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(Jimmy Boyd - with assistance from The Wrecking Crew)

A big departure from his first mega-hit "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" (okay, he was 12), Jimmy Boyd had a brief stint at Vee-Jay Records (the Chicago label who gave us John Lee Hooker, Dee Clark, The Four Seasons and oh . . . the first Beatles album). With this moderate hit "That's What I'll Give To You", penned by none other than Barry Gibb during his starving artist/pre-Bee Gees days.

It's a pure out-and-out teen love ballad, assisted by members of the Wrecking Crew (Hal Blaine, Tommy Tedesco et al).

The problem was, Vee-Jay was about to go into receivership just after this single was issued - not the first time the label would have financial problems, and certainly not the last. But it did manage to screw up an album or follow up singles by Boyd, which was too bad because Jimmy was a remarkable talent. Sadly, Jimmy passed away earlier this year and I don't think he ever got the chance to hear the stereo mix of this track.

I managed to unearth the 4-track session masters and hoped this would be in a compilation at some point. But no. Financial problems would prevent that from happening, yet again.

Well . . . at least you get a chance to hear it in stereo for the first time. Lucky you.

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(Sandra Phillips - Soul doesn't get much deeper than this)

I have always loved checking out singles B-sides, the ones that didn't get the airplay and the ones that didn't make the lp and the ones often forgotten about when reissues come along.

I was working several years ago on a project for EMI doing a reissue project for the legendary soul label Sue, and had the great pleasure of running through the master library for all the released singles. I wasn't all that familiar with Sandra Phillips and knew the A-side was "You Succeeded", but out of curiosity listened to the B-side "When Midnight Comes". It blew me away and I've loved it ever since.

So here is the seldom heard B-Side to her 1965 hit "You Succeeded", "When Midnight Comes". From what I gather, it's Ike Turner's band in the background. Say no more . . .

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(The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - all good clean fun . . .sort of)

Okay, this is a slight cheat tonight. The album this cut comes from has been reissued (thank God) by at least one label, but I forgot about that as I was playing the lp and remembering how great they were when I saw them live a couple of lifetimes ago.

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (or WCPAEB . .but even that was a mouthful when you were stoned) were something of a phenomenon as far as West Coast psychedelia were concerned. They looked like your quintessential surf band, only on acid. And even though on the surface they could sound pretty tuneful and innocent, they were insane - but in a good sense. There was a lot behind the band rather than the effect and the fuzz.

This track "Smell of Incense" is a classic and it's off their second album for Warner/Reprise issued in 1968. They would go on to do a few more albums, with personnel and label changes, but would never achieve household name status.

Thanks to reissues they've gotten an audience who had never heard of them before and a newfound appreciation of people who missed them the first time around.

Further evidence good music is timeless.

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(Somewhere between delusional whack-Job and Cassandra stood Martha)

Martha Mitchell has faded into history's woodwork. Famous for her paranoid rants and haywire midnight phone calls, she had the dubious distinction of being associated (in a rather "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers" sort of way) with Watergate via her husband, then-Attorney General John Mitchell.

Largely dismissed at the time as a bonafide whack-job, Mitchell did gain some vindication when the scandal of Watergate broke and all fingers pointed to the White House. But it didn't dismiss the fact that she was delusional, ego-centric and had a little bit of a substance abuse problem.

In this hour long interview, part of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, Snyder asks her point blank if she thought she was an alcoholic. Mitchell blurts out "no" (of course - wouldn't you?), even though the answers borders on the slurred. What Snyder failed to ask was if she had a drug problem. I believe the answer would have been a resounding yes - even if she had flatly denied it. All you have to do is listen to her.

So it was the curious mixture of the insane person being privy to shocking actual events, who took the elements of truth and turned them into a persecution extravaganza with all consequences directed straight at her that probably made her seem like she was imagining it.

The more she ranted, the more people thought she lost it. Of course, the Nixon White House did little to dispel that portrait - it did take the heat off for a while.

The bottom line was, she was probably right - but since she insisted it was all about her, the credibility drew more than raised eyebrows.

Of course nowadays, drugged out paranoid egocentrics get their own TV shows and loyal followings. Something that wasn't in the cards in 1974.

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(Ted Sorensen - before boats became swift and innuendos became large)

One of the first appointments to the Carter White House was Theodore Sorensen to head the CIA. Sorensen seemed like a good choice. He was White House Chief of Staff under Kennedy and served in the LBJ White House and overall had a distinguished career in Washington.

At least it seemed so. But no sooner was the appointment announced than the rumor mill began working overtime to discredit and trash his chances of confirmation. Rumors spread of his unauthorized taking of secret documents connected with the Kennedy White House, his support of Daniel Ellsberg during the Pentagon papers trial and everything from his being "too liberal" to allegations of being a draft dodger during the Korean War. It was a grab bag of smears.

The rumors and the accusations were persistent as well as unfounded. But they were enough to force Sorenesen to abandon the appointment and notify the President-elect two minutes before he was scheduled to appear at the confirmation hearings of his decision not to pursue the appointment.

So rather than submit to questioning from the committee, Sorensen chose to read a prepared statement outlining his decision and answering the barrage of slurs.

Much speculation has been made over the years as to who was responsible for the rumor campaign. It was largely thought to be members of the CIA bent on eliminating Sorenesen's chances at the post, as well as right-wing extremist groups, fearing Sorensen as CIA chief was unthinkable, since he was perceived by them to be a liberal pacifist critic of covert espionage tactics.

In the end, the votes for his confirmation weren't there and, rather than stage an uphill fight, Sorensen chose to bow out gracefully.

The following recording begins with Sorensen reading his statement and follows through to the post-hearing press conference and a postmortem wrap-up with a discussion featuring former Deputy CIA Director Ray Cline and investigative reporter David Wise. Cline spends a lot of time tut-tuting that the CIA would never dream of spreading rumors and were mostly concerned with "shuffling papers" and nothing as clandestine as trashing someones career. Seriously.

I suppose the only comfort is knowing the ritual of trashing appointees isn't new and it has a long and somewhat dubious history.

Welcome to 1977.

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(The single pre-dates their first album by a year)

Another one of the lost legends of West Coast psychedelia. This one comes in the package of a Santa Barbara band called The Giant Crab. Their first single, issued on the indie label Corby in 1967, was a moderate local success in Southern California. Listen Girl had all the trappings of a mind altering masterpiece. But it just didn't crack the top-40 mold at the time and wandered into obscurity until the band was signed to Uni Records shortly after. This track never made it to any album, and not even to any compilation as far as I know.

It's one of those gems just waiting to be noticed.

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(Outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran - November 1979. Not the happiest place on earth.)

For all the recent saber rattling coming from the shrill sector, it seems the lessons of history have fallen on selectively deaf ears.

And speaking of Iran - the last time we got the good idea of being the world's policeman we had our embassy overrun by militant students chanting "Death to America" and the uneasy feeling we were stuck in a game of chicken, seeing who was going to do what first and who was going to blink while doing it.

Trouble was, we had a history with Iran, going back a long way. Contrary to what some think that the average Iranian has a short memory span, most remember our foray into nation building in 1953, where we actively supported the overthrow of a legitimately elected government and replaced it with a monarchy the people no longer wanted.

We had a vested interest and it was called oil and we became inexorably linked to supporting the wrong guy in our adventures abroad for a goodly chunk of 20th Century history, particularly in the area of the independence movements after World War 2.

So when the overthrow of the Shah came in 1978, we were stuck in the rotten position of giving tacit support to the Shah while ignoring the moderate majority and allowing the fundamentalist factors to hijack a populist movement and turn it into a radical version of the repression they were dealing with since 1953.

The rest, as they say, is history. It is with that in mind that our current administration is taking the position of holding their tongues and letting history play itself out. In light of running the risk of history repeating itself, it's the only option available at the moment.

But in case you forgot the last episode, here is a rundown of events that took place between Washington and Tehran starting on November 4, 1979 and going to December 29th with Jimmy Carter's press conference.

A refresher course in the consequences of screwing up seems in order now.

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(The Walker Brothers - reinventing many times before the right combination hit.)

Just prior to becoming The Walker Brothers, Scott Engle (Walker), Gary Leeds and John Maus went through a number of different incarnations before scoring major success. One of their incarnations was under the name The Strangers (they was also known as The Dalton Brothers, but that's another entry in the future and no relation to the U2 side-project), at least that's what they were known as on a single issued by the indie Hollywood label Linda Records in 1964. The track is "Tell Me" an early Jagger-Richards composition that became the mainstay of just about every garage band in Southern California, if not the world, from 1964-1966.

But even this well-worn classic has the unmistakable touch that became The Walker Brothers signature - the Scott Walker voice.

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(In lieu of an actual photo of the band, which may or may not have ever existed)

The United Fruit Company - "Yes, We Have No Bananas" - York Records 1967.

No doubt something someone put together on a whim, cashing in on the sort-of twenties/smoking bananas craze around 1967, this little ditty appeared briefly and was just weird enough to make for rather pleasant listening. Nothing much is known about the band, or the musicians who played on it if there actually was a band.

Let's put it this way - don't lose sleep trying to figure out the earth shattering historic importance of this disc. It's not there.

It's just another shade of cheerful goofiness that was part of the 60's.

And no, the bananas didn't get anybody high.

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(John Kongos - A little primal never hurt anybody.)

John Kongos "He's Gonna Step On You Again". Elektra single EKS-45729.

I know this has seen the reissue light of day all over the place, but it's still one of my favorite singles and went very nicely with the early '70's.

Besides, it's Friday night - it's the end of the week . . and what a week it was! Good music to howl by.

Play loud.