The history of Pop music fairly overflows with perplexities. Bands that should have made it, didn't. Bands that had no reason to exist became wildly popular. Bands with infinite promise that, for whatever reason, never made it out of the starting gate. Bands that just got lost in the shuffle.

It's not clear why a band like The Smoke never managed to secure a licensing deal with a U.S. label, but were relegated to cult status for almost their entire existence. True, their first single, My Friend Jack, became something of an underground legend, based on the fact that it was banned from the start because of it's alleged drug reference. And there were also several other bands calling themselves The Smoke, including a one-off band put together by West Coast wunderkind Michael Lloyd. But those didn't seem like good enough reasons to just ignore the band altogether.

But like I said, the history of Pop Music is no stranger to whims and perplexities.

Tonight's track, It Could Be Wonderful, issued in 1968, was one of a handful of singles that made their way into the hands of collectors and fans throughout the UK and Europe, where they enjoyed a modicum of popularity.

Luckily, because of their cult status, The Smoke have been enjoying a new-found popularity the past several years, due in large part to reissues of their completely rare singles and sessions.

Pop Music may be vague and perplexing, but fortunately it doesn't forget.

Amid fears the Republican Party of 1964 was taking a sharp turn to the right, with the rise in popularity of Barry Goldwater, and all indications pointing to his nomination as the Republican Presidential candidate, much attention was being paid on that election year to the outcome of the Republican Governor's Conference, being held in Cleveland Ohio in June, 1964.

And it was the current state of the Republican Party in 1964 that was the topic of conversation on this episode of Meet The Press, first aired on June 7, 1964.

Interviewed were the Chairman of the Conference, Kansas Governor John Anderson and Host of the Conference, Ohio Governor James Rhodes. A number of subjects were discussed - where candidate William Scranton figured in this picture, the Rockefeller wing of the Party - how other Governor's were feeling about the current climate.

Interesting sets of questions and interesting answers, as was always the case in this early incarnation of Meet The Press.

Here is that entire program.

For all intents and purposes, just a typical June day - only it's 1984.

President Reagan arrived in London on this day, as the 10th Economic Summit got started. A full slate of issues greeted the participants.

A Liberian Grain ship hit a mine in the Persian Gulf, escalating tensions in the already war-torn region. Fighting in the Iran-Iraq War was grinding along with casualties mounting by the hour.

Fighting between Sikhs and the Indian Army escalated with the Army storming the Golden Temple in the Punjab region, resulting in the deaths of 300 Sikhs as well as their leader. The battle touched off Sikh riots in New Delhi with a reported 30 dead at the time of this news report.

A joint Military exercise between the U.S. and El Salvador enraged the government of Nicaragua, who claimed it was ruse in order to stage a full-on invasion of that country. Protests were lodged.

A sailboat bound from Haiti to the U.S. capsized off the Florida coast with a reported 6 drowned and some 61 rescued. The suspicion was the sailboat was crammed with refugees seeking asylum in the U.S.

The Presidential Primaries held on Tuesday yielded sufficient delegates for Walter Mondale to secure the Democratic nomination for the November election.

Flash floods were raging around Vermont.

And it was reported that Acid Rain was more widespread than previously thought.

All this and a lot more on this June 7, 1984 as reported on The CBS World News Roundup and the 9:00 am (PDT) Network news.

Heading into the 80's tonight with a track by The Style Council. When The Jam called it quits, front man Paul Weller promptly switched gears from Punk icon to Blue-eyed Soul and Funk aficionado and baffled quit a few fans in the process. But for all the scorn he reaped from his old fans, his new ones came running and The Style Council created a lasting impression and a newly-found admiration base for Paul Weller.

Tonight it's a track off Introducing The Style Council, released in 1983. Long Hot Summer starts the album off and quickly eases into the groove that would be their trademark over the next several years.

And since we are heading on a crash course for Summer anyway . . . .

Over to Dorchester-on-Thames this week for a live broadcast of the opening concert from the 2012 English Music Festival in Dorchester, England with the BBC Concert Orchestra in music by Parry, Curtis, Delius, Vaughan-Williams, Ireland and Moeran.

Celebrating their 60 years as a tight-knit little band, The BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Martin Yates and featuring Mark Bebbington, play an outstanding program of World Premieres and seldom heard works by British composers, and a couple of work-horses in the mix.

Here the rundown:

Live from Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-On-Thames
Presented by Catherine Bott

The opening concert from this year's English Music Festival in Dorchester-on-Thames. The BBC Concert Orchestra are joined by pianist Mark Bebbington in John Ireland's Legend and the first performance of an early work by Vaughan Williams, his Piano Fantasia. The concert ends with another premiere: conductor Martin Yates's completion of Moeran's Second Symphony.

Part 1:Parry: Jerusalem
Curtis: Festival Overture
Vaughan Williams: Piano Fantasia (World Premiere)
Part 2:Ireland: Legend
Delius: Over The Hills And Far Away
Moeran: Second Symphony (World Premiere)

Mark Bebbington (piano)
BBC Concert Orchestra
Martin Yates (conductor).

It's Anti-road Rage Wednesday, and this one does the trick.

Enjoy.

With the stunning and sad news of the passing of author, philosopher and icon Ray Bradbury today, I ran through a mental catalog of his many milestone works and found it overwhelming. Probably one of the most gifted and keen minds the 20th Century had to offer, Bradbury painted a world perhaps more prophetic than fantastic, more visionary than imagined, more real than fancied.

As way of tribute, I ran across this brief excerpt from an interview done in 1958 where he explains the premise of his landmark novel Fahrenheit 451.

In 1958 he explained his reason for writing a piece on the willful and systematic destruction of books, with a sense of optimism that the climate that spawned the piece (the McCarthy era and book censorship) had passed and our culture was becoming more enlightened.

In retrospect, he may have spoken too fast. But then, history has that awful tendency to repeat.

Thank you Ray, for being one-of-a-kind. We do however, need you back right about now.

Probably the most famous June 6th of the 20th Century was this June 6th in 1944. The news was exclusively about the goings on in France, as one of the largest invasion forces ever assembled went ashore on the French coast in what would be a turning point in World War 2. The airwaves were jammed with breathless accounts, bulletins and analysis for the next 36 hours as America waited and listened and didn't do much else.

Here is an extract of continuous coverage as broadcast by CBS Radio on June 6th, 1944.

And that's exactly what it sounded like, sixty-eight years ago.

Thanks to a faithful and growing following, the legacy of Arthur Lee & Love is alive and well. One of the pivotal West Coast bands in the mid-1960's Love, like so many artists at the time, weren't quite understood by the mainstream and were, for a period, considered something of one-hit wonders and purveyors of Garage Rock, with the unofficial anthem 7&7 Is. But their turning point came with the release of Forever Changes, an album that has been ranked alongside The Beach Boys Pet Sounds as one of the biggest influences on the West Coast Sound and one of the best albums ever made.

Tonight it's the haunting and poignant Andmoreagain.

Hasn't aged a bit.

While tonight's Primaries are still fresh in everyone's mind, I thought would run a quick comparison to another June Primary - June 1976. The race was between Jimmy Carter and Gov. Gerry Brown on the Democratic side and Ronald Reagan and President Ford on the Republican side.

Here is a 90 minute snapshot of Primary Night, Tuesday June 8, 1976 as reported locally in Los Angeles by CBS Radio affiliate KNX-AM with returns from Primaries all over the country.

Still a horse race. Still down to counting ballots. Still confounding the polls, thirty-six years later.

Despite the fact that some ten million workers had virtually shut down France, and chaos was looming, the Peace talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam had stalled and the war was grinding on, all eyes and ears were on Los Angeles on this particular June 5th in 1968.

Shortly after midnight, amid a jubilant crowd and election returns that gave him a solid win in the California Primary, Presidential Candidate Robert Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin on his way from addressing campaign workers and well-wishers to a press conference at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Here is the now-famous on the scene report by Mutual Broadcasting's Andrew West, followed by continuous news from 7:30 to around 8:30 on the morning of June 5th.

The rest of the news that day seemed inconsequential by comparison. At the time of this news broadcast, there was still hope for recovery. The assassin was still a would-be and he was as yet unidentified, arraigned as only John Doe.

Imagine you're waking up on this morning, not knowing what happened (as so many did), and hearing the news for the first time.

News from KFWB in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.