Happy Birthday, Jason Pierce! Jason Pierce (a.k.a. the Spaceman) is an alchemist of the best sort – summoning sounds disparate yet similar in their scope and intensity, whether blues & gospel, psychedelic or electronic, the focus is on the core, the seed, beneath these layers of music: a cosmic drone which clears the mind and …
Happy Birthday, Gene Clark. Back at the turn of the 20th century (the so-called “American Century”), there was talk of the end of the American frontier, the wild blue yonder that set America apart and impelled everyone to seek their home there. Ever since that moment, there has been a search for the artistic experience …
Mary Lattimore is a harpist originally from Philadelphia but currently based in Los Angeles, California who played with The Valerie Project (an alternate soundtrack to the 1970 film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders), has released solo albums At the Dam (2016) and Hundreds of Days (2018), and has collaborated with Meg Baird on the …
I remember. I remember that hot July day when you died. It was the summer of love for everyone else. It was the summer when I lost my love. It was a sad summer. I could not eat because I missed you. I could not sleep because I missed you. In the autumn, I felt …
Born in 1942 (the same year of birth as guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who was influenced lyrically by Mayfield), Curtis Mayfield began his career with the R&B group The Impressions. Curtis Mayfield was one of the first African American artists to address the Civil Rights Movement in his lyrics in “Keep On Pushing” (released in 1964, …
Legend of Hell House (Delia Derbyshire & Brian Hodgson)One of the most haunting horror movie soundtracks because of the experimental genius Delia Derbyshire (born May 5, 1937). Cobwebbed organs, rhythmic synthesizers, and an array of erotic, goosebump-inducing, hair-raising electronically altered ghost voices that get under your skin. “Seven Bowls” (Aphrodite’s Child)Although only one minute and …
“Dark Shadows Theme” (Robert Cobert)This is the perfect introductory track for any and every Halloween playlist. Robert Cobert (appropriately born on October 26, 1924), composed this ghostly, iconic, shivering score with trembling theremin for the Gothic TV show Dark Shadows in 1966. It conjures images of the clammy Collinwood mansion and stormy, windswept seashores. “It …
On June 10, 1914, the same month that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, leading later that summer to the “Great War” (World War I) in Europe, on the other side of the Atlantic, in a tiny town named Engelberg, Arkansas, Ida Layton was born. On October 27, 1914, back across the Atlantic in Swansea, Dylan …
After my first magic mushroom psilocybin psychedelic experience at the age of nineteen, I decided that my screen name should be Graveyard Poet. There were three inspirations for this name at the end of my teenage years: 1.) the poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray (whose birthday was the day before …
Meg Baird’s most recent solo album Don’t Weigh Down The Light was released in 2015. She also plays drums, sings, and writes lyrics for the band Heron Oblivion who released their debut in 2016. Meg collaborated with harpist Mary Lattimore on Ghost Forests released in 2018. Meg Baird’s music has been acclaimed as “celestial” (NPR), …
