229: Closer Than They Appear

A couple of post a go I mentioned folk music and that folk music often addressed issues of the day. Today while waiting to give a friend a ride. While setting there I was thanking of the burdensome escalating expense of getting my truck inspected and registered. I glanced in the mirror and the reflected ATM sign gave me a folk music flash back.

M.T.A. Closer Than It Appears.

M.T.A. was a protest song about true incident; a proposed subway fair increase in Boston Mass. Here is the Kingston Trio's protest. It is one of the classics from the 60's folk era. Listen to the words!!

222: The Subversive Diaries – Distorted Perspective

Distorted Perspective

After completing my last post I sat back to listen to some music from my past. The music was folk music of the early sixties. Folk music of that era was a bit spoken based on the performer’s view of the distorted perspectives of the time. As I listened I was reminded of the first time I was accused by government officials of being an active anti American intelligence agent.

Let me set the stage, it is the early sixties. We are in the midst of the Cold War. The Russians are putting missiles in Cuba (Cuban Missile Chris). The John Birch Society was recently organized (1958) and extremism runs rampant. Me, I am in college and the Hippie era is in it birth pains, so college kids were under great scrutiny.

As a diversion, I was spending some time listening to foreign broadcast. If you made detailed notes on a specific broadcast and sent that information to the broadcaster they would generally return a card to confirm your hearing the station. Collecting these cards demonstrated your expertise and the reports helped the broadcaster see how well his signal was heard in various areas.

One day as I was leaving class I stopped by the campus post office to pick up my mail. When I opened by post office box, I was confronted by two FBI agents. It seems Radio Moscow had returned a nice listeners package in addition to a normal conformation card. The G-men wanted to know what was in the package I got from Moscow. When they learned it had to do with radio, they wanted to search my room for a “spy” transmitter. No transmitter was found. Times have changed, back then all the shows involved “spy” radios, now it is photography. But, the distorted perspective has not changed.

The song that brought this to mind was “The John Burch Society” by the Chad Mitchell Trio. As in insight: WCTU -> Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.



And so it is Documenting the Human Condition.