There is a new show on the KCCK radio station at FM 88.3 broadcast out of Cedar Rapids, Iowa (106.9 in Iowa City). It’s called the Big Mo Pod Show, which is keyed to his previous Friday night Big Mo Blues Show which starts at 6:00 PM.
The show generally quizzes the DJ, Big Mo (John Heim) on some of the tunes (name of artist, name of the song, why he played the song) he played the previous Friday night. A good example was Friday, April 19, 2024. You can access the show on different platforms, which are announced at the end of the show.
Big Mo did alright. He got most of the answers right, including the one by John Primer, “Crawlin’ Kingsnake.” I also like John Primer’s song “Hard Times.”
Remember, the Big Mo Pod Show is recorded and based on the Big Mo Blues Show from the previous Friday night. You can hear it by going to KCCKdotorg web site and click the Listen tab to find Shows on Demand to find “BigMoPodShow.”
I wish I could have made the title of this post “Why It’s So Hard to Be a Human.” But that would mean I know why it’s so hard to be a human.
The reason this comes up is because of a song I heard last Friday night on the Big Mo Blues Show on KCCK radio in Iowa. The title is “Hard To Be A Human.” I’ve never heard of the vocalist, Bettye LaVette, who has been around a long time. A musician named Randall Bramblett wrote the song and he’s been around forever too, although I just learned of him as well.
I’m going to connect this song with the paranormal show I usually watch on Friday nights, “The Proof is Out There,” which I watch after I listen to the Friday Night Blues with Big Mo.
The show lives on videos from people who report seeing and hearing things like UFOs and Bigfoot or whatever that’s paranormal. There are a lot of fakes and conventional explanations uncovered on “The Proof is Out There,” including UFO videos sent in by contributors.
The reason I’m connecting the song “Hard To Be A Human,” to the paranormal is the letter “A” in the title. There’s another song with a similar title, but without the “A.” In my mind, leaving out the article “A” makes it clear that song is about humans for humans.
By contrast, the song with the article “A” makes me think of extraterrestrials. “A human” could imply that there might be some other life form aside from humans. Of course, there’s no such song as “Hard To Be An Extraterrestrial” (or, if you’ve read Douglas Adams’ book, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” maybe “Hard To Be A Vogon”). Insert “Martian” if that makes thinking about this any easier, which it probably won’t.
There is a song entitled “Hard To Be Human,” which I think is really about how difficult it is to be human, without considering whether there could be any other beings besides the human ones.
Just adding the specific article “A” in front of the word “human” led me to wonder if you could interpret the song in a galactic sense. Now, I have no problem admitting that all this is probably just because of the temporal juxtaposition of the song and the paranormal TV show.
On the other hand, I have this thought. While I couldn’t find the full lyrics to “Hard To Be A Human,” I could understand some of them. I could discern underlying themes suggestive of Christianity. There are definite references to the Bible, such as walking in the garden “apple in my hand”, the lyric “I’m just another life form,” and “First He made the mountains, then He filled up the sea; but He lost his concentration when he started working on you and me.”
I’m willing to concede that the “just another life form” phrase might have been restricted to just the life forms on planet Earth. However, might it suggest that God made beings (and mistakes) on other planets and their inhabitants?
I hope these references are familiar to at least some readers, because I think the point of the song might go beyond the everyday struggle of being human. I think there might be an attempt to raise the notion of trying to compare the sense of being a human with that of some other kind of being not from this planet.
The older I get, the less sure I am that a human is the only kind of being in the universe. It’s a big universe. If we’re not the only life form in the universe, could life be harder for other life forms?
Probably the answer is no. I don’t see extraterrestrials in millions of flying saucers blotting out the sun in a desperate attempt to move here. Inflation is outrageous. And, after all, it’s pretty hard to be a human.
I heard the song “Florida Man” by Selwyn Birchwood on the Big Mo Blues Show on KCCK radio tonight. I updated my post “Gators OMG” by adding the YouTube video to it.
Last night on the KCCK Big Mo Blues Show I listened to something I haven’t heard since the mid-1970s. It was a radio commercial for the Green Beetle and Frank’s Liquor Store. It ran right after the song, “Memphis Women and Fried Chicken.”
I think I first heard this radio ad while I was a student at Huston-Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in Austin, Texas in the mid-1970s.
I heard it early on in the evening in my sweltering college dorm room. Later on, I heard a stirring rendition of the opening song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” for another radio program, the name of which I can’t recall. I don’t know who sang it, but her voice was breathtaking. I have not heard a better version of it since.
The contrast between the “Old Crow Boogie” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was striking. No matter what race, culture, gender we are, we struggle to reconcile these opposites.
I heard this spiritual by Mavis Staples, “Creep Along Moses.” It was on the Big Mo Blues Show on KCCK. It rocks, like just about everything Mavis does.
This song is by Iowa’s own Kevin Burt. I heard it on the KCCK Big Mo Blues Show. I don’t know anything about music, but “Smack Dab in the Middle strikes me as being about dichotomies, which can be reduced to the old saying, being between a rock and a hard place or being neither fish nor fowl.
But it can be about not wanting to make a choice, or feeling like both sides of a person or issue are important.
I think the lyric “went down to the crossroads” in the lyrics might be an allusion to Robert Johnson, who went to the crossroads and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar playing gift.
As many of you know, I often listen to ‘da Friday Blues show on KCCK radio broadcast out of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. Last Friday, he told listeners his email address and invited fans to get in touch with him. I can’t remember ever hearing any KCCK radio show host make that invitation.
So, I did. I sent him a message last Friday night telling him how much I appreciate his show, the Big Mo Blues Show. It airs fantastic blues music every Friday night starting at 6:00 PM.
John actually got back to me yesterday. We both got a big kick out of the whole thing. I’ve never done anything like cold-calling or emailing a celebrity—because that’s what John is. We shared some memories and really got a charge out of that. He’s a great guy.
And he runs a great show. So, give a listen to John Heim aka Big Mo every Friday night on KCCK 88.3 FM in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. You can listen on internet radio if you’re not in the area.
And if you like Big Mo’s show, let him know, bigmo@kcck.org.
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