Since it's Christmas and we' re on a Holiday schedule of sorts I thought I would add a concert that was long thought non-existent but which has proven to be something of a classic for holiday concert recordings.

This one features the legendary Modern Jazz Quartet with the equally legendary Alto sax player Paul Desmond in what became known as the only appearance of the two giants of Jazz together in concert.

The recordings for this concert were long thought not to have existed, and it wasn't until they were unearthed in John Lewis' collection did this concert see the light of day for collectors in the early 1980's.

The disc (from what I understand) has been reissued by several labels over the years, and from what I gather is once again out of print. It's a memorable concert with both MJQ and Desmond complimenting each other perfectly.

If you haven't heard it or missed getting it the first time around, here's the complete concert and best wishes from Newstalgia for a great and high-voltage year.

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.

Ayn Rand has become something of a resuscitated icon of late, certainly within the ranks of the Tea Party who have embraced her Extreme Capitalist and Anti-Government theories with almost romantic fervor.

In 1971, as part of the Comment series on NBC , Rand was asked to deliver an essay on her views regarding the Ecology movement.

Ayn Rand: “Ecology is the war on abundance, fought by the same people who are fighting the war on Poverty. The Ecologists claim that local pollution affects the whole world and threatens the survival of all living species. There is no scientific proof of this claim and none has ever been offered, on the grounds of nothing but arbitrary projections and panic mongering slogans, the ecologists are urging mankind to commit suicide by paralyzing industrial production. Their immediate but not ultimate goal is the destruction of the last remnants of freedoms of capitalism in our mixed economy and the establishment of a global dictatorship. In order to protect our natural environment, this means to enslave mankind on order to protect weeds, birds and reptiles.”

Her views were, at best, extreme and she has certainly not been without her detractors, nor fans in high places. Alan Greenspan has claimed to be a great follower of her ideals. That she paints everything in the most dire and dystopic of terms probably speaks more to her Russian background than anything else. As was once pointed out, her style was reminiscent of "philosophy as it's written in the Soviet Union" and has been challenged, debunked and left quietly as an antique of history over the years, until recently.

History is forever astonishing and baffling and it's jammed with contradictions, just like Ayn Rand.

A great sounding concert from 1971. Recorded at The Record Plant* and broadcast over WPLJ-FM in New York on April 12, 1971. Procol Harum during their Broken Barricades period.

A memorable concert during a particularly great period of the band and if you aren't familiar with them, or only know them from Whiter Shade of Pale, now's a great chance to hear what the fuss was all about.

Enjoy.

*note: Thanks to an eagle-eye reader, it was pointed out to me that the actual recording venue was A&R Studios in New York. I screwed up, thinking of something else. Thanks for setting it straight!

(Member in good standing of the Too-Much-Fun Club)

With seemingly half the country visiting rehab at one time or another, and the endless parade of personalities trotted out before tabloids with one sort of substance abuse problem or another, you'd more or less imagine America's propensity for overdoing it had taken a sudden and abrupt turn for the extreme.

Well . . .no. It just feels that way. Perhaps our MSM's overpowering need for distracting news and paying no attention to the "man behind the curtain" makes it seem as though we're heading straight into the abyss of wretched excess (or wretched access if you're so inclined). The problem with substance abuse is old; very old.

And back when we had that extinct thing known as The Fairness Doctrine and Public Interest, radio and TV networks spent a lot of time actually talking about problems in our society and looking for solutions. And addictions were one of them.

Second Sunday, the NBC Radio Documentary series devoted numerous episodes to what was going wrong with America through the 1960s and 70s, and on June 13, 1971 they devoted an hour to the problems associated with Alcoholism.

It was a problem in 1971, and earlier documentaries going back to the 1940's suggest The Too-Much Fun Club was alive and well and causing mayhem and damage pretty much throughout history. Some say when it was discovered you could ferment grapes and "spiritual things" would happen and I'm sure there are hieroglyphics on caves illustrating Cro-Magnon sized hangovers.

So if you think the problems of Lindsay and Mel and several million others are new - you may be a little disappointed to learn they just ain't.

(Lester Maddox and thug wielding "drumstick" - some drum . ..and pay no attention to the gun)

Lester Maddox addresses a meeting of the New York Press Club on January 29, 1971. With the ongoing campaign to whitewash the Civil Rights Movement and the desire to turn the evolution clock back at least a hundred years, it's good to be reminded from time to time that those practitioners of hate, racism, bigotry and violence under the guise of "democracy and freedom" were very much alive and active and being revered as "misunderstood patriots". And even while their feeble attempts at explaining away hateful behavior fall on largely skeptical ears, there are still those, and they have forums now, who try to drive the point home that all that hate was an illusion, that those lynchings never happened, that passing laws eliminating discrimination were in fact bad for our country. That Lester Maddox wasn't as bad as all the "librul press" painted him to be. That he was just a "lovable boob who talked funny."

Lester Maddox: “You read about some drumsticks I brought up here, not axe handles, pick handles . . drumsticks, souvenirs. Pick in Pickrick means to select, choose, pick out. Rick means to pile up, heap or amass. So these are popular souvenirs for more reasons than the one you heard. And so . . many congressmen and Senators had asked for them. Capitol office officials and staff, black and white. And so they had asked for a number of them. And I brought a box rather than have them mail ‘em on my next trip to Washington. And the Capitol Police wanted to carry them into the dining room and I wouldn’t let them, because the manager of the club and others there wanted them and I said to go outside they can’t take them in. But you read in the paper and broadcast that I brought a boxful of them into the dining room. I read in a Chicago newspaper that I had a box full of them under my table.”

There is an active movement afoot to re-write history. And if the distraction is loud enough and the claims wild enough and told often enough, there is a strong chance you will simply forget what the truth of the situation was and believe the lie.

And you can't afford to do that.

Finishing up the week of Session Specials with T. Rex and Marc Bolan recorded live in session at The BBC on August 3, 1971 for the Bob Harris Show.

T Rex started from rather psych-folkish beginnings but quickly morphed into one of the premier Glam bands in the early 1970's. No one on the planet had a voice quite like Marc Bolan's - it was completely distinctive and you either loved it or hated it. And maybe for that reason T Rex didn't achieve the enormous popularity in the States that they did in the UK and throughout Europe and Japan. Although a staple in the diet of most FM stations at the time, with a string of hits of which Jeepster (the second track on tonight's lineup) was one, Bolan wasn't taken all that seriously over here. Being relegated to Teeny-Bop status, which was something of a false pigeonhole.

Tonight's track lineup goes like this:

T-Rex at The BBC - Recorded August 3, 1971
1. Cadillac
2. Jeepster
3. Life's A Gas

T Rex didn't last all that long, as band's go. The Glam movement came and went within a few years and Bolan was somewhat left behind and his career was dwindling. His tragic early death as the result of a car accident in 1977 at the age of 29 robbed the musical world of a great and innovative talent. What he might have gone on to do is anyone's guess. Whatever it would have been it would most definitely have been unconventional - that was a given.

But we'll just never know.

Hopefully we'll do more sessions in the coming weeks. Of course, that all depends on if you can chip in to keep Newstalgia afloat. That would be more than appreciated.

I confess to having read Tom Wolfe's The Pumphouse Gang some 30 times since getting hold of it in high school. Not that I was thick to the message, but with every reading some nuance, some observation came flying out with such razor sharp accuracy that I could not imagine anyone who is a more keen observer of American culture than he is.

So naturally, sharing this essay read by Wolfe, as part of the Comment series from 1971 seems a perfect addition to the Chronicles.

If you haven't read any Tom Wolfe, or aren't familiar with him, I would really urge you to put him on your list of "must reads', particularly when it comes to class and culture clashes of the 1960's.

But in the meantime, have a listen for five minutes.

This is one of a series of lecture sociologist, philosopher and peace activist Erich Fromm delivered in the early 1970's. This lecture is titled "How Can Conflicts Be Resolved Without War".

Of course, this was during the Cold War and Vietnam period when war and it's threat were prevalent everywhere.

But the sentiments and words are as apropos now as they were forty years ago. Maybe more so.

For the next hour, you get to decide.

There is a treasure trove of artists and songs that have gone strangely unnoticed in mainstream music over the years. Referred to in the U.S. as Deep Soul and in the UK as Northern Soul, it was a rich vein of music that became a sub-genre all to itself. Rarely did many (or any) get the sales or airplay recognition of the acknowledged hit makers, this was however the backbone, the songs that fairly ached performed by artists who were either largely overlooked, or who went on to achieve fame later in the mainstream.

Tonight's track is by Willie James - a single issued around 1971 which has become a serious collectors item over the years. Down On My Knees is typical of the Deep Soul genre - songs which dealt with themes of loss, betrayal, hurt, determination, pain and love just gone bad.

I think we're going to be paying an extended visit to Deep Soul this week. There's certainly enough to pick from.

This might be new to you. Stick around for the expedition.