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(Niels Bohr - Physics owes a lot . . .so does the Atom for that matter)

Tonights Gallimaufry features an address by Niels Bohr from Copenhagen Denmark on the occasion of the 25th anniversary (April 5, 1913) of Bohrs completion of his paper on The Bohr Theory on the Structure of the Atom.

Niels Bohr: “Of course, in a short speech, it would be quite impossible to give any detailed account of the marvelous development of atomic fission in our days. And so therefore only recall a few points, especially suited to illustrate the decisive role cooperation has played.”

The broadcast, via shortwave and Bohr's thick accent make understanding a little difficult, but the historic nature of this recording makes those problems not that big a deal.

Another small dose of history from the Archives at Newstalgia.

hint-hint.

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(The Perceived World Of Leisure - 1958 - it looked good on paper)

From the CBS Radio Documentary series "The Hidden Revolution", broadcast from April 1958 narrated by Edward R. Murrow. The subject was The Twenty Hour Work Week, and how life in 1958 was adjusting to it (which, of course it never really did - then as now, leisure time was a foreign concept). But at the time, all things were possible.

Edward R. Murrow: “Americans living in 1958 face an era in which all of the problems of the good life, including the uses of leisure time can be, indeed must be, assessed as one of the most important parts of the Hidden Revolution. In the next thirty minutes, we intend to explore the possibilities inherent in a situation where most men and women may find themselves working in what our fathers would have thought of as paradise; a time, a place where an individual works a twenty hour week.”

Well . . .it sounded good. But reality was a different thing entirely.

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(What it is, is Baseball)

One last salute to Baseball before it all goes away until next year. This one, from a program called Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow ran a history of baseball up to August 12, 1951 (the date of the broadcast).

Check it out and keep it for that snowy day in January to remind yourself Summer eventually comes.

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(Birdland on 52nd Street - A hotbed of Jazz activity in the 1950s)

A live set from July 3, 1952 featuring Arnett Cobb and his Orchestra and The George Shearing Quintet at Birdland on 52nd Street in New York.

NBC radio, throughout the 1940s and 50s did weekly live sets from Birdland, as did all the other networks from various clubs and ballrooms around the country. Live music on the radio was a nightly embarrassment of riches with bands, small groups, singers - just about everybody with a union card, getting their 15 to 90 minute musical messages across to millions of interested listeners.

And this was one of those nights.

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(The 1970s - beneath the tinsel, more tinsel)

Hard to imagine the 1970s as a decade of turmoil and self-doubt. Compared to the last nine years of this decade, the 70s seem almost sane and dull by comparison. But I guess it proves the point that every decade, no matter which one is loaded with fear, anxiety, loathing and self-doubt. Just seems natural, in a strange way.

A few years ago, BBC Radio 4 aired a documentary in three parts called "The 1970's: The Decade of Self-Doubt".

It primarily covers the financial, social and political upheavals that took place in Britain from 1970-1979. Some of the issues don't apply that much to America in the 1970s, but there are enough to feel an eerie sense of deja-vu coming on, particularly with the Women's Movement and the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher.

But a lot of it deals with the financial and labor problems that beset England right at the end of 1969 and continuing on throughout the 1970s, such as the continuing labor troubles at the National Theatre as recalled by Sir Peter Hall:

Sir Peter Hall: “The country was having a prolonged nervous breakdown, and there was obviously a very serious situation about the power of the unions and how much a democratic society the unions could actually do to the rest of the society. The National Theatre, I found to my horror was a kind of metaphor for the whole country. We had unofficial strikes, we had pickets declared official by unofficial strikers so that the actors wouldn’t cross the picket We had Workers Revolutionary Party Shop Stewards unfurling red flags on the top of the National Theatre. We had an unholy alliance among the stage staff, between the kind of extreme right-wing South London heavy mob, and the extreme Trotskyites.”

Much of what happened in England in the 1970s wound up visiting us in the 1980s via the Reagan Years and the Bush years.

This is part one and two of a three part series. I will post the third and final installment later on this week.

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(Tim Buckley in 1967 - Eternal Brilliance)

As the result of my never-ending Digitization process, I am constantly finding things I thought were lost, erased, never recorded or stolen.

This is one such tape. I was a huge fan of the original Firesign Theatre Sunday night radio series on KRLA called "Radio Free Oz" which ran from 1967 to 1968. Before that it was on the Pacifica station KPFK a little over a year. RFO incorporated later Firesign Theatre bits, as well as interviews, music and audience participation (since it was a live broadcast from various clubs around L.A.). The show was about 3 hours long and it usually took up two reels of tape to record it.

During the big earthquake of 1971, I had the gross misfortune of having an entire wall of 5,000 tapes tip over and fall on me while I was stumbling to get out of bed. Reels flew everywhere. Boxes and reels separated and it took me the better part of the next 20 years to get them all back together. Some got mislabeled and misplaced, but I was never able to find Part One of this show, which aired on November 19, 1967 and included this very rare interview with Tim Buckley.

Luckily, it was found a few months ago and it's been amazing to hear again, the first time in a little over 40 years. This interview took place just as "Goodbye and Hello" was released and it features a couple of cuts from that album. Rather than replace those tracks with newly remastered versions, I just let the original play as it was.

A nice piece of history.

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(In its last gasp, radio got really creative)

If I was to tell you there was a time people paid more attention to radio than anything and that Television was the stuff of experiments and shrugged shoulders, you would call me insane. Listening to radio now bears no resemblance to radio of even 20 years ago, let alone over 50 when this broadcast first appeared.

But radio was an important part of culture, and in some parts of the world it still is - America just abandoned it and left it for the wasteland to consume. Too bad.

But when radio was in its twilight, it did do some interesting things. It's that mentality that says "when you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose" where sometimes brilliant events occur.

One was a short-lived radio series produced in conjunction with Galaxy Magazine, one of the more popular Science Fiction periodicals of the day, and NBC Radio.

Before technology made all things possible in the visual arts (i.e. Science Fiction film), radio was the perfect medium to convey that sense of mystery and suspense. You could say the world was destroyed by an atomic war and, through the use of sound effects, it was destroyed. Imaginations ran rampant and everyone had their own visual concept of just what a devastated world looked like.

And so X-Minus One took advantage of that - and did it wonderfully well with virtually no budget - it doesn't cost anything to imagine.

Tunnel Under The World was an adaptation from a short story by Frederick Pohl which appeared in the January 1955 issue of Galaxy. This broadcast, from September 4, 1956 adds all the elements of drama, sound effects and mystery to make it one of the most memorable episodes in radio.

If you're going to go out, you might as well go out with a bang.

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(For the Princely sum of 50k and your choice of shrinks)

In the mid-1950s a movement sprang up around the country - a mass exodus West and a mass exodus from the cities. The lure of sprawl, unobstructed views and tranquility screamed loudly everywhere. This was all part of the evolution of modern day America.

So much so, that it became the subject of books. One such book was The Exurbanites by AC Spectorsky.

The book was wildly popular in the 1950's as were its sentiments. So CBS Radio, as part of their "CBS Radio Workshop" did a quasi documentary/dramatic presentation on the book.

Narrated by Eric Sevareid and broadcast on March 30, 1956, The Exurbanites sought to answer the questions about the great trek west, the great exodus from the cities.

In retrospect, it's interesting listening - a distant point in our culture when things evolved and changed.

And one day we woke up and it was all different.

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(Sex, dope and not quite rock n' roll)

Gangs, binge drinking, teen pregnancies, dope, crime, dropouts - we were a mess. And that was only 1953!

Going back to the mantra "no matter how much things change, it's how much they stay the same" kind of nails it here.

The world was a frightening place in 1953. Smack in the middle of the Korean War, not to mention the Cold War with Commies everywhere - no wonder kids got a little out of control. Life Magazine called them the "lucky generation" but I wonder how lucky they were feeling at the time.

This documentary, produced by CBS Radio, featured narration by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and interviews with a vast group of teenagers, all slated to graduate in winter and summer 1953, from all over the country. It's a fascinating document, and a good reminder that what's going on now may seem horrible. But it's always been that way.

Strangely, we've also managed to survive.

Think of your parents and grandparents when you listen to this - they are most likely the ones the documentary is talking about.

Scary . . no?

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(Jean Shepherd - Occupation: Cheerful Chaos Merchant)

Living on the West Coast, I didn't have the opportunity of experiencing Jean Shepherd as so many in New York did. I got it by way of rumor, his album on Elektra and his syndicated radio show that periodically ran on KPFK. I heard he was good friends with a lot of the Beat Generation poets, and growing up with a well-thumbed copy of "A Coney Island Of The Mind" in my high school notebook, anyone who was anywhere near that scene had to be a hero of mine.

Years later, I ran across a collection of tapes which featured his live shows and a bunch of his studio shows from the early 60's, which this is one.

Shepherd is pretty much known today as the guy who wrote "A Christmas Story". And even though it's achieved a kind of "classic Americana" status - it doesn't really explain who Shepherd was and why he was so loved by everyone who heard him. His was a skewed vision of the world, often darkly humorous and completely iconoclastic.

To a 16 year old mind, he was just what the doctor ordered.

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(Oscar Levant - worlds Greatest Neurotic who chummed around with Gershwin)

As long as we're still in Fourth of July weekend mode, I thought I would toss in a little Gershwin as interpreted by his friend Oscar Levant for good measure.

This is a Hollywood Bowl concert from July 25, 1950 featuring Levant, along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Artur Rodzinski, playing the Gershwin Concerto in F, a bunch of encores which included some DeFalla and ended up with a solo version of "Rhapsody In Blue".

Never available commercially, and from the original raw transcription disc masters.

And as we like to say here at Newstalgia "You heard it here first!"

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(Connie Mack: "There's always next year")

With Baseball season in full swing, I ran across a documentary about baseball from another time - baseball from almost a hundred years ago. During the early part of the 20th century, one of the great figures to emerge in Baseball was Connie Mack, whose career began in the 1800's and who became one of the greatest managers and owners of the game.

This documentary, part of the series "Biographies In Sound" was produced by NBC Radio on April 10, 1956 as a memorial to the man who died only a few months earlier. It features the players and members of the who knew him as well as recordings of Connie Mack giving his views on the game he devoted his entire life to.

A little sports history as an antidote for an otherwise insane weekend.

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(Almost that time again)

As you know, one of my biggest guilty pleasures is listening to old live concerts - really old ones. A few weeks ago I posted an excerpt of a New York Philharmonic concert from 1960 featuring Fritz Reiner. This time it's the famous Besancon Festival in France featuring L'Orchestre de la Societe des Concerts du Conservatoire (Paris Conservatory) conducted by Andre Cluytens from September 1949 performing Dukas La Peri. Summer is festival season in Europe and there are a ton of them going on . They are mostly all broadcast, as is the tradition going back to the beginning of radio. Luckily, for poverty-stricken culture vultures like myself it's a matter of finding the stream or podcast and downloading it. If you're addicted to time travelling, it's a matter of digging into your archive and pulling out what some radio station tossed in the trash.

Either way, it makes for a non-stress afternoon - especially when the regular Sunday diet consists of televised talking heads.

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(Making an indelible impression on a curious teenage mind.)

If there was one single thing, one defining moment that turned my life around as a teenager, it would be the first time I heard "The Dreams" in 1966.

No, The Dreams are not a band - nobody played guitar, you can't dance to them. The Dreams was the first part of a four part Electronic Music piece originally broadcast over the BBC in 1964 and released by the BBC Transcription Service to radio stations in the U.S. shortly after.

It was described as "an invention for radio" conceived and written by Barry Bermange and scored by The BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The result was haunting, hypnotic and totally overwhelming for these fifteen year old ears. It completely changed the way I listened and reacted to music.

Having only captured half of it on tape at the time, I waited years to find the complete recording, when a radio station tossed out their BBC Transcription library. We collectors are adept at being dumpster divers, even before it was fashionable.

For a long time I thought Barry Bermange (a talented writer on his own) was the one behind the whole concept. I didn't realize until much later that The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was actually the brainchild of Delia Derbyshire, and she was the one responsible for the incredible electronic sound that accompanied the voices.

Her work has been sadly neglected over the years (she died in 2001), but reading about her I came to realize she had a huge influence over a lot of people in the 60's, from Luciano Berio to The Beatles.

Hearing The Dreams today is just as fresh as when I first heard it that Saturday night in 1966.

Some things are just destined to stay with you.