3 Chords & the Truth: Can I even?

It's been a couple of weeks.

Last week, I couldn't even.

This week, I'll give it the ol' college try.

Welcome to 3 Chords & the Truth. Some weeks, I feel like I'm playing music in the darkness and hoping for the best. This week, I feel like I'm playing music in the darkness inside an insane asylum.

SUCH IS LIFE in the United States -- and inside a red state in the United States -- these days. And here I am doing a freeform radio show on the Internet. Congress is paralyzed, thanks to the Rabid Weasels Eating People's Faces Party . . . now engaged in eating one another's faces.

Normally, the sight of that would be highly gratifying. But we really could use a legislature right now, when Hamas terrorists are beheading Israeli babies, and the whole Middle East is a powder keg in the middle of a bonfire.

I can't even. But I'll try here on the Big Show.

For so many reasons, I can't even. For so many reasons, I have to try.

Shalom.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: That's freeform for ya

I have a new minimum standard for the Big Show.

All I need to do is not f*** this thing up as badly as House Republicans f*** up everything. That should be easy enough.

And what am I not f***ing up? Basically, playing what the hell I want. All I have to do is make sure that makes some sort of sense.

Again . . . way ahead of the House GOP.

Freeform in the 21st century. That's exactly what 3 Chords & the Truth is, and this week's program is about as freeform as it gets. Minus the Tuvan throat singing or Bulgarian folk songs.

This time.

The Big Show. It's a little of the 1960s in the 2020s. It's a little vintage big-city, freewheeling FM radio behind red-state lines.

What it is, is 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all.  Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Love and hate

It's a thin line between love and hate.

Or is it a chasm?

Perhaps it depends on the context. In America today -- or is it Amerika? -- there's a chasm. And hate is all around. Fascism is on the rise.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we take a musical look. The subject matter is harsh, but the music goes down easy.

I'm biased, but I recommend you give this edition of the Big Show a listen. The devil you try to ignore will kill you even faster than the one you acknowledge.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Further out, man

It was Friday, Sept. 22. It was gray and damp in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. I was working the night watch out of the 3 Chords & the Truth culture-war bunker.

My partner's Belle the Dog, the boss is Mrs. Favog. My name is Favog. A powerful new podcast capable of producing strange and mind-expanding auditory phenomena had found its way onto the Internets. It had fallen into the hands of listeners in several places. We had to try and keep the party going, man.

We had to get further out, man. We had to get further out.

MAN, IT WAS a blast having half your head in rock and half your head in the space-age bachelor pad. But, man, you have to get further out. You have to get further out.

We could give you something on a sugar cube or in a little capsule, man. But that requires some bread, you dig? But, man, this thing cats call the Big Show, that don't cost nothin'. It don't cost nothin', man. And it'll get you further out.

Way far out, man.

MAN, it's groovy. Trippy. You'll go into orbit, man.

Forget Coca-Cola, man. 3 Chords & the Truth is the real thing. It's a happening all by itself.

Man.

And it's real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real.

Can you dig it?

I can dig it, he can dig it, she can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, you can dig it. Oh, let's dig it. Can you dig it, baby?

I thought that you could.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Walk on by?

Some of the most vexing questions in our daily lives revolve around a single vexing question.

Walk on by, or don't walk on by? That is the question.

3 Chords & the Truth cannot answer that for you, but we do have a strong suggestion in one particular case. A strong suggestion.

Another strong suggestion for you right now is not to walk on by this week's episode of the Big Show. It's another good one.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The knowing

You have to admit there's one thing about American life that's easier today. It's easier to be a depressive.

That, I think, is a sane reaction to . . . American life today. And all you have to do to get there is pay attention.

But that's not healthy, you might say. You likely are correct. But tell me this: How healthy is it to check out from the world around you, to no longer pay attention, to live in a world faux-sanitized for your peace of mind?

Does balance exist? Where might it be?

These are the questions confronting every episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. And to tell you the truth, they're not easy questions, and it's not easy to do a music program that aims neither to ignore our reality today nor to wallow in it with no respite in sight.

PERSONALLY, I think the root cause of this country's social and political brokenness is some sort of American civilizational collapse. Try "keeping it real" amid a nationwide nervous breakdown while also trying to be somewhat entertaining.

"Keeping it real" could make you a total depressive. Being tight and bright might tend toward delusion, with a certain head-in-the-sand je ne sais quoi. If you live on this side of America's Ironic Curtain, behind authoritarian lines somewhere in a red-state enclave, it helps to do your show from a culture-war bunker.

What does this have to do with a freeform music program, this Big Show, going out over the Internet during troubled, spite-infused times? I suppose both nothing and everything. Your guess is as good as mine.

I tell myself this weekly 90 minutes is a refuge, though not one for delusional thinking. Maybe the better analogy is a sanctuary for what beauty and sanity we can preserve. Maybe it's the audio version of a candle in a dark room.

Whatever it is, I'm certain that 3 Chords & the Truth is better than the prevailing social and political ethos -- at least in many quarters to the right of me -- of burning the motherf***er down, because one's grievances (justified or no) demand it. The nihilism of the "burn the motherf***er down" crowd has no Plan B and no plan for what comes next.

The only thing left, as one stands in the ashes following a conflagration of one's own making, is "Well, f***."

"Well, f***," indeed. Maybe the truth of the Big Show is that all we can do is remind folks of what they're putting the match to -- so much beauty, so little regard for it. I don't know . . . but I reckon that's not nothing.

All I do know is that a country full of mental toddlers really shouldn't be allowed to play with matches. Now here's something to listen to by the warm light of the flickering flames outside as you recall when we were better than this.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The music, the aether and you

There's music in the air.

It's the Big Show, drifting across the aether, in the night, into your device and into your soul -- a refuge in dark and stormy times. That is kind of the niche we occupy these days.

If nothing else, the program -- if everything goes to plan and we hit the sweet spot -- can be a reminder that we can be so much better than the times we unfortunately inhabit. America has had moments when we were better than this, and we can be better than this once again.

3 Chords & the Truth music certainly points to that. Once, when we grimaced because a song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it was because it was just dumb. Now, and we're looking at you Jason Aldean, it's because the hottest song in the land reminds one of the heat coming from a flaming cross.

IT'S BECAUSE one suspects the song would at least sound better in the original German.

The Big Show doesn't play that game. We expect you're better than that. If you're not, I'm pretty sure you are not listening to this particular podcast coming from a Midwestern enclave somewhere behind America's own Iron Curtain . . . the Ironic Curtain.

What the show is . . . is diverse. That's not a popular thing in many quarters in a country teetering on the edge of fascism. What 3 Chords & the Truth is . . . is eclectic. The expectation here is that, like two things being able to be true simultaneously, you are able to appreciate -- and love -- several genres of music at the same time.

And in the same show. We're funny that way.

If you love music, period, and if your mind is capable of expansion, this is the show (and the episode of the show) for you. If not, I'm wagering you never listened to start with -- and won't in the future.

So get ready for another great episode of a great music program. It starts as soon as you click or download.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Beware the flying monkeys

New this week in the culture-war bunker, far behind America's Ironic Curtain: A flying monkey warning.

Now that Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges of the conspiracy and Espionage Act variety, we at 3 Chords & the Truth are hunkered down here in Red America, waiting for the disgraced former president and future felon to unleash his flying monkeys upon us all. Trust me -- there's no more disturbing sight than flying monkeys in red MAGA hats.

Still, the show must go on. And go on, it will.

Given that much of what the former prez says sounded much better in the original German, the Big Show will feature some music . . . in the original German. Which sounds fine to me, being that it features none of the original Nazi.

Unlike most of what we hear here behind the Ironic Curtain, which is much like the old Iron Curtain.  Here in the former United States, though, it's incongruent with the "freedom" and "liberty" blather favored by the flying-monkey crowd.

Anyway, just because we hunker in the bunker, it doesn't mean we can't crank out program after program featuring the best music mix on the Internets. After all, the proof is in the listening. Which you should begin about now.

So, that's about it for another introductory missive for yet another show. There's only one thing left to be said.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Something stupid

Something unusual happened. The world has noticed Nebraska . . . and its politics.

 

Nebraskans long have lamented being overlooked by the world. They long have wanted a little attention. They long have wanted their props, dammit!

 

You know that old saying, "Be careful what you wish for"? Bingo.

 

This week's installment of 3 Chords & the Truth notes that we finally got some attention from the folks in the Big Apple -- a long examination of this year's dominant legislative shenanigans by New York magazine. It wasn't pretty.

 

And Omaha Sen. Christy Armendariz didn't come off so well.

 

One day, a freshman senator named Christy Armendariz led me to a bench in an empty hallway. She found it puzzling that a reporter from New York would come all the way to Nebraska to cover this affair. "I don’t watch the news or get the newspaper," she said. "Is there anything going on I should be aware of?" I mentioned that other states had passed similar bills and that a federal appeals court in the same circuit as Nebraska had ruled one of them unconstitutional. "So is it a big widespread thing?" she asked. As far as she could tell, ordinary Nebraskans did not know about the issue. "I knocked doors for a year, and nobody brought this up." She said she wished the bill had never been introduced.

 

Yet, she voted for it.
 

THE BILL was LB574 which, in its original iteration, banned all "gender-affirming" medical care and surgery for transgender minors. It ended up being amended to regulate the medical care while still banning surgeries.

 

And senators tacked a 12-week gestational-age abortion ban (about 10 weeks from conception) onto the bill after a six-week ban failed earlier.

 

You'd like to think legislators knew that all this was a big Republican Party push nationwide this year. You'd like to think that even someone as as negligent and clueless as Armendariz would've known her party was pushing all that as a grand culture-war political strategy.

 

You'd also like to think that readers nationwide might not believe all Nebraskans are that @#*$%+! dumb. Not all legislators here are, though many probably are. And, to be fair, ordinary Nebraskans elected these clods, so there's that.

 

But this is not a political column in the newspaper. This is a music show. On the other hand, the political stuff certainly informed the music show . . . and now you know that's the name of that tune on the Big Show this go around.

FRANKLY, that's why I love doing an old-school, beatnik-adjacent, freeform kind of a thing here on the Internets. One, you don't much see this kind of thing on the radio anymore. Two, when folks on the radio give you the impression they think at all, what they want to you to think they think might not be what they actually think. They just pander to what they think you think.

And those folks don't even have any good tunes. 3 Chords & the Truth, though. . . .

Anyway, perhaps the real value of the New York magazine piece is something akin to Robert Burns’ poetic wisdom:

 

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!

It wad frae mony a blunder free us,

An' foolish notion:

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,

An' ev'n devotion!

 

It’s a hard pill to swallow when what “ithers” see ain’t so flattering. But at least you know, and knowing gives you the chance to evaluate, and evaluating gives you the opportunity to change.

Just as long as you don't change that Internet dial!

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

3 Chords & the Truth: 600 and counting

This is the 600th episode of 3 Chords & the Truth. You think I'd have something suitably momentous to say about it.

I do not.

After 600 shows, you tend to feel like you've said everything you have to say about it -- unless sudden inspiration strikes. Well, as I post another of the Big Show with two zeros at the end of the number, inspiration has struck out.

Not in the show itself, mind you, just in thinking of something to say about it, apart from -- once again -- eclectic, reasonably entertaining, good music and the host doesn't completely suck. Of course, there's a lot of leeway in "doesn't completely suck."

So, give the latest 3 Chords & the Truth a listen, and I'm reasonably confident you will find that it doesn't completely suck.

And, no, I never did get the salesman gene. This is as good as I get.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Thatsa lotta shows!

It just so happens that episode No. 599 of 3 Chords & the Truth drops on my birthday.

After all those years, and shows, I certainly hope the program is fresher than I am. For I am . . . not young.

Five hundred ninety-nine editions of the Big Show. That means the next one will be . . . let me get out the calculatin' machine here . . . hang on . . . workin' the problem . . . any second now . . . just about there . . . No. 600.

Thatsa lotta shows.

But I'll worry about that next time. This week, there is good music, of course, but I'm at a loss over what else to say. Birthday, don'tcha know. Takin' a break from thinking too hard.

So, with that not said. . . .

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Jonesin' in the years

Sometimes, progress looks like going from Butch Wax to Brylcreem. Unless, of course, you live in a Vitalis household.

The above sentence makes sense to me. Therefore, I am (Generation) Jonesin' in the years. Stowin' away the time.

This means I remember when vintage was new. When classic rock was AOR. Which was not MOR. All of which ends up on 3 Chords & the Truth, by the way.

This last sentence also makes sense to me. Authenticity -- you can't fake it. It also helps you avoid sepia-colored cliches. A little dab'll do ya.

I KNOW. I'm rambling. It happens at my age. But sometimes you ramble into a lot of good stuff, just like we do on the Big Show.

I guess that's just the way we midcentury old farts do things.

So . . . yeah.

Groovy.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Tick tock

Let's do the time warp again.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we turn back the clock a little more than usual. To the Old Days. But not much.

Still, the Big Show is a real sentimental journey.

So, looming over the whole thing is the clock up on the wall . . . running backward. If you have any complaints about that, please direct them to PA 6-5000. Ask for Flat Foot Floogie.

It's a floy floy, Daddio.

As usual, though, it's gonna be a real trip. A journey to unexpected places. Just don't get nervous on the road -- it's going to be all right. You might even learn something. Or not. That's entirely up to you.

Also, I am pleased to announce that everything is in full-fidelity stereo. Except when it's not.

And if all this is somewhat confusing to you, then you don't know me. But that will change as days go by if you keep listening. There's a lot on the website to help you get up to speed with all the eclectic wonderfulness of this here endeavor.

So, there's only one thing left to say here.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: To tell the truth

It's time to mix things up -- a little -- on the Big Show again, so I did. You'll note that the opening ain't what you've gotten accustomed to over the past few years.

To get to the point, we get to the point a bit quicker now. And we've freshened things up a bit here and there.

Next week, we'll be introducing the $1 million music-trivia challenge. No, that's a lie. Which is another way we've refreshed 3 Chords & the Truth -- abject false claims and non-existent contests, because the truth has gotten kinds of stale these days. Or not. Who's to say? We say get ready to get rich -- trust me.

So, that's about all the news your host -- me, George Santos -- has for now. So stay tuned, by which we mean start downloading or streaming, for another big, exciting episode of Drag Queen Drag Racing, where every show is a walk (or car race) on the wild side.

Don't forget to bring along your AR-15 -- and we'll be giving away three every edition of the Big Show -- no matter how many voices you're hearing . . . or what they're telling you. It's all good.

Now sit back and prepare to be wowed by another edition of Life With Father, Who Identifies as Mother, Who Bears an Uncanny Resemblance to Ron DeSantis. We guarantee it's a good one.

Honest.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Back in the saddle again

I'm back in the saddle again.

It's a new year, and -- finally -- there's a new episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Since we last met, for the Christmas edition of the Big Show, the wife and I got a New Year's present . . . COVID. As much as one would like to take that one back to the store and exchange it for something nicer, that proved impossible, and we were stuck with one lemon of a gift.

This after three years of successfully avoiding being so gifted.

And getting rid of it proved to be, well, a process. And having the gift made me pretty much unfit to do a podcast. If I had had the energy to do the show, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have wanted to hear me trying to do it.

Excuse me while I cough. The cough sticks around after the disease is gone.

ANYWAY, I'm back, 3C&T is back, and it's a good one. And it was put together on a brand-new Mac Studio computer, which is smokin' fast and . . . well . . . new, replacing the warhorse iMac that had been my trusty studio companion the past decade. That's like 115 in computer years, and it still works fine. I just couldn't update the operating system or the audio software anymore.

So, I now have that new-computer feeling.

And you have a brand-new episode of the Big Show to enjoy. Which will commence whenever you click on what must be clicked.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Rock on, man

What?

Hairy fist mush? What the hell is fist mush?

Hang on.

OK,  I turned down my almost brand-new, 48-year-old bitchin' studio headphones. What's this about fist mush?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. Merry CHRISTMAS! I thought the wall of sound had turned my brain to mush there for a second.

I see that look on your face. Don't say it, or it's no 3 Chords & the Truth for you. And you do not want to miss this edition of the Big Show.

Yes, it's that good.

Now, if you don't mind, I shall resume rockin' out. Man. Just listen to the show and don't try to talk to me when I have these things on.

Go. Get. Listen.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Tempus fugits at Christmastime

It's Christmas season once again, and another year that has slipped through our grasping fingers.

Because it's the holidays, we do the festive thing. Because it's another year that has passed by, leaving us -- yet again -- wondering where time has gone while our attention was elsewhere, we also think of all that was, yet is no more.

On 3 Chords & the Truth this week, we're doing a bit of the ho-ho-holidays. Behind the musical scenes, I'm wondering how six-plus decades could pass so quickly. So much I thought would be forever when I was young isn't anymore.

TAKE THE Dalton Theater in North Baton Rouge. It was a little neighborhood movie house we'd always drive by whenever we went to see my Uncle August. A middling landmark of my Louisiana youth, it was, standing there at Dalton Street and North Acadian Thruway.

First it closed sometime in the1970s, then it decayed. Then the city condemned it. Then, in 2000, the city tore it down. The progression of Uncle August -- who died, age 65, of cancer in 1982 -- was not dissimilar.

I think of that stuff at Christmastime. My parents' generation of the family is all gone. So are a lot of the things and places I grew up with. We shall not go there this week on the Big Show. I suspect you, if you're of a certain age, don't need my help in that regard this time of year.

It's there, lurking, in the corners of our minds. It stares back at you in the bathroom mirror every morning. C'est la vie.

Street View, Google Maps

No, this week, 3 Chords & the Truth, as always, is about the music -- pop, rock, big band, jazz, soul, standards, easy listening, country and all the rest. It's all mashed up in the food-for-the-soul processor of the mind and spit back out onto the Internet in sets that make musical sense. Well, I think they make musical sense; such is freeform radio, even when it's in cyberspace.

If my thoughts turn melancholy when the bitter wind sweeps across the Plains and the mercury digs a hole for itself, the Big Show does what it always does. It entertains and, one hopes, enlightens a bit. That doesn't change, even though everything else does.

Even though everybody else does . . . and you, too.

That's where we are as Christmas 2022 draws nigh after two previous, warped COVID Christmases removed so many things -- and people -- from the here and now and tossed them unceremoniously into the once was.

There's so much that, in Louisiana-speak, ain't dere no more. But the thing is this; the music always will be. Dance while you can, because the tempus is fugiting, and its run at the Dalton has been extended indefinitely.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: What the cluck?

Ask any random podcast listener what is this thing we call 3 Chords & the Truth, and chances are they won’t know, eggsactly . . . er . . . exactly.

But if you weren’t shunned, punched or had the cops called on you when you asked, you could deduce that you were dealing with a good egg.

So, what is this thing we also call the Big Show? It’s . . . uhhhhhhhh . . . it’s . . . uhhhhhhh . . . ummmmmmm . . . it’s eggsactly that. Whatever that is.

I CALL IT postmodern freeform radio on the Internets. I call it that because I just made that label up. Yay, me.

But, really, what the program is, is good. It’s diverse. It’s full of surprises. Eggsactly that. Er . . . exactly that.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we’re gonna get you moving. We’ll have the best in soul, and the best in. . . . Well, why would I spoil the surprise?

Maybe you need to listen and find out what the rest of the good stuff is. In other words, do yourself a favor and be a good egg.

Eggsactly.

Here in the 3C&T studio, your Mighty Favog works hard so as not to have egg on his face. That means your ears will be happy. Eggsactly that.

Do your ears a favor for Thanksgiving. And you’re welcome.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Come as you are

Have you seen those old ads for console hi-fis and televisions, where everybody is dressed to the nines just to stare at the screen or gaze fondly at . . . the speaker cloth, or maybe a spinning record?

What the hell is the deal with that anyway? Personally, I just think that means we've been demented for decades, and it's not just a recent phenomenon.

Let me be clear. We're not like that at 3 Chords & the Truth. You can sit on the couch in your underwear and stare at the speaker, for all we care.

WE MAY CHUCKLE at the thought of that but, fundamentally, we don't care. You do you.

Likewise, the Big Show will do the Big Show.

I'm glad we could clear that up straightaway.

Now to the business at hand. This week, there's yet another exemplary program cued up for you, with lots and lots of great music . . . and a reasonably competent host to carefully place it out here on the Internets.

And, really, what more do you need as you sit there in your chair or on your couch, drinking an adult beverage and eating nachos. In your underwear.

We chuckle at the thought. But again, you do you. No judgment, just a discreet chuckle here and there.

That's really all there is to say. Great music, thoughtfully ordered. Nachos. A sofa. You and your Fruit of the Looms. The end.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: No tricks, just treats

Trick or treat, smell my feet. . . .

No, I couldn't do that to you. I don't even want to smell my feet.

Let me tell you what I will do for this Halloween-ish edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, though. I will forgo the tricks . . . and give you nothing but treats of the musical variety.

This will not be your average ghoulcast. The Big Show is waaaaaaay better than that.

Don't believe me, just listen for yourself. And I promise, no one will suck your blood.

Unless, of course, your significant other is a mosquito. In that case, I can't really help you.

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