Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

This is “Eight Miles High” by The Byrds:

My favorite album by The Byrds is Sweetheart of the Rodeo because I love all that country twang and Gram Parsons, and when I first heard it back in the mid 1990s it opened my ears to sounds I hadn’t really listened to very hard before.  But sometimes you really want full-blown psychedelic excitement, and “Eight Miles High” gives you exactly that, as close to perfection as is reasonable to ask for. Here’s an almost ten-minute live version from 1970.