Tape of the week: an early ’80s mix. U2, Talking Heads, the Chameleons, Echo & the Bunnymen, Big Country, Let’s Active, Missing Persons, the English Beat, Berlin, Romeo Void, the Church and Icehouse.
Every Friday, The Mixtape brings you five songs picked by people: one nugget from the sixties, one emerging artist, one new psych record, one deep track and one live cut. Watch this week’s video below, hear all five on our playlist, or put on Acid Flashback Radio and let us do the picking.
This week’s mixtape
ASide A
1. Psych nugget
I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)
The Electric Prunes, 1966
That swooping sound at the top is fuzz guitar played backwards. The single came out sixty years ago next month and later opened Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets compilation, the record that gave garage psych its name.
2. Emerging artist
Carmilla
Six Foot Blonde, from Hummingbird (2026)
Eric tipped me off to Hummingbird, the brand-new album from this indie-soul-rock sextet, out September 25. Julia Rusyniak, the six-foot blonde herself, fronts the band, and they made a video for this one too. Read our 2024 interview with Six Foot Blonde.
This week’s video
3. New psych
Annihilator
DOOM GONG, from MEGAGONG
Seven players, two drummers sharing one kick drum, and a mellotron riff with a 1972 heavy metal snarl. Frontman John Anderson told us how it all fits together. Turn this one up.
BSide B
4. Deep track
Good Times Are So Hard to Find
Blue Cheer, BC #5 The Original Human Being, 1970
Most people know Blue Cheer for the loudest “Summertime Blues” ever cut. By their fifth album they had wandered somewhere stranger. DJ Kaigem opened Psychedelic Psaturday with this one.
5. Live
Crime of the Century
Supertramp, Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1975
The closer from the newly restored Hammersmith concert. John Helliwell told us the last sax note climbs to a top B that gave him trouble even in the studio. Listen for it.
Hear all five
Every song from this issue is on The Mixtape, Vol. 1, our own playlist. Five new songs every Friday, fifty in all, then Vol. 2 starts fresh.
AThis weekend on Acid Flashback Radio
Acid Flashback Friday with DJ Uncle Steve, Psychedelic Psaturday with DJ Kaigem, the Grateful Dead Hour and more. See the full weekend lineup.
BNew on InternetFM
Got an old mixtape of your own? Subscribers can reply to any issue with a photo of the J-card, and it might be a future Tape of the Week. See every issue of The Mixtape.
Get The Mixtape every Friday
Five songs, the weekend on Acid Flashback Radio, and the newest stories from InternetFM. Free, in your inbox every Friday morning.
Rock on,
DJ Uncle Steve
