Update: Coming into the final stretch and, thanks to a flood of donations the past few hours, we're almost at our goal. It's been incredible, the support and encouragement that's come this way. I can't begin to express my humble gratitude to all of you for your kindness, your generosity and your support of Newstalgia. Sometimes it's difficult, posting day after day, not knowing if anyone besides me is actually listening to any of this stuff or really cares about its existence. Clearly, the past several days have proven you are out there reading and listening and enjoying what Newstalgia has to offer, and that is gratifying, to say the least. It has certainly given me renewed enthusiasm to bring as much interesting, rare and essential material as I can drag out of the Archive. For the moment, we're right at the home stretch, within a few hundred dollars of our goal. If you haven't considered making a donation, please do - no matter how much you are willing to donate. No amount of money is too small that it won't make a huge difference. - it all does. We're getting there - we've almost done it!

Taking a break from sessions this week and diving into no genre in particular. Tonight it's 60's Folk-Pop-Psych icon Donovan and one of the Jazzier selections from his Mellow Yellow album of 1967, The Observation. With the exception of his debut, most of his earlier projects of the 60's were a combination of Folk, Pop, Psychedelia and a nod in the direction of Cool-School Jazz. Usually making for an interesting and somewhat eclectic listening experience, it also tried to deflect from the stereotype that Donovan was presented to mainstream music as a sort of Bob Dylan-Lite, which just wasn't true. But in the world of pigeon-holes, he had to be put in one, and as we all know, Jazz isn't big commercially.

So here's Donovan's nod to Beat-Poetry and Word Jazz from 1967.

While Music was going through it's realignment and recovering from the shock of the Punk movement, a new genre was creeping into the lexicon; New Wave. Spearheaded by bands like The Knack, New Wave sought to bridge the gap that existed between hardcore Punk and 70's Rock. It created something of a safe and commercial middle ground from all the disparate movements at the time. Blondie fit into that category nicely and were wildly popular through the late 70's and into the 1980's.

Here they are, just about at their peak in a BBC Radio concert recorded live in Glasgow on New Years Eve 1979.

A full hour's worth for you to catch up on what you probably haven't heard in a while.

Enjoy.

The name Laura Nyro probably doesn't ring that many bells with people today. Not like it did say, twenty or thirty years ago when she was riding the crest of a very big wave of singer-songwriters who had established careers on both sides of the fence; that of the performer and that of the writer for other performers. Nyro's work probably did as much to enhance the careers of others as it did her own. Her death in 1997 at the age of 49 robbed the music world of a unique and insightful voice that has remained for the most part timeless.

Here is a rare program originally run on NET from November, 1968 which features a short interview with Nyro as well as her manager David Geffen as well as Nyro performing solo while others remark on her work. The host is former CBS Newsman and host of the TV Game Show "What's My Line?" John Daly, who seems a bit mystified with popular culture of the time, and for all intents and purposes seems rather proud of that fact.

The remarks by the "critics" are annoying, tending to portray Nyro as something of a wounded bird or Savant - but this was the state of music criticism at the time, particularly with regards to women. Can't get around the misogyny, even though the music itself was bigger than the pigeon hole.

That's just the way it was and small wonder the Women's Movement came about a short time later.

(Annuals - mixing up a big bowl of Experimental in Raleigh)

My bad. I've been meaning to post this band on Newstalgia for many months now. I've been a big fan ever since their first album Be He Me came out in 2006. It's bands like this that keep proving to me over and over that the good music ain't on the charts and it ain't on your local Mainstream radio station.

As usual, I ran across Annuals during one of my browses on MySpace in 2006. Got sucked in within the first 30 seconds and I've been checking on their progress ever since. They come from Raleigh North Carolina and they've been around since 2004, and doing it like so many bands these days are doing it - slowly, but staying at it and getting good word of mouth going.

This track, Brother opens their first album. They have a lot of new material out (or newer), but this track was the first one that got me and I suppose we could call it an oldie. But like my theory goes - if you've never heard it before, it's new to you.

So, if you're familiar with them, I'm preaching to the choir. But if you've never heard them before - take a break and check them out. As always, they can use your support and I hope their fortunes take them to many places and turn on many people.

Every time I think of Simple Minds I immediately gravitate to their mega-hit Don't You Forget About Me, and that brings Pretty In Pink to mind and the flood of John Hughes films from the period. But Simple Minds were a lot more than a footnote in Popular Culture of the late 70's/early 80's. Most bands don't start off wanting to be associated with Teen Angst. But truths to tell, it wasn't anybody's fault that happened. It did amazing things for Simple Minds as a popular band, and the mega hit was highly evocative of a place and time, and I don't begrudge them any of the notoriety that came with that. Good on them, as they say.

But I wanted to go back a bit further, towards the beginnings of the band, just at the tipping point between Punk, Post-Punk and the evolving New Wave, to get an idea of what they sounded like early on.

So tonight it's a session Simple Minds cut for the John Peel Program at the BBC. Recorded December 19, 1979 the four numbers on the player are:

1. Changeling
2. Premonition
3. Citizen (Dance of Youth)
4. Room

A good and popular band who are still together who made some great music.

Over to Helsinki Finland tonight for a sampling of music by Burning Hearts. A trio that encompasses Dream Pop and Alternative along with a liberal dose of Electronica to keep it all interesting.

Tonight it's Various Lives, off their latest album Extinction.

When you start thinking in terms of Music Without Borders, it all gets very interesting.

And maybe having a listen to Various Lives will keep it all going.

As long as we're looking at Pop Music the last several decades I thought I would make a brief stop in the 1940's where Pop and Jazz blended for a while before parting company. Tonight it's The Page Cavanaugh Trio who made quite a name for themselves on Radio and in films in the 1940's providing backup for such artists as a young Doris Day and for Frank Sinatra's Radio show.

Fashioned after the smooth presentation of the Nat "King" Cole Trio, The Page Cavanaugh Trio managed to appeal to both Jazz and mainstream Pop audiences, and their long legacy as a Lounge Act served as a model for a number of up-and-comers in the small-combo genre all through the late 40's and 1950's.

Tonight it's a track they recorded for RCA Victor and released in 1948 but didn't chart. No Moon At All is typical of the Cavanaugh Trio style. Tight vocal harmonies either sung or whispered and trading off solos between Page Cavanaugh's piano and the guitar of Al Viola.

Again, it's off an original 78 so I have no idea if it's been reissued or if any of their RCA material has been reissued.

The maze of Pop Music appears to have no end.

One of the biggest instrumental hits of the 1950's was a song composed and recorded by Jazz pianist Eddie Heywood and accompanied by Hugo Winterhalter and his Orchestra for RCA Victor. Canadian Sunset was a smash and has, over the years, achieved icon status as a track that typifies Pop Music in America in the 1950's.

Heywood had been around for the better part of two decades in various capacities as soloist and sideman for a number of Jazz outfits including those of Benny Carter and Don Redman. His transition into the Pop idiom was something of a fluke, and even his solo recording of Canadian Sunset didn't achieve the massive exposure the full-blown wall-of-strings version did.

And, as is always the habit in pop music, a follow up single that sounds "almost like" the hit record came shortly on the heels of the mega-hit.

Tonight's track, Lost Love is the follow up, recorded about two months after Canadian Sunset in 1956. But unlike Canadian Sunset, Lost Love didn't make a dent in the charts, despite the signature over-production so popular in 50's mainstream pop. It seems lightning was not destined to strike twice and shortly after Heywood left RCA to greener pastures with Mercury and a resumption of his status as a Jazz figure with fits and starts to continue on into the 80's.

So, just as we did with Joni James a couple nights ago, here is the original 78 just as it was destined for your local jukebox or AM radio station.

And the wheels of Pop fortune continue to turn.

Those of you of a certain age no doubt will look at the headline and think I have lost my mind. Petula Clark? Are you joking? Middle-Of-The-Road tapioca Pop music?

Well . . . .there's method to my madness. First off, Petula Clark (who really was around since the early 1950's) had a sizable number of hits over almost the entire decade of the 60's and, say what you want, was somebody you probably found yourself listening to more often than not during the course of the average day. Secondly, Petula Clark (and her music Director Tony Hatch), had that uncanny knack of borrowing other people's musical phrases and weaving them into their own. Tonight's track Don't Sleep In The Subway has an eerie similarity to The Beach Boys' God Only Knows in the chorus. Subtle, but catchy. Thirdly, she and many others like her served as the backbone for top-40 radio in the 60's. Radio wasn't as narrow in its vision as it is now. You could, and often did, hear a set that included The Beatles, Supremes, The Leaves, Lee Dorsey and Petula Clark all in one dose. So what you got was a very broad, all-inclusive sampling of popular culture at any given hour, and because of that you cultivated a wider musical taste than you could at any other time whether you knew it or not.

And finally there's that thing about Production. Every one of her many hits had something in common; excellent production, impeccable arrangements and well-polished execution. It's no exaggeration to point out that most of the best studio musicians (i.e. Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck et al.) working in and around London at the time were enlisted for Petula Clark sessions. They provided that "hip-edge" that gave all her hits the added dimension and authority. It wasn't elevator music. It was sincere Pop Music with a purpose.

So with all that in mind, here is my nod to Pop Music tonight by way of Petula Clark. And maybe more next week.

You never know.

Hot on the heels of hearing of the passing of Blues and Soul legend Howard Tate last night, I also heard the sad news on the passing of another Blues and Soul legend, Dobie Gray, who passed away last night at the age of 71.

I hate these things. They are never easy.

My first exposure to Dobie Gray came by way of his debut hit The In Crowd which dominated the radio, when the Beatles and Rolling Stones weren't. I didn't really hear very much from him for a few years until the early 70's when he came out with Drift Away, which has since become a staple on FM Radio ever since.

Rather than play that, as I am sure if you've been anywhere near a radio you've heard a few hundred times today, I thought I would play something else from that period. Lovin' The Easy Way is a track maybe not as well known but certainly every bit as much a tribute to the versatility and wide-ranging talent that Dobie Gray had.

You couldn't pigeon hole Dobie Gray as "this" kind of singer or "that" kind of singer. He just did what he did and he did it wonderfully well.

Doesn't get much better than that for anybody.