Tonight's program will begin with an extremely rare recording of Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies from their 1969 album, The American Metaphysical Circus.  I will be playing the 11 minute composition, "The Subsylvian Litanies" with three sections:

• Kalyani (3:50) a spacey electronic score that starts like a flying saucer coming to land and morphs into a layered vocal track, "To die and wait" and finally the three voices move into phase (unison) as the transition for the next piece

• You Can't Ever Come Down (2:58), a driving electric guitar leads into vocals

          "Waiting to die for the 17th time,

            Etched on a mirror in the back of your mind,

            Trapped on a mountain nobody can climb,

            You can't ever come down (repeated)   .... (and on it goes)

• Moonsong: Pelog (3:47). The bad trip settles, "Come down, baby, come down easy, Onto your lady's satin pillow.  Come fly, angel, come fly gentle, over your lady's heathered meadow..... (and so it goes)

Joe Byrd was a student of the electronic music school at UCLA and Univ of Arizona. He worked in the New York music scene with critic-composer Virgil Thomson.  He recorded an album under the group name, United States of America.  However, the American Metaphysical Circus (1969) continues to stand the test of time as a landmark work in experimental electronic music.