3 Chords & the Truth

You say you want a revolution?

Well, you know, we all want to change the world.

Maybe you should just stop trying. Well, you know, that's when you might change the world.

So welcome to the 3 Chords & the Truth Used Record Shop. Where we know it's gonna be all right, all right, all right.

GRAB A CUP of coffee, and I'll put a record on. We'll work our way through the vinyl, and maybe you'll find a new fave song.

We'll talk and put new some stuff on the turntable, so pull up a chair. The Big Show is specializing in "being," which is when greatness just might arise. We'll make the most of these moments . . . and that just might change our lives.

It's comfy here amid the albums, and the 45s and the CDs. Just the perfect spot to settle down and just be.

On the Big Show and at the ol' record shop, vinyl lives, and radio occupies a soft spot in our hearts. The coffee's free, and we have hot tea, too.

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

Has anyone seen our culture?

No, not the weird gal screeching and showing the world her tatas . . . I mean the culture. You know . . . quality arts and music and literature and stuff. The anti-barbarian intellectual-engagement plan.

Yeah, that.

So, you say you haven't seen it the last couple of years?

Well, Bunkie, are you in luck today! I happen to have some of it right here on 3 Chords & the Truth. I mean, we're talking quality rock, and quality pop, and quality folk and sublime jazz -- all on one show.

IN FACT, we have so much of that stuff -- the musical culture stuff -- that it can't even fit in an ordinary show. That's why this show is called the Big Show.

That's right . . . 3 Chords & the Truth has to be 52 percent bigger than Brand X to fit in all the quality musical culture and witty repartée you find at this quality spot on the Interwebs.

For example, just on this episode alone, you will find The Rubinoos, the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Neil Young, John Lennon, Jefferson Airplane, Jeri Southern, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Art Blakey, Count Basie and lots more! The leading bargain brand cannot compare to the sublimity of musical arts you will find right here on the Big Show.

No, the best Brand X can offer the listening public is generic Philistinism.

AND THAT'S why you're here . . . at the quality place in cyberspace. You know a good thing when you hear it -- the "culture" thing.

Stay as long as you like. We never close.

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

Hang on a second while the vacuum tubes warm up on the old Radiola, and in a minute we'll see what happens when Ray Charles ran into 10,000 maniacs.

Or was that 10,000 Maniacs?

Regardless, the result ought to be interesting.

Just a few more seconds, now, and it'll be all warmed up and ready for 3 Chords & the Truth. Rumor has it that this week's edition of the Big Show is going to be a big show, indeed.

AFTER ALL, Ray Charles does run into 10,000 Maniacs. I don't know whether hilarity ensues, but music certainly does. And we're not even mentioning the Johnny Cash, Doobie Brothers, Avett Brothers and something that was going on in San Diego.

And then there's a little night music, s'il vous plait. That, we have covered. You bring the blanket, drinks and a plush chair to curl up in.

Is that Radiola about warmed up? Looks good to me. I always prefer my podcasts served up in a fine hardwood cabinet with an inner glow, so to speak. I'm funny that way.

Well, now that everything's warmed up on another winter's day, it's time to serve up the audio goodness -- maybe with a little something on the side. Settle in, curl up and lose yourself in the music. You'll be glad you did.

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

This week's edition of the Big Show is best heard on something running on vacuum tubes, in the dark.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is best heard in the middle of the night, where magic dwells.

This week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth features night music -- jazz music -- the way it used to be.

Come with us to yesterday, to the night, to a faint glow in a dark room. Come with us to find where magic hides itself amid blues in the night.

I HAVE THOUGHTS on this subject, and I'm not shy about sharing. Here's an excerpt from something I wrote a while back about magic, and music, and glowing vacuum tubes in the dark. Yeah, this is what this week's show is about:

Today, an iPod will give you music. Yesterday, this old Zenith filled your house with magic.

I know. I sound like a broken record (another lost metaphor only fossils like me get). But if you ask me -- and you didn't . . . tough -- one of the tragedies of our age is the absence of magic.

Where is the magic in an iPod? Where is the magic in YouTube? Sure, YouTube is a great tool . . . and, in some cases, a forum for all manner of tools.

And sure, You Tube can offer up stuff you never could have imagined -- or perhaps imagined that you'd never see again.

But it's not magic.

Kind of like the iPod, a zillion websites, Facebook, Twitter and whatever they'll think of next. All useful. All interesting. All with the potential to while away countless hours.

But magic? No, not magic.

Magic is a multicolored dial glowing in the dark. Magic is the five tubes inside an old Zenith tombstone radio casting a backlight glow, silhouetting the angles and curves of a wood-veneer case.

Magic is the rich sound of a six-inch speaker fed by heavy metal and hot filaments.

Magic is the smell of ozone wafting through the room

Magic is sitting by yourself, listing to mellifluous voices on distinguished radio stations in distant cities, each with its own distinctive "sound." Each beaming the life of a far away place, a distinct local culture into the ionosphere and then back to earth, into a long-wire aerial, through the circuitry and out the cone speaker of a 1936 model-year Zenith radio set.

Made in the U.S.A.

Sitting in a darkened room. Singing into your ear and speaking to your soul.

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

Our Christmas tree is the story of our lives, me and the missus. Yours may well be the same.

There's a little wooden painted-tree ornament over here -- I made that in elementary school more than 40 years ago. And that glass ball over there with the glitter on it -- that's from my wife's childhood Christmas tree.

And there's the big Lucite heart that says "Love. Christmas 1983." We bought that at Hallmark our first Christmas as a married couple. I cherish that ornament.

I cherish our tree . . . the annual Yuletide story of our lives, with baubles commemorating five years together -- 1988 -- and first Christmas in our new house, 1989. Ornaments given to us by now-gone parents. Ornaments for now-gone pets. Ornaments made by now-grown children of friends.

EVERY YEAR -- with every added year -- Christmas becomes more wistful. It becomes more about loss, more about what once was instead of what might be. It becomes about remembering and erasing the impenetrable barrier between what was and what is -- who we were and who we are. It lets us bring back those who have gone, if only in our dreams.

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

THIS WEEK on 3 Chords & the Truth, we celebrate He who has defeated time and death, the celestial king come to earth as a little child, born in a manger long ago in a land far away. We play the songs of our Christmases past as we anticipate its coming once again.

This week, the Big Show is about the songs of our lives, both sacred and playful.

It's Christmastime once again, and we're having a party. Everyone is invited -- past, present or future . . . it doesn't matter. Not this week. Faithful friends who were dear to us will be near to us once more.

As will you.

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

And don't forget to try the egg nog and bourbon balls. Yum.

You know what kind of music my parents were buying in 1947? Walter Brown -- "My Baby's Boogie Woogie."

Low-down blues. "Race" music. Along with pop, jump and country twangfests like the Delmore Brothers (above).

"She's got what it takes, make a preacher lay his Bible down," sangeth Mr. Brown. You should hear the flip side -- and you will . . . on this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

This is a special one, this episode of the Big Show. If you want to know the music of my soul, this will get you pretty close.

If you want to know what was it that made your Mighty Favog the musical creature that he is -- 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 player -- this is it.

This is personal.

THIS WEEK'S 3 Chords & the Truth is who I am. This week's program sounds like the world -- the Deep South -- I was born into a half century ago. It's a sequel to this episode of the Big Show, only I go "there" a lot more this time around.

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. So is the show today.

Take Walter 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 . . . even if they couldn't share a seat on a city bus.

And no one thought twice about either peculiarity.

This explains my parents' music-buying habits of 1947, 14 years before I came along and about 18 years before I 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 Louis Armstrong, Hank Williams and Jim Crow -- who could in 1947 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.

Those Wallace and 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.

THE SOUTH: It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, tucked away in an enigma and fueled by contradiction. This week, you can look under its hood a little bit -- its and mine. You won't totally understand either of us at the end of this particular installment of the Big Show . . . but it will be a start.

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

I miss the days when stereo used to dance.

I miss the days when we would get excited over something as simple as "stereo" gettin' jiggy wit it. I miss the days when we didn't say "gettin' jiggy wit it."

I miss the days when we didn't take this stuff for granted. When dancing stereo was fresh, new and exciting. Down Up. Down. Up. Down. Up.

STEREO!

This week's 3 Chords & the Truth is completely down with the jiggy stereo. Or is that sTeReO.

I miss the days of glorious analog and 29-cent gas -- the days when we were so easily amused. I miss the days when $3.98 could buy you, if not love, left and right channels of WOW!

I miss "WOW!" too. Wow and dancing stereo went hand in hand with our lost sense of wonder. When progress was a given, because we were Americans, by God!

Mostly, I miss the sense of wonder. If you get anything out of this week's edition of the Big Show, I hope it's an inkling of wonder. A smidgen of glory.

Actually, we have a whole set of "glory" this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. A whole set of cheatin', cryin' and drankin', too . . . call it "fair and balanced" DJing.

MAINLY, though, it's about the WOW! and the dancing "stereo" on old record albums pulled from the closet -- and from the warm glow of our memories of a time of wonder. Maybe it's not too late to recapture how that felt.

All you need is $3.98 and a time machine. Of course, just downloading this week's show would be easier . . . and cheaper.

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

This week on Four Songs: five songs. It was necessary, one of the songs is by John Denver, and a "make good" was in order.

IN MY DEFENSE, I didn't pick the music. That was done according to what was hot with the record-buying public . . . in April 1975. Unfortunately, John Denver's "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" was big back then.

Unsurprisingly, I would have picked differently. But they don't let 14-year-old kids program Top-40 radio stations, and that's how old I was when this episode of Four Songs was done. Live. Through the facilities of the Big 91, WLCS radio in Baton Rouge, La.

In all its amplitude-modulated glory.

And glorious it was. So glorious that I was sitting at the kitchen table, early the morning of April 17, 1975, with my portable reel-to-reel tape recorder patched into the earphone jack of my clock radio to preserve a piece of WLCS forever.

It was a Thursday. Gary King was the morning man.

WLCS was one of Baton Rouge's two Top-40 blowtorches. Radio 13 -- WIBR -- was the other. 'IBR had some great jocks, and a friend of mine even was a part-timer there when I was in high school . . . but I was an 'LCS man.

No offense to WIBR.

Of course, by 1976, I was firmly in the camp of Loose Radio (WFMF during its album-oriented rock salad days). But I'll always love Double-U ELLLLLLL CEE Ess . . . even though it died in 1983, a few months after I married a KOIL woman from Omaha.

And if you're under, say, 30, you're not getting this conversation at all, are you?

LET ME EXPLAIN. Once upon a time, there was this thing called radio -- AM radio -- and we listened to it on "transistors," which were like iPods, only affordable. And better.

An iPod only can bring you the few hundred songs you load into it after illegally downloading them off the Internet or legally buying them on iTunes. But a transistor radio, that could bring you the world, baby.

All for free. And without the threat of a lawsuit by the music cops.

The world first came to my bedroom on a transistor radio tuned to WLCS. I also could tune in the whole wide world on WIBR, or maybe WTIX in New Orleans -- and sometimes KAAY through the ether from Little Rock at night -- but I mostly dug those rhythm and blues . . . and rock 'n' roll . . . and countrypolitan . . . and a bit of ring-a-ding-ding, too, on the Big 91.

What it was, was the breadth of American popular culture at my fingertips. And British Invasion, too.

Never was education so fun. I turned on the radio just to listen to some tunes, and I found myself under the spell of a thousand different tutors -- friendly voices from morning to overnight -- playing for me the breadth of musical expression . . . or at least the musical expression that charted well. It is because of 'LCS, 'IBR, 'TIX (and later, 'FMF) that this Catholic Boy has catholic tastes.

Your iPod is cool and all, but it can't do that.

SEE, THE DEAL IS that I can't repay the debt I owe to WLCS, for one. I can't repay the debt I owe to Gary King, that friendly morning voice on this episode of Four Songs.

For a spell there, King's was the voice I woke up to, got ready for school to and ate breakfast to. He played the hits and told me what the weather was outside, and Gene Perry gave the news at the top and bottom of the hour.

Back in the day, radio was a well-rounded affair.

King's also was the friendly voice that answered the studio line when an awkward teen-ager in junior-high hell would call to request a song. And his was the friendly voice that would take time to chat for a bit when that kid -- or his mother -- sometimes thought he had nothing better to do . . . like put on a morning show.

I didn't know it then, and Gary King (real name: Gary Cox) probably didn't know it, either, but what he was doing was being Christ, in a sense, to a lonely kid and his -- come to think of it -- lonely mother. I shudder to think what one of today's "morning zoo" shows would do with rich material like me and Mama.

That is, if they answered the studio line at all.

Via the AM airwaves, I made a human connection with WLCS and Gary King. I needed that. We all need that. And you can't get that from your iPod, though some of us will try to give it, because you have to work with what you have.

BEFORE APRIL 1975 was done, Gary King was gone. He originally was from Kentucky, and one day the call came from WAKY, the Top-40 powerhouse in Louisville that Gary grew up listening to.

On his last show, Gary's ending bit was "convincing" Gene Perry that he could catch a bullet in his teeth if the newsman would just help him out on the gun end. It didn't work as planned . . . which means it worked perfectly in radio's "theater of the mind."

I think I shed a tear or two.

And a couple of years later, I was learning the ropes at WBRH, Baton Rouge High's student-run FM station. And 33 years later -- after various pit stops on the air and hot off the press -- here we are at Revolution 21, trying to figure out what "radio" will be in this new millennium . . . right here on the Internet.

Thanks, Gary. I can't repay you in full, but maybe this will make a nice down payment.

Here's another special audio presentation: A bit of nostalgia recorded off the TV in the early '70s in Baton Rouge.

I remembered this recording when I heard of the death of Jules d'Hemecourt, a journalism professor when I was in school at LSU . . . and the man behind "The Cajun 12 Days of Christmas" when he was news director at Channel 33 in Baton Rouge.

This must have been recorded by me, off the air, sometime around Christmas 1973. Maybe '74. D'Hemecourt, who also was the Channel 33 news anchor at the time, introduces the recording on a holiday newscast.

Back in the day.

Enjoy.

Here's a special audio presentation -- don't worry, the podcast will post as usual Friday -- from Revolution 21. I thought you just might want to hear this . . . a ghost in the machine, as it were.

What it is, is a recording of legendary Alabama radio host Joe Rumore from Oct. 28, 1949 on WVOK, Birmingham. And it's an extraordinary look back 58 years across the tidal wave of change and cultural revolution that radically transformed America.

It's a look at who we used to be, and at a kinder, more gentle and humane era of broadcasting that -- to today's ears -- sounds like a just-received transmission across many light-years of interstellar space from a star system far, far away.

You can read more about it on "Revolution 21's Blog for the People" at http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/03/way-we-were-1949.html.

Enjoy.