When The Moon Hits Your Bike

Dukes of Stratosphear - Bike Ride to the Moon

The English band XTC are already rad when they’re playing with a straight face, not that a band that comes up with great lines like “She a laughing giggly whirlybird, / She got to be obscene to be obheard” is especially serious. But I just decided that what every great band really needs is to do an album under another name, with a half-hearted pretense that they’re not actually the same people, consisting of perfect pastiches of ’60s psychedelia. At least, that’s what XTC did, and it’s amazing, so I think everyone might as well do it, too. The Dukes of Stratosphear put out an EP called 25 O’Clock, after its perfect first track, and then an album called Psonic Psunspot, and then stuck them together in 1987 as Chips from the Chocolate Fireball, which is how you can get it now. Practically every song is a perfect imitation of its influences, but unlike the crappy parodies we all listened to in middle school, these songs are original themselves, instead of just renaming “My Sharona” “My Bologna.” ‘Cause face it, Pink Floyd is a good idea for a while, but after a while, they’re not worth the effort. What the world needs is psychedelic music made by people who are at least minimally in their own heads; enough to remember that most actual, authentic psychedelia is boring sober.