KFHO · 19.76 · For Headphones Only · show · September 21, 2026

Open Water

For Headphones Only, show one. A day that ends at sea.

A day that ends at sea. It opens with Greg Lake and an acoustic guitar and moves through the machines waking up, the city after midnight, an elegy, the long way out of orbit, and open water. King Crimson takes it out past the breakwater.

This is the first show made in the shape of the Sunday-night program on KQRS that For Headphones Only remembers: long songs, three or four at a time, a voice between the sets, and no next button. The host is Molly Rose. She introduces the first song of each set, comes back afterward to say a word about the others, and hands off to the next. She is a voice made by a machine, reading words I wrote for the woman I couldn't name.

Inside each set the songs hand something to each other. Greg Lake's acoustic guitar gives way to Peter Gabriel's flood, and the flood gives way to King Crimson asking you, in Japanese, to please wait, and Radiohead showing you what happens if you do. The Alan Parsons Project's robot wakes up and Kraftwerk's city is already running, and then four boys from Basildon are learning that a synthesizer can be shy. Elegia is an instrumental written for a dead friend, and the three songs after it are three different ways of holding on to something. Ken Nordine is alone in orbit and a little in love with the view, and Supertramp takes him the rest of the way out. The last set is water: an exorcism with a groove under it, a narrow way, and eight minutes of King Crimson that feel like the horizon.

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

Set list

1. From the Beginning · Emerson, Lake & Palmer
2. Here Comes the Flood · Peter Gabriel
3. Matte Kudasai · King Crimson
4. Everything In Its Right Place · Radiohead
5. I Robot · The Alan Parsons Project
6. Metropolis · Kraftwerk
7. Any Second Now (Voices) · Depeche Mode
8. Monument · Depeche Mode
9. Theme from 'To Kill A Dead Man' · Portishead
10. Teardrop · Massive Attack
11. Veruschka · Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark
12. The Big Ship · Brian Eno
13. Elegia · New Order
14. Over and Over · Beach House
15. We Own the Sky · M83
16. Somebody Up There Likes You · Simple Minds
17. Manned Satellite · Ken Nordine
18. Fool's Overture · Supertramp
19. Chronozon · Tangerine Dream
20. The Jezebel Spirit · Brian Eno & David Byrne
21. The Narrow Way, Pt. 1 · Pink Floyd
22. The Sheltering Sky · King Crimson