The Long Seventies Podcast

The P-Funk Collective…. Decades of musical genius influential in multiple genres of music. Dozens of musicians and singers. At least five different names and sub-groups. Afrofuturism. Riches. UFOs. Guitar players wearing diapers on stage. Financial ruin. LSD and cocaine. Drug addictions. The band that birthed a thousand sample based hip hop tracks. This is part one of their story.

The P-Funk Collective…. Decades of musical genius influential in multiple genres of music. Dozens of musicians and singers. At least five different names and sub-groups. Afrofuturism. Riches. UFOs. Guitar players wearing diapers on stage. Financial ruin. LSD and cocaine. Drug addictions. The band that birthed a thousand sample based hip hop tracks. This is part one of their story. Part two coming up next week.

In the early 70s the FCC mandated that all cable companies with a certain number of subscribers had to offer channels for public use and broadcast. This led to the generally wacky programming known as “Public Access Television.” Little did the FCC know, but in 1978 a small group of intellectuals in Austin, Tx would attempt to use Public Access TV to take down the establishment media by telling the stories they wouldn’t tell. This was Alternative News Magazine, a counterculture version of 60 Minutes, and it broadcast over 500 episodes over a period of 20 years.

In 1968 a Soviet submarine sunk in 16,500 of water 1500 miles NW of Hawaii with nuclear missiles and cryptographic material onboard. This is the amazing story of how the CIA recovered part of that sub and pulled off one of the most incredible engineering feats in history, without the Soviets or the American public knowing what was going on until journalist Seymour Hersch published the story a year later, in 1975.

In 1971 hundreds of hippies left Berkeley, California to establish a commune in rural Tennessee. This is the story of why they did it, how they learned to survive and grow their own food, the problems they faced, and why 12 years late the commune eventually chose to re-embrace the the American economy.

We talk about quirky cartoonist B. Kliban’s eclectic body of work, including but not limited to Playboy Magazine and millions of coffee mugs and office calendars.

We discuss a fascinating Los Angeles based new religious group called The Source Family, led by a charismatic WWII vet, hand to hand combat expert, mystic, guru, and possible bank robber. It’s sex, drugs and rock n roll, literally. The Source Family was a short lived group, but during its short life it found its way into the favor of the Hollywood elite, the vegetarian movement, and psychedelic rock history.

We review our first year of shows and see if any of our ideas and assumptions have changed along the way.

We dig into chapters 5-8 (of 8) of Changing Images of Man, a unique study carried out in 1974 at Stanford Research Institute. These chapters offer the Image the study authors consider to be the best remedy for the global crisis, contrast it with the current image, project what might happen if society doesn’t adopt their new evolutionary image, and explain how they think their new image can be implanted in society.

We dig into chapters 1-4 (of 8) of Changing Images of Man, a unique study carried out in 1974 at Stanford Research Institute. These chapters look at what role images play in society, some historic images from different time periods and cultures, the current image “economic man,” and the impact science and empiricism have made on our images of man.