Tape of the week: my Jefferson Airplane cassette. It holds two whole albums, the 1967 vinyl release of Surrealistic Pillow and the 1969 release of Volunteers.
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. Tape tie-in
Good Shepherd
Jefferson Airplane, Volunteers, 1969
Jorma Kaukonen says he learned this one in the early 60s from a guy named Roger Perkins, and it traces back to Jimmie Strothers, a blind Virginia street musician recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1936 under the title “The Blood-Strained Banders.” Jorma put it on Volunteers, and I was lucky enough to see him and Jack Casady play it as acoustic Hot Tuna at Evanston SPACE in 2014. Here they are doing it, with Jorma’s own introduction.
This week’s video
2. New psych
Toadstool
Dark Dazey, God Is A Frog Heaven Is A Swamp, 2026
A Los Angeles psych band with pedal steel in the mix, from their new album. It is one of Eric’s favorite songs from their 2026 album, and you can hear it on Psychedelic Psaturday this weekend, along with Frankie and the Witch Fingers.
3. Psych nugget
She’s About a Mover
Sir Douglas Quintet, 1965
Doug Sahm was born on November 6, and we are saluting him on Acid Flashback Friday. The band was sold as a British Invasion act, but this is pure San Antonio, and it reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
BSide B
4. Rock now
Realization
Frankie and the Witch Fingers, ZAM, 2019
Garage-psych from a band that formed in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2013 and now calls Los Angeles home.
5. Live
Xanadu
Rush, R30, 2004 (live)
Rush opened their 2026 shows with this song, the first time it ever opened a Rush set. This is the 2004 live version from the R30 tour. This week they announced five shows at Sphere in Las Vegas next May.
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 at noon Eastern salutes the birthdays of Doug Sahm, George Young, Glenn Frey and Corey Glover. Psychedelic Psaturday with DJ Kaigem on Saturday features Dark Dazey and Frankie and the Witch Fingers, two bands from this week’s Mixtape. See the full weekend lineup.
BToday in Rock History
On November 6, 1967, George Martin and Geoff Emerick spent the afternoon at Abbey Road in Studio Three mixing four songs from Magical Mystery Tour: “Hello, Goodbye,” “I Am the Walrus,” “Your Mother Should Know” and the title track. We play all four on Acid Flashback Friday at noon Eastern.
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Rock on,
DJ Uncle Steve
