More than 90,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus. For more than three months, the president of the United States did nothing, despite repeated warnings.
He repeatedly said the virus would disappear -- like a miracle. He repeatedly said it was a Democrat hoax. He repeatedly has touted quack cures.
Americans can't get tested when they need to. Doctors, nurses, first responders and "essential workers" can't get proper protective equipment. The elderly are dying in nursing homes -- alone.
The gravely ill are dying in hospitals, about one every minute. Alone.
America's governors and mayors are trying to manage the gravest threat this country has faced since World War II -- alone, with scant aid from the federal government.
ALL ACROSS our land, high-school and college seniors are graduating -- online. And their future? Up in the air, where the virus spreads. And spreads.
And spreads.
The president -- many governors, too -- pushes to "reopen the economy." We have no tools, no procedures to intelligently and safely do it. Yet we plow ahead into the unknown, hoping magical thinking will conquer biology.
Into the darkness of the pandemic steps a learned man, a United States senator from Nebraska. He beams into little Fremont from the big Internet to shine a digital light -- to offer wise words and sound guidance from afar to the new graduates of his alma mater.
And, perhaps, shaving and lipstick become superfluous?
No matter what, 3 Chords & the Truth is your dedicated follower of fashion . . . and breakout music on the hot spot of your Internet dial. And while you'd be smart -- and considerate -- to mask your face to stop the spread of the coronavirus, there's no masking the reality that good music makes hard times just a little bit better.
And the forecast for the next 90 minutes of the Big Showis a marked improvement in conditions wherever you are.
Now grab a drink, crank up the high-fidelity apparatus, and settle in for the musical journey. It'll be an adventure -- we guarantee it.
It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
You remember the old Merle Haggard song, "If We Make It Through December"?
Somehow, it has become not insane to wonder if we'll make it to November. That ain't good.
That can send a body into a serious funk. That can seriously harsh one's mellow. That ain't good.
Seriously, what the hell are we to do? Shine a light into the virus-loaded darkness, I guess. I mean, that's what we're trying to do here on 3 Chords & the Truth -- shine a tuneful light into this darkest night.
So, in that . . . light . . . this is gonna be one hell of a show. A Big Show. The price of admission? Wash your hands.
And keep your distance from your neighbor.
And wear a mask when you're out in public -- which you ought to be as little as possible. There's a virus goin' on.
F*** the darkness. Let's shine some musical light. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
I wonder what the "truth in advertising" version of this would look like.
And where's the gutter and the . . . well, you know?
Then we get to the smart-ass takes on this bit of Midwestern naivete. What was the "junior's beat" (or was it several juniors' beat) on Bourbon Street? Furthermore, did their parents know?
Film at 11. Hopefully not at the Muse Theater at 24th and Farnam.
It's a fine mess we find ourselves in, this coronavirus thing, and the folks one usually looks to when extrication is called for . . . well. they're pretty much useless.
If not outright existentially threatening. So. Well. Um . . . what are we supposed to do, then?
Well, there has to be a better answer than one I've taken to in recent months -- sitting on the front stoop with a drink and a Lieutenant Dan cigar, muttering the F-word a lot. Let's brainstorm this, shall we?
FIRST, keep calm and carry on intelligently. Do what your doctor would tell you to do. I'm reasonably sure that doesn't involve a Lieutenant Dan cigar. Hey . . . do as I say, etcetera and so on. Second . . . chill. 3 Chords & the Truthcan help you with that second thing, and we'll do it by the numbers -- 33⅓, 45 and 78. And at whatever speed a compact disc spins. If music can soothe the savage breast . . . beast . . . both? . . . whatever, music can get us through this epidemiological cluster-you-know-what. Music can mellow us out and calm us the you-know-what down. Lucky for you, the Big Show is just a click (two at the most) away. So, let us all center ourselves for the long slog -- by the numbers.
These are the times that try men's immune systems.
And their faith in mankind . . . political leaders . . . the "American way of life" (snort) . . . human intelligence, God and the universe. Americans, most of us, are not in a good place right now. We're cooped up, the president's brain obviously is f***ed up, people are all head-up, and right-wing politicians and pundits look at the mounting coronavirus death toll, then agitate for the economy to "open up."
It's late 1918 and the Spanish flu all over again. That didn't end well. ON TOP of it all, John Prine died on April 7. Of the coronavirus. It's all enough to make you give up hope. That's exactly why you can't. And that's more or less what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about -- that, paying tribute to the great John Prine, a Woodstock jam and other good stuff. To be frank (because I'm sick of people calling me Shirley), I'm kind of at a loss for what else to say about this go 'round of the Big Show. So I won't. Just listen; you'll figure it out. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.
The rules of the album challenge on Facebook was that you pick (just) 10 that influenced you big-time, and this is No. 10 -- Nick Lowe's "Labour of Lust."
I loved Lowe's music the first time I heard it, probably a year before this came out in June 1979, right between me graduating high school and starting college at LSU. Before I'd figured out that he was one of the driving forces and producers behind the whole Brit New Wave scene that was saving American rock 'n' roll, one great college-radio single at a time. And years before I figured out he and I share a birthday.
Nick Lowe is a hell of a songwriter, and he writes an even better hook. The man, in the late '70s, was the power in power pop. Four words: "Cruel to Be Kind."
By the way, did I mention Rockpile? And that Lowe produced the first five albums of Elvis Costello, who used to be a roadie for Brinsley Schwarz, the pub-rock band (1969-'74) from which all things New Wave and power pop flowed (including Nick Lowe).
HOW BIG an influence is Nick Lowe in my musical world? Let me elucidate: 10a, 10b, 10c and 10d on my list probably would be Costello's "My Aim Is True," "This Year's Model" and "Armed Forces," then Lowe's 1978 LP "Jesus of Cool," which in this country became "Pure Pop for Now People" because the suits remembered what happened to the Beatles in 1966. That about cover it, Skipper? Seriously, by 1978 or so, rock 'n' roll was a bloated, self-satisfied son of a bitch, and (once again) needed the Brits to come to the rescue, mind the bollocks, then pry ours out of a corporate vise. As much as anyone, Nick Lowe took on what was a dirty job amid a music scene that couldn't be unseen, and made the extraction quite painless, actually. There's an "American Squirm" joke in there somewhere, but I'm just not seeing it right now. The End.
This influential LP came later in life -- as in, I-was-over-50 later in life. But influential is influential, a revelation is a revelation no matter how delayed, so here goes No. 9 on the list -- "Calcutta!" by Lawrence Welk.
As a Baby Boomer of a certain age, I absolutely was force-fed a diet of The Lawrence Welk Show every weekend. Saturday night on the network . . . Saturday or Sunday afternoon in syndication, you could count on Lawrence, Myron, Joe, Norma, Arthur, Bobby, Cissy, Gail and Dale to cheese up the living room TV set so much, all you really needed was a box of Ritz crackers for your evening to be complete.
Mama and Daddy loved The Lawrence Welk Show. And Mama and Daddy controlled the television when it counted -- the precise times for 1) Lawrence Welk on Saturday afternoons, 2) The Gospel Jubilee on Sunday mornings, and 3) whenever The Porter Wagoner Showwas on -- maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday afternoon.
Unfortunately for my force-fed self, The Lawrence Welk Show was . . . was . . . was. . . . A half century later, I am at a loss for words.
I, however, can show you:
NOW YOU KNOW why folks got one toke over the line. In short, Lawrence Welk represented, for all of my youth, a big, lame joke. When it wasn't being the Abomination of Geritol Nation. Well into married life, my wife -- subjected, in her youth, to the same Welk abuse as myself -- and I would watch reruns of the show on public TV for the sheer irony and hathos of it all. Sometimes, we still do. Then at an estate sale one Sunday, one of the LP treasures of a passing generation presented itself to me. "Aw, what the hell," I told myself as I grabbed "Calcutta" for ironic listening enjoyment. I cleaned the vintage 1961 vinyl, plopped it on the record player, and immediately a huge problem jumped right off the grooves and into my smug, superior little shit of a face. The @#&%!$*!# album was good.
The Welk orchestra almost . . . Dare I say it? . . . No, I CAN'T! . . . Go on, say it, you little frickin' WIMP! . . . DON'T YELL AT ME!!!! . . . the Welk orchestra almost . . . uh . . . swung. It was really tight. And the "Calcutta" Welk was so much more fun than that Geritol- and Serutan-fueled weekly video constitutional might suggest. YOU DON'T EXPECT, at least not in one's 50s, for it to be so earthshaking to discover one's parents -- well, at least kinda sorta -- were right. But on a matter involving such a deeply held principle? About something that strikes at the core of Boomer generational solidarity?
Consider my earth shaken, if not also stirred. God help me, the title cut was fun. (I was already familiar with the "Calcutta" single, just not with the idea that it was "fun.") "Perfidia" was even better. Exquisite, even. God help me, I had to give Lawrence Welk his due. I had been influenced. And I wasn't even one "modern spiritual" over the line.
Back when you were a broke-ass college student and you liked music (when albums were a thing and music piracy meant taping songs off the radio), you hit the bargain bins a lot and waited to be intrigued, surprised . . . or both.
Sometimes, you achieved "Holy shit!" You usually came to this point only after unwrapping the LP and putting it on the turntable. That point only could be reached after you got intrigued standing over the bargain bin.
Only after the record had spun, your speakers had thumped and "Holy shit!' had been reached could you then achieve "educated" and "impassioned." These two bargain-bin compilation finds -- a combined No. 8 in my series of 10 influential albums -- checked all the boxes for me back in the day. The first was "The Soul Years," a 25th anniversary overview of Atlantic Records' soul and R&B history first released in 1973. I was hooked with the first cut of the double album -- "Stick" McGhee and His Buddies' early Atlantic single from 1949,
"Drinkin' Wine' Spo-Dee-O-Dee." This was not the kind of oldie you would have heard on Baton Rouge radio back then. I think this is the kind of thing the young version of my parents would have liked -- before my old parents hated it.
ME, I WAS all in. That was even before I got to Joe Turner's original 1954 recording of "Shake, Rattle and Roll," which was not cleaned-up and white-i-cized like Bill Haley and His Comets' version, which wasn't even recorded until Turner's had hit No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart.
Unsurprisingly, this verse from "Big" Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll" was changed when Bill Haley recorded the song:
Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through Way you wear those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through I can't believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you
And this verse ain't there at all in Haley's cover:
I get over the hill and way down underneath I get over the hill and way down underneath You make me roll my eyes, even make me grit my teeth
It is good to find a compilation LP that's just as educational as a "Big Joe" Turner record. And don't even get me started on how superior The Chords' "Sh-Boom" is to the Crew-Cuts' cover version.
WE FIND that "WCBS FM101 History of Rock -- The 50's" is a much more conventional album -- that is, "mostly stuff played on white radio stations" -- but it makes my "influential" list because it intimately acquainted me with what now are two of my favorite songs of all time.
Those would be (drum roll, please) . . . the Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night" and the Skyliners' "Since I Don't Have You." And it was the Five Satins who gave us the term "doo-wop" -- them or The Turbans' with their slightly earlier "When You Dance." On NCIS: New Orleans, Scott Bakula always tells his TV special agents to "go learn things." When you're talking about music, that's always so much damn fun.
Fortunately, if your playlist is as broad as American music, there's lots to pick from. It's hard to escape the blues in something that expansive.
