KFHO · 19.76 · For Headphones Only · show · September 22, 2026

Five Past Ten

For Headphones Only, show two. One Sunday, morning to night.

One Sunday, morning to night. It opens with the Moody Blues arguing with a computer about whether you exist. I heard that argument at seventeen with the headphones on, and it may be the first time the question got into me. I have been chasing it ever since, through a philosophy degree, a thesis on whether a machine could have a mind, and most of what is on this site. Then the show goes out for the day: a bicycle race, a morning, a long afternoon, a night at the pictures, and a last set that ends on Biko and the quiet after it.

This is the second show made in the shape of the Sunday-night program on KQRS that For Headphones Only remembers. The host, Molly Rose, is late tonight, five minutes past ten, because somebody stole the tire off her bicycle, and she says what the original said: whoever took it must have needed it, and she hopes it gets them where they're going. She is a voice made by a machine, reading words I wrote for her.

The show is a day, and it moves the way a day does. It wakes up slowly, the Moody Blues and Genesis and Greg Lake at his gentlest. It goes out on the bicycle, three versions of the same Kraftwerk song, which sounds like a joke until you hear how a song can change its mind. Then the morning proper: Kate Bush's fog lifting, a song by Andy Bell and Masal that came out this month, because she always played what was new, and a meadow in Grantchester where a fly does not make it to the end of the song. The light goes long: Tuesday Afternoon, a death in the afternoon, a dream about it, and a diary to write it down in. Then it is dark and you are at the movies, ten minutes of Saint Etienne that go by in four and twelve minutes of Jon and Vangelis pretending to be Bogart. And then the last set does the thing she always did, which is get serious right at the end. Leave in Silence. Biko. And OMD's title track to walk you home, wordless.

Lie down. Put the headphones on. Somebody else is choosing.

Set list

1. In the Beginning · The Moody Blues
2. Your Own Special Way · Genesis
3. Still...You Turn Me On · Emerson, Lake & Palmer
4. Tour de France 2003 (Version 1) · Kraftwerk
5. Tour de France 2003 (Version 2) · Kraftwerk
6. Tour de France 2003 (Version 3) · Kraftwerk
7. The Morning Fog · Kate Bush
8. The Morning of the Trip · Andy Bell & Masal
9. Grantchester Meadows · Pink Floyd
10. Tuesday Afternoon · The Moody Blues
11. I Remember (Death In the Afternoon) · Ultravox
12. A Dream Within a Dream · The Alan Parsons Project
13. Dear Diary · The Moody Blues
14. Cool Kids of Death (Underworld Mix) · Saint Etienne
15. The Friends of Mr. Cairo · Jon & Vangelis
16. Leave in Silence · Depeche Mode
17. Biko · Peter Gabriel
18. Architecture and Morality · Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark