Roger Keith Syd Barrett Laughing

I really love you and I mean you
the star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...
I wouldn't see you and I love to
I fly above you, yes I do
well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...

Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
the fins a luminous
fangs all 'round the clown
is dark below the boulders hiding all
the sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
the move about is all we do
well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...

Floating, bumping, noses dodge a tooth
the fins a luminous
fangs all 'round the clown
is dark below the boulders hiding all
the sunlight's good for us
'Cause we're the fishes and all we do
the move about is all we do
well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...

I really love you and I mean you
the star above you, crystal blue
Well, oh baby, my hairs on end about you...



Those lyrics above are from the opening song from Syd's first album Madcap Laughs. The album is quite amazing. My first Pink Floyd listen was from when Syd was in the band. It might be three short years, but those years are the most important years of the band. I would listen to Dark Side of the Moon and tell myself that I need to start from the beginning. When I asked the uneducated question the record store guy what should I start with, I got a person who handed me two CD's the first was Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Madcap Laughs. He told me the first was Pink Floyd's first album and the other is the former leader of Pink Floyd's first solo album. Each have a great place in the musical lexicon and should be studied and listened to with great study. He sounded like a History professor who told me that If I study this then I will know all I need to understand about the history of the world. I am glad I listened.

The mystic of Syd Barrett was the fact that his lyrics and his voice carried the world of Pink Floyd. These wonderful understandings taught me that there was a side of music that was not happy, even though the music from this period was something that was full of Psychedelic roots and even the culture was the same way. The back story of Syd Barrett was a man who escaped any way he could, but his music and words was genius. When we lost him a few years back in 2006 we lost a person who was a man not easy to understand, but a man who if you knew him well enough through his music was someone who was much smarter then the average musician of the time.



I picked up these two recommendations and listened with quite intent. It was a far different sound then the first Pink Floyd album I got introduced to. I knew that I had to really listen hard to this music to understand what was going on. My time with this was great because I realized that the music that was being presented was a bit more on the side of classic. This classic sound was not talked about in great detail in music books I read. They only gave a brief explanation of his music and kind of lumped it into the rest of the Psychedelic genre. It was sad looking back on it, because his music was a bit of that but it was very personal. Syd Barrett was using music and acid to run away from something. It just happened that his music was part of a very interesting time period in pop culture.

In a way his music reached far beyond the simple and got more and more complex. His music was a very close observation of the world. The music I loved his first person thoughts and observations. He was important to me because of his highly creative nature. Syd would be a person who (if I was around then) would be an artist I would follow. There are artist today that think Syd is quite important as well. People like Robyn Hitchcock really praise his music. It's wonderful that we had this genius on this planet. The sad thing is there is so much unreleased material from working with Pink Floyd and his solo work that needs to be put out.



The album featured a rather unorthodox recording process, in which Syd would provide a backing track of his own singing accompanied by acoustic guitar, over which the session musicians would overdub the rest of the arrangement. However, Syd's playing and singing were highly erratic and unpredictable—he skipped or added beats and bars seemingly at random, or otherwise he would strum on a single chord for a long time before unexpectedly reverting back to the main portion of the song. Syd would not allow the musicians to rehearse or re-record their overdubs, insisting that they sounded fine. After several months of intermittent recording, the album was finally deemed complete. (AM)

If anyone who loves the early Pink Floyd like I do, then this is the place to start. His genius is written in every song. The music itself is very good. It has a few guests on it including two Pink Floyd people; Roger Waters and David Gilmour. Three Soft Machine people too, including Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and Robert Wyatt. If you want to have fun with great music then start here. The music of Syd Barrett should be looked a bit closely and this is the best place to start. Enjoy! I hope that this listen will give you more of understanding what early Floyd was all about. Enjoy!