Since we're coming to the end of a year and the end of a decade, I thought taking a look at the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the turbulent times surrounding it might be a good idea.

Here is a look back at the Johnson years, as presented by NBC Radio and their Second Sunday series, broadcast on January 1969, as Richard Nixon assumed the White House.

Opinions on Johnson as President were sharply divided as much as everything else in the country at the time. In that respect, there are striking similarities between then and now with very little in the way of "middle-ground" opinions it seems.

So in case you were wondering if the country has always been divided over a leader and an administration's policies. I'm here to tell you it's always been that way.

I guess we just have to get used to it.

Happy New Year.

Hard to imagine, since what we call Top-40 radio these days is pretty devoid of personalities. But the airwaves in the 1950's and early 1960's were jammed with those endlessly chatty folks with gimmicks and alter-egos whose sole purpose was to be bigger, better and weirder than the other guy. Peter "Mad Daddy" Myers was one of an entire genre of radio personalities who seemed to fit in perfectly with the dawn of rock n' roll and Top-40 radio. Mad Daddy's shtick was a sort of "cool-ghoul", a rhyming quasi-Surrealist with a dollop of Dracula to go with the sound effects. And throughout the 1950's, his inimitable style was unbeatable.

Sadly though, Top-40 Radio was gradually weening off the gimmick based Disc-Jockey by the mid 1960's and guys like Mad Daddy were pretty much relics by the end of that decade. Although, Pete Myers wouldn't make it to the end of the 60's as suicide had different plans in 1968.

This aircheck, the last fifteen minutes of his show for WINS from August 31, 1963 perfectly illustrates his trademark style and why Top-40 radio in the early days had such wide appeal and probably seems so strange now in comparison.

A dose of Americana tonight by way of the King of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. This is a tape made during a performance at New River Ranch in Rising Sun, Maryland on July 28, 1963 playing to an enthusiastic audience. Bluegrass staged a revival in the late 1950's/ early 1960's, right around the same time Folk Music dipped its toes in mainstream and gave us The Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four, The Christy Minstrels and a whole generation of others. But what it also did was give Bluegrass a boost and legendary practitioners like Bill Monroe were on hand to reap the rewards and adulation of a whole new audience of fans who had never been exposed to this slice of rural life before.

And maybe you haven't either. Bill Monroe left a long and rich legacy, and fortunately for many, these concerts were recorded and are, for the most part preserved. These tapes weren't broadcast and judging by the photos in the tape box, were recorded by a very dedicated engineer by the name of George B. McCeney. Anything beyond that, I really don't know aside from this being a pretty fast-paced half hour of some serious Bluegrass.

Something you don't hear every day.

It is with great sadness to report that one of the most dynamic, outspoken and courageous leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's has died this morning.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was at the forefront of the early Civil Rights Movement, having withstood countless attempts on his life, destruction of his church and untold years of frustration. Throughout all of it he never flinched, never wavered in his commitment to the Civil Rights struggle.

As way of a tribute to the man and his struggle, here is a portion of an address given in Birmingham on April of 1963.

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: “Negroes are not concerned about white folks smiling at them, they’ve been smiling for years. What the Negroes are concerned about is how far is it from here to my freedom”.

Rest In Peace, Reverend Shuttlesworth.

It goes under the heading of Oldies But Goodies tonight. Bob Dylan, from the Bootleg Series put out by Sony in 1991. From his Concert at Brandeis University with the venerable Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues.

Get ready for the weekend. It's coming.

If you are of a certain age, the one thing you would hear most often around this time of year was "where were you the day Kennedy was shot?" - and everyone of that certain age will tell you exactly where they were, what they were doing and what they were thinking. It was just that kind of day. It was that kind of event.

For my part, it began what would become a lifelong pursuit of collecting history. The day Kennedy was shot I was home recovering from surgery and I was bored and playing with my parents tape recorder, just recording random things off the radio. As fate somehow how had it, it was the precise moment I was recording something that the very first bulletins came on. And for some reason, I had to record everything that happened as it was unfolding.

As years went on and the archive grew, I began to get more recordings of the event, such as an original ABC Radio network recording, which was a much better version of the one I originally made.

The shock and urgency and the feeling of helplessness are still there, even listening to this tape 47 years later.

I don't think there is anything I can add to this that hasn't been gone over adinfinitum through the years.

Here is the first hour, exactly as it happened this day in 1963.

This is actually a rather famous and famously circulated batch of recordings made during a concert put together by then-fledgling composer Frank Zappa under the auspices of Mount St. Mary's College on May 19, 1963.

The recordist, Carlos Hagen was my very first teacher in the area of phono-montage and experimental music. It was through him I wound up working at KPFK in the autumn of 1966 and it was because of him I developed a great love for the experimental music of Harry Partch, John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Frank Zappa and countless others. He was (and mostly likely still is) the person you would see at all sorts of gatherings with a portable tape recorder (a Uher 5000 if I correctly remember), recording endless hours of everything, not only for his weekly radio program, but for his archives. Everything that had any relation to sound held enormous fascination for him and it was his lifelong desire to preserve those sounds and to turn other people on to them that has made him something of an institution, not only among the eclectic population but among historians as well.

And so recording this concert was right up his street - in fact, it actually was since he has been associated with UCLA for many years and had an office on campus which was a few blocks away from Mount St. Mary's.

For those of you who know this tape (and I'm sure there are a lot), there's nothing I can add to it, other than list below was the pieces are. For those of you not familiar with it, a lot has been chronicled about Frank's early experimental work and that this was where his passion was. The Mothers Of Invention was a commercial side line as far as he was concerned; a means to an end - the thing that brought the money in to pay for what he was really interested in doing. And I'm pretty sure had there not been a Mothers Of Invention and the outrageous reputation they acquired over the years, he may not have attracted the attention of people like Pierre Boulez who championed his more serious work in Europe. So sometimes the sidelines do pay off.

At any rate, here is the concert. The sound isn't all that good. Carlos recorded almost all of what he did on the fly and getting it right was a hit-and-miss affair as it always is. But we can all be thankful he had the foresight to actually be there in the first place. Thanks Carlos - once again, you were where history happened. Also, remember (if you're not all that familiar with early Frank Zappa) that this is experimental music and it's not for all tastes - you are almost required not to dance to it. I am sure a lot of you will absolutely hate it - some things just never change. But, as everything with life, if you approach it with an open mind and a tiny bit of willingness, it could be pretty amazing.

Enjoy.

Mount St. Mary's College, LA May 19, 1963
* Variables II for Orchestra
* Variables I for Any Five Instruments
* Opus 5, for Four Orchestras
* Rehearsalism
* Three Pieces of Visual Music with Jazz Group

Probably one of the most referenced speeches in history, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech to a crowd of civil rights marchers estimated at over 200,000, assembled at the Washington Mall, August 28, 1963.

In light of how Dr. King's words have been distorted, taken out of context and abused in recent times, I thought it would be appropriate to run this speech in its entirety today as a reminder of how just powerful and universal his message was, and still is today.

Things you just don't want to forget.

(The Kennedy Tax Cut Proposal - Sweeping Changes - not everybody was happy)

Note: This is a repost from last year on this day. Seems the story just doesn't change.

In what became the most sweeping set of changes to Tax Cut legislation, House Bill HR-8368 passed by a vote of 271-175. It represented a radical change in the economic structure of the country by basing its operations on the theory of deficit financing.

President Kennedy: “No more important legislation will come before the Congress this year than the bill before the House to reduce Federal Taxes. In fact, no more important domestic economic legislation has come before the Congress in some fifteen years.”

A little too radical for some. Most Republicans voted against it as did the bloc of Dixiecrats who warned it would mean fiscal ruin for the U.S.

It didn't and the bill passed the Senate in February 1964 created the largest tax cut in history and it's still argued about today, as no doubt this post will provoke.

History is very often the gift that keeps on giving.

(Thurgood Marshall - concern for the creeping cynicism and mediocrity)

This roundtable discussion, featuring Thurgood Marshall, Norman Thomas and Reinhold Niebuhr took place before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I'm sure the tone would have been different and maybe more cynical if it had. But even early on in 1963 there was concern that America was no longer a place of innocence. The question of our moral stature, of what we had become - the creeping mediocrity of our society, the lack of principle in our political system, our lack of involvement.

Thurgood Marshall: “The middle group in America, and I think this is what has happened over a period of years, you take the middle class economic class, a man that’s about to be made vice-President, or the young vice-President bucking to become Executive vice-President; he’s very careful of anything “controversial”. So anything controversial they stay out of. And that’s what’s wrong with politics in general in this country is that those people will not engage in politics. They don’t want to get in anything. So with the race problem, they’re not going to get involved unless there’s some leadership that pushes him. Now if the President of this corporation or that corporation had been willing to get into the controversy, the vice-Presidents would have, and the foreman. But it’s the power structure that failed to move. And I think that’s the responsibility that’s got to be met. We criticize the ministers in the south for not taking a position on the School cases. It’s not fair to criticize the ministers, criticize their boards of Trustees. Those ministers like to eat like everybody else.

That this discussion could have taken place last week instead of over forty years ago begs the notion that, not only have things not changed, they have become worse. The cynicism and mediocrity have taken over to the point where it's the norm and not the exception.

It does make you wonder where this is all heading.