A few days ago the Pentagon released a report on UFOs to Congress called Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). They went with UAP rather than UFO because of the stigma associated with UFOs. Maybe this newfound transparency will shut down conspiracy theories–or not. Anyway, this episode has 11 new psychedelic tracks, mostly by American artists and almost all released in the last couple of months.

Interesting reading:

How pop culture has shaped our understanding of aliens in The Guardian

The truth is still out there: why the current UFO craze may be a problem of intelligence failings in The Conversation UK

Pentagon UFO report: Government transparency and desire for better data might bring science to the UFO world in Phys.org

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All of the tracks in this episode are cover versions or tributes. The songs are from the sixties and seventies but all of these tracks have been released in the last year or so. I asked the artists featured in this episode what their desert island disk would be. The Dust Bunnies, who cover the Beatles song Long Long Long chose the White Album, which makes sense. Other picks weren’t so close to the cover you’ll hear in this episode. Tuluum Shimmering’s version of Eight Miles High closes this episode and they selected Cornell 1964 by the Charles Mingus Sextet. Dub Wreckage, who cover the Velvet Underground, said their desert island disk would be Y by the Pop Group. And Spacelab, who cover Hawkwind couldn’t decide on a single album. They split between John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and DRI’s Dealing With It. The episode starts off with a Kiss cover from CIA Hippie Mind Control, who picked the Ramones It’s Alive as their desert island disk.

This episode was initially posted on June 17, 2021. All of the tracks in this episode have been released in the last three months. The one exception is The Spacebombz track, which was on their demo released in January. The tracks in this episode are from all over the world, with bands from the US, Australia, Europe, Argentina and Japan.

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This is episode 9 from 2021. Number 9 put me in mind of John Lennon, especially after watching a video from the excellent series You Can’t Unhear This devoted to the Beatles song “Rain.” One of the ways “Rain” was innovative was that it included a reverse vocal line, which occurs during the track’s fade out. A Japanese pressing of the Beatles LP Hey Jude included a lyric sheet that transcribed the backward vocal. It tried to make sense of the gibberish and came up with “Stare it down and nourish/what comes near you” which actually works pretty well! I thought that would be a good starting off point for this episode’s collection of recent psychedelia.

Special thanks to Justin Bendell of fuguers cove for a better set of interview questions.

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April 20th is no stranger to strangeness. There’s the whole 420 weed phenomenon, and you can Google whose birthday it is. Perhaps most important, though, is that it’s the day after Bicycle Day. A time to reflect on the growing psychedelic influence in the world.

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Spiritual psychedelia (even if it is a punchline). The music in this episode all tends toward the spiritual. This episode leads off with “Zenith” by Avdey, a track that explores how a person can become one with the universe, followed by “By the Hand of God” by Children’s Ice Cream. The playlist concludes with “Brotherhood of Eternal Love” by Miss Lava. A few of the tracks also explore altered consciousness. Along with “Furthur Ahead” by Word of Life and “Peyote Sunrise” by Robot God is “Turn off your mind, float downstream” from Tim, where are you now? an album that commemorates the centennial of Timothy Leary’s birth.

Karl Stefanovic was one of the hosts of Today on the Australian Nine Network when he interviewed the Dalai Lama. He ill advisedly used the opportunity to tell a joke that was lost on the Dalai Lama. “The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, ‘can you make me one with everything.'” The Dalai Lama has a good sense of humor and even if he didn’t immediately get the joke he was a good sport about, even eating a slice of pizza during a subsequent interview. Not to mention that this actually went much better than former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota related a line from the movie Caddyshack to the Dalai Lama in cringeworthy fashion.

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