3 Chords & the Truth: A ray of sunshine

It's another rainy day in River City.

Drizzly, bleak, pervasive is this pall,
It's the soggy side of fall.

Music brightens the day in River City,
The Big Show fights off the brooding sky.
And spirits, they will fly!

Music and good cheer,
Your blues will disappear.

ANOTHER rainy day in River City,
Another wet fall day in this old city,
Sitting in this cozy studio,
The tunes are good to go.

Windy, wet and gray in River City,
You're the only one want to see . . .
Here at 3C&T!

Now suddenly you feel
The music's bright appeal . . .

Another rainy day in River City. 

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

I'll build a (vinyl) stairway to paradise

This afternoon's listening was . . . transcendent.

Sarah Vaughan. George Gershwin's very large segment of the American Songbook. Where could you go wrong?

Answer: You can't.

Boy, oh boy, are you in for a treat this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. My dilemma is deciding what to play off this 1957 masterpiece of an LP.

I have a couple of thoughts, but I almost feel like I'd be cheating you by not just playing the whole thing. The problem is that I have lots of other great music, too.

I'd feel like I was cheating you by not getting around to all that, too.

In brief, my dilemma is your gain. That's the Big Show for you.

Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords & the Truth: Buddy and the Beatles

The Cricket is the father of the Beatle.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we explore Buddy Holly and his influence on The Beatles, which I submit was huge. In short, had Holly not lived and blown open rock 'n' roll with all kinds of then-not-rock 'n' roll influences and instrumentation  -- A full string section? Harps? Heresy!!! -- you have to wonder whether it would have been possible for John, Paul, George and Ringo to make the music they ultimately did.

Maybe so. Then again, maybe everybody would have been remaking "Roll Over Beethoven" and the greatest hits of Fabian over and over and over again.

But Buddy Holly blew it open, and the boys from Liverpool reaped the musical benefits.

THAT'S WHERE we're going this week on the Big Show. And you are going to reap the musical benefits as we revisit some classic Holly and some live Beatles, as broadcast back in the day on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

We're live on the BBC, and we're on top of lots of other exceptional stuff this go around. You're gonna love it.

So. . . .

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Java jivin'

Way down among 3 Chordsians . . .
 
Coffee beans grow by the billions
So we've got to find those extra cups to fill
We've got an awful lot of coffee in the till
 
You can't get cherry soda
'cause we gotta fill that quota
And the way things are I'll bet we never will. . . . 

We've got a zillion tons of coffee on the bill 

No tea or tomato juice
You'll see no potato juice
'cause the Favog in the Big O's saying "No, no, no"
A Big Show listener's daughter
Was accused of drinkin' water
And was fined a great big fifty dollar bill
We've got an awful lot of coffee songs to shill

IN OTHER WORDS, this week on 3 Chords & the Truth . . .

I love coffee, i love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (boy!)

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

Tonight's vinylpalooza

I'm cheap enough that paying $15 for this 1959 stereo release gave me serious pause at the LP bins of an Old Market antique emporium.

On one hand, I'd rather find a gem for a song at an estate sale or something.

On the other hand, the records from this vendor are usually in marvelous playing condition.

On the third hand, a stereo rock 'n' roll record from 1959 -- the mono version of Bobby Freeman's Do You Wanna Dance album came out the previous year -- and from an indie label, no less. That's likely on the rare side, making the $15 price not a rip-off.

I'll say!

BEFORE LISTENING to this early-rock classic this evening, I did a little Internet price checking for the stereo version of Do You Wanna Dance . . . Jubilee 1086 for all you record geeks out there. And the low price I found it being sold for was something like $29.95. The high price (on eBay, of course) was . . . was . . . gulp! . . . $110. I understand a mint first pressing goes for $200.

Mine seems to be a second pressing. Sigh. I coulda been rich.

Now note that amid all this "What's it wurf???" nerd-o-mania, not a word was written about the actual music, which was great despite following the rock-album convention of the day for a hot act. That would be:

SIDE A

• Cover something.
• Cover something.
• Cover something.
• Original that'll never be released as a single.
• Cover something.
• Hit record we named the LP for.

 SIDE B

• Cover something.
• Cover something.
• Original that you'll hear nowhere else. Ever.
• Cover something.
• Original that sounds exactly like the big hit on Side 1.
• Cover something inspiring. Or something.

That is all. Good night, and good listening.

And that's the way it @#$%*&!!! is . . . .

Alrighty, folks. This is your NSFW video of the day.

Here, at wits' end dealing with a producer back at the station, British reporter Jonathan Pie gives us the real news. Which is a lot closer to the truth than the "official" news.

"Jonathan Pie," alas, is really comedian Tom Walker, as reported by the Russian-government website Sputnik News. Which is just as well, I suppose. Pity the real TV journalist who gets fed up and tells the unvarnished truth . . . and then has the outtake go viral.

Now, what I'd like to see is a real newscast by American and Russian anchors who get good and cranky, then cut the official propaganda of each superpower to shreds . . . thereby arriving at something like the truth.

3 Chords & the Truth: Is this thing on?

We almost interrupt this program due to technical difficulties.

Almost.

It's a little late this go around, but 3 Chords & the Truth is here . . . and the music is good. Really good.

IN A FEW instances, as usual, your mind will be blown by the latest edition of the Big Show. Take safety precautions to prevent ill effects similar to those occurring when the Adobe Audition audio editor comes in contact with the latest Mac OS, El Capitan.

In short, your mental state could resemble Donald Trump's hair.

Be prepared. Be safe. Hold on.

COME TO think of it, we are on, right?

Testing. Testing. One, two, three, four, five. . . . Testing.

Whew! I was worried there for a second. Carry on.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Hep to the jive

Don't be a wet blanket, pally. Get hep to the 3 Chords & the Truth Fan Club and never miss another jivin' tune again.

All you have to do to be with the swingin' crowd is become a regular listener of the Big Show. And the best thing about it is that you get the whole wide world of solid sounds for exactly nothin'.

That's right, won't cost you a thin dime, Ain't no better bargain than free, buddy boy.

So join all the cool kids in the 3 Chords & the Truth appreciation society and hear everything from the Syndicate of Sound to Southern Culture on the Skids. From She & Him to Dale & Grace.

And that ain't the half of it, Daddy-O.

SIGN ON with the Big Show, and you get some bonus Otis Redding and Shawn Mullins for a small shipping and handling charge. That would be your undying devotion, sister. Or brother. Either way, man -- it's copacetic.

Oh, the things you'll hear!

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

If you or a loved one has been hurt by Leonard Fournette. . . .

I don't care who ya' are, this is funny.

In a related class-action development, I understand that pursuers who inhale the dust in Leonard Fournette's wake also may be at high risk for mesothelioma. If you or some linebacker you love develops mesothelioma after playing football against LSU and Leonard Fournette call State, War Eagle and Orangemen at 1 (800) TOO SLOW.

Geaux Tigers!

3 Chords & the Truth: Drop the needle

 
I've got a phonograph, and I'm not afraid to use it. Don't mess with me.

Man, that kind of sums up the whole of 3 Chords & the Truth, doesn't it?

Actually, I've got more than a few phonographs, and I use 'em plenty. That's where the bulk of the music on the Big Show comes from -- musical gems I've had forever, and treasures I've dug up at estate sales, thrift shops, used-record bins and elsewhere all over creation.

A lot of it you're not going to find on the Internet or on CD. So if you want to hear a lot of this stuff. . . .

For instance, remember Lou Bega's big hit from 1999, "Mambo No. 5"? Well, this week, you're going to hear the original by Perez Prado and His Orchestra from way back in the day. If you ask me, Prado's version swings a lot harder than the 1990s iteration.

OTHERWISE on 3 Chords & the Truth this week, your Mighty Favog has . . .

A little bit of Stafford in my life, a little bit of Van Damme by her side

A little bit of Cugat is all I need, a little bit of Dusty is what I see

A little bit of the Moodies in the sun, a little bit of Nick Lowe all night long

A little bit of Root Boy here I am, a little bit of Stan Getz is my plan.

Get the drift?

No? Let me elaborate.

A little bit of Arlo in my life, a little bit of Crenshaw by my side

A little bit of Elgart is all I need, a little bit of J-Cash is what I see

A little bit of Pozo in the sun, a little bit of Seco all night long

A little bit of Prado here I am, a little bit of you makes me your man.

BELIEVE ME, you ain't heard nothing like this.

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

How your hi-fi stereo record works

Click on the picture for larger, readable view

This afternoon's vintage-LP listening comes with a technical note.

And our tech talk today centers on a question: You ever wonder how stereo records put the stereo on the record?

Well, the top photo of the inner sleeve of our 1958 release by David Carroll and His Orchestra explains how the modern marvel of stereophonic records work. And it also contains a caveat for the stereo newbie, as nearly everyone was 57 years ago -- do not play this thing on a monophonic record player.

A mono cartridge on your mono phonograph will tear this sucker up.

See the explanation on the record sleeve for why that is.

3 Chords & the Truth: Twice as nice

It's a twin-spin weekend on 3 Chords & the Truth!

That's right, you hip, happenin' and now music fans, we're staring off this week's episode of the Big Show with artists so nice, you've got to hear 'em twice. And I'm also going to play you the 1966 Petula Clark album cut that I think should have been a single, because it's that good.

Of course, there were one or two more album cuts on her My Love LP that also should have been hit singles, but you can't play 'em all. Well, I suppose I could, but I restrained myself. I'm a professional.

And that's just the first music set this go around on 3 Chords & the Truth. There's so much more good stuff on the rest of the program, you just can't imagine.

WELL, if you're a regular listener to the best musical spot on the Internet, you can imagine. But saying that doesn't work as well rhetorically, so just go with me here.

So sit down, grab a snack and a drink, and treat yourself to an hour and a half of music-media bliss. If you don't, you'll just be cheating yourself.

Trust me on this.

So, without taking up more time reading that you should spend listening. . . .

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

Vintage LP du jour

 

On the menu tonight at La Maison de Trois Chords is The Friends of Distinction's Real Friends album, a nice 1970 vintage for our listening pleasure.

Not only does it feature one of my all-time favorite songs, "Love or Let Me Be Lonely," it also sounds better than many new albums right out of the shrink wrap, even though this particular LP left its shrink wrap around 1970.

DO YOU THINK I still could get me a "Complete RCA Catalog" if I mailed a quarter to Dept. C, Rockaway, New Jersey 07866?

On the other hand, maybe I can dig out the Complete RCA Catalog that I did get for 25 cents back then.

Once a geek, always a geek.

That is all.

3 Chords & the Truth: The horror

It was the worst of times. It was the worst of times.

Aye, it is true that we see through a glass darkly. But sometimes, it is too dark to even see the glass.

That's the theme of this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. No, this isn't the kind of program that tries to fool you into thinking it's sunny all the time.

But this is the kind of program that tries to lift your soul even while we're trying to make you think about some stuff that maybe you'd rather not. Sometimes, thinking can be entertaining, too.

Nevertheless, there will be no pledge-week hard sell after the Big Show. Perhaps there would be if we had a pledge week -- but we don't. You can put your credit card away.

SO this week, events have pushed us into thoughtfulness, if not out-and-out solemnity . . . though there's a touch of that, too. As we put this week's show together, it's the 14th anniversary attacks on New York and Washington, and that's plenty of reason to reflect on a lot of things. A few of those things make it into the show, for your reflection and, one hopes, edification.

Also as we wrap up another edition of 3 Chords & the Truth, we've just finished watching the remastered, 25th-anniversary edition of The Civil War on that channel that does have pledge breaks. It seems to me that that's food for plenty of thought, too, in this summer of controversy over Confederate symbolism and monuments. Thus, a Civil War set . . . submitted for your approval.

Lest I start to bog you down right here in the description of the podcast, I'll just stop my touting right here and humbly ask you to set aside a spare 91 minutes and 15 seconds and listen to the thing. I don't think you'll be sorry you did.

And you may even be ecstatic that you did. So listen. Click the player or the link and have at it.

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

America was warned

March 4, 1963.

That was the day Frank Zappa, age 22, appeared on the Steve Allen Show and played the bicycle.

We cannot say we didn't see what was coming.

3 Chords & the Truth: Tunes from wonderland

If you're younger than your Mighty Favog, who apparently is something of a fossil, you probably don't remember when your TV picture being in living color was a pretty big (and expensive) deal.

It was a glorious entertainment development way back when, during the Age of Wonders, when the wonders of technology were spaced out just enough for us to appreciate them all.

Now, it seems, I'm always at least one wonder behind. Because fossil, no doubt.

Too, the wonders don't seem so wonderful anymore. Just kind of "meh" as wonders go. Maybe we just have too many of them too fast today. Maybe I'm just jaded in my old age.

And that, Cap, is kinda, sorta the inspiration for this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

THUS, we start the Big Show with seriously wonderful music from the time when color TV was a true wonder. And, looking back on that era, so was the music. Especially our opener this week, Lenny Dee's wondrous 1966 take on Chris Montez's fantastic 1965 take on Petula Clark's 1965 original of "Call Me."

And if it's possible, the program just might get better from there. A little trippy at times, too.

So, that's about all I have to say about that. Just do yourself a huge favor and listen. Preferably on one of those massive 1960's console stereos. Those things were awesome.

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

Let's dance!

Here's some of what's been on the old record player the past couple of days.

In 1956, Capitol Records got Benny Goodman and some of the old orchestra gang together to recut some of his classics in hi-fi. And boy do they sound good in high fidelity, pointing out the advancements in recording technology in just the decade and a half or so since the originals came out on 78 r.p.m. discs.

THE ALBUM, The Benny Goodman Story, featured selections from the motion picture of the same name that had just hit movie houses all across America.

What's interesting about this album, which just may be a first-run pressing -- given the packaging and red Capitol label, which changed to turquoise sometime that same year -- is how the cardboard LP sleeve came inside a paper outer sleeve. I don't think I've ever run across that sort of packaging before for a record album.

And that's your bit of vinyl-nerd bait for the day, all the way from the fabulous '50s.

Where Jefferson met Lincoln

Welcome to the hamlet of Colo, Iowa, population 869.

Colo, about a 20-minute drive east on U.S. 30 from Ames -- itself about 25 minutes north of Des Moines -- isn't exactly a destination these days for most folks. The little Story County town isn't a real swingin' place, though you can get a mighty fine burger and perfect fries at Niland's Cafe.

But if you're a road geek (And doesn't everybody have a little road geek in him?), Colo, Iowa is something approaching a Holy Grail of geekdom. Turn off Highway 30, head north on U.S. 65 and soon enough you'll come to County Road E41. Turn left, and you find yourself at what once was the crossroads of America.


There you'll find the Colo Motel, the cafe and a filling station that hasn't filled anything up since the 1960s. Between 1913 and 1928, though, if you wanted to get from Times Square to San Francisco -- or from New Orleans to Winnipeg, Manitoba -- you'd eventually find yourself in Colo.

There's another name for County Road E41 -- the Lincoln Highway, the first cross-country road in the United States. Likewise, what now is U.S. 65 through Colo once was the Jefferson Highway, the first great north-south road in North America, starting in 1916.
 
Jefferson met Lincoln in little Colo, Iowa.

TODAY, if you want to get from the East Coast to the West, you take Interstate 80. If you want the scenic route, you take Highway 30, which now runs about a mile south of this stretch of the old Lincoln Highway.

If you're headed north to Winnipeg, you'll need to head over to I-29, a couple of hours west.

Once upon a time, however, Colo was the crossroads of North America.

Now, Niland's Cafe is, in addition to that of a home-cooked meal, the home of a small museum dedicated to the Jefferson and Lincoln Highways. And the old gas station has been left more or less untouched since pumping its last tankful, except for the addition of three restored vintage pumps out front and some general sprucing up.

Last week, after wandering around Ames on a roundabout journey back to Omaha from the Iowa State Fair, a stop at the crossroads was a must. I live less than a mile from the Lincoln Highway's old route through Omaha. In Baton Rouge, I once lived on Jefferson Highway. The Jefferson Highway, which in many places has kept its name after it lost its official status.

Given my journey in life, it was only fitting to pay homage to the Crossroads.

Old school

Pioneer Livestock Pavilion, Iowa State Fair.

Impervious to the horror here in the heart of darkness

The Daily News slapped New York readers in the face Thursday. It slapped them in the face with a still sequence from a snuff video.

I think I know why the editors did that, and I won't outright condemn them for it because the benefit of the doubt says their motives were pure. The benefit of the doubt says  someone who thought that posting images from a snuff film made by a deranged terrorist -- a terrorist in the purest sense of the word -- would boost street sales is a terrible businessman, either that or someone who's calculated that America has reached some sort of psychopathic critical mass.

I don't know. Maybe it has.

I can understand -- maybe -- someone's curiosity getting the better of them and their watching the video. Once. Not a noble curiosity, but a human one nevertheless -- curiosity, after all, is what led Eve to the Tree of Life and a fatal taste of the forbidden fruit.

Alison Parker and Adam Ward

But gazing -- on the subway, at your office desk or over at the Daily News on your living room coffee table -- at the moment a young television reporter from Roanoke, Va., recoiled in terror as a devil with a handgun sent her to God, that is not something a normal person can stand for more than a moment. If that. Even a fleeting glance cannot be unseen.

Merely seeing the aftermath of such evil, such uncut horror, is why so many cops and paramedics end up messed up. Images like the last in the sequence the tabloid put on its front page, here for God and everybody to behold, are the pictures that combat veterans cannot get out of their minds. The moments of death that come to them in their dreams, cause them to awaken screaming in the night and, for some, cause them to blot out the terrible images with a bullet to the brain.

BUT THERE it is on the front page of the Daily News, the moment that gunshots cut down WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, 24. The moment she realized she was going to die. The moment before the gunman killed television photojournalist Adam Ward, 27, and shot a regional chamber of commerce director, Vicki Gardner, who survived.

To look into Alison Parker's eyes is to know her horror.

My hope is that the Daily News editors' intent was to force Americans to realize that the sudden horror that swept over Alison Parker as a fusillade from a Glock semiautomatic pistol began to tear into her body is, in fact, the unremitting horror of a gun-crazy -- no, an increasingly crazy crazy -- nation. An ongoing, largely preventable horror.

My conviction is that, if my hope is well placed, the Daily News editors are deeply naive. You can't argue with crazy people and bought-off politicians, and Americans today are stark, raving mad while their elected representatives, many of them, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the National Rifle Association.

I AM equally convicted that you could ambush seven out of 10 Americans and shoot them in the ass every single day for a year, then on the 366th morning, they would change the dressing on their hamburger buttocks and vow that if they had had an Uzi and eyes in the back of their heads, you never would have gotten the first shot off, you son of a bitch. Americans were not horrified by Columbine enough to insist that the Second Amendment was not drafted so that every citizen could amass an arsenal exceeding that of some small African nations.

Americans were not frightened enough by Virginia Tech to tighten up this country's firearm free-for-all one bit. Ditto for Aurora.

Sandy Hook upset folks a little bit, but it wasn't anything that the NRA and more The Bachelor and Dancing With the Stars couldn't nip in the bud.

By the time a fledgling neo-Confederate massacred nine praying African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C., church, an angry right-wing nut shot up a movie theater in Louisiana and a disgruntled ex-reporter gunned down his former colleagues in Virginia, we had come to the conclusion that the aftermath of yet another American gun massacre was an inappropriate time to talk about preventing yet more American gun massacres.

Just because we've become a nation of gun-worshiping lunatics doesn't mean we have to be indecorous. That is something best left to Donald Trump and late-night infomercials for herbal male-enhancement pills.

After all, this is America. The only thing we love as much as a big iron on our hip is a big iron in our pants. Fretting over the mounting death toll just distracts us from the important things in life . . . down here in the abyss.

And force-feeding deadly, intimate and graphic things we've no right to gawk at will not, at long last, cause those who live in this heart of darkness to see the light. If you ask me, The Horror is us.

* * *  
POSTSCRIPT: I watched the video, alas, because I wanted to get my facts and my chronology straight. As I write, it is either very late or very early -- take your pick -- and I fear sleep, for fear of what I'll dream. God help us all.