One thing you have to say about the Firing Line series hosted by William F. Buckley was that he never shrank from an opportunity to book a controversial guest. Even though fireworks famously flew (as in the case of Noam Chomsky), it did make for good theater.

One example is the famous interview Buckley did with former Black Panther co-founder Huey P. Newton, which was originally broadcast in February 1973.

Huey P. Newton: “The question is; during the Revolution of 1776 when the United States of America broke away from England, my friend would like to know, which side would you have been on during that time?”

William F. Buckley: “I think probably I would have been on, been on . . . the side of George Washington, I’m not absolutely sure. Because it remains to be established historically whether what we sought to prove at that point might not have been proved by more peaceful means. On the whole, I’m against revolutions. I think, as revolutions go, that was a pretty humane one.”

Huey P. Newton: “You’re not such a bad guy after all. My friend will be surprised to hear that.”

It goes rapidly downhill from there. A five minute video clip of this interview has been around for some time. This is the complete one hour interview and it covers a wide variety of subjects asked in the inimitable Buckley fashion with answers in the inimitable Newton fashion.

Ah, the 70's.

Having noticed the steep and continuing climb in gas prices (over $4.00 a gallon in L.A.), and the state of nervousness surrounding the Jasmine Revolution, once again the oil producing Arab nations are being tagged as the culprits in the latest energy crisis. Whatever the circumstances are (and there are always countless circumstances for spikes in gas prices; some imagined, some imaginable), the region has not been a stranger to crisis situations. In 1973 it was the Arab Oil Embargo based on the then-Arab-Israeli War and our support of Israel in the way of military aid. And since there was the Cold War still going on, the Soviet Union was a source of concern with their support in the way of military aid to the Arab nations. There was also the domestic furor over Watergate which some have contended suited the Arab Oil Embargo quite nicely as it took our attention away from Nixon for a while. Whatever the real situation was, it created a crisis which has become something of a playing card ever since. But in 1973 it was something new and the signs of "no gas" were creeping up all over the country. Somehow, we knew this was the beginning of the future and it was never going to go back to the way it was.

And of course all the punditry and experts were lined up to explain what was going and why this was going on and in their way, get us used to it. One of those experts called upon was Walter Levy an economist and Oil consultant who appeared on an episode of Meet The Press on November 23, 1973 to explain what this all meant.

Walter Levy: “Certainly the last three years have shown that oil companies, that have huge operations in the Middle East, who discovered this oil, who developed it, exported it all over the world, have lost practically all of their bargaining power with regards to the Middle East producing countries. We have a story in the last three years of nothing but broken agreements between oil companies and oil producing countries. And where, when the producing country concerned, the producing country concerned, changed it’s demands, increased its requirements for money, for control, against arrangements just concluded, the oil companies could never afford to say ‘we want to negotiate, we want to change it’, because the usual reply of the producing country was ‘if you do not – quote/unquote agree today, we will legislate tomorrow’, and a minute before the legislation became due, the oil companies, just in order to protect whatever they still had said ‘yes, sir’.”

In what sounds like the ultimate "good cop-bad cop" scenario, the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 set a precedent which has been repeated over and over simply because it works. Shift blame, shrug shoulders, wring hands and repeat. And let's face it - this is way too comfortable a situation on the parts of the Oil Companies and the Oil producing countries to change since all parties are quite happily in bed with each other. The system has been figured out and is played at every chance. And it is most likely for that reason there will probably never be a successful alternative to Arab oil in our lifetimes. Ain't gonna happen IMHO.

I suppose you could say Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson was a man of many contradictions. An advocate for Civil Rights, who supported the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, he was also opposed to Japanese relocating on the West coast after World War 2. An advocate for a Foreign policy that believed evil should be confronted with power and a firm believer that the U.S. should be a force for good in the world inspired many of his aides (among whom were Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams and Douglas Feith) as well as Ben Wattenberg, who was Jackson's political aide during his unsuccessful runs for President in 1972 and 1976. Jackson, along with fellow Senator Ted Kennedy opposed Gerald Ford's request to end price controls on oil. Jackson was also an advocate of increased military spending and earned the nickname "The Senator From Boeing" because of his strong ties with the defense industry.

Jackson died while in office, of a heart attack in 1983 shortly after delivering a press conference on the occasion of the shooting down of Korean Air Flight 007 and his condemning the Soviet Union for its action.

This recording, an episode of ABC News Issues and Answers from September 9, 1973, features Jackson speaking on a number of subjects of interest at the time - primarily the energy crisis, the wheat sale to Russia and our economy.

Sen. Henry Jackson: “I for one want to help the President in every way possible. The American people expect the Congress, and they expect the President to act responsibly in this period ahead. There’s three and a half more years of the administration, we have nothing but trouble in the domestic areas, inflation, the economy, energy. You’ve got the problem of the Middle East. We’ve got the serious situation along the Sino-Soviet border and I think the American people expect us not to be petty partisans and I’m going to do my part regardless of what goes on. Now one of things I think they need to do is to give serious consideration in bringing in some new people, especially in the economic area. It’s in the economic area where there has been nothing but a mess and confusion. I think there needs to be some improvements in the Department of Agriculture. My lord, we have the admission now from Secretary Schultz that we got burned in the Russian wheat deal. Why, to hear Mr. Butz, he says it’s the greatest thing since the beginning of anything. And I must say that it was a disaster and I’m not sure that the Department of Agriculture is getting geared up to meet what I think is a serious problem, this year and for the period ahead there’s a world-wide shortage of grain.”

Fascinating stuff, considering the legacy Jackson has left behind.

Who would have thought?

(With dismal regularity: The Roundup)

Continuing our survey of Immigration and attempts at Immigration reform, here's a documentary produced for NPR's All Things Considered in 1973. Titled "The Desperate Journey", it traces the steps most illegals take in getting across the border to the U.S., what happens, who takes advantage of the situation and what was happening in 1973 to reform it. Peter Rodino, who was co-author on a number of bills dealing with Immigration reform (including an early incarnation of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill initially called the Simpson-Rodino Bill in 1986) is interviewed on what the then-current problems were and what was being done to change it.

It makes for interesting listening, especially when you consider the climate they were talking about was 1973 and not 2010. You begin to realize nothing has changed much. There has always been the threat of vigilante violence and "get tough" policies - but as history has shown, they haven't worked nor are they very likely to work in the future.

And the problem goes on.

(Zulfikar Ali Bhutto - the respite between military coups)

Most people think of Pakistan these days as "the unstable region" and names like Zia, Musharif and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto come to mind. But I suspect not a lot of people (certainly in recent years) have heard President-turned-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was, among other things, the father of Benazir Bhutto and leader of a country coming out of the losing end of a war with India, the loss of a region (Bangaladesh) and pulling itself out of one military dictatorship before falling into another in the later 70s.

Prime Minister Bhutto tried to establish a democratic form of government and did his level best to sell that idea to the rest of the world, including the U.S.

Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto: “If I may put it briefly, the Pakistan of today has little resemblance to the pre-1971 Pakistan. We call it a New Pakistan. Let me tell you why. Geographically it is no doubt a Pakistan reduced in size by the separation of its eastern part, but it is also far more cohesive and united. Far more confident of its future. Politically, it is a Pakistan which is determined to nurture democratic institutions. As you know, Pakistan was ruled by a military dictatorship for more than a decade. It is my country’s pride that, after twelve years of military rule, which inevitably devitalized our political life, we are firmly established civilian supremacy and a government accountable to the people.”

The attempt was short lived, as history has documented so well. But for those of you who think Pakistan's problems are a thing of recent vintage and that a country in a state of perpetual turmoil is something that happened since 2001, it just ain't so.

As gas inches up to (and past in some places like Los Angeles) $4.00 a gallon, I remembered the last time there was a major outcry over prices at the pump. In 1973 the major culprit were the Oil companies and the major culprit now appears to be . . . yep, the oil companies.

Granted, the situation in the Middle East is uneasy at best, but it was in 1973 as well. However, in 1973 we weren't used to it. America enjoyed a seemingly limitless source of energy and oil and the crisis that confronted us then was pretty dramatic. So dramatic that NBC News devoted an entire 3 hours of Primetime programming to covering the story. Something that would never happen today. But in 1973 it was cause for major concern.

So today I'm going to run that entire show, all three hours. It's split up over three players and, even though I doubt you'll want to sit around and listen to it online, you will no doubt be better off downloading it and listening to it over several beers.

The story goes like this with highlights below:

Hour 1:

Frank McGee (NBC News – Talking about Nuclear Power Plants): “If the emergency cooling system failed, if there were a meltdown, some scientists think an area half the size of Pennsylvania might be contaminated, 100,000 people might die.”

Nuclear Power Plant Spokesperson: “There is no industry the world has ever known that has such safety features built into it. And there is no activity, no industry, no technology that has ever been developed that has such stringent rules for operation.”

Public Safety advocate: “There’s a large majority of the reactor experts that the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) relies on who have the most serious doubts about these safety assurances. We have hundreds of documents that have been suppressed by the AEC whose source was the safety community and these demonstrate very clearly that the controversy over the AEC’s claims is very deep and very serious.”

Bear in mind that six years later we had that episode at Three Mile Island - the Pennsylvania reference by McGee is purely ironic>

Continue reading »

(The Jackson 5 - with Michael in front. Before it all got very complicated)
(In remembrance of the2nd anniversary of the passing of Michael Jackson, I'm reposting this interview which originally appeared in 2009).
With the tragic death of Michael Jackson, and the reverberations of his passing echoing around the world, I ran across an interview Michael and his brothers did in 1973. They had just arrived in New York on the third leg of a world tour - they were playing Madison Square Garden that particular night - the night being July 22, 1973. It was a sold out concert, as so many of them were. The Jackson 5 were at the pinnacle of their success - the world in many ways was still their oyster. Michael was the wise old age of 13.

So this hour, recorded at radio station WWRL in New York features Michael all the brothers talking and joking - optimistic about the future, with that cocky assurance everything is possible, before it all got very serious and very out of control.

Before it all changed.

By the time the 1970's rolled around, a new and experimental phase of Rock that began life as a hybrid between Psychedelia, Classical and Free-form Jazz in the 60's, burst on the scene and took Europe by storm. In the States, it took a while. Shrugged off in the American press as pretentious, sterile and overly-intellectual, the genre had to find its audience by almost by word-of-mouth.

With such bands as Yes, The Nice (in the later 60's) and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, inroads were made that bridged the gap between a skeptical press and an eager audience. But still, the overwhelming majority of bands in the Prog-Rock genre were the exclusive property of "that" side of the Atlantic.

Genesis had been around since the late 1960's. With one early album (From Genesis To Revelation) showing promise, but lacking that winning spark. They eventually signed with Charisma Records, founded by former Manager-turned Label owner Tony Stratton-Smith and their fortunes soon changed. Getting a word of mouth and popularity in England and all over Europe (especially in Italy), they secured a license deal with Dunhill Records in the U.S. - they had made one or two brief tours of the U.S., primarily in the Northeast and, almost unbeknownst to the U.S. record industry, Genesis were gaining a huge popularity. When Charisma struck a label deal with Atlantic, and their maiden album with the new arrangement, Selling England By The Pound was released in 1973, Genesis took the record industry big-wigs completely by surprise and sold out every venue they were booked in during their first cross-country U.S. tour. Word-of-mouth paid off with dividends.

Tonight it's the opening track from that milestone album, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight.

Maybe you remember it - and maybe you've never heard it before.

Pull up a chair and have a listen for the next seven minutes.

Coming along at the pinnacle of the Glam-Rock movement, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band cut a rather unique figure in the annals of 70's rock n' roll. Like many bands of the period, you really had to see them live in order to appreciate them.

Led by former Blues singer Alex Harvey, who already had a career in the early 1960's as a solo artist and later, as a member of Simon Dupree Big Sound, Harvey added a dose of the lunatic fringe to his stage persona and acquired a large a loyal following as the result.

Tonight it's a track off his 1973 album Next. The Faith Healer is a timeless bit of writing, just as apropos now as it was when it first came out.

And if you've never heard The Sensational Alex Harvey Band before tonight, I would take a little time and check them out if I were you. You might be missing something.

Hopefully, our servers are up and working and are in the mood for some 70's Headbanging in the form of Scottish rockers Nazareth.

This is from a series of sessions the band did at The BBC in 1973 and comes around the time their first A&M (U.S.) album, Razamanaz came out. Nazareth had been together since 1968 and really didn't get to the top of their game (audience-wise) until Hair Of The Dog was released in 1975. With Hard Rock gaining a huge popularity in the States, Nazareth were in a perpetual state of criss-crossing the U.S. - and the hard work paid off. At last report they're still together (with several personnel changes over the years, naturally) and still touring.

But for tonight it's the band during their upward climb phase. Here's what they play:

1. Broken Down Angel
2. Vigilante Man
3. Shapes Of Things

Shapes of Things is their take on the Yardbirds classic. They would go on to score huge interpreting other bands song, most notably Love Hurts, which was their breakthrough International hit.

As a precursor to Heavy Metal, Nazareth typified the 70's evolution of Hard Rock and more than justified the inducement to "play loud".

And of course, that wouldn't hurt with tonight's tracks.