said that, would he? Again, one gets what one pays for.

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

Friday, January 26, 2024

3 Chords & the Truth: What a drag it is. . . .

What a drag it is living here.

Life is different today, I hear everybody say. People need something today to calm us down.

And though we're not really ill, there's a big, big podcast show. We go running for the shelter of the Big Show outlook helper.

And it helps us on our way -- gets us through our busy day.

FOLKS ARE different today, I hear everybody say. Watching the TV news has become such a drag.

So here's 3 Chords & the Truth, and life seems less uncouth. We go running for the shelter of Favog's little helper.

And it helps you on your way -- gets you through your busy day.

Let's go running for the shelter of your Big Show podcast helper. . . .

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