DOWNLOADS: 683

PLAYS: 240

Embed

(Being Louder Than God did have certain drawbacks)

Demo's tonight. This by way of a friend who religiously recorded KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco from his dorm room in Berkeley in 1968. During summer break he would come down to L.A. and share his discoveries, stacks of reel to reel tapes of all that was happening in the Bay Area.

One of those discoveries was a group of demo tapes recorded by Blue Cheer, who came out with their first album "Vincebus Eruptum" a few weeks earlier. Summertime Blues was the single getting the most airplay at the time, but this demo sounded a lot better - the album was a disappointment by comparison. The demo was raw and loud and it was everything I remembered, hearing the band live months earlier.

I read a review recently saying their reputation as being "louder than god" was all hype.

Um . . . not so. As someone who saw them no less than a dozen times over a two year period, I can probably attest to some of my hearing damage to being caused by them. They were loud and nothing compared to them for a time. Of course, P.A. systems were pretty crude back then with no stage monitors to speak of and feedback all over the place. There was no such thing as 11 in 1968.

But as time went on, live music performance sound got perfected and soon everyone could boast being the loudest - but Blue Cheer were the barre to which most other bands live performances were judged, as least in my ears.

And there is ample evidence to indicate Blue Cheer were actually the very first Heavy Metal band.

Another patch in the Psychedelic quilt.

DOWNLOADS: 374

PLAYS: 56

Embed

(The Soft Boys - deceptively catchy)

Tonight it's The Soft Boys. Originally issued as part of an ep in 1980, just around the time they split and Robyn Hitchcock went solo - "Strange" didn't appear anywhere until 1993 when it was issued as part of a compilation ("Underwater Moonlight" disc 2) featuring singles and out-takes from their brief, but amazing career.

Hitchcock has always cited Syd Barrett (founding member of Pink Floyd) as an inspiration to his work. The inspiration is served well here. The first track on side one of this ep is Barrett's immortal "Vegetable Man", one of those odd instances where a song has achieved legend status by it's never being officially released, except on bootlegs. Strange, on the other hand, is one of the most compelling (albeit bizarre) pieces of music I've heard in years. I confess to having worn out my first copy of this EP, and spent months looking for a second copy.

If you're familiar with this song, you know what I'm talking about. If not . . .well just enjoy the ride.

DOWNLOADS: 1568

PLAYS: 533

Embed

(There goes the neighborhood)

(John Amato: I thought it would be fun to hear actual news reports of the Moon Walk from 1969. Gordon's collection of historical events is truly amazing. Promoted from Newstalgia)

I suppose if you aren't aware we're sitting in the middle of the 40th anniversary of our landing on the Moon, you are probably living in an isolation tank, or unconscious - or both.

So anything I have to add to this mix might be construed as redundant.

That said, it's difficult not to sift through some 80 hours of sound recordings from the day and not get a little choked up, remembering all the anticipation and nail biting that went on.

You have to remember that, prior to this day in 1969, everyone's concept of the moon was this large ball in the sky that people wrote songs about. Funny, they don't write those songs any more. The romance of the great unknown has been popped, as it were. Romance got a big footprint on it.

Only a year earlier the best it became was an orbit around the moon with Apollo 8, with still the wistful romance very much in place.

From July 20th on, the world and our place in the universe changed, The Great Mysterious had been broken and there was no turning back.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: 352

PLAYS: 20

Embed

(Congress in 1961 - astute and eloquent in their hypocrisy)

I just ran across this Sunday Interview show from September of 1961, part of the CBS Radio series "Leading Question" - it deals with the death of The Federal Aid to Education Bill, introduced during the 87th Congress in the early months of 1961.

Why is this important? Because Federal Aid to Education was high on the agenda of the Kennedy Administration during his first few months in office, much like the Health Care Bill is to the Obama Administration is now.

How the Federal Education bill died was due to a lot of political hypocrisy and attachments. It also had something to do with a Summer Recess where factions against the bills passing went into overtime poisoning the waters, so that when Congress reconvened, the bill was dead in the water with no hopes of revival.

In this interview - conducted by Bill Downs of CBS News, Congressmen John Brademas (D-Indiana) and Charles Goodell (R-New York), both explained what went into killing the bill and how it happened.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: 341

PLAYS: 57

Embed

(Plastic Penny - One Year Wonders)

Back to the 60's tonight and our never-ending quest for psychedelia. This time it comes from Plastic Penny, an underrated band that got started in 1967 and promptly folded at the end of the Isle Of Wight Festival in August of 1968. In that year they produced one hit single ("Everything I Am") and two albums before the band went their separate ways and got involved with other projects.

Mick Grabham, the lead guitarist left to co-found Cochise (another band with lots of potential but not much in hits) and eventually went off with Procol Harum.

This single "She Does" came out on Flying Dutchman Records in the U.S. in 1969, after the band had split up, but had a lot of material in the can to sustain an additional albums worth of tracks. It came and went without a trace, and doesn't even show up as an official release in either the States or the UK.

In any event, Plastic Penny is one more element in the complicated (and somewhat vast) tapestry of Psychedelia. One that keeps getting rediscovered all the time.

Raise your Freak Flag high.

DOWNLOADS: 476

PLAYS: 39

Embed

(The second they landed on the Moon - this music became more obsolete than it already was)

Prior to this particular day in 1969, one of the most universal song sentiments had to do with all things Moon.

It became a cliche, it was the epitome of corn. It was quaint, from a bygone age - but it was a romantic staple in our culture. No getting around it.

The Moon and all its implications were things of wonder, things people dreamed about, something people used as a great excuse to make out to.

And it had a huge history - long before the first records were ever made, but certainly a main attraction for the record buying public.

In the early part of the 20th century, Vaudeville was the main source of outside entertainment most people had. No radio - movies were relegated to sideshow curiosities - television was the thing of science fiction.

When records became a popular form of entertainment, most vaudeville stars of the time cranked out hundreds of discs, cashing in on the new medium.

One of those acts were the duo Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth. This song "Turn Off Your light, Mister Moon Man" was a big hit in 1911 from the Musical "Little Miss Fix-it". It was almost as big as their 1908 hit "Shine On Harvest Moon", another staple of the vaudeville repertoire.

I am suspecting very few of you have actually heard any of these discs. They are crude and somewhat fossilized with time. They seem very ancient. And for being 100 years old, they actually are.

But it's always good to introduce yourself to something you're not familiar with. You can laugh, giggle and parody -but at least you get the chance to hear the actual stuff.

Besides, ignorance of your culture is considered uncool. Moon landings notwithstanding.

DOWNLOADS: 736

PLAYS: 48

Embed

(Henri Salvador - rumored to have introduced France to Rock n' Roll, but later denied it)

Okay, I promise - next week we're going back to the 60s 70s and 80s. But here we are, Sunday night - everything bordering on mellow. So why not pay a little visit to the art of Chanson Francaise and one of its most well-known practitioners Henri Salvador?

Henri Salvador, a native of French Guyana started out as a nightclub guitarist accompanying other artists in Paris in the early 1930s. In the late 1940's he turned to singing and established a major reputation for himself in France. He was hugely popular all through the 1950's and 60s. It was said he had introduced France to American Rock n' Roll (recording under the pseudonym Henry Cording) and later disavowed any knowledge of diving into a musical form he really couldn't stand.

Nonetheless, Salvador enjoyed a long career, surfacing in later life to do voiceovers on film before his death in 2008.

Ciel de Paris is from 1953, during his early period, recording for Polydor in France with the orchestra led by Jo Boyer.

The record is a little worn - no doubt it provided background music to a lot of romantic evenings.

Just guessing . . .

DOWNLOADS: 404

PLAYS: 35

Embed

(Sex, dope and not quite rock n' roll)

Gangs, binge drinking, teen pregnancies, dope, crime, dropouts - we were a mess. And that was only 1953!

Going back to the mantra "no matter how much things change, it's how much they stay the same" kind of nails it here.

The world was a frightening place in 1953. Smack in the middle of the Korean War, not to mention the Cold War with Commies everywhere - no wonder kids got a little out of control. Life Magazine called them the "lucky generation" but I wonder how lucky they were feeling at the time.

This documentary, produced by CBS Radio, featured narration by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and interviews with a vast group of teenagers, all slated to graduate in winter and summer 1953, from all over the country. It's a fascinating document, and a good reminder that what's going on now may seem horrible. But it's always been that way.

Strangely, we've also managed to survive.

Think of your parents and grandparents when you listen to this - they are most likely the ones the documentary is talking about.

Scary . . no?

DOWNLOADS: 521

PLAYS: 69

Embed

(Claude Debussy lunching with his daughter and musical dedicatee Jouxjoux)

A little something orchestral this Sunday. A 1932 recording of Debussy's Childrens Corner Suite, as performed by the Paris Conservatory, conducted by Piero Coppola.

Coppola (no relation to Francis or Carmine, by the way), was House Conductor for His Masters Voice offices in Paris from 1923-1934. He was responsible for much of the French repertoire to be recorded and heard all over the world, in many cases for the first time. Debussy was reported to have admired his work, although there's no record of him actually hearing Coppola perform. Still, what Coppola recorded, for the most part, had the distinction of being the first conductor of international stature to bring attention to what was considered a lot of "modern" compositions before the record buying public. One of the most famous recordings he was associated with was Prokofiev's 3rd Piano concerto with the composer at the piano.

Coppola pretty much went into retirement during the war, and only surfaced briefly to conduct some session for the newly developed Full Frequency Range Recordings that Decca was producing in the late 1940's. Coppola died in 1971 and left a rich legacy of milestone recordings from the 78 era.

DOWNLOADS: 1273

PLAYS: 998

Embed

(Ten years ago today - a routine flight)

In what started out as a routine flight to a cousins wedding, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette went missing in the waters near Martha's Vineyard. Nothing seemed unusual at first. The flight was just late. But as the hours dragged by calls came in and a rescue attempt was mounted. And from that moment on, the news got grimmer and grimmer. In the end, the plane had gone down taking everyone on board.

And another chapter in the Kennedy family legacy came to a tragic close.

What's coming up is a capsulized version of those events, starting with initial reports on the morning of the 17th, a Pentagon Briefing and reports continuing in until the 20th of July when the search for survivors was called off and all were declared lost.