3 Chords & the Truth: Hot planet, cool music

Welcome to 3 Chords & the Truth: The "Climate change? What climate change? Why have my Chuck Taylors melted onto the sidewalk?" edition.

Did I mention that it's going to be about 100 degrees in Omaha today?

Damn Chinese and their insidious global warming hoaxes!

Must think cool musical thoughts. Must. Think. Cool. Musical. Thoughts.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The Electric Kool-Aid Bad Acid Trip

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

Next on the Big Show

  I think you may get the gist of this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth just from the incredibly bizarre goings-on in Washington the past 48 hours.

There are two explanations for this: 1) We all took some really bad s***, and it's all a bummer of a trip, man! 2) It's real, and Americans voted for some bad s***, man!

Either way . . . bummer, man.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Record party in the kitchen!

HOUSE PARTY

LOCATION: 3 Chords & the Truth kitchen.


WHEN: Whenever you show up. We'll be around.


WHAT: I set up my portable phonograph on the kitchen table. Bring records, BYOB. We'll
play music and have refreshments.

Just make yourself at home A good time will be had by all.

Especially Uncle Buddy.

Yes, he's bringing his Jerry Vale records.


UNTIL: Uncle Buddy gets three sheets to the wind.

IT'S THE BIG SHOW!

BE THERE! 

ALOHA!

3 Chords & the Truth: Circular seasoning

This job is a lot harder than I thought it'd be.

Thought I'd just charge straight ahead on 3 Chords & the Truth. See the hill; take the hill.

Instead, I'm an ever rollin' wheel, without a destination real.

I'm an ever spinning top, whirling around till I drop.

Oh, but what am I to do? My mind is in a whirlpool!

Give me a little hope, one small thing to cling to. You got me going in circles -- oh, round and round I go!

And I can't even tell you about the show without cribbing Friends of Distinction lyrics!

Sad!

I'm just going in circles. How can I make radio great again like this?

WELL . . .  let's us just accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative.

And latch on to the affirmative. Don't mess with Mister In-Between.

AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I can't even write this stupid descriptive doomaflatchie without plagiarizing in circles. It's like circling the drain of professional life. The painted ponies go up and down on the carousel of life.
 
I give up. Now I'm stealing my way into abject depression about the fleeting nature of time -- and my lost youth.

Listen, the show is good, despite it all. Some stuff about circles. And some stuff you can dance to. Right here on the Big Show.

Really, it's all good. And it's not like I have a nuclear arsenal at my disposal or anything.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Favog's Country Bunker

It's almost Election Day, and we're here in the 3 Chords & the Truth Country Bunker waiting for the end of the world.

If it doesn't actually happen Tuesday -- Wednesday at the latest -- one way or the other, it's gonna be close.

So this week on the Big Show, our time will be well spent listening to some favorites, getting close to Jesus and standing in the light. Well . . . as much light as there is here in the bunker.

If you find all this to be a great mystery, listen to the program and all will be revealed to thee. Here, In the bunker.

Don't mind the chicken wire in front of the stage.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Satisfaction guaranteed

Look at the Big Show as being kind of like the Monkey Ward catalog long ago and far away -- we have a little bit of everything.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth  will prove that to you. Just like last week, and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that, and the week before that. . . .

And we even have a little David Rose off of that 1962 Montgomery Ward promotional LP, in honor, of course, of the ex-department store's 90th anniversary some 52 years ago. So there you go.

Make sure you check out all the other departments in our audio store, though. Lots of good stuff around every corner and down every aisle.

We're sure you'll like what you find on the Big Show, and that's a proposition we stand behind 100 percent. As our slogan goes, "Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back."

OF COURSE, every episode of 3 Chords & the Truth comes to you absolutely free of charge, but you know what we mean. When it comes to our hand-picked variety of the world's greatest music, 'satisfaction guaranteed" means just that.

Even if no money changes hands.

Oh, God, I'm rambling. Don Draper, get me out of this!

What?

Oh, right -- brevity. Wrap it up. Gotcha.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Stacks of wonderful wax

'S wonderful, music is.

That's why yours truly does this little thing called 3 Chords & the Truth.

That's why yours truly also will scour the used-record bins in any thrift shop, antique store, record store -- you name it -- in search of something . . . well . . . 's wonderful. And I bet you wouldn't be horribly surprised to find out how much of the Big Show consists of those estate-sale, used-LP-bin and thrift-store gems, many from years before I was on this earth.

Last time on the program, I asked folks to tell me about their greatest used-vinyl find at a thrift store, the used-record section of their favorite music store or perhaps even an estate or garage sale. (That's "boot sale" for you Brits.) And dadgum if listener Russell Wells of Clarksville, by God, Indiana, didn't tell me about the near-mint, 1950s pressing of Ray Conniff's "'S Wonderful" album he found for a buck in a thrift-shop bin.

Well, your Mighty Favog of Omaha, by God, Nebraska, found himself a near-mint copy of that very same LP . . . and we're playing a cut off of it on the Big Show this week. It may have set your benevolent host back more than a dollar bill, however. That's just how the record spins, alas.

ANYWAY, that bit of the vintage Conniff sound is just one of many memorable musical moments on 3 Chords & the Truth  this revolution around the ol' turntable, and you'll be sorely deprived if you miss a single one.

And can someone please pull me back close enough to the present so I can get the ol' postmodern needle back in the groove and stop writing all aw-shucks glib just like I was stuck in 1953? Pretty soon, somebody's gonna enter me in a jitterbug contest at the ol' soda-fountain hep-cat hangout . . . and don'tcha know . . . I can't bop my way out of the ol' proverbial paper sack.

Well, that's about it for the ol' blog scribblin' about this latest episode of the show. Check it out, to hear your host with the most patter between the platters with the best stacks of wax in the ol' US of A!

Enough ramblin' for today, kiddos . . . I'll be diggin' you on the flip side Daddy-O!

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The spectrum of sound

Way back when we started this podcasting enterprise, there was one basic truth that was the guiding light, to get all clichéd about it.

It went something like this. OK, it went exactly like this:

3 Chords & the Truth exists in many realms as Revolution 21's flagship program. We rock. We roll. We're blues in the night. We play with a twang . . . sometimes.

Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth enough and you'll discover that we like old-school punk rock. That we have an attitude. That we can be ornery -- and thoughtful, too.

You will discover that we like to put together oddball sets of all kinds of music that somehow, someway make thematic sense. You will discover that we can be artistic and cultural bomb-throwers, because we think our society is complacent and self-centered . . . and entirely too self-satisfied with the violent and vapid societal space Americans have created for ourselves. . . .

In short, here's what your host and potentate, the eccentric but benevolent Mighty Favog, is aiming for with 3 Chords & the Truth: A mix of thought-provoking, challenging and sometimes just plain fun music, both Christian and mainstream, covering a wide variety of genres -- rock, hip-hop, punk, techno, folk, blues . . . you name it. You can’t put it in a neat little niche.

Kind of like life, ain't it?

THAT'S IT. That's what we do on the Big Show.

Boy, do we do that hoo doo dat we do this week. This edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is pretty close to the epitome of the Big Show's creed -- that there's only two kinds of music, good and bad. And the bad, we don't mess with.

Let's just say we start out with the early-'60s incarnation of (swing and sway with) Sammy Kaye 's orchestra, and then we veer into some major lounge music . . . and then we end up somewhere far, far away from that. And it's all good.
Boy, is it good. (He says humbly.)

NOW, if you want to know how good, you have to listen to the program. That's how it works.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: No information available

Due to the government shutdown, no information is available on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

No attempt may be made, under penalty of federal statute, by this post's authors to inform of the exceptional quality of the latest edition of the Big Show.

Refer all queries to the originator of the program, 3 Chords & the Truth.

[[[[<<a a="" border="0" gt="" height="529" href="http://it's=3+chords+&+the+truth,+y'all=be+there.=aloha>++/" i="" img="" mageanchor="1" p="" style="margin-left: 11em; margin-right: 11em;">

ERROR+ERROR+ERROR+ERROR+############

#######################

xxxx

3 Chords & the Truth: Beyond hip

Words are starting to fail me in trying to give you the lowdown on each week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

I like the Big Show. I think lots of people do. It's eclectic . . . full of surprises.

That's all I got here.

So I decided to turn to the Omaha World-Herald's new advice columnist, the Sad Hipster, for help.

"Sad Hipster," I says, "why do you look like Ron Burgundy in a dirty-book store? I mean, that doesn't seem very hip to me. That seems rather '70s . . . and possibly kind of sticky."

"WELL," says the Hipster dude to me, "if I have to explain to you the style I'm going for here, the answer would just go over your head."

"It looks like you're going for 'creepy' to me. Possibly with polyester overtones."

"Oversimplification," he attempts to riposte. "It's about, ugh, whatever."

"Ugh about covers it," I parry. "But I digress. I came here to ask you to describe my podcast, 3 Chords & the Truth."

"Is that the new Desaparecidos album?"

No, it's my music show, I tell him.

"Is it like when we get really high and listen to River City Folk on public radio?"

"No, it's completely different," I explain, getting a bit sad myself. "Screw it. Just listen to this." I hand him my tablet computer. He recoils, having expected an iPad, not a Surface. I lie that it's really a fair-trade iPad made by Bolivian villagers. He takes it.

He listens to the Big Show. At first, he is confused by the hack of Tibetan throat singing. But then something happens.

The Sad Hipster smiles. And it's not because he's just won the Pulitzer Prize.

I think that about covers it. 3 Chords & the Truth: Recommended by 9 out of 10 doctors as an effective cure for sad hipsterism.

Yes, it's that good. 

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Everything but the zeppelin

On this edition of the Big Show, you got your planes.

You got your boats.

You got your trains.

You also got your Memphis blue-eyed soul, the Queen of Soul, some Otis soul and all kinds of soulful music from almost every genre. I mean, on 3 Chords & the Truth this week, you got happy songs, sad songs, rockin' songs, French songs, jazzy songs and absotively luscious songs.

What you don't have is any zeppelin songs, Led or otherwise. My bad.

LOOK at it this way, though. If the only thing you're missing on your favorite music podcast is a lack of zeppelins, you're doing pretty dang good, aren't you? And so, I would posit, is 3 Chords & the Truth.

So there's that.

And there's this: 90 minutes of great music on the Big Show. If you don't believe me, just listen.

Just don't expect any zeppelins, Hindenburgian or otherwise. Is what I'm sayin'.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: All over the road

In music, nobody dies if you suddenly swerve across the center line.

Furthermore, on 3 Chords & the Truth, it's OK to be all over the road. Staying in just one lane is so . . . confining.

This week on the Big Show, we're feeling particularly unconfined, and we're driving all over the road. Better yet, nobody's going to jail for it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Except for "Listen to 3 Chords & the Truth. It's good." Why? Because we're having a swervingly good time all over the road.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Hot day, hot tunes

It was 99 degrees in Omaha today.

It was hot. Dang hot. And humid, too. It was so hot that . . . well, you get the picture.

In fact, it's so hot -- and so hot in this studio where now I sit, typing and perspiring -- that I have deemed it too much so to write much about this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Anyway, how many different ways can I tell you it's good, it's eclectic and that you ought to give it a listen . . . right now? I don't know -- I'm still coming up with 'em.

But you know what? It's too hot to try to come up with another, at this juncture. Wouldn't be prudent.

Besides, you know it's good already. So here's what I'm a gonna do -- I'm a gonna just say that the music on the Big Show today is as hot as the weather in these parts. Look! Another reason to listen.

Imagine that.

But it's still hot, and I'm still sweating, so I'm done convincing you. Let the music do the job for me, OK?

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Plain as black and white

One thing always has puzzled me about the South, where I was born and raised.

It's the whole race thing, including the region's checkered past in that regard -- what with slavery, a war fought to defend slavery, Jim Crow after the war thing didn't work out, segregation, freak-outs over miscegenation, freak-outs over integration, nullification, racism, state's rights and a lack of civil rights.

With all these skeletons in our Dixie closet, you get the impression that black folk and white folk can't get along. All too often, that was -- and is -- true.

What's ironic about this -- and this is something we demonstrate a little bit on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth -- is that Southern white folk are, without a doubt, the blackest white folk on Earth. And to all this country's African-Americans who have qualms about their ethnic and racial cohorts "acting white," I just want to say that it's quite all right.

WHITE Southerners like me and mine have been acting black for ages -- even when that went against the official Jim Crow party line. Irony, thy name is Dixie.

We survived, and indeed, I think, prospered culturally for it. From what, exactly, do you think the Big Show emerged almost fully formed? From me playing my white parents' black R&B records (and their white country ones, too) as a young kid in the segregated South.

Irony. Complexity. Music. Life.

That was and is the South, and that pretty much is what you get, too, on 3 Chords & the Truth. Let's just say you'll be amazed at how much in common Ruth Brown has with Jerry Byrd & the String Dusters' hillbilly assemblage.

That's pretty much where I started on this show post, and I guess that's where I'll leave it, too.

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

Nerve, defined

The headline on NPR's Planet Money blog sums it up so well, it leaves one with little else to say:

Robin Thicke's Song Sounds Like Marvin Gaye. So He's Suing Gaye's Family.

WELL, that about covers it. All I have to add is Robin Thicke's actions here pretty much define "nerve."

In this new age of the barbarian, the future belongs to the plunderer.

3 Chords & the Truth: An offer you can't resist

As if getting to listen to a classic song from Hawaiian legend Alfred Apaka wasn't enough reason to listen to the Big Show today, I have 23 other good reasons for you.

Of course, there are the other 22 bits of musical excellence on this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. And then you have your witty, charming and thoroughly brilliant Mighty Favog.

OK, you have 22 other wonderful songs on this edition of the Big Show.  We promise that Favog doesn't talk all that much . . . concentrate on the music. It's as eclectic as the host is, uh . . . uh . . . uh, eccentric. Yeah, that's the word.

FOR EXAMPLE, in just this edition of the epitome of eclecticism on the Internets, you'll hear bands and artists like:

• Creedence Clearwater Revival,
• Chuck Prophet
• The Avett Brothers
• Mimi & Richard Fariña
• The Allman Brothers Band 
• Rosanne Cash
• Bruce Springsteen 
• Billy Bragg
• John Prine 
• Glenn Miller & the American Band of the A E F 
• Frankie Carle
• Les Elgart and His Orchestra 
• Eddie Heywood 
• Al Hirt 
• Crystal Gayle . . . 

. . . AND MUCH, MUCH MORE! If you act in the next 24 hours, you also will get other episodes of 3 Chords & the Truth absolutely free!

So you get the most recent edition of the Big Show for free, and then the extra added bonus of several other gems of freeform programming at no additional cost. Act now!

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Let yourself go

 
As a public service to our listeners everywhere, the Big Show is happy to pass along the following advice from Irving Berlin.

Per the usual procedure, it is strongly advised that you do the following while listening to 3 Chords & the Truth for maximum musical enjoyment. And now, our free advice:

As you listen to the band don't you get a bubble?
As you listen to them play don't you get a glow?
If you step out on the floor
You'll forget your trouble
If you go into your dance
You'll forget your woe
So:

Come
Get together
Let the dance floor feel your leather
Step as lightly as a feather
Let yourself go

Come
Hit the timber
Loosen up and start to limber
Can't you hear that hot marimba?
Let yourself go

Let yourself go
Relax
And let yourself go
Relax
You've got yourself tied up in a knot
The night is cold but the music's hot

THIS MUSICAL advice has been brought to you by the Big Show, the happy home of your Omaha friends on the Internets. Listen early and listen often -- a rich menu of musical goodness awaits!

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Wide awake . . . ish

This Looney Tunes is lagniappe. You're welcome.

I don't sleep so you can stay awake.

I have no idea what I just said here. I mean that I don't sleep so each week's 3 Chords & the Truth won't fall asleep . . . uh, put you to sleebh.

Sleep.

The keybirtod os loojinf kinfa blurty. Blurdy.

Blurry.

What did you say your name was again?

OK . . . what did I say my name was again?

LIsstdn, aal I knowe is that this week's ebisodbe of the Big Show kicbks bubtt. You willm not falss azsleep during it -- ths sis because I forgo sleep to put together an exceptional music podcasty proddcut.

Product.

In fgact, you will marvel. You will be enraptured. You will even snap your fingers.

You will keep comming banck for more 3 Chords & the Truth. Now let ypour Mighty Favog take a little nap.

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

(thud)

3 Chords & the Truth: I'm not jivin' you

Well, maybe I am.

Then again, I put in a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears into production of this here show, this 3 Chords & the Truth thingamajig, so why shouldn't I jive you if I feel like it?

So I hope you enjoy the 90-minute program I've prepared this week on Tibetan throat singing and "the romantic zither" of Ruth Welcome. Naaaaaw . . . I'm just jivin' you!

See, there you go.

THAT'S CORRECT, after putting in the work and summoning the creativity necessary to conjure up each new episode of the Big Show -- and let's not even think of the Herculean effort that is saying something pithily original about the program every week, week after week, month after month, year after year -- I reserve the right to mess with your mind.

The show is free on the Internets but, no, there is no free lunch. Particularly since the "sequester"  went into effect in Washington. So here's the deal: You get the best in freeform musical programming; I get to screw with your head.

Sound fair? Who cares?

YOU SEE, that Ruth Welcome album, The Romantic Zither, is on the shelf at the local Goodwill, and I am not afraid to pay the 99 cents.

Naaaaaw . . . I'm just jivin' you!

Or am I? Listen to the show and find out.

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