3 Chords & the Truth: Whatever works

How are you getting by this week in this time of disease and woe?

Me, I've found that the best method for coping is . . . whatever works.

A big part of "whatever works," we at the Big Show hope, is the Big Show itself. A weekly dose of good music helps a lot when you're afraid to turn on the news for fear of what fresh hell awaits.

But while you're listening to the program -- listening to the finest in recorded music from the vast 3 Chords & the Truth library -- might I suggest sitting in a comfy chair with a refreshing libation. It might just be the shot in the liver you need.

PERHAPS A Skyball would do the tri . . . tri . . . hic . . . trick.

This classic 1960s bit of alcoholic nostalgia is sort of like a spruced-up highball, only made with vodka, lemon juice and lemonade. And I'm sure it's healthier than sitting on the stoop with a Lieutenant Dan cigar and muttering the F-word a lot.

Like I said, whatever works.

Of course, if you happen to be under 21 -- or if you just don't like booze -- I'm sure a nice refreshing glass of no-octane lemonade would work just fine, too.

Listen to me, I was pre-med in college. Wait, I was a journalism major.

Hell, what's the difference?

Good music and good libations -- that will help you get through this time of pandemic and pan-idiots. And helping you get through it all is our special mission on 3 Chords & the Truth.

S'alright? S'alright.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Doing what we can

First, the pandemic. Then, the reckoning.

Hell of a spring you're having, America.

Amid a double-barreled storm -- a double-barreled world of hurt -- what then are we to do? The answer is both complicated and really simple. Being a simple sort, I'll stick to the latter with this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth.

Now, the envelope, please. And the answer is . . . what we can.

We do what we can. That's certainly what we're doing here on the Big Show -- what we can. It involves (one hopes) not being dumb, not saying dumb things (at least not extraordinarily dumb, which seems the fashion for American society today) and playing the best music available here in the Apocalypse Bunker.

MANY MIGHT know that better as "the studio."

That pretty much sums up this week's show -- playing good music to soothe your soul and not saying or doing anything extraordinarily dumb. Don't worry, we'll still have plenty of the ordinarily dumb.

Just ask my wife.

I suppose that's all there is to be said -- he says as the smartphone and iPad keep dinging and lighting up with the latest Fresh Hell Alerts. (Would it be appropriate to change the alert tone to something more appropriate to these times . . . like an air-raid siren?)

Ponder that after you rebalance yourself by listening to the show.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: No. 1 in the heart of . . . something

When life has become a slog and the world around you is in turmoil, sometimes you just need to self-medicate . . . with music.

This may or may not preclude self-medicating with other things. It's that kind of year.

This week on the Big Show, we're self-medicating with a lot of hit records -- and records that, in your Mighty Favog's humble opinion, should have been hit records. Or bigger hit records.

It beats crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Which, again, may or may not preclude also crawling into a dark corner with a bottle. Because 2020.

But for right now, you can try coping by listening to the hits and shoulda-been-hits on this here edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

I guess that covers it. So give it a listen and escape the suck for a while.

That is all.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Please do not adjust your set

Please do not adjust your set. 2020 is experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

(Cue the peppy, yet soothing instrumental music to accompany the "technical difficulties" slide on your screen.)

Please stand by -- perhaps that ought to be the new motto of the United States as the country staggers between a pandemic, economic collapse, civil unrest and a president who manages to be deeply evil and barking mad, too.

God knows "E Pluribus Unum" just isn't cutting it anymore.

If you have any answers beyond "Just hold on, and do the best you can," the Big Show would like to hear them. Address your reply to 3 Chords & the Truth, Apocalypse Bunker, Omaha, by God, Nebraska, Oh-What-the-Hell-Is-the-Point-Anymore?

AT A TIME when the president sets federal agents and troops upon peaceful protesters just so he can walk unbothered by the hoi polloi to a boarded-up church to stage a phony photo op with a Bible he doesn't read, just holding on and doing the best we can seems to be about all we can do right now.

Just hold on. We'll do the best we can to play some good music to distract you from your aching fingers.

That's about all I can tell you right now. God help us.

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

Amerika, a pictorial study

Here's a scene from Saturday's protest in Salt Lake City.

If this is how Amerika's storm-trooper cops treat a 67-year-old leukemia patient who walks with a cane, how the hell do you think your average able-bodied black man gets treated by police in the 'hood?

The old guy's crime? He was taking pictures when the cops swooped in to "dominate the battlespace."

“I thought they were just coming down the street and all of a sudden they came charging at me,” he told KTVX television. “Ten minutes before the armored vehicles showed up that’s when I got there,” said Tobin. “When I went down there to take pictures there was no mob scene. It was just a bunch of people standing around taking pictures. I was at the end.”

Afterwards, Tobin says a group of people then came to his aid trying to call an ambulance, but one couldn’t get through.

“They stayed with me,” he said. “Bandaged up some of my cuts on my arms.”

Frustrated, Tobin went home. The next morning, he says he received a call from Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown.

“He said that’s not the way the police are supposed to act, and he was going to look into it with internal affairs and the review board, and take action,” said Tobin. “I told him whatever you’re going to do is fine with me.”

Tobin, who has Leukemia, has a visible scratch on his head from his fall.

“My shoulder still hurts a little bit,” he said. “My rib on the back is still sore, but the main problem is my knee.”

If given the chance, Tobin shares what he would tell the officer who knocked him down.

“I’d just say, I hope you don’t do it again.”

I DON'T KNOW exactly at what point your average cop in the United States became your average Nazi storm trooper, but here we are. In the last 10 days, we have heard -- and seen -- story after story after story after story of ordinary, peaceful folk being brutalized by "(fill in the blank's) finest" while "boogaloo bois," vandals, looters and arsonists run amok as America recoils in civil-disobedient horror at . . . well . . . the kind of crap you see here. And a lot worse.

Repeatedly, murderously worse.

But it's OK. The police chief is going to look into it. The trouble is, America's police chiefs have been "looking into it" for the last 55 goddamn years. Maybe the mayor will appoint a commission.

Or maybe not. President Caligula probably would fire off some mean tweets calling him a pussy.

IT SEEMS we live in a land where "pro-life" politicians -- like Donald Trump, "the most pro-life president ever" -- just can't satiate their blood lust, and now your average, unarmed African-American just doesn't hit the spot anymore. Now we have cops pointing weapons at the heads of toddlers.

In that case, the Long Beach, Calif., police have promised to launch a "review." Don't hold your breath.

Meantime, maybe some cops will take a knee or do a silly dance with the early shift of protesters. Hell of a great way of getting limbered up for the main event.


* * *
P.S.: Judging by his apparel, it seems that the Utah victim of wanton police brutality is a Nebraska fan. Haven't Nebraska fans suffered enough?

The crooked, white heart of a dying land

You need to watch this. You need to hear what CNN's Don Lemon has to say.

You do that -- I'll wait. Then I have something I need to say. In advance, I ask that you pardon my French.

Have you finished with that Don Lemon video? Good.

Now, you know what the problem is here, right? It's this: Way too many white folk are just like Donald Trump -- narcissists who lack empathy, only in their case that deficit only applies to those whom they've been raised to disdain.

Guess what, people. Those who raised you in such a manner were just as fucked up as you are. They taught you wrong, and you just aren't introspective enough to question your assumptions and conditioning.

LISTEN, the bad news is we're all fucked up. The good news is you're not alone. The better news is you have the power to fix your fucked-upitude. You have an imagination -- use it. Put yourself in the other guy's shoes for just a minute.

Until I got to Baton Rouge Magnet High, due to life in the public schools of Redneckistan and thanks to my own family dynamics . . . well, let's just say it's easy for me to understand the sort of rage we're seeing tonight. At age 59, I consider it, as Bobby Kennedy related in 1968 after Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, "the awful grace of God."

It's not terribly difficult for me to imagine just wanting to "burn the motherfucker down." It's not terribly difficult for me to understand internalized rage and humiliation.

Of course, it's not right to just "burn the motherfucker down," but it's certainly understandable as hell. At least if you get a hold of your self-absorbed self and imagine what it's like to have a cop with his knee on your neck . . . just because he can, figuring the consequences for that will be minimal.

WELL, we're seeing the consequences now, ain't we, Cap?

The problem here is that this sort of riotous anarchy has to be quelled, but the ones whose job that is have zero moral standing to do it. Not anymore. That doesn't make a violent mob any less a violent mob; it just makes us well and truly fucked right now.

Really, we're in an awful place when the tripolar dynamic in any society is, first, the lawless, enraged mob. Then, second, there are the jackbooted thugs, as embodied by Donald Trump and his cultists.

Finally, third, there is what appears to be the feckless liberal authorities -- in this case in Minneapolis -- who believe in relevance and self-abasement (self-abasement which isn't unmerited, I hasten to add), but are powerless to do much else but validate the feelings of the unthinking, enraged Id indiscriminately destroying everything in its path.

Welcome to the Revolution, folks. Chances are, it won't end well.

Minnesota copbots' algorithm needs tweaking

Let me get this straight: A mob burns down half a Minneapolis city block, including a police station, and . . . nothing. 

But a CNN crew, standing where the cops said it could do a live shot, gets arrested while on the air.

This after the reporter told the state police copbots they'd move wherever the cops wished. Handcuffs. No explanations for the arrests.

PERHAPS THE crew's mistake was that it didn't burn shit down. Then the CNN journalists would be golden.

Welcome to Amerika. Now, why are mobs smashing in storefronts and burning down police precincts again?

Obviously, there are many paths to mindless thugishness. Indiscriminately burning down your city as part of a mob is only one of them.

100,000 and counting

One. Hundred. Thousand.

Dead. In less than four months.

Our economy is in ruins. We're not near done.

God help us, because Donald Trump and his followers sure as hell won’t.

And wear a damned mask.

3 Chords & the Truth: The Blues Cafe

Damn right, I've got the blues.

Damn right, I bet you do, too.

It's a blue world here in Coronavirusland, so there's only one thing for us to do on 3 Chords & the Truth. It's time to play the blues.

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.

Rock? Blues.

Jazz? Blues.

The American songbook? Look beneath the surface of so much of it. Blues.

Damn right, we got the blues -- right here on the Big Show. Which is perfect for when a whole country done got the blues.

Trust us; the blues will cure your blues. At least a little.

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

Ben Sasse explains it all

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.

Ben Sasse speaks. He is unshaven. Well, many of us are these days.

The graduates listen, and so do his state and his country. What shall we do? Why is this happening? Where lies hope?

The learned man answers all.

What shall we do? Not major in psychology.

Why is this happening? Blame China. Maybe Jeremy -- you can't trust a guy named Jeremy.

Where lies hope? Obviously, not in Ben Sasse.

He's such a Jeremy.

3 Chords & the Truth: Virally stylish

New for '20! Style goes viral!

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 Show is 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.

3 Chords & the Truth: A tuneful light

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.

Uhhhhhh . . . OK, sure. (snort, giggle)

Omaha World-Herald, May 8, 1970

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.

3 Chords & the Truth: Calming numbers

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 Truth can 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.

33⅓. 45. 78.

And at whatever speed a compact disc spins.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Whadda you have to lose?

I give up. What the hell?

Got Lysol?

Truly, whadda we have to lose? I'm goin' for the cure!

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Déjà vu all over again

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 records that made me (some of 'em): Labour of Lust

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.

The records that made me (some of 'em): Calcutta!

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 Show was 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.

The records that made me (some of 'em): The compilations

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.