Tape of the week: Steve’s Pink Floyd cassette. Side A has Wish You Were Here and Animals. Side B has The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, including Matilda Mother.
Every Friday, The Mixtape brings you five songs picked by people, from the sixties to this year. 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. Deep track
Matilda Mother
Pink Floyd, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, 1967
Syd Barrett wrote it for Pink Floyd’s first album, and Richard Wright’s organ and the shared vocal give it a storybook feel nobody else was making in 1967. If you only know the Dark Side years, this is where the band started.
Read our Pink Floyd story: start at the beginning, not the Dark Side
2. Emerging artist
Fabienk
Angine de Poitrine, Vol. II, 2026
Two musicians from Quebec in matching costumes and masks, playing microtonal guitar and drums. It sounds like nothing else you will hear this year, and you can watch it in this week’s video. They just announced a 2027 tour that starts March 4 in Melbourne, and Vol. II won Canada’s Polaris Prize last month. Presale signups for the new dates close Sunday at 3 PM Eastern, and tickets go on sale to the public Friday, October 30.
This week’s video
3. Psych nugget
Dirty Water
The Inmates, 1979
The Standells made it a garage rock anthem in 1966. Thirteen years later a London pub rock band turned it up and sent it to a new crowd. It was our Song of the Day.
BSide B
4. New wave
Senses Working Overtime
XTC, English Settlement, 1982
Andy Partridge stopped touring in 1982 because of stage fright, and XTC became a studio band. This is one of the best-known songs from English Settlement, and a fine reason to visit our New Wave pages.
5. Live
Free Hand
Gentle Giant, live bonus track on Free Hand, 1975
Few prog bands earned a live reputation like Gentle Giant. This live version of “Free Hand” is a bonus track on the 1975 album, and the song turns up on five of the eight discs in Front Row Center, a set of rare American concert recordings arriving November 27.
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
Mr. Peabody, author of many of our Songs of the Day, takes over Acid Flashback Friday for all three hours with deep tracks and psych nuggets. Then Psychedelic Psaturday with DJ Kaigem, the Grateful Dead Hour and more. See the full weekend lineup.
BToday in Rock History
On October 23, 1966, the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded their first single, “Hey Joe,” at De Lane Lea Studios in London. Hendrix wasn’t the first to cut it. The Leaves and The Byrds got there first. Read Today in Rock History for October 23.
CNew on InternetFM
- Zepparella Drummer Clementine: Picking Up Sticks at 27 and Honoring John Bonham
- Genesis: Band History & Biography
- A Conversation with Andy Sherriff of Chapterhouse
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Rock on,
DJ Uncle Steve
