The records that made me (some of 'em):The contradiction of Mama and Daddy's 78s

The album-cover challenge continues, Part 4. The thing is, this ain't an album. It's a few 78s, ones that I've been playing since I was old enough to work a record player, which was age 4-ish.

First, behold this influential record of my youth -- Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up," on glorious shellac.

In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.

And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.

Now I have brought much of my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess, preserved on not-so-glorious hard drives these days. (Don't worry; I still have the records.)

"All Shook Up." I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.

In 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it still was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it still is today.

Me (age not quite 3) and the Silvertone . . . and the records

THAT GOES as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it sitting on a 1952 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.

And you know what? After half a century and more, the Elvis records still sound pretty much like new. Hell, I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. I mean, some of these old 78s sound great.

RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.

Now let's turn to a couple more 78s that more fully became touchstones when I hit my 50s -- Walter Brown's "Fine Brown Baby" / "My Baby's Boogie Woogie" and The Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away From Me."

In 1946, when my parents were still newlyweds, they were buying "race" records and hillbilly blues records from their favorite Baton Rouge music emporiums.

LOW-DOWN BLUES. R&B. Along with pop, jump and country twangfests like the Delmore Brothers.

"She's got what it takes, make a preacher lay his Bible down," sangeth Mr. Brown. You should hear the flip side.

If you want to know the music of my soul, my folks' old 78s will get you close.

If you want to know what was it that made me the musical creature that I am -- if you want to hear the records I was playing when I was but a lad, just old enough to get into my folks records and operate a record changer -- here you go. This and Fats Domino . . . and Ivory Joe Hunter . . . and Fats Domino . . . and Hank Williams . . . and Louis Jordan.

This is about as personal as it gets.

This is who I am. The music of my parents' young adulthood (and my record-geek childhood) sounded like the world -- the Deep South -- I was born into damn near six decades ago.

It was eclectic, the Louisiana . . . the South of my youth. It was seemingly at odds with itself if you didn't look any further than the surface of things. It was also rich beyond measure.

Take Brown, the blues shouter who once sang with Jay McShann's orchestra. In the particular culture I entered into during the spring of 1961, black shouters like him could sit next to white twangers like Ernest Tubb in the record cabinet in the bottom of the old Silvertone console -- even if they couldn't sit next to each other at the Woolworth's lunch counter.

AND NO ONE thought twice about either peculiarity.

This explains my parents' music-buying habits of the 1940s and '50s, long before I came along and, a few years later, started raiding their music collection. It also explains the complex and contradictory inner lives of these people -- formed by the Southern society that brought us Williams, Louis Armstrong and Jim Crow -- who could in 1946 buy racy records by blues shouters, then in 1971 yell at me about my expletive-deleted "n***er music."

People who thought Dick Clark was a communist, probably because of the fatal combination of "beatnik music" and race mixing on "American Bandstand."

Those George Wallace and David Duke voters.

A couple more of the blackest white people on earth -- as Southern Caucasians surely are -- who may have found it just cause for homicide if you had told them that back in the day.

Go figure.

The South: It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, tucked away in an enigma and fueled by contradiction. These records give you a peek under its hood a little bit . . . its and mine.

You might not completely understand either of us, me and the South, but it will be a start.

The records that made me (some of 'em): The B-52's

Well, I am up to No. 3 in the post-pictures-of-formative-albums challenge. So far, so good.

Now watch me forget No. 4.

The year: 1979. The guy: Idiot, 18-year-old me, spending much time at carrier-current WLSU (soon to be on FM as WPRG, then eventually KLSU). The album: "The B-52's." (Really, is the distinction between plural and possessive really that hard to decipher?)

The LP arrives at the station, and it starts getting airplay -- "Dance This Mess Around" was the first radio cut. I think my first reaction was along the lines of "What the FUCK is THIS SHIT?!"
My first exposure to the B-52s (B-52's? I give up) left me thinking that Yoko Ono had taken some really bad shit, man.

Then "Dance This Mess Around" started to grow on me. And grow on me. And grow on me.
 
I MEAN, "Why WON'T you dance with me? I AIN'T no Limburger!" That pretty much sums up the life of a college freshman.

And thus I learned -- not for the first time, certainly not for the last -- a great life lesson: "You may hate it now, but wait till you drive it!" In this case, the B-52s (sans apostrophe) turned out a hell of a lot better than the Family Truckster.

Bought the album in the fall of '79. Still have it today.

By the way, did you know there's a moon in the sky called the moon? You learn something every day.

The records that made me (some of 'em):Darkness on the Edge of Town

If I somehow had never heard of John Prine, this would be No. 1 in my (actually) no-particular-order list of record albums that had the most influence on me: "Darkness on the Edge of Town" by Bruce Springsteen -- channeler of the young man's angst in 1978.

I was turned on to The Boss by Loose Radio (God rest its amazing FM soul) and an old friend back at Baton Rouge High School. I was a megafan on contact, and "Badlands" became my personal anthem for a long, long time.

John Prine was the consummate chronicler of the universal human condition, but Scooter and the Big Man had the key to my restless teenage American heart and gut (which I had a hell of a lot less of back in the day). In short order after buying "Darkness," I acquired "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." and "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" and "Born to Run."

And I pounced on "The River" as soon as it hit Kadair's (or was it Leisure Landing?) in 1980, my sophomore year at Louisiana State. Then I was in the crowd when The Boss played the LSU Assembly Center on Nov. 11, 1980. Still have the ticket stub somewhere.

I SAW The Who earlier that year (they blew up the stage, and I still have the tinnitus to prove it -- I had great seats), but Bruce and the band was better. That's saying something.

Another thing I have to say: Another high-school friend somehow got onto the stage -- and to Bruce. Or, as (God rest its newspaper soul) the State-Times' Laurie Smith reported in the next day's review "one girl got through to Springsteen before she was pulled away."

My friend obviously had somewhat better seats than my girlfriend and I did.

It was the best concert I'd ever seen . . . until I saw John Prine a couple of years later at the LSU Union Theater. It was a damned close concert competition -- maybe it was the Union Theater's relative intimacy that gave Prine the edge.

Who cares? It was all GREAT.

I cannot remember if I cried when Springsteen sang "Independence Day" at the show. Probably not -- I was with a date, don't you know?

I sure as shit cried when I first heard that song on "The River," in the privacy of my bedroom. Bruce had the same relationship with his old man that I had with mine -- complicated. Real complicated.

I SUPPOSE it says something about LSU and the Gret Stet that the Springsteen lyric I set in headline type and posted on my bulletin-board space at The Daily Reveille kept getting taken down:

I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these
Badlands you gotta live it every day
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you've gotta pay
Well keep pushin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good

Well, if Bruce taught us all anything, it's that shit happens. Often.

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

A Facebook friend (also a non-online one of decades) tagged me on one of these Facebooky things the other day -- this one to post a picture each day of 10 record albums that have influenced your life. Well, I can do that.

The reason for my social-media tagging seemed to be the crap ton of vinyl and CDs engulfing the house) to post a cover a day of 10 albums that shaped my musical consciousness. Oy. Just 10? Just post the picture and not gas on about the choice? Not a chance.

Will I forget to keep doing it after No. 3?

Stay tuned. Here's No. 1.

Gris-Gris, Feb. 9, 1977

I BOUGHT this LP in the fall of 1978 from the record bin at the LSU Union Bookstore during a break from the state high-school journalism conference -- I was a senior at Baton Rouge High. I'd heard much about this John Prine guy (and seen all the ads in the local alt-weekly, Gris Gris, for his NORML benefit concerts), and I was officially intrigued.

After I got home and ensconced myself in my room (and my pride-and-joy stereo setup that I still have and use . . . the Marantz 2226 receiver, at least), I dropped the needle on this record and had my horizons radically expanded by one of the greatest songwriters this country ever produced.

Frankly, I think he edges out Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the man who gave words to my townie angst and desire to get the F out of "these Badlands."

When I had finished listening to "Bruised Orange," I understood the meaning of "transcendent" a little bit better. I had just lived it, and I was filled with a desire to get all the Prine that I could manage.

I had been eclecticized, and I hope one day to tell Mr. Prine in person what he's meant to so many of us. He damn well better get well from this damnable COVID-19 thing.

Please, God? OK?

America today

Just saw this on Facebook. This hospital is in Hamburg, Iowa, just down I-29 from Omaha.

This is what we've come to in a country that, day by day, is looking more and more like some sort of Third World failed state. In no way do I think this is the biblical End of Days, but one has to wonder whether this might be the beginning of the end for the United States, which no longer can take care of its own -- even those who take care of us when we're desperately ill.

There will be a reckoning when this is over. If there isn't, that would be worse, I fear.

If you can help out the doctors and nurses of Hamburg, which has had much to suffer in the last year, please do.

3 Chords & the Truth: Into the void together. Alone

A friend today summed up these officially interesting times perfectly. Absolutely perfectly.

"This is the Lentiest Lent I ever Lented," she wrote.

Yeah, that about covers it. Almost to the point where I have nothing else to add.

It would seem that we are flailing amid a world of hurt, a world of suffering and a world of fear. That's before we get to the religious obligations of prayer, self-denial and penance.

This is one hell of a Lenty Lent, all right. We even had to give up church for Lent. America's president and government would have given up common sense and competence for the penitential season, except for one niggling detail.

You cannot surrender what you do not possess.

AND HERE we are, with too many people unnecessarily giving up good health for Lent. People giving up a sense of security for Lent. People by the thousands giving up their very lives for Lent -- giving them to a virus that U.S. officialdom never took seriously until it was damned near too late. Whether some leaders ever take the coronavirus seriously enough to do any damned good remains to be seen.

Let's just say I'm not real optimistic as I sit in the 3 Chords & the Truth apocalypse bunker here in Omaha, by God, Nebraska.

That's about all the elaboration I can muster. It's hard staying at home. It's hard being isolated from friends . . . and the world. It's hard for me, and I'll bet it's hard for you, too.

So . . . we all do what we can to make it through, and to help one another make it through. The Big Show is what I do -- give you some music to listen to and maybe a thing or two to think about. Maybe that's helpful. I pray that it is.

Wash your hands, keep your distance, and be careful out there.

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

Let's see who's going to be 'hysterical' in two weeks

If I see one more social-media post about not listening to the "hysterical" media -- a group I was proud to belong to, and still do in my own way, and to which my wife, over in the dining room busting her ass for the Omaha World-Herald, still belongs -- I am going to go all Ray Nagin on WWL radio after Katrina.

If not for "the hysterical media," you wouldn't know what the fuck is coming at you like a freight train. You wouldn't know squat about "wash your hands" and how COVID-19 is spread. You wouldn't know that your health-care system is at risk of collapse if you don't stay the hell home and not cause yourself (or your loved ones, friends and random strangers) to be infected.

If not for "the hysterical media," no one would be sewing face masks for hospitals or trying to help out laid-off workers -- because they'd have no damned idea if they weren't hard hit themselves.

IF NOT for "the hysterical media," you'd know jack shit about jack squat. (Which still, unfortunately, is too often the case in this country, despite the heroic efforts of "the hysterical media.")

Untold members of "the hysterical media" have given their lives to let unreflective and ungrateful people know the things they'd rather not know but damned well need to. On my darkest days, I don't know why "the hysterical media" bother.

Right now, there are hard-working folks in "the hysterical media" who have been infected by COVID-19 in the course of trying tell you about the threat of COVID-19 and how your fellow Americans are suffering under the plague of COVID-19.

Not that people fucking care. At least, won't care about until they're lying on a gurney in the hall of an overwhelmed hospital, gasping for breath, waiting for death because there's no respirator available.

Your governors have been screaming bloody murder about that shortage. You'd know that if you actually had been listening to "the hysterical media."

Now, please don't get all hysterical when you're blindsided by what you refused to believe was coming. It's a bad look, don't you know?

And please don't say the media didn't try to tell you. They did, and you called them all "hysterical."

3 Chords & the Truth: Doing our level best

End of Week 2 in nearly total home sequestration: Mr. and Mrs. Favog have not killed one another.

So far, so good.

In the name of "flattening the curve" of COVID-19 cases, we certainly hope you're doing the same. Your health, your neighbor's health, your grandmama's health and the health of our American health-care system demand that middling sacrifice of us all.

The virus, it is real. And real bad.

SO, IN THE NAME of making your homebound state as pleasant as possible, here's another episode of the Big Show . . . 3 Chords & the Truth. As usual, it's a good one.

An eclectic one.

One that will make you, at least once (maybe twice . . . OK, maybe three times) go "WHOA!"

That is how we roll here in the Apocalypse Bunker in Omaha, by God, Nebraska. We're doing our level best.

Now turn us on and listen to the music. And wash your damn hands.

So . . . is anybody else disinfecting groceries? Yesterday's gobstoppering paranoia is today's mere prudence, I suppose -- here in Coronavirus Nation.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Well, here we are

You can't say the Big Show is a laggard in having an apocalypse bunker, now, can you?

And I'll bet you're scrambling to construct one of your own, now, aren't you? Complete with microbial air filtering capabilities.

Well, that's why 3 Chords & the Truth is a leader, in musical entertainment and disaster preparedness, too. That's why you're here -- you want the best in entertainment while you get ready for God only knows what next.

THIS WEEK on this here program, we're going to keep it light and relaxing, because God knows we've all had about as much anxiety and heaviness as we can stand. So prepare to be mellowed out . . . and to have a little joy infusion into this present viral-induced joy deficit.

And that's about it. We're going to try to chill as best as we can. We need all the chill we can muster for the times ahead.

As you're hunkered down.

In your own apocalypse bunker.

Remember this, though. We'll get through it. It won't be easy, but we will.

Somehow.

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

If you can't win a Pulitzer, at least try not to win a Darwin

Click for full size

If marijuana -- hell, crystal meth -- isn't legal in Nebraska (it's not), you'd be hard-pressed to divine that from the Omaha World-Herald's website tonight.

This fails every possible journalistic test. It fails in newsworthiness. It fails in "what folks are worried about." It even fails the Internet Age test of "What story is gonna get the most page views?"

PUTTING "Creighton looks to spruce up 24th Street" in the lead-story slot over, oh, coronavirus fast getting a foothold in the Omaha area even fails a basic tenet of the news business that every first-year journalism student learns in college -- if not on their high-school newspaper: The most important story gets the most important slot.

I can't say I know exactly what the hell is going on here, but whatever it is, it's seriously messed up.

The World-Herald hasn't won a Pulitzer Prize since 1944 (and probably won't under the bleed-it-dry ownership of Lee Enterprises) but at least you'd think it wouldn't be too much to ask that it not try for the newspaper version of the Darwin Awards.

3 Chords & the Truth: Watch your step

The covid-19 thing, the "novel coronavirus," is getting real here in the United States. So far, 15 are dead. Total confirmed American infections are north of 300.

One case was confirmed at the Omaha hospital a block from where I write.

And this is what the president of the United States said -- amid health officials praising him in Dear Leader terms -- during a visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta today: "People are really surprised I understand this stuff,” he said. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Believe me, Donald John Trump's only "natural ability" is for being a liar, an ignoramus, a buffoon and a flim-flam man.

SO . . . what does this have to do with this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth? Well, this week's edition of the Big Show is all about WATCH YOUR STEP. That's what we all have to do now, because we're pretty much on our own -- watch your step.

Part of watching your step, besides washing your hands -- a lot -- and substituting a wave for a handshake, and staying out of large crowds, and making sure you have enough provisions to hole up at home for a while if need be . . . is keeping a level head and keeping your spirits up.

The aim of 3 Chords & the Truth is that last thing. The aim is to play some good music, make you think a little bit . . . and to keep spirits up. We're going to need that. A lot.

Besides, this here program would serve as excellent entertainment if you're homebound and eating lots of beans, soup and tuna fish.

That . . . is all.

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

There's a spot on Donald's head where all the crazy flows

NASA

This is the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. It's a helluva storm that's been there a long, long time.

It's the biggest storm, the yuuuuuugest storm in the solar system. You wouldn't believe what a storm it is -- and it extends 200 miles into the gas giant's atmosphere.

Fox News

THIS IS the Great Gray Spot on Donald Trump's head. It's a helluva . . . well, we don't know exactly what the hell it is.

But given its similarity, except in color, to the massive storm on that other gas giant in the solar system, some might infer that the Great Gray Spot also is a massive storm, which may account for much of the erratic behavior, lack of focus and general covfefe of America's head case in chief.

Fox News

Other possible explanations for the unnatural phenomenon include a horrendous comb-over or a Russian remote-control device.

Unfortunately, a more precise answer concerning the origin and effects of Great Gray Spot requires better data than we have with these images. That will have to wait until NASA can send another interplanetary probe to that region of head space.

3 Chords & the Truth: Hard times

Hard times are us.

Really, it's just one damned thing after another. Now it's a looming pandemic and a crashing stock market because of the looming pandemic, which has pretty much shuttered China and threatens to do the same to the rest of the world.

Investors also weren't exactly comforted by the realization that the president of the United States is a mentally unwell half-wit who thinks the whole coronavirus (or"caronavirus" if you're reading Donald Trump's tweets) thing is just being exaggerated by the evil liberal media and the Democrats to crash the economy and cost him re-election.

To summarize: We are f*cked.

THIS EDITION of 3 Chords & the Truth is an attempt to internalize that . . . and be as much a musical balm as we can. It may not be much, but it isn't nothing.

The Big Show also is a fine way to pass the time once we're all too afraid to venture out of our homes for fear of infection. Or are quarantined -- one or the other.

Who knew that the 3C&T Apocalypse Bunker might end up being something other than a metaphor, a mere semi-witty saying? But that's where we are in the Land of One Damned Thing After Another.

Good night, and good luck. And may all your infections be mild.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Carnival in the bunker

Just because you're hunkered down in an apocalypse bunker in the Trumpian States of Amerika, that doesn't mean you can't spruce the place up a bit and celebrate Mardi Gras.

Let's just call Carnival time the bright spot between secular, never-ending Lent and religious Lent plus the ongoing secular, never-ending Lent in this national vale of moonbattery.

That's where we are on this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

But . . . the music's great, the music is fine, and the music on the Big Show (one hopes) will get us through every form of Lenten mortification.

And dat's the name of dat tune.

Period.

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

3 Chords & the Truth: Looking back to our better selves

Let me be direct: I often find myself looking backward, embracing the anachronism, because the present is too much to take straight up.

Sometimes, anachronistic ain't such a bad thing to be -- like less vitriolic, more accepting of grace and redemption . . . having a longer attention span.

For example, 3 Chords & the Truth is a big time throwback to another age, totally out of step with postmodernity. First off, this is a freeform music program. Where the hell do you even find such a thing anymore?

Not many places, that's for certain.

ANOTHER THING . . . the only computer that puts together any playlist for any episode of the Big Show resides inside the head of your Mighty Favog. It's somewhat larger than your smartphone, and I'm pretty sure it's hand-wired and runs on vacuum tubes.

Too, this here podcast embraces the quirky, the eccentric and holding more than one thought in one's head at one time. Talk about anachronistic.

3 Chords & the Truth has a soft spot for old music, old electronic equipment, old politics and old notions of what we used to know as "radio." We have no damn clue what the hell folks think they're doing on several fronts today.

And we feel sorrow and sympathy for those too young to remember the good things we do, too young to remember, and be wary of, the old bad stuff we've seen and lived -- and which keeps coming back around every so often.

That pretty much sums up the aesthetic of Revolution 21 and the Big Show.

That also helps to make this, in my humble opinion, a damn good radio program. Even if it's not actually on what passes for radio these days.

Try it. You'll like it, this anachronistic thing here.

YEAH, call us an anachronism. We like it like that.

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

If you wigged out, Luzianne had you covered

Baton Rouge State-Times, Feb. 12, 1970

Maybe it's the caffeine.

Well, switching to Sanka might've been one cup over the line, so 50 years ago in coffee-loving Louisiana, Luzianne had a plan for when the ladies might get a little jacked up and tear their hair out -- buy our coffee, get wigs cheap.

Works for me. So, did they have any toupées?

The best thing about outmoded technology

Fifty years ago, in February 1970, Polaroid Land Cameras were a big thing.

In fact, Polaroid represented instant photography -- pull the undeveloped film out of the camera (and the film was the picture) -- wait a minute (or 2 minutes for color), and you could see what you just took. Will miracles never cease.

Oh, don't forget the flashcubes or flashbulbs if you're going to be taking pictures indoors.
 

Omaha World-Herald -- Feb. 12, 1970

THE TECHNOLOGY of my youth was much more advanced than what we have today, what with taking film-free, electronical "pictures" on one's telephone, which hasn't even the decency to be attached to a phone outlet by a long cord.

With the Polaroid and its Colorpack film, by God, you got 10 exposures, and that film wasn't cheap -- because People Smarter Than Yourself didn't want you wasting time and resources taking pictures of stupid things.

Like yourself.

In 1970, if you tried to take a selfie with a Polaroid camera, it would not go well for you. For one, you would be seeing spots -- still -- in 2020. And that's
assuming you didn't have a bad flashbulb that . . . how shall we put it . . . blew up.

Now, it wouldn't matter at all that the selfie would be completely out of focus. That's because all you would see would be the bright white of the flash bathing your now blind-ass self.

Of course, you could try taking a selfie as people did back then -- in a mirror. In a very well-lit room so you could avoid shooting a flash into a mirror . . . which, again, probably would not go well.  

FUN FACT: Did you know that until, in historical terms . . . yesterday, all selfies showed backward people pointing backward cameras much like the one in our Calandra Camera ad, a


I had a Polaroid camera in 1970, and I am happy to report there are no blurry, washed-out selfies of my Ernie Douglas-looking self. If you know who Ernie Douglas was, you remember the blessed days when taking a selfie was a process involved enough to deter people vain and unserious enough to want to take one.

History giveth, the present taketh away.

3 Chords & the Truth: Easy, right?

It's been a week, hasn't it?

Seems like we've had a lot of those, right? A week. A month. Three years. We've had a three years.

It's easy to lose hope. It's easy -- and probably correct -- to think things are just going to get worse. It's even easier to not know what the hell to do.

It's really hard to see the bottom, mainly because there may not be one. The president is a deranged cult leader, and cruelty is is specialty -- which is what many, including the allegedly religious, see as a feature and not a bug.

TORMENT WHOM you will and despoil what you will, Mr. President. Just give us some right-thinking judges, and save the faith we've mocked from them what hate us. Whom we likewise hate, for Jesus said we ought.

It's in the Bible -- somewhere in the back. No? But they said on Fox News.

Three years ago, we knew this present darkness would be hard. But we thought it'd be easier.

Right.

WHAT DOES this have to do with 3 Chords & the Truth? I don't know. Nothing? Everything?

What will we do on the Big Show? The answer is . . . what we can.

We'll play great music. We'll endeavor not to be dumb. We won't insult your intelligence, and we'll try to be a light, however small, in the darkness that has overtaken this land.

It started in 2008, and it continues right now. Vive la résistance! Long live "What we can"!

And this week particularly, you're gonna love "What we can."

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

This shouldn't be rocket science. But apparently it is.