Since America had escaped the ravages of the Red Scare during the 1950s reasonably well (aside from all the careers devastated by innuendo), the new scourge of Western Society was the advent of the Counter Culture in the 1960s. That wholesale rebellion against social airs and graces that typified life in a terrified yet insular society, the Counter Culture, at first a logical next step from the vestiges of the Beat Generation, was a combination of the Free Speech Movement, the Anti-War Movement, The Civil Rights Movement and probably a few hundred other social and artistic movements all rolled into one massive social upheaval.

And because most aspects of the Counter Culture had to do with politics reasonably well to the left, the practitioners of the various movements were labeled misfits, deadbeats, malcontents and the newest and most lasting one for the period; Hippies.

Hippie was a nice blanket classification for anyone who questioned the previous status quo in social/political/artistic behavior. Hippie came to be associated with shiftless, lazy, unmotivated, perverted, hirsute to the extreme and manipulative. It was also a movement that was officially pronounced dead at the end of summer 1967.

But when mainstream media began looking at this Counter Culture phenomenon after the fact, they did it with a certain jaundiced eye geared to the sensational. And as anything that starts off as a small independent movement and gains popularity, it inevitably gets into the mainstream (usually after the fact when it morphs into a life of its own) and that's when the trouble starts. And as is always the case, the initial motivators behind this and other movements either faded away, wound up in jail or on the run or were co-opted by the malcontents, agenda-grinders and grandstanders and turned into a quasi-profitable lifestyle. So what began as a serious questioning of social mores became a free-for-all and disintegrated, certainly by the end of 1969. Some say 1968. My feeling has always pinpointed it around Altamont (but that's just me).

But in November of 1967 the media were still very curious about it all and WNEW in New York ran a documentary/essay called A Child Again where a nineteen year old girl named "Marcy" was interviewed and asked about her lifestyle and her choices.

Today it may sound quaint and somewhat naive, as does a lot of history when you look back at it. At the time though, Marcy represented every parent's nightmare. And truths to tell, they had a lot to spend sleepless nights over. But that's the stuff of youth and every generation has it since the beginning of time.

And Marcy and her love of Speed and Alice In Wonderland was ours.

Oh, and if you're curious about the music bed that plays in the background, it's Jefferson Airplane off Surrealistic Pillow - in case you were driving yourself crazy wondering.

(Radio in the 1960s looked an awful lot like this most everywhere)

It's been one and possibly two generations gone by that never actually heard what AM radio was all about, or what it aspired to do, in the 1960's. Before radio tightened up playlists, got generic and became bastions of shrill talk radio, there was music and lots of it.

In 1967 it was still pretty much geared to the 45 rpm disc, the singles market. Even though by the end of that year things would already be changing dramatically until by the following year the discovery of FM would further erode a once powerful force of the Music business. AM radio, despite trying, always sounded lousy, it just couldn't help it. But what it lost in quality it more than made up for in sheer personality and a desire to connect with an audience in a meaningful way.

In 1967, upstart radio station KBLA located in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank became something of a middle ground between the 45 culture of the hit record and the burgeoning subculture of free form radio.

Because it was a very competitive market (KRLA, KHJ and KFWB being the dominant forces in Los Angeles at the time) and because the station wasn't all that powerful, the experiment didn't last. And on June 16, 1967 KBLA did it's final day as a free-form/top 40 radio station. Dave Diamond, himself a popular fixture on the L.A. scene in the 1960's, would go off to other stations after this final broadcast.

But the writing was on the wall and it would only be a matter of months before a tsunami of change would sweep over popular culture, and popular media was the first to feel it. Top-40 on AM radio at least, had its days numbered.
So here is a small slice of history (less than one hour from a three hour show) to give you some idea of what the fuss was all about at the time. Fortunately for everyone, there were a lot of people armed with tape recorders who, like their geek brethren of later years with computers, sat faithfully by their radios day after day and preserved this stuff for some future generation to marvel or gaze askance with strained credulity.

It was another element in what it all later became - how it all wound up.

(Phil Spector with The Ronettes - Factory Work of a kind)

Anyone who has even a passing interest in the history of Pop Music has the BBC to thank for the many and incredible documentaries which have been produced by that network over the years. Today's Pop Chronicle feature comes via the BBC and an excellent series currently running on BBC 6 Music on the history of Sixties Girl Groups. This installment, which aired last week, features the girl groups produced and guided by the legendary Phil Spector (yes, that Phil Spector - the one currently serving time, but that's another story). It dives into the history of many of the great groups of the period and exposes a few myths for what they are, while also giving some background on what was really a factory atmosphere that turned out one hit after the next.

Good listening and great information on a period of music occasionally dismissed and often portrayed under false pretenses.

(A Christmas Sing With Bing - 1958. Guilty pleasure)

For those of you (and I guess there are a lot) who despise Christmas, this particular post ain't for you.

But since this is a blog dealing with aspects of our popular culture, present and past, you can't really let the season go without a nod to what was, for a very long time, an American Institution - Bing Crosby.

Every Christmas eve, like clockwork, CBS radio would blare out their annual "Christmas Sing With Bing" all throughout the 1950s and into the early 1960s, when TV took over with their Christmas extravaganzas and radio was promptly abandoned.

This Christmas Sing With Bing from 1958 was typical of the tradition with a heavy emphasis on the religious aspect of Christmas, not so much the consumer part. There is also a nod to the events of the past year, with a piece on the Nautilus and our newest state Alaska. The first "Sing With Bing" in 1955 was issued on lp by Decca (now Universal), and became a staple of their Christmas catalogue well into the CD era.

Crosby died in 1977 and with him went this tradition. He's pretty much relegated now to annual marathons of "White Christmas" and "Holiday Inn", but I thought you might enjoy a one hour dose of what the season used to be like fifty years ago. If you've never heard this before, I'd be curious to know your impressions. To you it may seem odd and quaint, a relic of a distant past. It was part of my culture of growing up and sometimes those impressions can be muddled. I took it for granted and never thought it would be any different.

We live in such interesting times. But nonetheless, it's Christmas Eve and we're almost at the close of another decade. And as with everything in life, it constantly changes and never remains the same.

Enjoy the holidays and thanks for all your support this first year of Newstalgia.

Oh yeah . . .and that too . .(click on the donate button if you can)

(Unfortunately, not in the same room at the same time)

An interesting spectrum of opinions, given in this 1971 survey of Contemporary America. Hosted by Newsman Edwin Newman, this was actually a sampling of the program Comment which ran on NBC from the 1960s to 70s, featuring prominent people expressing opinions on events of the day. A lot of people talk about Ayn Rand, but I doubt many people have actually heard her. Tom Wolfe is still popping up from time to time on talk shows. Herbert Marcuse, probably known mostly today as the philosophical driving force behind radical Black Activist Angela Davis during the 60's and 70's, although that would be a very short shrift for someone of his caliber - but popular culture likes pigeonholing. And Anthony Burgess, best known today as the author of A Clockwork Orange. An all around unlikely bunch of people, but an interesting set of opinions nonetheless. I wonder what something similar would look like today.

More importantly, what would it sound like.

(Eddie & Ernie - Underrated but rediscovered in the UK)

Northern Soul (as its known in the UK) or Deep Soul (as its known here) is that genre of Soul and R&B that's not about happy endings or love forever. They are usually songs that deal with loss, loneliness, determination, despair - always the deeper, more complex side of human nature. For that reason, a lot of them weren't very big on the charts, but they made huge and lasting impressions on a lot of people, particularly other musicians (Janis Joplin for one, who copied note-for-note the Howard Tate classic Get It While You Can).

Eddie & Ernie were probably two of the most underrated talents in the Soul/R&B scene in the 1960s. They recorded several sides for the Sue Records subsidiary Eastern Records, among other labels including this one Goin' For Myself in 1964. It's a classic song that's been reissued on several compilations, plucking it from a completely undeserved obscurity.

Sadly, both Eddie and Ernie are gone. They would have loved finally getting the recognition. But at least their music is their living legacy that keeps getting more fans.

(The Quotations - in the land of one-hit wonders)

I'm threatening to do an entire week of Doo-Wop next week. It's an almost extinct form of popular music that some people still swear by and maybe it's time to get those of you not familiar with it at least introduced. Like I always say, ignorance of your culture is considered uncool.

Rather than start at the beginning point (the early 1950's), I thought I would jump ahead and do something from the tail end of the Doo-Wop era, the 1960s. The Quotations were (as you can tell by the photo up there) from Brooklyn and were one of the only such signings to an almost exclusively Jazz label, Verve in 1961.

They delivered their one and only hit, Imagination, a standard written in the 1930s by the team of Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen. That was what a lot of Doo-Wop was about; taking standards and giving them a twist that, not only made publishers happy but exposed a whole new generation to some tried-and-true song material.

Some of it was pretty corny and some of it was absolutely great.

So with this track, you get to decide.

(The Temptations - A definition of Soul in every move)

Motown this weekend. The Temptations were completely woven into the fabric of our culture in the 1960s. They defined the meaning of Soul. I don't think there is anyone who was around then who can't point to at least one Temptations song as being an integral part of their own personal soundtrack as so many films dealing with that decade have at least "My Girl" mixed in there somewhere. It's always good for a collective "ah-ha" from the audience.

Tonight it's The Temps from 1984. Still great, even though time is doing the thing it does so well. The pipes are heading towards rusty but the energy is still there in abundance. And the crowd at the venue in Santa Barbara that December night knew they were in for a memorable occasion.

And you get to join in too - even if it is from a distance.

(Poster for a Tom Northcott gig in Vancouver, 1968)

Heading back into oldies territory tonight. Tom Northcott is better known in his native Canada than here in the States, even though he had a couple of hits on U.S. airwaves in the late 1960's. This track, the Harry Nillson song 1941 did rather well on the charts here. It's produced by Leon Russell (before his solo career and around the time he was tinkering with the concept group Asylum Choir with Marc Benno) and Northcott almost gets drowned out by the musical pyrotechnics, but it's still a well produced track.

Northcott won a Best New Artist Juno award in 1971, but never really became a household name down here. He later co-founded Mushroom Studios in Vancouver and put performing on ice for a while.

One of a long list of overlooked artists of the 1960s.

(Phineas Newborn Jr. Bright promising future cut short)

When Phineas Newborn Jr. came on the scene in 1956 he was considered one of the great up-and-coming pianists in Jazz. His reputation rose very quickly in the late 1950's. But in the early 1960s things took an abrupt change and Newborn went through the rest of his life in and out of mental hospitals, battling a debilitating mental illness that eventually took his career.

But when he was at the crest of his wave, Newborn cut an album with a full orchestra led by the great British band leader Dennis Farnon for RCA. While My Lady Sleeps is the title cut off this same-titled album (Victor LPM-1474). There's something about recording a session with a full orchestra and strings that has always been so appealing to Jazz musicians - it's almost a sign of "having arrived" to having cut one. And Newborn was no different.

And so, from the session cut in New York on April 23rd and 24th 1957 . . .