(Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy - a word or two about live albums in 1978)

Tonight we're going to start what I hope will be another regular weekend feature: Newstalgia Pop Chronicles. The idea came about largely as the result of discovering a huge stash of recorded interviews and interview programs in the vault, pretty much untouched the last twenty years. They comprise primarily of figures from the Pop music world (including Rock, Jazz, Folk and just about everything in between) talking about their lives and their work. The sources run the gamut but the main emphasis is on our popular culture. Some people will be very familiar and others will probably need reminding as to who they are and what their contributions were. Some have long since left the scene while others are caught at the very beginnings of their careers. But all of it represents a slice of cultural history and hopefully some enjoyable weekend listening and a break from Weekend talk shows (even for a few minutes).

So tonight we're starting off with a weekly series produced by the BBC called Rock Capsule. This one is for the week of July 3-9, 1978 and features interviews with David Gilmour, Phil Lynott, Fee Waybill and Steve Hackett.

As always, if you like it we'll keep it going. It should be interesting.

I would venture to guess, just based on uncovered evidence, that America in the 1950's was probably more balanced from a cultural standpoint, than it is now.

Why do I say that? The evidence - weekend radio in America was a veritable grab-bag of music, information and culture - all laid out, usually in one place. In 1955, NBC Radio introduced a Weekend service called Monitor. It was an adventuresome idea, geared along the lines of America's then-insatiable curiosity over how things worked.

Monitor's credo was "go anywhere, do anything" and it lived up to that credo over a 48 hour period, beginning at 12:01 on Saturday morning until 11:59 Sunday night.

This episode of The Grand Ole Opry comes from that service. For a half hour (On June 22, 1955) it featured the talents of "Little" Jimmy Dickens, "Cousin" Minnie Pearl, Del Wood, Jimmy Newman, Chester "Chet" Atkins and a host of others. Strictly Americana at its most rural.

But here's the thing - right after Grand Ole Opry, Monitor went to Birdland and featured a set by Woody Herman and Erroll Garner, and a half hour after that, a set by Tyree Glenn and "Philly Joe" Jones.

And the next day, you got the NBC Symphony. Quite a blast of disparate culture, to say the least. But if you were up for it, you got one hell of an education in the space of 48 hours. And your musical taste got very broad and all-encompassing. And if you were a musician, you stumbled into a gold mine.

So as a reminder of how potentially isolated we've become as a culture, here is a half-hour of down-home rural/middle America/roots music, supplied by Mainstream Radio in the form of NBC on June 22, 1955.

The Jazz portion comes tomorrow.

It was with sadness that I learned today of the passing of Maurice Sendak, the man who took the concept of Children's books to an entirely new level. His was a unique voice and vision and it will be missed.

I found an episode broadcast earlier today via NPR's Fresh Air program which features a remembrance of Sendak along with excerpts of several of the interviews he did for that program over the years.

If you haven't already heard it - here it is now.

Rest in Peace Maurice Sendak - you made surviving the day-to-day so much more bearable.

Political humor of the 1950's - you don't really hear much about it these days. The forum for political humor has changed a lot over the decades. But in 1959 Political humor and social satire, like most social movements of the day, were considered outside the mainstream and relegated to the domain of nightclubs, college campuses and the occasional appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

But that's not to say the message was buried, and comedians like Mort Sahl rose to prominence during a time when questioning where our society was heading was just getting started. It was also a time when FM was slowly coming into its own and that proved to be a great launching pad for a lot of consciousness raising, politically as well as culturally.

I ran across this broadcast, originally aired over a local Los Angeles FM station (KRHM which became known as KMET and later The Wave) who happened to have a recording of a Mort Sahl appearance at L.A. State College in September of 1959. As far as I know, it's never been available commercially and it's classic Mort Sahl.

You may need to Google many of the names he mentions, like Claire Booth Luce, but you'll get a taste of what the political climate was like from a non-mainstream perspective. And that could be instructive or ironic, since a lot of the issues Sahl talks about are issues we're still dealing with some 50+ years later.

And further evidence some things just don't change, and may never change.

Here is a performance by Mort Sahl, as recorded at L.A. State College and broadcast by Les Claypool over KRHM-FM in Los Angeles on September 30, 1959.

When certain people become instrumental in shaping the formative years of your life by way of their message, their point of view or their example, their passing seems doubly poignant as it signifies an integral part of your development as a person is no longer able to be there. That sure-fire sign you can never go back.

I'll admit it's been a long time since I heard The Firesign Theater. By the 1970's I was on to other things, other messages and other examples. But hearing of the passing last week of Peter Bergman, the man who was the backbone of perhaps one of the most innovative and outrageous comedy groups in the U.S., brought me back to those nights when I was stuck to my radio like glue, joining this outrageous team of metaphysical clowns on their trip through hyper-reality.

The Firesign Theater were only part of the bigger picture. Radio Free Oz was "the big show" and was one of the more eclectic examples of broadcasting to come along in a very long time. Initially they were on KPFK, the Public radio station in Los Angeles. And then, for a short while, were on a top-40 AM station on Sunday nights. KRLA, which was one of the most popular Top-40 station at the time, played host to Bergman and Company.

Tonight I'm running a little under 2 hours of their final broadcast at KRLA. In typical Radio Free Oz fashion, the mix is heady, with an interview and poetry reading by Deep Image Poet Robert Kelly, and later featuring an interview with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In between all that is a Firesign skit "A Life In The Day" and lots of music.

I left just about everything as-is. Sadly, the show isn't complete and is missing the last hour (it's around, but it got separated from it's companion reel) and I did cut down on the music, but even that's an interesting point of departure since 1968 saw the beginning of Free-form radio on FM, and AM was dabbling in being free-form.

At any rate - as a tribute to Peter Bergman and the genius of The Firesign Theater, here is the last Radio Free Oz broadcast from KRLA on January 14, 1967.

I broke it up between two players - the top player features Poet Robert Kelly and the bottom player features A Life In The Day.

All in all, an interesting footprint in time and an appreciation to Peter Bergman for all he did and all those minds that were delightfully blown by his amazing presence.

Enjoy.

These days, when you want distraction from the world in general you can be bombarded by mindless reality shows, mindless talkshows and mindless infomercials. In 1967 the avenues weren't so plentiful (newspapers, radio or non-cable TV), so what was the equivalent of a "media event" in 1967 was a White House Wedding.

Not that much unlike the substance-free Kardashian wedding of recent vintage, in 1967 we had the wedding of Lynda Bird Johnson and Captain Charles Robb. And on December 9, 1967 that was pretty much what the world watched.

The interviews with the Bride and Groom-to-be are quite priceless, only because in a few scant years the social underpinnings from where this interview sprang would come quite unglued. And needless to say, in a few short weeks the madness that would be 1968 would be upon us and this event would seem quaint and distant and from another time.

So if you were curious as to how America got their attention riveted prior to the dawn of Social Media and instant access, this twenty minute capsule of what was at the time one of the most talked about events in America, may prove enlightening.

That was then and this is now and the concept of something being many lifetimes ago seems somehow apt in retrospect.

And in the event you weren't there, or weren't even getting started yet - here is a glimpse of what may or may not have missed.

NBC News with "Candlelight and Crossed Swords" for December 9, 1967.

Back when NPR was still known as National Public Radio, a reasonably fledgling operation (starting in 1968), short on money but long on imagination, they were able to produce a vast array of interesting and informative programs like this one. Starting around 1972, Voices In The Wind was hosted by folk singer and songwriter Oscar Brand and his subject matter ran the gamut, as is evidenced in this half-hour excerpt from 1975.

An interview with Stripper and Burlesque Queen Ann Corio on the art of Stripping in connection with her Broadway show "This Was Burlesque". An interview with fledgling screen idol Jan-Michael Vincent on the art of acting. John Lennon on the seemingly endless question "will the Beatles ever get back together?". A piece on the long-thought lost Concerto of Max Bruch and an interview with Tim Weisberg, fresh from his success with "Dueling Banjos" from the movie Deliverance.

The first half hour is sadly missing, so I don't know who else was interviewed. But this half-hour is more than ample proof that curiosity and a gift of gab seem in very short supply these days. Or our current state of affairs with mainstream media just chooses not to notice - which I suspect is more of the case than there just not being enough interesting people and interesting situations to go around.

Such is Pop Culture.

I doubt anyone who was born during the "Reagan Years" would have any vague idea of what this is all about.

Popular culture has moved so far, so fast and the mainstream aspect of that culture has become so compartmentalized, marginalized and abandoned that listening to this entry may seem downright strange to you.

And hearing his tape again I realize just how far removed we are today from that period of time in our popular culture where the Disc Jockey actually served as a sort of Town Crier and imparter of wisdom and musical taste.

In 1967 we had AM radio and AM radio had B. Mitchel Reed, who was one of the most popular disc jockey's in Southern California. A transplanted New Yorker, whose reputation had been cemented at another Top-40 AM radio station, WMCA. Reed was a cornerstone and a bridge between the staid music business of the time and the bubbling under counter-culture in search of the alternative. And it was probably because of his pioneering spirit in the area of free-form radio that made such a dent in audiences growing up in the mid-late 1960's in California.

Here is one hour of B. Mitchel Reed on KFWB from July 15, 1967. We swore by him.

During the early days of the Tape Recorder (yes, those bulky reel to reel machines) it almost seemed a national pastime that hobbyists sprung up all over the country recording, in addition to family get-togethers, every possible sound of nature, city, and industry. Entire albums were released featuring sounds of Coney Island, sounds of rainstorms complete with thunder and sounds of race tracks (both horse and car). Some people found it to be the perfect medium for documentaries. And so the concept of "A document for Ear" was launched. CBS Radio was at the forefront of this new medium for on-the-spot recording going back to the late 1940's.

In the mid-1950's, one of the last of the "experimental" network programs was introduced. The CBS Radio Workshop went by the credo "dedicated to man's imagination - the Theater of the Mind". It offered a vast array of documentaries and new concepts for the medium. One of those programs introduced audiences to a documentary sound maker, Tony Schwartz, whose audio montages became something of a benchmark for the new genre.

One of his most popular was a program called "The Voice Of New York", which was broadcast on March 2, 1956. It was an audio portrait of a city, a sonic tapestry of the sounds and voices that made up New York on the average day. It was subsequently reissued on lp and re-broadcast over the years. Tonight it's the first broadcast as it was originally aired in 1956.

New York sound a whole lot different now, maybe unrecognizable from this recording. But this was what the city sounded like almost 60 years ago as it was picked up by Tony Schwartz and his tape recorder.

If you think the Hippie Movement of the 1960's was the most parodied, lambasted, pigeonholed and marginalized era by mainstream media, you have only to listen to this documentary, produced by KNX Radio in Los Angeles in 1959 to know The Beat Generation won that dubious achievement hands down.

Titled The Beatniks, this one hour look at the Beat Generation as it was happening in Venice California was narrated by noted 60's and 70's Astrologer Sydney Omar and hosted an interesting cast of characters, headed by the somewhat self-appointed guru Lawrence Lipton who figures prominently as spokesman for all that is Beat and Bohemian in Los Angeles at the time, even to the point of proclaiming The (Greenwich) Village and North Beach (San Francisco) were no longer relevant, but now The Gas House in Venice was. Once you get around the rather quaint and self-conscious proclamations, there are some interesting people who were legitimately influential forces in the Beat Generation, among them Kenneth Patchen and Stewart Perkoff.

So it's an interesting listen, even if it is slathered over with a lot of marginalization.

But then, that's the 50's anyway, and mainstream always.