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(Okay - admit it: When's the last time you heard Hawaiian guitars?)

I don't know about you, but here we are in the dead of summer where it's 90+ degrees with 90+ percent humidity and the only thing I want to do is go vacant in front of a large air-conditioner and imagine balmy breezes and tiki bars.

So naturally, my fingers wandered over to a stack of Hawaiian 78's, recorded in the 1950's by the great Rudi Wairata and The Mena Moeria Minstrels.

You probably haven't heard of them. And to tell you the truth, neither had I until a few years ago when I got a collection of 78's from a friend in Europe.

It seems The Mena Moeria Minstrels were a combination Dutch Indonesian and Hawaiian and were pretty big in Europe, apart from their popularity on the Islands, and these discs were put out by a Dutch company Omega Records in 1953.

Aside from the historic aspect, I was hooked on this track "Maui Moon" after the first few bars.

The 1950's were loaded with a lot of interesting (and some downright strange) music, aside from the flood of rock n' roll and R&B. Not a whole lot of it has been explored and some of it has been unjustifiably neglected.

This might be one of them.

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(Judy Collins (w/Bassist Bill Lee) - at the cusp of being a household name )

Going back to the 60s this week - Judy Collins in her return appearance at the Hollywood Bowl from 1965. The same concert I featured a few weeks ago with Ian & Sylvia's first Hollywood Bowl performance, and Bud & Travis' last Bowl appearance. This is Collins still steeped in Folk Music tradition, not quite the next step that would cement her place in the 1960s lexicon, but right at the cusp.

History as it evolved.

Here it is, the complete set.

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(Despite the overused cliche, he really was the most trusted man in America)

The idea of Walter Cronkite not being among us, even at the age of 92, is a hard concept to grasp. Those of us of a certain age who grew up with him every night, glued to our TV's during every defining moment of our history - hearing the words of calm and conscience, we came to expect he would always be around - maybe not nightly as he was until 1981, but in some form, some presence of the man we trusted - always there, always observing, always the witness.

But life doesn't work that way, and now we're left with moments of time, places in history we associate with Walter Cronkite.

Tributes the past day have been largely flashes of moments in history - the Moon landing, the JFK assassination.

I thought I would add something a little different to the mix - maybe not as earth shattering as a tragedy or a walk on the moon, but the postmortem of an election - November 7, 1968, when Nixon won by a narrow margin. The exhaustion of staying up most of the night to report returns up to the final moment when Nixon was declared winner. It's not a milestone moment, but it was typical of the eloquence, the thoughtful reflection on a night in a troubled time.

Those nights we turned to Walter Cronkite the most.

“There’s a great deal of talk tonight of Richard Nixon, not by his own admission a loveable figure, succeeding without a clear mandate, to the leadership of a divided nation. These, to put it mildly, are negative thoughts. President-elect Nixon has said his first job will be to try and unite the nation. There’s no one who can say tonight, including Richard Nixon, whether he can do that job. Who can restore the hope of the American spirit, to all our people, black and white, rich and poor. But there is one thing that should be abundantly clear, the President-elect, whether it was Nixon or Humphrey or Wallace or the candidate of the Prohibition Party, could not do that job alone. The leaders of the opposition including Dick Gregory in a particularly Statesman-like concession called for unity. Their followers can do no less than to give the new man a chance. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News election headquarters – good night.”

And that's the way it was.

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(Peter Asher (L) and Gordon Waller (R) - A very important wing of the British Invasion of 1964)

I was very sad to learn today that Gordon Waller (the Gordon half of Peter and Gordon) died yesterday at his home in Connecticut.

It reminded me of how much of a presence Peter and Gordon were, during the British Invasion of 1964 and just how long ago that was.

I never saw them live, but rather via television. Their popularity waned by the end of the 60's, with Peter (Asher) turning to producer and being responsible for a string of hits for artists such as Linda Ronstadt.

But it was their sound, their voices that made such an impression. Several of their early hits were written by Lennon-McCartney, and I'm sure it had much to do with their initial success, but they were talented song writers on their own.

By way of a tribute, I dug up a live version of "World Without Love" originally featured on an album "Tribute to Michael Holiday" recorded in 1964 and added as a bonus on a Japanese CD release in 2002.

I doubt if it's been heard very much. I'm sure you're all familiar with the hit studio version. I thought I would offer something special.

Because they were and Gordon was.

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(The Joys Of Travel)

When the deregulation of the Commercial Airline industry came into full bloom by 1983 (the bill was signed into law in 1978), everything was bordering on chaos. Granted, the major airlines had something of a monopoly for years and abuse was rife. But the pendulum swung the other way and cost cutting measures, layoffs and threatened bankruptcies of airlines like Continental created an uneasy and in many ways, an unsafe environment for air travel. There was talk about considering the airlines a public utility. But as was evidenced by the breakup of AT&T (which was considered a public utility) that alternative wasn't viable either. The trouble was, things were getting worse and no one was willing to offer an alternative. Strangely, they still aren't.

As a reaction to the worsening conditions, The Airline Pilots Union went on strike against Continental Airlines (one of many during the 80's).

The strike was the subject of a "Face The Nation" episode from October 2, 1983 featuring Leslie Stahl and a panel consisting of Sen. Mark Andrews (R-North Dakota), Dan McKinnon (Civil Aeoronautics Board), Phil Bakes (CEO, Continental airlines) and Capt. Henry Duffy (Airline Pilots Association).

Bakes: “It’s interesting that unions will charge us with union busting and not being fair to the employees – the one group of our employees who’s not a member of a union, which are our agents and number over 50 percent of our employees were allowed to vote on the pay cuts that we’ve instituted. Ninety percent of them voted for it. But yet the unionized employees were never allowed to vote. Now they’re voting with their feet and so are the consumers.”

Duffy: "What makes it a union busting maneuver is that, his employees had come to him and told him that they would do whatever was necessary to make that company profitable before they filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Instead, they chose the course of action of going Chapter 11 in order to do away with the union contracts and seniority and all of that’s been done in these emergency work rules that they published, and that tells us what they’re up to.”

Although it didn't dissolve into name-calling, it did cast light on just what a serious mess the Commercial Airline industry had become.

One which we're still living through today.

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(A little close to home)

I think I heard this song once when it first came out in 1970 and only on an FM station. Needless to say, it didn't race up the charts.

From the best I can figure out, Fresh weren't actually a real band, but the brainchild of producers Ray Singer and Simon Napier-Bell, producers responsible for a lot of 60's hits in Britain. The musicians listed were Roger Chantler, drums Kevin Francis, bass and Bob Gorman, guitar. There were only two albums issued by this "group": Fresh Out Of Borstal and Fresh Today. And then nothing.

So Stoned In Saigon was an anti-war anthem that came out just around the time anti-war sentiment was at a high. In 1970 we had the invasion Cambodia and the shootings at Kent State and word back in the states was drug use was rampant in Vietnam.

So needless to say, I think the song's heart was in the right place, but it's sentiment was probably a little too close to home for the casual Rock Radio listener.

In any event - here it is.

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(It's not your dad's idea of government anymore)

I think one could probably argue the Reagan Years represent eight years of leaving the "hen house door open", and what we get to deal with now are the disemboweled carcasses of prudent ideas and the blood soaked abatoir of long range thinking.

Okay, leaving the grisly poetics aside, we can probably trace this "earthquake" (as Hedrick Smith puts it) back to the Nixon Years:

Hedrick Smith: “I think what happened . . .back in the 1970’s, and it actually began in the House not in the Senate, was a power earthquake that took place, an explosion of power that brought Congress as a whole in rebellion against the President. We had Watergate and Vietnam as you recall. We had the budget resolutions, the whole budget process, the whole War Powers resolution on Foreign Policy. And then an upheaval within Congress, a kind of anti-authority mood that swept the country during Vietnam and infected Congress, the members of the House threw out some of the old committee chairmen, the old seniority system was cracked, and at the same time a tremendous reform in the political financing system for campaigns, which brought a growth, an acceleration of the whole money business and special interest politics and then the dissolving effect of television. Our government is a much harder government to run for any President or for the leaders of the Senate or the House than it was in the time of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon.”

This documentary, part of the CBS Radio Newsmark series from May 8, 1988 features Lawton Chiles, Daniel Evans and Sen. Paul Trible, as well as N.Y. Times correspondent Hedrick Smith discussing with CBS News Correspondent Judy Muller the changes that have taken place in Washington in the Post-JFK, Post-LBJ period.

From all appearances, it's the downward slide that just didn't quit.

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(The debate rages - sixty years and going strong)

In my continuing coverage of the Health Care debate and its historic place in our political life, here comes another debate via the NBC Radio program "America United" hosted by David Brinkley from June 27, 1948.

This debate, under the title "should we expand our Social Security coverage?" also takes on the subject of Universal Health Care, a proposal brought about months earlier by President Truman. It spends a good deal of time talking about the status of Social Security, since it was enacted in 1935, but the talk gets a bit heated when it turns to Health Care. The panel features Philip Pearl of the AF of L, Rep. John Dingell Sr. (D-Mich.) who co-authored a Universal Health Care bill in 1948. Dr. Emerson P. Schmidt of The U.S.Chamber Of Commerce and Dr. Lloyd Halverson of the National Grange.

Dingell is adamant about the subject of Health Care, despite the overwhelming amount of negative statements concerning the fear of "socialized medicine" (the ever-present mantra that continues to this day). It should also be noted that Dr. Lloyd Halverson was also a member of the AMA and this certainly shades his comments.

Rep. Dingell: “ The most important thing about Social Security, is that which was never put in; that’s Health Insurance. It’s more important than Unemployment Insurance. It’s more important than old age pensions. It’s more important than annuities. It’s more important than aid to the widows and orphans for this reason; that a man can take care of all of these if he’s in health – and he can take care of none if he’s sick. . . . It was, as you agreed, a complex problem. And it was one to which there was so much opposition on the part of reactionaries in this country that it was deemed wise to delay it. But there is no further excuse for it now."

And sixty one years after that was said, there's still no excuse for it.

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(The Tourists - around for a short time, but on to bigger things)

Before Eurythmics entered our lexicon of Band names, we had The Tourists, a punk/new wave band founded by Peet Coombes in 1977 and featuring Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Jim Toomey and Eddie Chin. Great band with good production by way of German Prog-rock producer Conny Plank. As with many bands of the day, The Tourists had trouble breaking into the charts and airplay was sporadic, especially in the States.

After releasing three albums, Coombes called it quits and Lennox and Stewart resurfaced as Eurythmics. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But long before things and fortunes changed, The Tourists issued their first single "Blind Among The Flowers" in 1979.

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(Edwin Wilson - one of the CIA's Greatest Hits)

As I was digging through the archives in search of more Reagan Years material, I ran across this rather interesting tidbit via ABC World News Tonight from August 28. 1981. I forgot completely about it, and it seems so did everyone else.

The story goes, Edwin Wilson was a CIA operative working in Libya and, according to various sources, was training Libyans (or anyone with a checkbook) to carry out various assassinations and plots . . everything the CIA swears up and down they don't do. There were allegations of former Green Berets enlisted to train terrorists - or as Wilson says in his interview: "to train people in compass reading and low-level field operations".

Sounds a little like he was training troops of Boyscouts, but in 1981 people paid scant attention and the story blew over rather quickly. Wilson was convicted of transporting explosives to the Libyans and sentenced to 27 years in prison. It's just interesting that a similar story came to light in the later 80's, only that time it was called the Iran-Contra affair.

Oh, those crooked webs . . . .