(Obviously, this has gone up an hour early, as this series is being incorporated into my Self Care series. The others will go up at the normal 12 pm time, but still as part of my Self Care series for the foreseeable future.)

Story time!

I’m a huge fan of psychedelic and experimental rock. I’m also, incidentally, fascinated by LSD, and while I haven’t tried it yet, I hope to one day. Since I am fascinated by LSD, I’m constantly on the look-out for music clearly inspired by it. And finding such music is, of course, very easy. So many genres, songs, and even full albums to choose from (I mean… we’ve all heard Sgt. Pepper’s and Magical Mystery Tour… right?).

One day, it occurred to me that writing a musical soundtrack to an LSD trip would be awesome. Of course it’s been done before, but this one would serve a specific purpose: envelope a trip with positive, major-key music to keep it happy, while expounding upon the wonders of the universe, allowing the person or people taking the trip to fly through the Cosmos, spurred on by guitar, keyboards, drums, bass, atmosphere, and many different scientists to visit the very birth of our universe and, eventually, the birth of us… and the cosmic tourists would come back home, enlightened, happy and content. So obviously it would have to last as long as a trip does, which means I won’t finish this until I go on a trip myself… it’ll be as long as mine lasts.

In looking for a spark of creativity short of LSD itself, I kept coming back to this Jimi Hendrix song. Something about it fascinates me. I’m sometimes surprised by how many people I know, including Hendrix fans, who find this overly-long, meandering, and boring, but I guess that’s the kind of thing I love. And it inspired the first part for my LSD suite, tentatively titled The Heven Suite.

So here it is… the amazing Third Stone from the Sun…

There’s no video, here, just audio. So all you have to do is listen.

The whole thing is an experimental guitar solo, so… make sure you don’t skip anything.

So what are your favorite psychedelic/experimental rock tracks? What LSD-inspired songs do you enjoy tripping out to (with or without chemical aid)?

Aside from Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds or Linton Samuel Dawson, that is…