Dear folks, Hope things are going well back at 3 Chords & the Truth! Am having a great time on this mental trip to the Bahamas.
The water is fine, the beach is pristine, and I'm doing my own musical thing here! Nobody looks askew at me when I play wild, crazy, improbable collections of all kind of music -- because here on the beach, in the Bahamas, everybody's free to do our own thing, baby!
And I'm a-doin' it! You can make book on that.
You just wouldn't believe the fineness going on here by the ocean, in the Bahamas of my mind.
Sweet!
I MEAN, all these crazy artists are here -- like, people who would NEVER play on the same bill -- and they're having this amazing jam session on the beach outside my cabana. OMG!
It's the place we longed for -- the place to get away from it all. The place to be an individual just like the Joneses, with whom we must keep up.
It's the adjustable-rate American Dream, the one where we lose ourselves as we lose our way, and the neighbors can't help because -- frankly -- we don't know them all that well.
It's the hour commute of our discontent. It's where we come to know poverty can be more than a lack of disposable income. It's where we have everything and have nothing.
It's a way of life we're finding we no longer can afford, fueled by resources we're running out of.
It's Suburbia . . . and we're taking a musical look at it this week on 3 Chords & the Truth, just in time for the release of Arcade Fire's excellent new album, The Suburbs.
What does it all mean? Well, it depends.
Download the Big Show, put on your musical thinking cap and see whether you can sort it all out. Or just turn off your brain and rock out -- it's totally up to you.
Really. LET'S SEE . . . what else we got going on on this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth? Well, lots, actually.
We go under the covers, and you can use your imagine to decide what that's all about, because I ain't giving it away here. You'll have to listen to be sure.
And . . . what else? Let's see, we also go all the way back to 1949 to see what was on the radio back then, as we look for the roots of rock 'n' roll in there somewhere.
Sound like fun? Yeah? Then what are you waiting for? It's up there on the audio player, and it's here, too.
If you're wondering what happened to this week's edition of3 Chords & the Truth . . . there isn't one. We're taking the week off. As you can see from this picture of my assistant Scout, we're tired.
As you also can see from my assistant Scout, it's impossible to find good help that works for dog treats.
We figure the Big Show will be back next weekend, and we also figure that it just might blow your mind.
It already has blown Scout's.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there next week (or listen to the archives now). Aloha.
This episode of the Big Show seeks to answer a single, simple question. Was Rusty stoned, or what? He hadn't been himself lately. Normally, he would be the life of the party, telling jokes and flirting with all the women.
Tonight, though, he seemed different. Introspective. He kept putting this Joan Baez album on the record player, and listening over and over again -- deep in thought.
RUSTY, normally a leisure suit full of laughs and hijinks . . . piss and vinegar, got a little weepy talking about Janis Joplin. Wondering about the music of her former beau, Kris Kristofferson.
We asked him to sing that "La Vie en Rose" thing he does, but he said he wasn't in a bistro-y, chanson-y kind of mood. He was hitting the Early Times pretty hard.
I mean, you saw him -- was Rusty stoned or what?
Man, I sure hope Mary was driving home -- if Rusty was behind the wheel, it'll be "Book him, Dano" time.
That boy -- there's four letters for that boy . . . D-R-N . . . U . . . D-R-A . . . . There's five letters that spell that boy's name -- S-T-O-N-E-D.
I DUNNO. Listen to the Big Show right now and let me know what you think.
Hey, babe! Hit me up again with a double of somethin', doll!
I've been away from the blog -- mostly -- for a while doing this delicate dance between my inner MacGyver and my inner MacGruber.
In other words, I was out accomplishing s***. Despite myself. The saga started Sunday, when Mrs. Favog and I bought an old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck for $30 at an estate sale here in Omaha. Did it work? I didn't know, but I suspected I might be setting out on a journey to the Land of Fix-It -- a kind of road trip of the mind and soul that I'll detail in a bit.
But here's what's important right now about that trip: It feels good -- and I needed that.
It's easy to sit behind the keys here and write about stuff. Some of that output, I hope, is insightful and decently written. Most of it, I fear, falls in the category of "Well, DUH!"
OURS ISan age where I have just committed a branding and self-marketing faux pas. Humility is out, and so is introspection that might lead to honesty.
What I ought to have told you is how dead-on right I've been about stuff, that this is important writing, and that you can't live without reading my take on things. This would be because I am smart, hip, happenin' and. . . .
That's right -- cool.
That's how, apparently, one "markets" oneself. I suck at that, probably because I think it's bull. A lie. Immodest . . . particularly in a world where a little modesty might be refreshing.
Yeah, I could have been waxing eloquently about the bloody obvious fact that Shirley Sherrod got hosed, that the Obama Administration let itself get stampeded by the Big Lie, and that Andrew Breitbart is a far-right ideologue and twit whose actions over the last year or so just may prove him to be objectively evil.
Or at least indifferent to the truth.
All of that, of course, would be bloody obvious, except to certain brain-dead constituencies who -- unfortunately -- have taken advantage of universal suffrage.
But I didn't wax eloquently about that, or any other stuff that might be rattling around the echo chamber this week. Instead, I've been doing something useful -- fixing up that beautiful old TEAC reel-to-reel tape deck, one about 40 years old.
Why?
WELL, for one thing, getting that thing running again -- put back into good use once more -- was something tangible, a sign of contradiction in this increasingly intangible world. I figured I could look at something restored to its former audiophile glory and feel like I'd accomplished something.
That's objective fact. It was broken. Now it ain't. I accomplished something.
Being another schmuck opining on a blog? Feh. Maybe that's an accomplishment, but you just might find it to be a first-class detriment to . . . whatever.
Making a tape deck live again -- making it once again able to pluck lost bits of music . . . and history . . . indeed, ourselves out of magnetized oxide particles stuck to a Mylar backing -- now that's something tangible, and your validation neither adds nor subtracts from the act.
I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see.
Or hear, as the case may be.
LIKE I SAID, my journey with the old TEAC started in west Omaha last Sunday. The ticket cost 30 bucks.
I don't know why -- I mean, apart from my general geekiness -- I love old reel-to-reel tape decks.
But I do love me some reel-to-reel tape deck, and I have even before I did my first air shift in a radio station, where once upon a time, you could play with top-end (or not) reel-to-reel tape decks to no end.
For its time -- the late 1960s and early '70s -- the TEAC A-4010S was quality stuff. A top performer. Built like a tank.
Today, geeks like me call it a "classic" -- classic in performance, in design and in quality of construction.
When I bought this one -- as I said -- I didn't know whether it worked. Turns out it didn't.
THE ELECTRONICS in the amplifier were fine, as I more or less discovered when I got it home and powered it up, but the tape transport was in bad shape. The pinch roller mechanism, part of what makes the tape move along at the correct speed, was as stiff as a board -- it moved only through brute force.
This was not by design. The whole thing needed cleaning and oiling . . . and a screw in back needed loosening (a little).
And the capstan drive belt? It had turned into tar balls. Really.
Ever tried cleaning tar off of all manner of metal moving parts? Not fun.
Slowly but surely, I got the old TEAC -- it of long-past better days in an Omaha home where its owner used it to listen to Latter-Day Saints conference sessions and some sort of music programming -- cleaned up, lubed up and loosened up.
I scavenged a drive belt and a better pinch roller from another old TEAC tape deck I wasn't using anymore. When I found the belt was too loose to stay where the tape-recorder gods intended, I cut it to fit and super-glued it back together.
And when the torque on the drive motors was too much in one spot and too little in another -- trust me, this can get real ugly, real fast -- I ended up doing some MacGyvering of the taps on a couple of resistors.
IN BRIEF, thank God for old service manuals found on the Internet, an unused tape deck to scavenge from, WD-40, Super Glue and electrical tape. Not necessarily in that order.
And thank God for the tangible things in a self-promoting, subjective and intangible world. Thank God for old tape decks, craftsmanship that stands the test of time, working with your hands and the visible fruits of one's labor.
Thank God for these things, because sometimes they're what keep us sane. And sometimes, they point the way toward what's really important in life.
If a certain teen-age heartthrob is any indication of "how we ball at the Omaha mall," I'd rather watch paint dry. But Twitter says this is da bomb, trendingwise, so it must be fab.
Or . . . maybe it's time for America to overthrow the running-dog teenybopper mindlessness and return whathisname to performing in the annual talent show at some fresh suburban high-school hell.
Maybe it's time to rise up against a level of adolescent crap that makes Donny Osmond look profound.
MAYBE it's time to dig deeper into the music -- maybe it time to try music for a change -- and "trend" over to the Big Show, otherwise known as 3 Chords & the Truth.
What do you have to lose? It's not like 3 Chords & the Truth could be any worse putrid than how Justin Bieber "balls" at the Omaha mall.
The last time I posted a "WBRH episode" of3 Chords & the Truth, it was an accident.
When I finished putting that particular program together back in February, it struck me that one of the musical sets sounded a lot like what we might have done at the radio voice of Baton Rouge High School 3o-something years ago. Or something like that.
This "WBRH episode" of the Big Show, however,is entirely on purpose -- as in, "If I could bring the WBRH of old into the present day . . . and then do the afternoon rock show there again, what would I do?"
THE ANSWER is simple: Something a lot like this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, that's a lot like most editions of 3C&T, but not exactly.
If I had a shift on my high-school radio station once again, there's probably one or three things I do here I couldn't do there. But after I'd had a while to work on 'em . . . who knows?
This week, it's the spirit of '78, updated and plopped down in July 2010, right here on WBR . . . er, the Big Show.
There's something I need to say. You know how people -- mostly in corporations and crap -- say no one is irreplaceable? That's bulls***. The folks in North Platte, Neb., learned how irreplaceable Keith Blackledge was when he retired as editor of the North Platte Telegraph.
They learned how irreplaceable he was when he was no longer at the little daily newspaper, and no longer was taking punk kids right out of college and turning them into grown-up reporters and editors who, frankly, learned more in North Platte than they had in several years of journalism school. North Platte also learned how irreplaceable Keith was when -- suddenly -- the little newspaper that could . . . couldn't. Well, at least not nearly so much as it had under the steady -- and sometimes bemused -- leadership of Keith Blackledge.
People learned how irreplaceable one newspaper editor was when he no longer sat in that corner office at the Telegraph. When he no longer could will, it seemed, a little city to do what needed to be done, establish what needed to be established and build what needed to be built.
They also learned how irreplaceable Keith was when he grew too frail to serve on the approximately 98 trillion committees and boards he had served on for decades and decades.
AND NOW we all are learning how irreplaceable Keith Blackledge is as a presence in our lives -- as a living example of how to love the place where God has put you, do a job to the best of your ability and then teach your charges how to do that, too. We're learning that because time waits for no man -- not even Keith -- and it finally has taken that presence away from us.
We can't replace it. We can't replace the best damned boss we ever had -- those of us who were blessed enough to pass through the Telegraph newsroom on our way to somewhere, alas, not as good.
Almost three decades ago, a know-it-all, smartass kid from way south of the Mason-Dixon Line trekked out to the Sandhills of Nebraska to give Keith Blackledge a spring and a summer of hard work, some more-or-less decent news stories and, no doubt, a serious case -- or 20 -- of acid indigestion, with the odd migraine thrown in as lagniappe.
In return, Keith gave me a graduate-level, hands-on education in community journalism, a well-deserved ass-chewing or two, several friends for life . . . and my dear wife of 27 years -- the wire editor I stole from him on my way out the door.
I got the better end of the deal. Keith, meantime, was left holding an IOU I couldn't repay, not even if I had six lifetimes to try.
At the wedding shower, he also gave me the best advice I've ever gotten. Keith advised me that I should take care of all the monumental things in Mrs. Favog's and my marriage -- you know, world peace, geopolitics, erasing the national debt and divining the meaning of life -- while letting my new bride handle everything else. You know, like what I'll wear, where I'll go, where we'd live, what we'd eat, when I should just shut the hell up . . . stuff like that.
So far, it's worked out pretty damned well.
Except that I just broke Keith's rule about cussing in the newsroom.
I only can hope that the best damned newspaperman ever will forgive me this one last transgression. After all, I was -- and am -- replaceable.
Once upon a time, Walt Whitman could write this -- I Hear America Singing:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
I THINK, when you distill all that besets up on this Independence Day of 2010, it comes down to this one thing.
We're having trouble remembering the tune.
The tune that America was singing. Anyway, that's what's on my mind for this holiday edition of the Big Show. Your mileage may vary.
There's some other stuff -- amazing stuff -- in there as well this week, so you really don't want to miss what we're up to as you go about whatever it is you're up to for the Fourth.
Diese Woche auf 3 Chords & die Wahrheit, könnte man sagen, dass wir mit einem musikalischen Turmbau zu Babel.
Musik aus aller Welt, die alle durch die Jahrzehnte, die alle in verschiedenen Sprachen. Nur nicht Englisch ist.
Das ist so ziemlich das Spiel für das erste Drittel des Big Show -- und es ist ein guter. Du wirst sehen. . . oder vielmehr zu hören. Einfach zuhören, OK?
QUESTA SETTIMANA il 3 Chords & la Verità, si potrebbe dire che siamo dotate di una torre di Babele musicale.
Musica da tutto il mondo, tutto attraverso i decenni, tutti in lingue diverse. Solo, non in inglese.
Questo è esattamente il piano di gioco per il primo terzo del Big Show -- ed è un buon compromesso. Vedrai. . . o, meglio, sentire. Basta ascoltare, OK?
DENNA VECKA på3 Chords & Sanningen kan man säga vi featuring en musikalisk Babels torn.
Musik från hela världen, alla genom årtionden, alla i olika språk. Bara inte engelska.
Det är ganska mycket i spelet planen för första tredjedelen av Big Show - och det är en bra en. Du kommer att se. . . eller snarare höra. Lyssna bara, okej?
ESTA SEMANA, el 3 de Acordes y la Verdad, se podría decir que estamos con una torre de Babel musical.
Música de todo el mundo, a lo largo de las décadas, todos en lenguas diferentes. Simplemente no Inglés.
Eso es más o menos el plan de juego para el primer tercio del Big Show -- y es una buena idea. Ya lo verás. . . o, mejor dicho, oír. Sólo escucha, ¿OK?
CETTE SEMAINE sur les3 Accords et la Vérité, vous pourriez dire que nous sommes dotées d'une tour de Babel musicale.
Musique de partout dans le monde, tout au long des décennies, le tout dans des langues différentes. Juste pas l'anglais.
C'est à peu près le plan de match pour le premier tiers du Grand Spectacle -- et c'est une bonne chose. Vous verrez. . . ou, plutôt, d'entendre. Il suffit d'écouter, OK?
You heard me. Listen to this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- it's right here -- or Tony Hayward gets it.
I'm serious.
Really, I'll do it! Listen to this week's episode of the Big Show, or the CEO of BP gets it. And then we'll throw what's left of him into the oil slick.
I'm not messing with you people anymore. Either listen to3 Chords & the Truth -- which really is a fine show this week and every week -- or we let Tony Hayward, CEO of British Polluters, go home to London unscathed!
He'll make it back without a scratch on him. Unless you listen to the program right now.
We may reside nowhere near them anymore, but we have our touchstones.
The things that make us who we are. The things that remind us who, and what, we are.
And sometimes we lose them. Sometimes -- for the love of money or whatever the hell else -- somebody destroys them.
Places . . . things . . . cultures are destroyed just because we humans can do it. That's what we do. We tear up stuff.
And people. I'VE BLOGGEDplenty about the latest calamity befalling my home state, Louisiana. It's tearing me up, and I'm half a continent away. Want to know what it's like to suspect you mail hail from the lost continent of Atlantis? Buy me a few beers, and I'll try to tell you.
That's what this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about. I don't belabor the point this week -- that would make for entertaining radio, right? -- but that's what the show is mostly about.
I'm hopeful the music will speak for itself.
SO . . . that's the rundown on the latest episode of the Big Show. I'm betting that making a point, and venting via music, still can be entertaining. You be the judge.
The following cautionary tale is brought to you by the Internet's finest music podcast, 3 Chords & the Truth.
Ready? Here you go:
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for?
SO SAD. So sad. It seems to me the quality of poor Eleanor's dream could have been enhanced by regular downloading of the Big Show.
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?
WHERE DO all the lonely people come from? Obviously from that bitter and antisocial place where 3 Chords & the Truth is not a weekly part of one's life.
That prospect is depressing enough to turn anybody into a sad hermit.
Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear No one comes near. Look at him working, darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there What does he care?
HELLO? FATHER? Nobody is listening to your sermons because they're booorrrrrrriiinnng! Really, if you listened to 3 Chords & the Truth, you'd be much happier, and I am sure there's scientific research somewhere pointing out that listening to good music increases the effectiveness of sermon writing 110 percent.
Get with the program, Fadda! Listen to the Big Show and quit being such a prig.
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people Ah, look at all the lonely people
YEAH, YEAH, YEAH . . . been over all that. Yadda yadda yadda.
Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name Nobody came Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave No one was saved
WELL, that's just sadder than hell. And such a waste, too.
It could have been avoided with something as simple as a weekly dose of 3 Chords & the Truth. Proven effective in combating the boredom that causes priggishness, a leading cause of loneliness.
All the lonely people Where do they all come from? All the lonely people Where do they all belong?
UH HUH, uh huh. Yeah, yeah. Heard that, haven't we? Move along, nothing new here. Just listen tothe Big Show, and all will be well.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
It's as simple as that. Just being. No big message, no overriding machination to the conglomeration . . . just being.
EXISTING in the moment. Taking life -- and the Big Show -- as it comes, and enjoying the moment.
It's the Memorial Day weekend, and it seems to me that Memorial Day, and all it stands for, is as good a time as any to just be. And be content. And grateful.
But mainly just being. There.
I mean, I'm no Chance the Gardener -- well, maybe I'm kind of close to Chance the Gardener, except that nobody listens to me -- but that's what I have to say as we ease on into summer. With 3 Chords & the Truth . . . and the music.
Well, yeah, David Gates is the Guitar Man, but I got a few here on 3 Chords & the Truth, too.
And if you're interested, we got some horns and pianos, too. Want a bass? A violin?
HELL, this week, we even have some accordions, too. Because diversity and unparalleled selection are the hallmarks of the Big Show. It's all good, and it's all just a click away.
Two clicks, tops.
Anything else you need to know about this week's program? I didn't think so.
This week on the Big Show, you can pick your . . . pleasure. That's right, on Episode 101 (just a silly millimeter longer . . . sorry, really obscure pop-culture reference there) of3 Chords & the Truth, you got your country. And you got your rock 'n' roll.
And then you got your great ladies of jazz.
FRANKLY, I think that pretty much covers it. There's not much else to say, except that you need to look for the tie-in to a couple of posts on Revolution 21's Blog for the People earlier in the week.
If you're the first caller with the correct answer . . . give yourself a nice prize.
So remember -- this week on the Big Show, we got your country, your rock and your jazz. A balanced diet of fine music.
There's nothing like a song to kick off the 100th episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.
Good thing, then, that happens to be our standard procedure here on the Big Show. Let me move on, though, before you accuse me of facetiousness.
But before I do, can somebody explain to me the concept of "Tobalby"? And if you can, I'll think that maybe you're a little tipsy on Potliquor.
YES, it's my show, and I love her madly, but sometimes the whole deal -- and tha late nights -- just make me loopy. If not Monster Raving Loony.
On this auspicious occasion of the completion of the100th of the 3 Chords & the Truth program -- or, if you will, programme -- I'll just get in the drivers seat and crank up the Radio, Radio. For it's a sound salvation.
After all, the last thing I want to be today is a Wallflower.
So repair all the broken bells and let them ring out greetings through the air to all the white birds . . . let them ring out this simple message from your Mighty Favog.
"Trust Me." And "Love Me."
BECAUSE it is that little fire in your belly that tells you the music here is important. That the program -- er, programme -- that is the Big Show fills an important niche that is ignored by the insipid tossers that fish and whistle while radio and the music industry burn.
But it's still, whatever way you cut it, quite easy to say "What a Wonderful World," even if we sometimes look on a fouled landscape and think . . . "Is That All There Is?"
Whatever. Sometimes you make good sense, sometimes you don't.
And I'm a-doin' it! You can make book on that.
