(Cameron and Obama - meanwhile, back in the UK . . . .)

Seems there is an air of confusion everywhere as to just what our Afghanistan withdrawal policy is going to be. As Prime Minister David Cameron was meeting with Pres. Obama two weeks ago, back home Deputy Minister Nick Clegg was hemming and hawing with Parliament as to just what was supposed to happen.

Nick Clegg: “No timetable can be chiseled in stone, but we are absolutely determined, given how long we’ve been in Afghanistan, given that we are six months into an eighteen month military strategy embarking on a new political strategy that we must be out, in a combat role, by 2015.”

And after some howls he backtracked a few minutes later and it came out like this:

Nick Clegg: “First, lest there’s any confusion on the vital issue of Afghanistan, which I hope well continue to enjoy cross-party support, let me be absolutely clear that we will see our troops withdrawn from Afghanistan from a combat role by 2015, that is what we are determined to see happen.”

As this episode from the BBC Radio program Politics UK from July 23rd points out, the relationship is a long and sometimes confused one, certainly not helped by a muddled policy towards Afghanistan laid out by the Bush Administration.

It is a very tangled web. One with no easy solutions.

Newstalgia Note: We've put Newstalgia World Week on hiatus for a bit, at least until the new site debuts. In the interim, I will be putting these overseas news pieces, hopefully on a daily basis and see how that goes.

I admit that, in all the time Newstalgia has been up and alive, I haven't included any Led Zeppelin material in my posts. Why? Honestly, I overdosed on them around the time this concert was recorded. Led Zeppelin were probably one of the most visible, most hyped bands of the early 1970's. Their albums were played back to back non-stop on most FM stations in the country. Every Rock magazine had at least some kind of story regarding them in every issue. They toured almost constantly and, frankly I heard enough of them to last me a lifetime.

Not that they weren't a good band or anything, and not that I didn't like them. I just hit critical mass hearing about them and hearing Stairway To Heaven for the 2,000th time. That's all.

But my experience is probably not your experience - so when I ran across this concert I was looking at it as a historic document and not out of personal preference. So I decided to run it.

I am sure this concert has made the bootleg circles many times over, as practically everything they've ever done has, in one form or another. What's interesting about this particular concert, recorded at the BBC's Paris Theater in London in 1971, is how sedate the audience is. Evidence Led Zeppelin were much more popular in the States than they were in their native UK. A Led Zeppelin concert in the U.S. during their heyday was a stoner's paradise with massive quantities of drugs and alcohol ingested over the course of the concert to epidemic proportions. Attesting to that was the fact that, at one Zeppelin concert in Los Angeles, I was thrown up on not once, but twice in one night. Wretched excess is what they call it.

At any rate, in case you missed them the first time around, or never quite got into them in the first place, here is a taste of them live relatively early on.

Enjoy. I promise to grab something new and unknown next week.

This is the first of what I hope will be new weekly weekend series devoted to plays, contemporary and historic and running the gamut from Great American Plays to Experimental World Stage.

As many of you know, the idea of doing a stage play for radio is something that still happens regularly all over the rest of the world, but not here in the U.S. - not anymore anyway. The idea of doing plays for radio gets lumped into the somewhat quaint stereotype of "Old Time Radio Drama" which this is not and won't be.

The object here is to present plays that are famous in history, revolutionary in their concept and engaging in their execution. I'm busily digitizing a pile of plays going back to the 1950's and plan on doing these once a week, as a respite from the barrage of Weekend Talkshows, Pundits and Spinning heads.

Some of you responded when I asked a few weeks ago about adding plays to the eclectic mix on Weekend Newstalgia. So we're going to give it a shot and see what happens.

For the first one, I thought I would run something that is of recent vintage via the BBC. Kafka The Musical is a new production from playright/composer Murray Gold and it stars David Tennant (last seen as Dr. Who) in the title role.

Here is a rundown and cast list via the BBC site:

Murray Gold's new play starts from the suitably Kafkaesque premise that Franz Kafka finds he has to play himself in a musical about his own life. The play - or is it the musical? - introduces Kafka and the audience to some of the key characters in his life, Milena Jesenska, Dora Diamant and Felice Bauer.

Franz Kafka ..... David Tennant
Father ..... David Fleeshman
Mother ..... Joanna Monro
Milena ..... Naomi Frederick
Felice ..... Jessica Raine
Dora ..... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Barman / Singer / Doctor ..... Trevor Allan Davies
Newspaper Seller / Man ..... Brian Bowles
Music by Murray Gold
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer

Murray Gold's first radio play Electricity won the Richard Imison award for best new play after its broadcast on Radio 3 in 2001. It subsequently transferred to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2004 and was performed with Christopher Eccleston in the lead role. Other plays include 50 Revolutions performed by the Oxford Stage Company at the Whitehall Theatre, London in 2000 and Resolution at Battersea Arts Centre in 1994, and Little Joe and His Struggle Against the World (Radio 3 2005). Murray Gold has been nominated for a BAFTA four times in the category Best Original Television Music, for Vanity Fair (1999), Queer as Folk (2000), Casanova (2006) and Doctor Who (2008). He wrote the theme tune for the Channel 4 series Shameless and scored the period drama The Devil's Whore. More recently Murray Gold scored another David Tennant series, BBC1's Single Father.

It won't be for all tastes, and this production got some pretty mixed reviews a few weeks ago. But if you've never heard something like this before, here's a great excuse to check it out. It's a little under 90 minutes so it's all on one player.

Come back here for our next installment next week. But in the meantime, I would urge you to check out the treasure-trove of amazing material via the BBC Site. It's a good place to start, especially if you've overdosed on ersatz TV this week.

Enjoy.

(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.

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.

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Something homegrown tonight, but also via The BBC. The Smashing Pumpkins from a session the did for the John Peel Program during their European Tour in 1991.

I can't think of 90's without thinking of Smashing Pumpkins - and if you can't either, here's a rundown of what's on the Roundtable tonight:

Smashing Pumpkins - John Peel session of September 8, 1991
1. Siva
2. Girl Named Sandoz
3. Smiley

I think it's a safe bet to turn this up and wait for Friday to roll along.

We're still at 25% of our goal. A big debt of gratitude for the donations so far. But we still have a ways to go. We can get there if you can help out, any way you can. It doesn't have to be big - every bit helps. Give what you can so we can keep Newstalgia from going away forever. I know that sounds bad, because it is. Newstalgia will cease to exist after May if we can't raise $5,000.00 to pay the rent. I know we can get there. And if you like what this site is all about please do what you can to help.

Since we ran David Bowie last night, it's only natural we dig a bit more into the mainstream for something else unusual. And tonight it's Led Zeppelin in their second session at the BBC, recorded on June 24, 1969 for The John Peel Program.

If you're a diehard fan, you will probably have this session somewhere in your collection. You are probably well-versed in all things Zep. But if you're a casual fan, you may not have heard this session, and you may not have realized Led Zeppelin were originally The New Yardbirds, when the old Yardbirds dissolved. When Jimmy Page, the last remaining member of The Yardbirds set out to form a new band, following largely in the footsteps of the old one. When asked if he was interested in joining up in this new venture, Who drummer Keith Moon declined, casually adding Page's new band idea would mostly likely go down like a Led Zeppelin with audiences.

And the rest is history.

And so's what you're going to hear:

24/06/1969 - Led Zeppelin
Producer - John Walters
Engineer - Tony Wilson
Studio - Maida Vale 4

TRACKLIST
What Is And What Should Never Be
Whole Lotta Love
Travelling Riverside Blues
Communication Breakdown

LINE UP
Jimmy Page (Guitar)
Robert Plant (Vocals)
John Paul Jones (Bass, Piano, Organ)
John Bonham (Drums)

Take it from there.

A band whose name may not initially ring any bells, but certain key people involved do. The Tourists were a short-lived Punk/Post-Punk band featuring singer Annie Lennox and guitarist Dave Stewart. Together from 1977 until 1980 (just after this concert, by the way), The Tourists were moderately successful, but nowhere nearly as successful as The Eurythmics who emerged when the former band dissolved.

Here is one of their concerts, recorded by The BBC in 1980, and one of the last the band would perform together before splitting. The voice of Annie Lennox is unmistakable and it's interesting to hear in this early stage of her career.

The Tourists were a good band. Guided by the excellent and forward-thinking production of Conny Plank (whose work in the early 70's was closely associated with many of the ground-breaking German Progressive bands a the time), they were a cut above a lot of what was going on at the time and, in retrospect would be considered overlooked, had it not been for the remarkable success of Lennox and Stewart as the powerhouse Eurythmics in the early 1980's.

But that's another story. For now, it's The Tourists live in concert.

Only a slight departure this week from our usual diet of high-voltage, high-energy, high-volume Rock. Melanie is one of those artists who have bubbled under the radar for a number of years. Initially regarded as a kind of homage to Flower-Power, her music has withstood all sorts of flight-of-trend and has maintained its integrity throughout it all.

This weekend it's a concert recording made by the BBC in 1975, which ironically was her first appearance before their microphones, live at The Paris Theater.

Slowing the pace down a bit - quieting the noise from an otherwise really noisy weekend (you know what I'm talking about) and paying tribute to a Woman and her timeless art.

We do what we can.

I thought I'd offer a dose of Madchester tonight via a 1990 concert, recorded at Blackburn featuring the one and only Charlatans (or Charlatans UK if you don't want to confuse them with the pre-Dan Hicks 1967 band) by the BBC.

One of my favorite bands of the 90's who I remembered very well seeing in 1990 and realizing something interesting was brewing in the UK again.

They've gone through a number of personnel changes over the years but have weathered most of it pretty well with lead singer Tim Burgess still fronting the band. The latest word is they are planning on a tour in the Spring with confirmed dates in Tokyo and London. Fingers crossed they show up on the West Coast.

But in case you missed them the first time around, crank this one up and enjoy in the meantime.