3 Chords & the Truth

3 Chords and the Truth: Sounds like America . . . mostly

The Mighty Favog — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:44:10 GMT

Today's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth is brought to you by the letter U, the letter S and the letter A. Additional funding for the Internet's premier music program comes from the letters U and K, and the Corporation for Non-Corporate Webcasting. ON TODAY'S EPISODE of the Big Show, we're chillin' for the July Fourth holiday. We're taking some leisure time, and so is our brain. No grand message, no lofty theme -- as if -- just some cool music and a nod to the red, white and blue, Yankee Doodle, and kickin' back for the lazy days of summer. So, your mission for this week's journey into the land of cool music is to grab some cool refreshment, settle into a comfy chair, kick back and enjoy. That's about it. YOU BRING the illegal fireworks, we'll bring the music. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords and the Truth: The King of Pop is dead

The Mighty Favog — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:41:18 GMT

If you're looking for kicks and giggles about the media orgy surrounding the death of Michael Jackson . . . if you're looking for a snark fest about the untimely end of the King of Pop (and Weird), move along. Nothing to see -- or hear -- here. If you're looking for a show that will help you look upon the wreckage of a prominent life as a means of feeling better about your own, this week's 3 Chords & the Truth is not your cup of tea. YES, Michael Jackson is dead. Yes, there's a media circus under the big top. The Big Show can do nothing about either. I take that back. We can ponder what went so horribly wrong in the life of arguably one of the greatest entertainers ever. We also can celebrate the good amid the mayhem. It seems we owe the dead -- owe Michael -- at least that due. That we will do this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. While we're at it, I saw this article in The Jerusalem Post by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who had tried to help the famously troubled superstar. An excerpt: "I am no prophet and it did not take a rocket scientist to see the impending doom. Michael was a man in tremendous pain and his tragedy was to medicate his pain away rather than addressing its root cause. On many occasions when I visited him he would emerge from his room woozy and clearly sedated. Who were the doctors who were giving him this stuff? Was there no one to save him from himself? Was there no one to intervene? "By the time I met Michael in the summer of 1999, he was already one of the most famous people in the world, but he seemed lethargic, burned-out, and purposeless. He wanted to consecrate his great fame to helping children but knew he could not due to the 1993 child molestation allegations against him. He was cut off from family and was alienated from the Jehovah's Witnesses Church which had nurtured him. He could barely muster the energy to complete the album he was working on. The only thing that seemed to motivate him was his children, to whom he was exceptionally devoted." (snip) "In many ways his tragedy was to mistake attention for love. I will never forget what he said when we sat down to record 40 hours of conversations where he would finally reveal himself for a book I authored. He turned to me and said these haunting words: 'I am going to say something I have never said before and this is the truth. I have no reason to lie to you and God knows I am telling the truth. I think all my success and fame, and I have wanted it, I have wanted it because I wanted to be loved. That's all. That's the real truth. I wanted people to love me, truly love me, because I never really felt loved. I said I know I have an ability. Maybe if I sharpened my craft, maybe people will love me more. I just wanted to be loved because I think it is very important to be loved and to tell people that you love them and to look in their eyes and say it.' One cannot read these words without feeling a tremendous sadness for a soul that was so surrounded with hero-worship but remained so utterly alone. Because Michael substituted attention for love he got fans who loved what he did but he never had true compatriots who loved him for who he was. Perhaps this is why, when so many of his inner circle saw him destroying his life with prescription medication - something he used to treat phantom physical illnesses which were really afflictions of the soul - they allowed him to deteriorate and disintegrate rather than throwing the poison in the garbage." ALL HE WANTED was to be loved. Don't we all. The trouble with Jacko was he didn't know how to get there. God bless him, that's something we all need to be worrying about -- getting there. Getting to love. That's the point of everything . . . the point of life. Michael Jackson had everything, yet had nothing. How? Why? And there but for the grace of God. . . . Lord have mercy. That's the Cliff's Notes version of what this week's show is about. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords and the Truth: Ride, Captain, ride!

The Mighty Favog — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:19:51 GMT

I think this just might sum up this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth quite nicely: Ride, Captain, ride upon your mystery ship, Be amazed at the friends you have here on your trip, Ride, Captain, ride upon your mystery ship, On your way to a world that others might have missed. . . . THAT, AT ITS HEART, is what the Big Show is all about. 3 Chords & the Truth is a mystery ship on a mystery trip -- a musical voyage of discovery on the sea of life. It's not neat, and it doesn't fit into prefab categories. Then again, neither does life. You're never quite sure what you'll get from 3 Chords & the Truth. Just like life. But you know it's going to be an interesting ride, and you're on board with all your friends. The ship is leaving from Port Internet at your convenience -- get on board and let's hear what there is to hear out there in this great big ol' world. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords and the Truth: Just a little bit loony

The Mighty Favog — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:35:44 GMT

We're all just a little bit crazy, aren't we? Well, not all of us are over-the-top tormented like Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (God rest his soul) was three-plus decades ago when the Band released Barrett-inspired songs like "Brain Damage" -- featured this week on 3 Chords & the Truth -- and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," et al. But we all are at least a little bit "eccentric," aren't we? I mean, how boring would life be if we weren't? Take my wife, for example. . . . You wouldn't believe h ON SECOND THOUGHT, my lovely bride is perfect in every way. Sometimes, she feigns imperfection or eccentricity, but that is solely a ruse to make me feel less conspicuously inadequate as a human being. I am flawed. I am unworthy. And if you're like me, I have just the set for you this week on the Big Show. Because we're all "Crazy as a Loon." Or something like that -- except for my wife. Whom I love. WE'LL ALSO spend a lot of time this week strolling through the history of rock 'n' roll (and all the flavors of rock, too) . . . at least a little bit. Lots of fun this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. And that's about all I have to say about that. To say any more would just give the whole thing away, and that would be no fun. It's the Big Show, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

3 Chords and the Truth: My name is Mudd

The Mighty Favog — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:35:59 GMT

A show like this can mean only one thing: My name is gonna be Mudd. C'mon, I reference freakin' Hee-Haw, for pity's sake! I even assume people will remember the show . . . and Junior Samples' hilarious bits selling used cars. That number again: BR-549. And then on 3 Chords & the Truth, we go on to play stuff by the band that took its name from Samples' Hee-Haw bits -- BR5-49. IT'S NOT flippin' brain surgery. I am an idiot. I have outed myself as a gol-darned redneck. I had relatives who lived in the country. In trailers. Some still do. And, oh, what's the point . . . I mean, what the hell. The Big Show is gonna end up being the no-show. OK, you want some truth with your three chords? I'll give you truth. Whether or not you can handle it is another question. I drink Schlitz . . . PBR is kind of pricey. There. I've gone and done it now. My credibility is toast. I don't care. So, if you care about as damn little as I do, give 3 Chords & the Truth a listen this week. It's the Big Show. Be there. Aloha. HEY, Y'ALL! Watch thi. . . .

3 Chords and the Truth: It's summer!

The Mighty Favog — Sat, 23 May 2009 09:16:29 GMT

This week, 3 Chords & the Truth sounds like summer. There's a good reason for that -- it's summer (at least unofficially), and we're ready to bust out and celebrate summertime, summertime sum-sum-summertime. So, given all that, this episode of the Big Show might be a good one to load onto the iPod and take to the pool. Or maybe you could plug it into a boom box and kick it "old school" at the campsite or at a picnic. ALL YOUR NEIGHBORS will want to know what the cool show is on the radio. Except it's not the radio exactly. It's better than the radio . . . it's freeform, and HAL 9000 at MegaCorp Broadcasting don't know nothin' 'bout no freeform programming. Really . . . does HAL 9000 know who Mose Allison is, even? Ella Fitzgerald? Dale Hawkins? Matthew Sweet? BillyBraggWarParliamentMarshallCrenshaw DanleersZacharyRichard? We do. We play 'em all this week. And we're having more fun than is legal in 27 states. OK, here's our guarantee for this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth: If we don't blow your mind outright, we'll at least expand it. And if you don't like it, we'll give you your money back. OF COURSE, the Big Show is free, but that's not important now. The important thing is it's summertime, and we're livin' large. It's the only way to go. It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Four Songs: Yesterday Once More

The Mighty Favog — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:40:41 GMT

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.

On dem first day of Christmas . . .

The Mighty Favog — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:52:40 GMT

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.

The tale of the tape

The Mighty Favog — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 20:33:55 GMT

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.