3 Chords & the Truth: Keeping score

I took me out to the ballgame. I took me out to the crowd.

I did not buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack (substitute Fritos walking taco, hamburgers and a brat here) but, ultimately, I did have to come back.

To the Big Show. You knew that I would.

STILL, the College World Series here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska was maybe the greatest that's ever been -- 11 days of outstanding contests, including the best baseball game I have ever witnessed. That would be the 11-inning pitchers' duel between my alma mater, LSU, and Wake Forest . . . that ended in the bottom of the 11th with a two-run homer to give the Tigers a crucial victory on their way to the national championship.

LSU's seventh national championship in baseball.

We, of course, will pay tribute to that in this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth. Is this Heaven? No, but it ain't half bad.

There also will be, during the show, the usual complement of mind-blowing musical moments, with a healthy smattering of "Can he DO that?" Yes. Yes, I can. It's my program.

Well, that's about it for the preshow promotin' and explainin'. Just one more thing to add, though.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: The art of sound

Welcome to the art of sound, which today especially trumps the insanity of American politics.

Crap. There’s that word again — trump. Or, in our case, Trump.

Donald Trump is the boil on our collective arse that resists all treatment. And now he’s up on federal espionnage and obstruction charges. Cue the flying monkeys hooting, whining and threatening revenge and civil war.

Music is art, but it also can be a balm in these troubled times. 3 Chords & the Truth, overwhelmingly comprised of music, alas, can soothe our collective angst . . . I think. At any rate, it’s all I got, so it had better.

It seems to me that the art of sound resides within the music, but not only that. The art of sound also encompasses how we use the music, how we present the music.

Yes, it’s the Big Show. But I also hope it’s, in some way, art. And I hope it’s something of a balm.

I mean, like I said, it’s all I got.

This week on the program, we’ve got a progression of music going, so to speak. You’re going on a journey — a pleasant one, I trust.

And the farther we go on our musical journey, I’m hopeful the farther it takes us — even if it’s just for a while — from the insanity and ugliness of this present American political dystopia. One does what one can.

This show is what I can do.

Enjoy.

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: Music from the bunker

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs.

Come to think of it, I ought to have played the Five Man Electrical Band this week on the Big Show.

Just as the Nebraska Legislature closed out a session where it pretty clearly put out a sign saying who's not welcome here, the skies opened, the lightning flashed, the wind roared . . . and the lights went out. Makes you wonder.

But the electricity eventually came back on, so you're thinking "Well, maybe not."

Until, as I was putting together this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth early this morning, the lights went out again. And it wasn't storming. The computer instantly went dead. The lights went off. It was early -- very early -- so I couldn't see my hand in front of my face.

So, there I was, stumbling around like a blind man without a cane, trying to find a flashlight and channeling my inner Roy Kent. And while two power outages may or may not be a sign from the Great Beyond, they certainly are a metaphor.

THE LIGHTS are going out in these parts. Darkness reigns, trying to pass itself off as light. People are always falling for that one.

And here we are. And here I am.

But here's the thing: The lights went out -- twice -- yet here's a band-new episode of the Big Show. The process took a little longer, you're kind of thinking "Now, where was I?" when the power comes back on, but nevertheless. . . .

I'm crouched down here in the culture-war bunker, in Omaha, by God, Nebraska . . . and I'm still inserting an eclectic, adventurous and stellar variety of music right onto the Internet and right into your preferred electronic device. Maybe that's a metaphor, too.

The brief version of my little story is just one short sentence: Don't let the bastards get you down.

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: The Ironic Curtain

Greetings from the wrong side of the Ironic Curtain.

The what?

The Ironic Curtain. Let me explain. What we’re seeing in America these days is the building of an Iron Curtain in this country, dividing red and blue states -- and dividing Americans into first- and second-class citizens.

In America . . . again.

The irony, of course, is that we now have an Iron Curtain -- much like the one that divided democratic Western Europe from the communist east after World War II -- in a country that styles itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy for the world. This is the second time that's happened here.

The first time, it was the line separating the Jim Crow South from the rest of the United States. Back then, there were definite similarities between the repression found in the Eastern Bloc countries and the repression found in the American South. Before that, the South's Jim Crow regimes served as inspiration for the policies of Adolf Hitler's Germany.

TODAY, those of us stuck behind the modern-day Ironic Curtain are starting to see certain similarities between ourselves and Vladimir Putin's fascist dictatorship in Russia and, much more closely, Viktor Orban's fascist, authoritarian regime in Hungary.

It's not a good place to be, especially if you're an official "Other." That's what this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about, which is pretty much what last week's show was about, too.

As a Nebraskan by choice who sees what is happening to this state, I have been on the razor’s edge of rage for a while now. But it’s not really rage, fundamentally. What it is, is grief.

What I have witnessed during this session of the Nebraska Legislature -- and I have watched hours upon hours of it on television the past few weeks — is incipient fascism. The content of LB 547, and the chicanery employed to pass it, looked familiar to me; I was born in 1961 into Jim Crow era Louisiana.

I attended legally segregated public schools in Baton Rouge . . . until 1970. When my school was desegregated under a “neighborhood school” plan, I had a teacher tell me not to play with a Black classmate. I saw that Black classmate demeaned and discriminated against by our fourth-grade teacher.

As a Southerner of a certain age, I know what fascism and official “othering” looks like. And it has followed me here after all these years.

In Nebraska today, the Others are vulnerable pregnant women and transgender youth. Next year, the legislator behind today's othering intends to target drag shows.

I AM a 62-year-old man who has been married for almost 40 years. I do not understand transgenderism because, well, how the hell could I?

But I do understand that trans individuals are citizens of the United States and children of God, and they deserve to live in peace. The parents of trans youth have the right to seek the best care possible for their children. Medical science has no solution that will perfectly reconcile mind and body, but it should not be illegal to do the best one can -- especially when that might be what keeps your child alive.

As a Catholic, I would be inclined to proceed cautiously if I had a transgender child. But make no mistake, I would do what I had to do to keep my kid, first, alive and, second, happy and healthy.

But how parents raise -- or choose to medically treat -- their trans children is, fundamentally, none of my damned business. It is not the unicameral’s business. It isn’t even the church’s business. It’s just not.

Likewise, concerning abortion, I have to say I consider myself pro-life. However, LB 547, enacted by the legislature Friday, is no fitting way to reduce the instance of abortion as much as humanly possible. It also will endanger the lives of women with catastrophic pregnancies.

If legislators want to “save babies,” they should -- pardon my French -- give a shit about vulnerable women. They should give a shit about struggling families. They should give a shit about the outrageous expense of giving birth.

They should give a shit about the oppressive cost of decent daycare. They should give a shit about creating an effective social safety net. And they should give a shit about the jobs they’re about to drive away from Nebraska.

That said, this is the week Nebraska died. It’s over. And that's what informs this week's Big Show.

That is all. That is enough.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Hearing ghosts

I'm hearing ghosts. At least it seems that way.

Of course, what you hear in a program like 3 Chords & the Truth depends on the context. The context of these times we live in has me hearing ghosts in the music.

Ghosts of times past. Ghosts of our past selves. Ghosts of those who've passed. Ghosts of normality. Ghosts of a country and world that seem long gone.

Good ghosts, evil ghosts. Ghosts all.

I hear ghosts. Perhaps you will, too.

I'LL TELL YOU now what I'll tell you during this week's edition of the Big Show -- the ghosts I hear in the music, hear in my mind . . . they feel like being at the end of your life and looking back at what was, and you're regretful, wistful. You regret what you -- we -- have come to, You regret the opportunities that were passed by.

You regret the things that were done but shouldn't have been. You wonder what the actual f***.

The ghosts often provoke nostalgia. Nostalgia can be a blessing. It also can be a curse.

Yeah, this week, I'm playing -- and hearing -- ghosts, and it's not even Halloween. They hearken me toward better times and remind me of worse, and the worse remind me of today in these disunited and dysfunctional United States.

And that's the way it is, May 12, 2023. I'm your Mighty Favog, reporting from 79 Wistful Vista.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: 20 songs in the sunset

I suppose, as much as anything, this episode of the Big Show is about sunsets. The sunset of life, the warm glow of the sunset -- you could go on and on.

However the sunset speaks to you is good enough for us. That's what it's about today.

Of course, that didn't become clear(er) to me until this go-round of 3 Chords & the Truth was in the can, so to speak. So . . . yeah. Just consider the show this week to be 20 lovely songs in the day's fading light.

THE PAST couple of weeks, as is increasingly the norm for folks the age of your Mighty Favog, have seen the passing of a couple of musical giants -- Harry Belafonte and Gordon Lightfoot. The loss is great. What they have left us, have left in our cultural coffers, is tremendous.

And you'll get a taste of that this week.

You'll also get a taste of a lot more, as well. That's utterly normal for what we call the Big Show. That also is what makes this program stand out . . . and, during these times, stand apart.

If you know, you know.

If you know, you're exceptional. And fortunate.

There's really not much more to say, so I'll leave it right here. Now get comfortable and get musically enriched.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Two steps forward, 80 years back

Big shows don't play on tiny radios . . . and, to tell you the truth, they're not easy to do in small-minded states. Like this one.

Yet here we are with the latest edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

After the last week in the Nebraska Legislature, I am tempted to tell you to boycott this state. But then you'd probably boycott the Big Show, too, and that would be like Ron DeSantis trying to kill Mickey Mouse. Wouldn't end well for anyone.

So I just curl up next to the big, big radio and just do the damn show. With appropriate measures of snark, sarcasm, warped humor and a great and eclectic mix of music -- mostly great music.

I mean, if you're contemplating curling up into a fetal position, turn on some tunes first, man.

But brace yourself for that King Crimson to George Martin segué. You'll understand when you hear it.

Well, that's about all before I curl up next to the stereo system and turn on the program. Except for this. . . .

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

3 Chords & the Truth: What do we do?

It's a stormy, stormy night here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. Fitting for those of us living in a state that has become a shitstorm.

Pardon my French, but that's the best description I can muster for a place where the MAGA crackpots have taken full control . . . and now are doing what MAGA crackpots do. That would be punching down at The Other and generally waging war on what's left of civil society.

It's especially depressing when one's church is in on the action. Then again, Judas was a disciple, and Peter was a dolt. Things have gotten worse -- at least in these parts -- since.

"But what, Favog," you may ask, "does this have to do with 3 Chords & the Truth?

Excellent question.

And the only answer I have, as humble as it may be, is that the Big Show is a bit of a refuge -- for me and, one hopes, for you, too. That's all I got.

That's all I got.

As for the Nebraska unicameral, all I can say is that try as the booboisie might, the blind can't lead the blind. And it's pretty dark in there.

So, given the above, I'll enjoy the thoroughly enjoyable music as I ponder my options. I suspect you can, too. Actually, I really hope you do -- as usual, it's a hell of a show.

But not a shitshow. We'll leave that to the Republicans.

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.