"Interstellar Overdrive" by The Pink Floyd

"Interstellar Overdrive" is one of my all time favorite tracks. It's an instrumental but not in that background music sort of way. "Interstellar Overdrive" is a journey straight to the middle of your mind, and if you're lucky, you'll make your way back out.

It's the 7th track on the Pink Floyd 1967 masterpiece album Piper At The Gates of Dawn.

"Interstellar Overdrive" is the masterwork of this era of The Pink Floyd. Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd. Barrett wrote this song and it's trademark otherworldly guitar sounds that drive the song into the stratosphere.

At 9 Minutes and 41 seconds long the song is both an epic in the sense that it is very long and also in the sense that it takes it's listener on a journey with it's many different sections.

I think it may just be the most psychedelic song I've ever heard.

This track has been covered by quite a few bands including Pearl Jam, Camper Van Beethoven, The Melvins, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Mars Volta.

Such Great Heights by The Postal Service

(Download The Postal Service - Such Great Heights - Unlimited iPod Downloads)

The Postal Service is the side project of Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard. To me The Postal Service is a million times more interesting than Death Cab For Cutie who I find to be a rather boring indie rock band by numbers sort of group. Not that I'm saying they are awful, just very mediocre and yawn inducing.

The Postal Service is Gibbard and electronic producer Jimmy Tamborello. This combination creates a sort of electro pop music that is both very catchy melodically and also very interesting sonically as far as the production goes.

Such Great Heights is the song from their first album (Give Up) that really hit home for a lot of people.

Such Great Heights is currently the #5 most listened to song on Last.FM even though it was released four years ago. It seems to be one of the songs of the decade so far.

A cover of the song by Iron & Wine was featured on an M&M commercial and on the movie Garden State.

Check out the video for this song below:


Here's a very interesting cover of Such Great Heights by Ben Folds:


And here's an acoustic performance of the song by Ben Gibbard:


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Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles

(Download The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever)

This is one of my favorite Beatles songs which is saying a lot because I love almost all of their songs. This song was written & recorded in 1966 and officially released in February 1967 as part of the amazing double A-side single along with Penny Lane.

Strawberry Fields Forever was written and sung by by John Lennon although all of the Beatles songs written by either John Lennon or Paul McCartney (and the many songs they wrote together) are all officially Lennon/McCartney compositions. You can almost always tell who the main songwriter was (between Lennon & McCartney) by who sang lead vocals on the song.

An interesting note on the composition of this song: The famous notes that introduce the song on the Mellotron can be heard when watching the film The Beatles: The First US Visit when John Lennon plays them on a melodica. This was 1964, more than 2 years before the song was recorded.

The Mellotron that was used in this recording is now owned by the Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)

The song features groundbreaking production and a complex arrangement. It has been highly influential on countless musicians who wish to stretch the barriers of what pop music can be.

The song also featured one of the first music videos:



Strawberry Fields Forever, like most Beatles songs, has been covered by many musicians including Oasis, Frank Zappa (different lyrics), Peter Gabriel, and Richie Havens.