3 Chords & the Truth

It's getting closer to Christmas, and we at 3 Chords & the Truth have a present for you.

Good music.

This week, we start with a vintage Yuletide classic from Elvis Presley, and then we roll from there. Meaning that on this pre-Christmas edition of the Big Show, you'll be hearing stuff like Stepp. . . . Hey! I'm not telling you what you're getting!

SOME PEOPLE just don't care about ruining the surprise for everybody.

So, listen, Buster . . . you'll have to open your present like anybody else to find out what you got. Fortunately for you, all you have to do to open your present is start the player on click on one of the links.

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

The word of the week on 3 Chords & the Truth is "Good."

Then again, that's the word of the week every week on the Big Show. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is.

PART OF ME wants to be modest and just not blow my own horn when it comes to the weekly music program of the Revolution 21 empire. But All of Me thinks you need to know the score. And the score is that you need to listen to 3 Chords & the Truth.

If you had to write a song about the program, it probably would be "Embraceable You." Or something like that.

I'm not one to brag, but after listening to the Big Show just once, nine out of 10 supermodels refer to your Mighty Favog simply as The Man I Love. Again, not bragging, just saying.

Because, you know, God Bless the Child that's got his own. And that's no Strange Fruit.

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

With the weather being what it is as we roll into December on the Plains, consider this episode of 3 Chords & the Truth . . . cold comfort.

Here in Omaha, it got up to all of 26 degrees today. Right now, it's 18. Saturday, it might hit 40.

That will make it the "hot" day of the next week.

WHAT I'D RECOMMEND doing right now, if you're experiencing similar conditions, is putting on a kettle of water on the burner and some tea bags in the pot. Or perhaps some hot chocolate mix in your mug.

Then again, maybe it's just time to make a pot of fresh coffee.

As you curl up under something warm, it's your hot beverage of choice -- along with the music offered up on this edition of the Big Show -- that will keep you warm. That's what I call a game plan because, baby, it's cold outside.

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

Whatever gets you through the night (or the day) is all right . . . is all right.

Lots of the time, it's coffee. Coffee made with love, patience and an old, old pot -- because it's better that way.

OTHER TIMES, it's the blues.

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, however, we're putting together the blues with a little black coffee and seeing where it gets us. No doubt, somewhere that's all right . . . is all right.

Of course, there's lots of other tasty stuff on the Big Show this go around as well, so you'd just as well stick around and give it a listen. You just might have your horizons expanded amid the musical fun.

Well, that's about all for now. Go grab yourself a hot cup of joe and meet me back here at the Internet connection.

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

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth (among other aural goodness). . . .

Well, hang on. Let me quote the Four Seasons here:

Oh, what a night!
Late December back in '63,
What a very special time for me,
As I remember what a night,
Oh what a night!
You know, I didn't even know her name. . . .

WELL . . . all right, then. Enough of that.

How about that 3 Chords & the Truth, eh? Good stuff, am I right? We present only the finest in musical entertainment on the Big Show.

YEP, a chunk of this week's show is devoted to the one to the nine to the six to the three -- 1963. The sheer musical variety of one to the nine to the six to the three.

And the sheer musical variety of a lot of other years, too.

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

Drat. Five years too soon with that one.

We're on the road again.

Just can't wait to get on the road again. . . .

Now, wait a minute. With apologies to Willie Nelson, you can't get on the road again if you've never gotten off. And that's the story of life -- you're on a long, long road and you never get off.

At least until . . . well.

WE'RE ALWAYS on the road to something or down the road from something. Life is a journey, and we live it on the road. This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we'll celebrate that little fact with a great big, honkin' set of songs for . . . the road.

And that's just one part of the deal with the latest episode of the Big Show. Maybe you need to tune in to see what it's all about, Alfie.

But that's another song, entirely.

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

It's gray. It's wet. It's cold.

And it's drafty in here.

I've been drinking so much hot tea -- with the requisite amount of fresh mint -- that my kidneys bought one of those inflatable giraffe life-ring thingies kids use in the swimming pool. All I need to accessorize my toasty flannel robe is three days without a shave and an empty six-pack of Schlitz.

I'VE GOT SOME SORT of low-grade crud, my sinuses hurt, and I'm thinking that -- if I'm really lucky -- people will someday pray for my purgating self on All Souls' Day. I will be the reason future Catholics still are at it the day after All Saints' Day.

Hey! There's an episode of 3 Chords & the Truth in there somewhere.

Ah . . . look. Here it is.

As usual, the Big Show has the usual variety of great music, spanning various styles and genres. This week, in addition to our saintly and "soulful" musical musings, we also saunter through the '70s.

AND THEN WE . . . aw, hell, you just need to listen to the thing, all right? It'll be worth an hour and a half of your time.

Really.

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

The chill is chilling, the wind ain't thrilling, but we can weather the storm!

Who cares how much under the norm? We've got the Big Show to keep us warm.

I can't remember a worse October. Just watch that low pressure form!

What do I care if low pressure forms? 3 Chords & the Truth will keep me warm.

Off with my overcoat, off with my glove! I need no overcoat, it's music we love!

The iPod's on fire, the flame grows higher! So I will weather the storm!

What do I care how much it may storm? The Big Show will keep me warm.

With apologies to Irving Berlin, this is your Mighty Favog signing off with this final word:

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.