We’ve got it all tonight: UFO calls from listeners, albino animals appearing worldwide, and something about reduced expectations and fried chicken. New soundscapes from RedBlueBlackSilver, and a clip from our morning appearance on Z107.7 FM’s Up Close Show with Gary Daigneault.
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There are no visitor facilities. Roads are mostly washed-out jeep tracks. There is no water. And there’s no way out, unless you come back the way you came in. The state line between Nevada and California is unmarked in the Mojave Wilderness, so it’s up to you to know what’s legal or not. Do not make a mistake.
Subscribe to our pocket-sized print periodical and get our brand-new issue, #10!
This is EPISODE #189: THE HAUNTED HIGHWAY, with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. podcast at patreon.com/desertoracle. Listen to the radio broadcast tonight at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree & the Mojave High Desert.
Where is she, tonight? It has been a month and ten days since she mailed this postcard from Idyllwild to Joshua Tree. All we can do is hope that the monster did not put an early end to her Pacific Crest Trail adventure, as so often happens in those movies with Reese Witherspoon. Because there’s a real monster in the mountains around San Jacinto Peak, a real monster who murders people & eats their souls for dessert. It is called the Tahquitz.
This is EPISODE #188: THRU-HIKING WITH TAHQUITZ, with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks for supporting this advertising-free radio show via patreon.com/desertoracle. Listen to the radio broadcast tonight at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree & the Mojave High Desert.
Tonight we are joined by Joshua Tree bookseller, author & publisher Jean-Paul L. Garnier of Space Cowboy Books, along with a transmission from poet & sci-fi author Michael Butterworth.
This is EPISODE #187: SPACE RADIO (A TRANSMISSION), with new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks for supporting this advertising-free radio show via patreon.com/desertoracle. Listen to the radio broadcast tonight at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree & the Mojave High Desert.
To hear an earlier live broadcast with J-P Garneir and Ken Layne, just call up Episode #065, one of our occasional hour-long shows from 2019. The Micheal Butterworth exhibition at Art Queen opens on June 17, 6:30-8:30 p.m.
We’ve got a couple of classic episodes on the radio in Joshua Tree/Yucca Valley/29 Palms tonight, as we’ve been mailing & otherwise distributing Desert Oracle #10, the latest of our pocket-sized periodicals all about the strange & mysterious desert lands.
Listen to these episodes tonight 10-11 p.m. on Z107.7 FM in the Mojave High Desert, streaming online if you’re out of range: “Owl’s Eye View (#164)” and “Superbloom! (#050).” (Some very moody desert soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver on both episodes. Have you seen the RBBS Bandcamp page?)
You can subscribe to the print magazine right here on this website. Four issues delivered to your mailbox, hopefully several this year!
The waxing moon is moving through the constellation of Leo, Mars is fading, and Venus hangs heavy in the western sky. Venus seems enormous, especially late at night, low over our western mountains. Meanwhile on the desert floor, and splashed brightly up the desert hillsides, wondrous carpets of yellow and orange and violet wildflowers delight the eye & the soul.
This is EPISODE #186 of Desert Oracle Radio, The Nature of Color & Vision, by Ken Layne and with lush new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Thanks for supporting this advertising-free radio show via patreon.com/desertoracle. Listen to the radio broadcast tonight at 10 p.m. on KCDZ 107.7 FM in Joshua Tree & the Mojave High Desert.
It’s a beautiful spring in the desert, which naturally makes one dream of heading off to war. Maybe a secret war, a guerrilla war, an unknown soldier, wounded deep in psychic battle, like Leonard Cohen in the Sinai, like Che in Bolivia, like good old Ambrose Bierce headed to the deserts down in Mexico for one last campaign, one final outrage. With moody new soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, and a travelogue from ancient Damascus, where Saul/Paul stumbled into town after being blinded by the impossible lights over the Roman backroads.
Thanks much to those of you who support this program on our Patreon, and for listening over these many years. This is EPISODE #185: WHO BY FIRE, WHO BY WAR. (The book about Leonard Cohen in the Yom Kippur War is here.)
On this Good Friday — which wasn’t so great for the protagonist — let us be enlightened by the strange koans of the Desert Fathers. These were the 5th Century CE monks who started the whole “move to the desert” trend, leaving their elite lives in the cities for the hardship of a tiny hole dug in a limestone cliff.
With new spring soundscapes by our own musical monk, RedBlueBlackSilver, and hosted/written by Ken Layne. We wish you a very somber & festive Snakesgiving, as well. Now is the time for EPISODE #184: HOPPY EASTER, FROM THE DESERT FATHERS. Thanks much for supporting this show on our Patreon page!
Broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU FM in Moab, Utah.
During these many months of heavy rain & thick snowdrifts, we look around the southwest and notice all those playas, those alkaline dry lakes, blessed with a sheen of fresh water . . . and we remember this used to be a land of lakes, not so long ago.
As the last Ice Age came to a close, some 12,000 years ago, immense freshwater lakes covered much of what we now call California and Nevada. What a paradise it must’ve been, with people living in pleasant villages on the shorelines, lots of big game for food and fur and leather, everybody zipping around in tule boats made of our famous marshy bullrushes. This is EPISODE #183: THE LOST TREASURE OF OWENS DRY LAKE. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle.
Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. Saturdays at 9 p.m. on KZMU FM in Moab, Utah. Sundays at 8 on Valley 103.9 in Carnation, Washington.
(PS — If you downloaded the episode Friday afternoon, it was the wrong one! Please re-download, or however you say that.)
Apologies if you hear the wind whipping around on the roof of this little radio shack out here tonight. There’s some strip of metal the previous owners tacked down to cover a weak spot in the roof, and it’s slapping around the swamp cooler. And until your host robs a bank, well it’s going to stay that way because that’s the only way to get the ten grand the roofing company wants. It’s all right. It’ll dry up, over time.
This is EPISODE #182: THE ECSTASY OF ST. MINERVA, regarding awe & mystery in the holy wilderness. Whatever that means. Thanks for supporting this program via Patreon.com/DesertOracle.
Soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver, written & hosted by Ken Layne, and broadcasting tonight at 10 in Joshua Tree on KCDZ 107.7 FM. Brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank.
