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

3 Chords & the Truth: Hip to the radiophonic trip

  Has there ever been a better drug than music?

Has there ever been a better way to take it than by radio?

Allow me to answer that for you with minimal gum-flapping or keyboard wordgurgitation. No.

That is the basis of this -- and, to be truthful, every -- episode of the Big Show, which is a thing called 3 Chords & the Truth. Now, radio is an endangered species these days, and younger music lovers might not know what the deal is with it . . . why old farts like your Mighty Favog keep going on and on and on and on about how great radio was. Well, it's like this.

No, I mean like this. Like 3 Chords & the Truth.

USED TO BE that you had radio that sounded like this all over the place. Now, not so much. Now, there are places where radio -- the medium of legend -- still exists. Places where music is that best of drugs, one that can wash over you in a tidal wave of sound that will soothe your soul and expand your mind.

Radio. Wonderful, trippy, unpredictable radio.

I hope the Big Show is one of those places. These days, radio isn't always on the radio. You do what you can.

And you take it where you can find it.

Radio.

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

Say hey to an old friend

Be there. Aloha.

1977: Fly the friendly skies of United2017: Don't f*** with us, or you'll regret it

@United overbook #flight3411 and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here's how they did it: pic.twitter.com/QfefM8X2cW

— Jayse D. Anspach (@JayseDavid) April 10, 2017

This is what happened to a paying passenger -- a physician who said he needed to get back home so he could see his patients today -- when United overbooked a flight and no one volunteered to get off the plane so four airline employees could take their places.

United CEO response to United Express Flight 3411. pic.twitter.com/rF5gNIvVd0

— United (@united) April 10, 2017

This is what United's chief executive said about it.

1977 United advertisement

NOW, I'd like to know a couple of things.

First, is there any damn horrible thing American cops won't do in the name of "just following orders"? If they had caught the glint off a pager or cellphone the doctor was carrying out of the corner of their eye, would the hired thugs law-enforcement officers have just the f*** shot him?

Second, if Corporate America marshaling law enforcement to manhandle and brutalize law-abiding, non-violent, paying customers on the whim of incompetents isn't a hallmark of a fascist state, what the hell is?

If justice is still any kind of a thing in this desiccated and decadent land, that doctor will be America's newest multimillionaire, will be clutching the scalp of United CEO Oscar Munoz, and those aviation cops will be saying hello to their new cellmate, Tiny.

Dude tried to make Jesus a fool. Just made hip-hop uncool.

There are worse things than the Dinner Theater for Jesus ditties of Marty Haugen. You have to go to THIS extreme to get there, but get there you can.

The only thing I can say for this is "Rayvon" didn't call himself a "Jesus Wigga." But with this level of stereotypical idiocy, I'm not sure it would have been any more offensive if he had.

Not heard in the video: God, Jesus, Resurrection, Crucifixion, Sacrifice, Grace, Passover, Redemption, Christ, Christian, Sin, Forgiveness, Heaven, Hell, Life, Death or Love.

He can't even bring himself to utter the word "church." That's just as well.
 

His bling, however, runneth over.

This could be the only church (or at least the only one in Bel Air, Maryland) where you walk in as Homer Simpson and walk out as Beavis or Butthead (maybe both) -- followers, no doubt, of a feckless deity seemingly more ridiculous than yourself.

THE GREAT Southern (and Catholic) writer Flannery O'Connor once said that a God you understand is less than oneself. I fear that any God -- or, more accurately, god -- that "Rayvon" proclaims as his Primo Playa logically would be forced to damn himself to hell.

What a thing to achieve in the name of relevance but not necessarily righteousness -- a "gathering" of goddamn fools in the "swagtacula" name of a damn-fool god.

I think the term for insipidness such as this is "abomination of desolation." That's in the Bible . . . another thing, come of think of it, carefully avoided in da Gozpulshizzle uh Rayvon.

Which has managed to turn Jesus Christ -- He of "seeker-friendly" implicizzle but not revelizzle -- into something seemingly even tackier than Donald Trump.

Let the congregation say "Oy veh!" Or "Anathema sit." Whichever.

We're gonna party like it's . . . 1992

This is 90-something minutes of alternative rock 'n' roll greatness.

This is WBRH, 90.3 on your FM dial in Baton Rouge, La., almost a quarter century ago now. This also is a high-school radio station -- the broadcast voice of Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

I don't know who the DJ is . . . but she is on fire with the music she's choosing.

Likewise, I don't know when in September 1992 this aircheck was recorded, nor do I know the time of day. All I do know is this is my old station (1977-79) near the height of its musical powers.

I had been living in Omaha for more than four years by the time someone rolled tape on this bit of radio history . . . and there is no way the much larger city up Nawth had a rock station as good as this back then.

Or now, for that matter.

The city drops into the night

Eight-ish o'clock, Sunday night.

The Mexican joint in the Old Market Passageway has just closed for the evening, and I am full of chips, cerveza and the No. 2 combination plate.

The swanky joint next door is closed on a slow night for dining out.

Omaha is sluggishly, reluctantly steeling itself for the end of the weekend and the start of another workweek. But it's even worse than that -- there's a city primary election Tuesday.

When did we come to dread elections? Sigh.

All is quiet on the downtown front.

They paved paradise

  No, we didn't save the Paramount Theatre.

Yes, we did raze it and put up an Allright parking lot in downtown Baton Rouge, which specializes in not knowing what it's got till it's gone.

(Advertisement image from Gris-Gris weekly, May 21, 1979)

3 Chords & the Truth: 33. 45. 78.

33.

45.

78.

That's RPM to you and me and, to be completely accurate, the 33 is actually 33⅓ -- the speed at which a vinyl LP rotates as the music jumps out of the grooves, onto a phonograph needle and into your hi-fi as it prepares to caress your eardrums.

Compare this to your average MP3 file, which slithers out of a pair of earbuds emanating from some plastic thingy, on its way to mug your brain. And, no, the irony is not lost on us that 3 Chords & the Truth comes to you over the Internets as . . . an MP3 file.

TECHNOLOGY . . . damn . . . you . . . to . . . HELL!

Sigh.

Anyway, the other numbers on the Big Show this week represent the revolutions per minute of your 7-inch 45 single and your extremely obsolete 78 record.

No matter the number, we treasure them all. And that's how we roll on 3 Chords & the Truth. Amen.

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