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(In 1961, one of the culprits looked like this)

The eternal trade deficit. Buying imports, manufacturing and outsourcing overseas, imports flooding the market, cheap labor, regulations, de-regulation, unions.

In 1961 it was the beginnings of The Common Market. In 2009 it's the European Union. Either one, it's been with us for longer than anyone cares to remember.

And in November 1961, CBS Radio tried to tackle the issue on their Sunday talk program Leading Question.

Guests were Oscar Strackbein and Charles P. Taft, who didn't agree on very much. Even the number of unemployed there were.

Oscar Strackbein: “Let me point out that the problem is not merely that of how many people lose their jobs because of import competition, it is also a question of who is not being employed because of imports. We have over a million new workers coming on the labor market every year. Not to mention a degree of unemployment that is constantly rising after each recession. After we’ve come out of each recession the last ten years we have been left at the peak of prosperity with a higher number of unemployed than before. So today we have what . . five and a half million unemployed . . “

Charles P. Taft: “Four million the last time.”

Strackbein: “Now, I say.”

Taft: “I’m talking about the last figures. Day before yesterday – four million”.

Strackbein: “All right. Then we have made some headway.”

2009 things seem no different . . except the numbers.

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(Lambchop - eclectic and thankfully so)

In case you haven't been to any live gigs of late, and are convinced music died when Winterland closed, I'm here to tell you it's not true. Lambchop are one of those bands that defy description and would fit nicely into any decade - they are just good music and they are wonderful to listen to, and that's something that transcends any year.

Here is a short set from them, recorded by BBC Leicester during the Leicester Summer Sundae festival on August 14, 2004.

I would wholeheartedly recommend checking out their website, checking out their albums, checking them out live and doing whatever you can do to support them.

Bands like this don't grow on trees.

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(City Boy - timing is the whole enchilada)

Somebody once told me that getting a movie made, no matter how bad it was, is a miracle - all the elements falling magically into place and hoping an audience finds it. And no matter how good a movie is, if there is no audience for it, nobody sees it.

The same is true with albums. The miracle of all the elements falling in place, the support and momentum of the record company - hoping an audience finds it.

In the case of City Boy, a folk outfit turned electric, their first several albums went nowhere, despite good reviews. 1975, when their self-titled first album came out, there was a change in the audience, and rock music was about to undergo a radical upheaval. Groups in Britain featuring lavish harmonies and progressive instrumentation just weren't cutting it with an audience who fell head over heels for all the raw viscera of Punk. And City Boy, during their first few outings sounded a little too much like Supertramp for comfort.

It wasn't until much later that their style changed and their audience changed its mind. They did score well with two hits, "5.7.0.5." and "The Day The Earth Caught Fire", but sadly things didn't work out and they broke up in 1982.

But whatever is to be said about timing, one thing is certain; City Boy were an excellent band who made some wonderful albums which, thanks to a recent reissue, are having a chance to be discovered all over again.

This track, (Moonlight) Shake My Head And Leave, opens their first album.

Good undiscovered albums, like good undiscovered movies are further evidence having an open mind has its rewards. Remember that next time you think you've heard and seen it all.

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(An Eisenhower Press Conference - cheerfully referred to as Old Bubblehead)

I'm trying to do the math here. The tape says this is Press Conference Number 68. It's from May 11, 1955 - Eisenhower has been in office since January 1953. So as best as I can round it out, that's about one Press Conference every two weeks. I've spoken with several people who were with the White House Press Corps at the time and they honestly did refer to Eisenhower as "Old Bubblehead" - I'm not making it up.

I wonder if he was guilty of being overexposed?

At any rate - two subjects were covered:

First was The Big 4 Summit back when only four countries were considered worth getting together. Times have changed.

Pres. Eisenhower: “I would think the most important thing to possibly be done at such a meeting would be to define the lines or directions in which we commonly would want our Foreign Ministers to work to see if there’s any opportunity to relieve the tensions in the world. And beyond that, I don’t think you can possibly say what the subjects would be. Certainly there would be no agenda except in the most generalized form, to talk about a general group of subjects . No agenda in the sense that Foreign Ministers would normally meet.”

A sort of summit to sit around and talk about what they're going to sit around and talk about.

The other important topic in this press conference was the newly introduced Polio Vaccine which had been temporarily held up by reports of Polio outbreaks among people who got the vaccine.

1955 was the year the Salk Polio Vaccine was made public. People don't talk about Polio that much anymore, as it has been all but eradicated. But in the 1950s it was scary, especially if you were a kid.

The one thing that struck me was the civility of the press - not much in the way of screaming. Fancy that.

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(Skip Bifferty - same old story. One album, bunch of singles - on to other things)

It's almost beyond funny how many bands there were who got together, did one album, a bunch of singles and called it a day, or went off to other things. Skip Bifferty were no different.

They did release one great album in 1968 which went completely unnoticed in the States (I can't figure out why other than it was on RCA, which speaks volumes). They did a number of sessions for the BBC and had a decent modicum of popularity. But the vagaries of pop music being timeless, they lasted less than two years before packing it in and going their separate ways.

But they did leave this nice single - Man In Black.

Always nice to leave a place better than when you found it, right?

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(Jerusalem 1948 - Same as it ever was - Same as it ever was)

With the recent news of the attempted kick starting of talks between Israelis and the Palestinians, I was reminded just how long this entire odyssey has been going on - a lot longer than many people have been on the planet, for one thing.

But it seems there was a time when the U.S. had actually considered sending troops over to the region, acting as a sort of buffer between factions. The notion that we'd still be over there, some sixty years later gives pause as to how it could end up with us now in Afghanistan. When, during the election John McCain entertained the possibility of the U.S. being in Iraq for a hundred years, everyone recoiled. But in retrospect, it appears we're rather good at suggesting those sorts of things. Thank God we don't act on our instincts all the time.

But in 1948, with the British getting ready to leave the region and fighting between Jews and Arabs going full tilt, the Chicago University Roundtable hosted a discussion, featuring several pundits (aka: "experts"as they were called at the time) to venture an opinion on whether our involvement in the Middle East was a good idea or not.

The opinions ran the gamut, although it's interesting to note that no one actually from the region (i.e. Arab or Jew) was included. So there is something of a strange bias to be had going into this discussion, one of an "armchair" viewpoint rather than one actually on the ground, with the possible exception of Arthur Creech-Jones who was Colonial Secretary in charge of Palestine at the time. But times have changed. I don't think this type of discussion would take place today (unless it was Fox). But it's interesting to see what factors formed an opinion some sixty years ago.

John A. Wilson: “First, Palestine cannot survive economically if it’s carved into two zones. Second, a policing and occupying army does not bring a country together. It rather pulls it apart. Let’s look at the other countries which have been carved apart and held apart by force. Germany and Austria have been arbitrarily divided into zones, cutting off the normal and traditional flow of goods. Four enforcing armies hold Germany apart and prevent normal economic life. In Asia, Korea is in exactly the same situation, cut by an arbitrary line into two zones. A drastic surgical operation divided India into a Muslim state and a Hindu state at a cost of perhaps a quarter of a million lives. Partition is bad economy in Germany, Austria, Korea and India. It will be bad in Palestine. Imagine American and Russian military contingents inside Palestine. Would they bring the country together? Or would they push it further apart? How soon could they leave? It is not a pleasant outlook. American and Russian troops eyeing each other in Palestine for our lifetime. Everyone who argues a population increase in Palestine has done so on the basis of potential water power there. Well certainly, a Jordan Valley Authority like our TVA would be a marvelous asset to Palestine.

Continue reading »

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(LBJ at The UN - selling The Great Society was one thing - Selling Vietnam was something else)

When President Johnson addressed the United Nations General Assembly on the occasion of its 20th anniversary in June 1965, he had very little trouble selling his concept of The Great Society to the rest of the world. It was when the subject of Vietnam and Southeast Asia came up that ears suddenly turned deaf and support dwindled. Support for the war was rapidly fading in the U.S. and protests were mounting in intensity on an almost daily basis as the war escalated to no seeming end.

So it was with mixed results that President Johnson made his case to the world body.

LBJ: “ We in this country are committing ourselves to great tasks in our own Great Society. We’re committed to narrowing the gap between promise and performance. Between equality and law and equality in fact. Between opportunity for the numerous well to do and the still too numerous poor. Between education for the successful and education for all of the people. It is no longer a community or a nation or a continent. But a whole generation of mankind for whom our promises must be kept and kept within the next two decades. And if those promises are not kept, it will be less and less possible to keep them for any. And that is why, on this anniversary I would call upon all member nations to rededicate themselves to wage together an international war on poverty.

War on Poverty sounded good - War in Southeast Asia - not good.

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(Can - perfected the fine art of having your mind blown)

Surprisingly, a lot of people I have run into lately have never heard of Can before. To say they spearheaded the Krautrock movement in the 1970's is a little disingenuous. They were heavily involved in electronic music in the 1960's - two of the band members studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen. Irmin Schmidt, the co-founder once told me, that, in addition to working with Stockhausen, as a student he had worked for the East Berlin Opera as a repetiteur (before bolting to the West). So the band came from a more hardcore place than just plunking around on synthesizers.

Anyway - Can have a long and celebrated career and have been influential in a lot of musical circles.

This track Come Sta, La Luna comes from their last album for United Artists "Soon Over Babaluma", recorded in 1974 and released just before they signed to Virgin.

The band went through a number of personnel changes over the years before finally packing it in around 2001. But they are still very much involved in a lot of solo projects as well as working with other bands.

They definitely put their mark on the 70s though.

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(Lake Success 1949 - John Foster Dulles and Andrei Gromyko - between them, an iceberg)

With the upcoming General Assembly meetings at the UN, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back sixty years, before the United Nations headquarters was built and meetings were held in New York at Lake Success. In 1949 it was about forming the Atomic Energy Commission and the subject was inspections. The USSR had only announced a few weeks earlier that it had tested its first Atomic Bomb, adding one more name to the club that has grown increasingly ever since.

But in 1949 the UN was still grappling with the ground rules - where was this new potentially devastating power heading - and who else was going to get it?

During the weekly radio program Memo From Lake Success, co-produced by CBS, the CBC and United Nations Radio, the subject of regulating nuclear energy high on the list.

Future Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson is interviewed, explaining his take on the situation.

Interviewer: “Mister Pearson, the West maintains that atomic energy can be controlled internationally only by this proposed agency which will manage and operate the Atomic Industry. Would it be possible to set up, by treaty beforehand, a system of quotas, allocations of atomic plants and nuclear fuels. And then a system of continuous rigid inspection be set up for the international agency, which might be effective and perhaps necessitate a little less of the insistence on ownership and operation?"

Lester Pearson (Canadian Foreign Secretary): “ Well, of course naturally that point had occurred to people, but you must remember that the representatives of the majority in this commission, have gone through this matter very, very carefully. And they have come to the conclusion that the only safe way is to have international operations and control. But if it were possible to give more power of operations to nations, and take away some power from the international agency, then that would make it all that more important that you had complete international power of inspection at any time without any reservation of qualification. And that means a really . . well . . .quite important interference in what our Russian friends call National Sovereignty. And they have given no indication whatever at any time that they are willing to accept that kind of international supervision or inspection. And that seems to me to be the fundamental difference between the two positions now. We are willing to go very far in the direction of international inspection and supervision. They are certainly not willing to go so far."

The climate has changed considerably since 1949. There is no more Soviet Union for one thing - only now there's North Korea and Iran.

Two more members of the ever-expanding club.

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(The Motions - Dutch Psychedelia you probably never heard of)

The Motions were a big deal in Holland from 1963-1971. During their Beat phase they were produced by none other than Scott Walker (of the Walker Brothers) for several singles. And their label, Philips had issued their last album in the States to very little notice. They are all but unknown in the States and really only known by collectors even in Europe.

This track "Wonderful Impressions" comes from their psychedelic period from 1967. It was short lived, but it did yield some interesting tracks, even though their label decided it would be a good idea to mix a fake audience in (think: John's Childrens infamous Orgasm album with overdubbed audience). It doesn't seem to serve a purpose, but luckily it doesn't detract from what is a very nice track.

More unearthed gems.