This C-60 cassette is an interview of Sun Ra by journalist, writer and critic Erik Quint on 10 August 1984. The sleeve notes roughly sketch the setting of the interview:
“10 o’clock in the morning, an Amsterdam hotel room. Sheet music littered on the floor, a synth in the windowsill. Sun Ra gets his make-up done by Arkestra singer June Tyson, fresh henna for his beard. Preparations for the concert that night at the Bimhuis. A few questions asked, a lengthy monologue the result. Fragment of a universal mind.”
On this obscure recording the listener hears Sun Ra elaborating on a number of themes of his all-embracing Astro-Black Mythology: life on earth and the need to leave the planet, God, Satan, language, death, music, and Sun Ra’s own role in this mythology. “God is the enemy not Satan”, Sun Ra explains at a given point, “God is Death, not Life. There has never been a God on this planet except Death”. And: “Death is radiated through the crucifix”. Sun Ra, an angel from Saturn, claims to have been sent to do the impossible and bring another kind of happiness to the planet, where “words have been confused and have chained people up”. His space music and teachings reach out to everybody, black or white: “I’m dealing with the dark side of black, the dark side of white, the dark side of reality, the dark side of myth, the dark side of knowledge.” Open your mind and cast off your chains, brothers and sisters: this cassette is your ticket out of here.