An Interesting Mid-'70's L.A. Radio Station, More Right Wing Buffoonery, The Infinite Voyage, A High School Band, Ella and Steve, and Helping to Relax a Dick.

I'm going to start off this post with a tape I found featuring recordings from KNX in Los Angeles, made sometime near the end of July, 1974. Someone out there is going to be able to tell us the exact date, based on the status of the prison story and the Watergate story, as explained in the news (both stories went on for several days around that time). 

I found this station's format pretty remarkable - there's certainly been nothing quite like it here in Chicago during my 55+ years of radio listenership. Everyone has heard of Album Oriented Rock stations. This is an Album Oriented POP station. Some rock and roll slips through, but the majority of these tunes are from the softer end of the spectrum, and a not insignificant percentage of the tracks are album tracks rather than hit songs. 

According to Wikipedia, at some point in 1973, the station switched to "Gentle Country". This tape would appear to contradict that timing. 

Download: KNX, Los Angeles, Circa Late July, 1974

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Just over two years ago, I shared one tape from a collection of John Birch Society reels, containing an episode of a truly clueless (which should go without saying) mid '60's radio show called "Are You Listening, Uncle Sam", along with a bit of text for those not familiar with these loons. I have here compiled three more episodes of the same show for your perusal, heard back-to-back, belly-to-belly in one file. 

Download: The John Birch Society - Are You Listening, Uncle Sam? - Three Episodes Circa 1967

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I am not familiar with a late 1980's Public Broadcasting show called "The Infinite Voyage", which ran for five very short seasons. IMDB opines that it is "an exceptional series about of humanity, the stars, the dinosaurs, and other mysteries of the world and the universe" in their page about the show. I found a tape containing some of the music from the show.... somewhere, labeled "#3". Whether that's simply tape three or music from the third season or something else, I do not know. The show is available on YoutTube so maybe someone who wants to can find out exactly where this music came from. 

Download: WQED - Music From 'The Infinite Voyage' - # 3
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Now here's a man who is overly confident in his ability to provide the service he's been asked to provide. This is a relaxation tape - by all appearances a homemade relaxation tape done by an amateur. At least I hope he was an amateur, as his work here is... whatever the opposite of stellar might be. 

The man speaking, as you will hear, made this tape for, and provided this tape to, another man, named George Dick. And as you will hear, none of you are supposed to listen to this tape. None of you are supposed to use this tape, either. Do you hear me? NONE OF YOU. 

Download: Relaxation Tape to Be Use BY GEORGE DICK ONLY!

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And now, here is one of two tapes which came to me more or less stuck together. I'll share the other one in another post soon. 

What we have here is a high school band, playing a concert, most likely in 1972. Now, I was IN high school bands starting in 1974, and I must say, I was taken, and taken aback, by the percentage of tunes played by this band which were current and fairly recent pop hits. My bands never did that. And I have collected band albums over the years and have not found this sort of pop-hits-dominated material on any of them. I don't recognize all of the songs, but I suspect that even the one I don't recognize was a popular songs, rather than the standard band repertoire of the day. You'll hear "Morning Has Broken", "Jamaica Farewell", "El Condor Pasa" "Bridge Over Troubled Water", and a medley of Chicago hits. 

The brief news promo heard at the end of the tape, clearly from a completely different source, dates that part of the tape, at least, to April of 1972. 

Download: A High School Band Concert Featuring Lots of Popular Songs ("Wilson Band'), Possibly Circa 1972

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To close, a Very Short Reel. This is pretty neat, and I wish it was longer. It's a few fragments of an appearance by Ella Fitzgerald on what I assume is The Tonight Show during Steve Allen's period as the host. Ella's birthday was April 25th, so this is no doubt from that date, given the content, and the references (including the mentioning of Davy Crockett) seem to indicate that it is from 1955, although I wouldn't swear by that. But she had returned from a European tour that spring. 

The recording is sort of choppy, with conversations cut off and resuming at some later point, but there is a complete performance of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" 

Download: Fragment of Ella Fitzgerald with Steve Allen, circa April, 1955

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