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20060829
A man called Syd
Entry 270
About a year, a year and a half, ago I had this splendid idea of making a small Flash based game, basically a point and click puzzle that would use Pink Floyd covers (mostly by Hipgnosis) in a kind of interactive way. I made a preloader (a pink pig, of course) and an introduction that consisted of 16 Floyd covers that had to be clicked in chronological order during the game.
Puzzle #1 (of 16!) was based on the famous See Emily Play 'train' cover that uses a drawing from Syd Barrett himself. Add to that the apocryphal story that Syd Barrett named the band after he had had an encounter with a flying saucer and - bingo - this is were the first puzzle came in.
I started making puzzle two, based on the A Saucerful Of Secrets cover, but this was deleted (read the introduction for that) and the projects was abandoned...
This was not my first Flash encounter with Syd Barrett. When Dion Johnson started his much acclaimed Astral Piper (The New Syd Barrett Appreciation Society) website he wanted the members to send in a poem or some 'art'. I made a small Flash movie but that was rejected as only gifs or jpegs were allowed. Although a screenshot of the Flash movie made it into the gallery the movie itself was not published.
I have now glued these two files together and the result is here: Syd Barrett Unfinished. Nothing to be proud of but I am not ashamed either.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: The Pink Floyd Pie Chart
20061015
The Rough Guide To Pink Floyd
Entry 297
Pink Floyd fans have been diminished to a bunch of pathetic wankers if you ask me. I know, I am one of them. We discuss the fact if Syd Barrett was having an Earl Grey or an Orange Pekoe tea on Sunday morning the 18th of November of the year 1967 and we are proud of that.
You slowly become a Pink Floyd wanker (PFW for short) when one realizes that the amount of Pink Floyd tribute CDs starts to become bigger than the volume of official Pink Floyd albums. Magazines with Pink Floyd on the cover make a pile higher than the house you are living in and you have just bought The Rough Guide To Pink Floyd only because you want to scrutinize it for possible errors.
Being a grumpy wanker de luxe I am fairly disappointed in Toby Manning's The Rough Guide To Pink Floyd, because it actually is a very fine book. I like it, damn! I like the air of blasphemous criticism it breathes throughout the text, the fine humour, the stabs at all the (past) members of the band. This is by no way a hagiography. Aren't there any errors, "Show me the errors!", I hear you scream. Well probably they are in there, but I have already forgotten them, so much fun I had by reading The Story section of book.
'Cause the book is divided in 3 segments: The Story, The Music and Floydology. The Story takes about half of the volume and is a very good read. The Music tries to delve inside the productive qualities of the Floyd members and this is where some favouritism creeps in. Finally.
Over the years we have had several Which One Is Pink wars. There are still people around who think that the post-Barrett-era band does not have the rights to the name Pink Floyd. Most of those bozos would never have heard of Syd Barrett anyway without the tributes that have been buried inside Dark Side of The Moon, Wish You Were Here or The Wall, so their claims are not to be taken too seriously.
Of more importance are the Waters versus Gilmour feuds. Toby Manning has a fine point when he writes that The Final Cut is a Roger Waters solo record disguised as a Floyd release, while The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking is in fact a 'Pink Floyd album in all but personnel'. He certainly has the right to his opinion that post-1986 Diet Floyd was a fine forgery of the classic original. However, I do not understand that the author selects only one representative track from the post-Waters-period: Richard Wright's lament Wearing The Inside Out. That track is, by definition, not representative for the post-Waters Floyd at all and if the slightly horrible The Post-War Dream, Your Possible Pasts and Not Now John made it into his Pink Floyd Top 50, I fail to see why One Slip, Sorrow, What Do You Want From Me or High Hopes have not been included as well.
But even if Toby Manning is an erring admirer of the opposite camp he has probably written the best book about the Floyd in ages. It can stand without shame next to Nicholas Schaffner's Saucerful Of Secrets (1991, already) and Nick Mason's Inside Out memories (2004).
Wanking one last time: the 18th November of the year 1967 wasn't a Sunday after all!
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Fasten your anoraks!
20070303
Florbcast
Entry 308
A couple of years ago I discovered the slightly fantastic audio freeware Audacity and immediately started to play around with it. These were also the days that I was deeply into The Orb so I started to make an audio mash-up mixing tunes from that band with the geriatric dinosaur of rock called Pink Floyd.
Probably I started with the job in 2003 although this may have been a year earlier. One of my earliest attempts was to mix the chants by the otherwise unknown Magupa tribe on Absolutely Curtains with the Tuvan throat singers found on Madrugada Eterna from the KLF. I'm still not happy with that too obvious attempt so it will stay hidden in the cupboard.
A second attempt in creating a Florb was done by taking that absolutely fabulous, but rather unknown, ambient anthem by the Orbsters called I Am The Red Worm (originally from the Daleth Of Elphame EP (2002), but later re-issued on the Badorb.Com Bless You compilation) and gluing one of the worst Floydian tunes on top of it: A New Machine comes from the cocaine-driven and rather average A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987). Me thinks the result is quite funny, but you may of course have an other idea.
Pink Floyd was originally a rather experimental band and when Syd Barrett left in the late Sixties the remaining members just, euh, meddled on for a few years before finding the narrow way that led to their success. One of their experimental tunes was called Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict (Ummagumma, 1969) and when The Orb issued their rather chaotic Pomme Fritz album in 1994 both albums were sometimes compared. We're Pastie To Be Grill You shaked with Small Furry Animals leads to, hold your breath, Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Grilled Together In A Pastie And Arguing Over Beat Poetry and is the second track on my Florbcast.
Last, but not least, the beautiful Oxbow Lakes (Orbus Terrarum, 1995) stirred with some of the messier parts of Atom Heart Mother (1970) provides for the final part of the show.
I quit working on the Florb-mixes somewhere in 2004 although they are, in my opinion, not entirely finished. But as I'm not planning on reopening these files again I can as well publish them. I hope you'll enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed creating them.
Florbcast #1 (17 minutes)
A New Machine (Red Worm Meta Structure - 5'10")
Entrance: The Grand Vizier's Garden Party (MC Hans Keller - 57")
Main
Dish: Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Grilled Together In A
Pastie And Arguing Over Beat Poetry (3'25")
Dessert: The Grand
Vizier's Garden Party (MC Groovy Pict - 35")
Oxbow Lakes (Alan's Nuclear Breakfast Mix - 6'30")
(Comment 2008: the Florbcast has been deleted from my MySpace page.)
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Perplexed Orbbery
20070509
Astral Pipers Forum
Entry 310
The Astral Pipers Forum has closed down since a few days. For how long, we do not know and not all of its members could be warned. (Dion's website hasn't been updated since February.)
We were a very close community there and formed wonderful friendships. One of our members has formed a break-away Late Night forum for us Pipers to meet again. This is in no way a ploy to take existing members away from the original forum should it come back.
This is a call for Astral Pipers that are currently "Lost in the Woods" and are looking for a warm comfy place to stay.
(original text by Littleminutegong65)
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: A man called Syd
20070706
The Pink Floyd Pie Chart
Entry 315
From time to time I get these weird ideas. Most of those just
stay buried in my head. You have maybe already wondered why there is a
Star Trek category on this blog with two and a half and only two and a
half messages inside. That is because I had (and still have) this crazy
plan to write a sequel to an original Star Trek episode. Because I often
wondered, what happens with the inhabitants of a certain planet after
Kirk leaves the crease? I even downloaded some population
viability software and that came to the conclusion that a certain
tribe may well have died after Kirk and his goofy droogs
left the planet they supposedly saved.
Some of my opinions on some original Star Trek episodes can be found on Phil Farrand's Nitpickers site. He is the bloke who wrote those excellent Star Trek Nitpicker guides BTW. Phil, if you ever read this, let it be known that your Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers is the best Star Trek book ever I have in my unhealthy collection of Star Trek books. It is also one of my plans to publish my comments for all original Star Trek episodes on this blog. We'll see when these beam over here as well...
But that isn't what this post is about. It is about a small Flash quiz I have made, aptly called, The Pink Floyd Pie Chart. On the Late Night forum, I am a proud member of, there has been an Internet quiz addiction lately and so I just made one up myself. Probably I had more fun creating it then you will have playing it.
Back to the dishes now... I should buy me a dishwasher one of these days...
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: A man called Syd
20070708
Alvin 'Little Pink' Anderson
Entry 318
Day to day a year after Syd Barrett, founder of Pink Floyd, died from a diabetes related disease I learned that Alvin 'Little Pink' Anderson is suffering from the same illness.
For those who are not aware who Little Pink is, he is the son of legendary Pink Anderson. It was his name, together with Floyd Council, that Syd Barrett combined to baptise the band he was playing in. He had found these names on the liner notes on the back of a Blind Boy Fuller LP and these two were among the artists cited as being representative for the Eastcoast Piedmont Blues. Floyd Council was an obscure blues performer (mostly in Blind Boy Fuller's band). Pink Anderson, on the contrary, was rather known in blues circles and it is a pity that nowadays he is only remembered for the anecdote above.
End of past year Alvin "Little Pink" Anderson recovered from a stroke and was diagnosed with diabetes. Born in 1954 in Spartanville, South Carolina, he began his career at the age of three tap-dancing as his father played for medicine shows. (Taken from Leversblues December 2006)
A local American newspaper now writes the following:
"Pink Anderson
has diabetes and was told by his nutritionist that pecans would be a
good snack because they are low in sugar.
He called up Music Maker
Relief Foundation and told us he needed pecans but cannot find them in
South Dakota.
He'd like shelled, roasted, and un-salted please.
Send
to: Pink Anderson, 807 Cottage Ave #30, Vermillion SD 57069"
As Little Pinks medical expenses are about 500$ a month he can do with a bit more than a few nuts. For instance you can buy copies of Little Pink's CDs Carolina Bluesman and Sittin Here Singin the Blues, as well as his father's CDs Carolina Bluesman, Ballad and Folksinger, and Medicine Show Man, directly from him.
(Thanks to Benji for this story.)
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Giordano Kazemi
20070908
Fasten your anoraks!
Entry 328
No Pink Floyd release nowadays without a controversy between the fans, the (ex-)band members and/or record company. The Pink Floyd's first album 'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' has been celebrating its fortieth birthday and boys and girls that gravy train is riding again. Out comes a luxury package containing 3 disks: Piper in stereo, Piper in mono and a third disk containing the first 3 singles - 5 tracks, one B-side is exactly the same as on the album version and is not repeated - plus 4 alternative versions of Interstellar Overdrive (twice), Apples And Oranges and Matilda Mother.
So what is the controversy all about then?
1. EMI seems to release a special edition every decade.
Apart from the normal CD-issue that was basically just an analogue copy onto a digital carrier without fuddling we have already had a 1994 remastered stereo version and a limited (only a few million copies or so) 1997 mono version. The card box of the 1997 mono version was far too large to contain a single CD so that everyone could insert The First 3 Singles inside the box (that CD-EP had to be bought separately).
So basically this new edition combines the 1994 and 1997 versions in one package, adding 4 alternative takes. I know that EMI claims that the tapes have been remastered again (Why? Did James Guthrie do a bad job the previous times?) and the odd anorak will be able to tell you that the mono version of 1997 and the mono version of 2007 have a different fade out on one single track.
2. The tracks we are waiting for since decades are not included.
I don’t want to sound too ungrateful, collectors will find the 4 unearthed tracks worthwhile, but the tracks everybody was really waiting for are the final real tracks that Barrett recorded with his band: Scream Thy Last Scream and Vegetable Man. But perhaps these will find a place on an anniversary edition of A Saucerful Of Secrets.
And of course there are dozens of other (un)finished tracks and demos, believed to be lying in the EMI vaults that could have been included.
It would also have been a nice gesture to include the Pink Floyd's very first demo that has been circulating in bootleg circles for decades. Lucy Leave was Barrett's first song that was recorded by the band, including guitarist Bob Klose who would leave between the demo sessions and the band's debut at Abbey Road. The flip side of that acetate was the Slim Harpo classic (I'm A) King Bee, that has also been covered by Muddy Waters, The Rolling Stones, The Doors and The Grateful Dead.
3. One page is missing on the Fart Enjoy booklet.
Included with the Piper deluxe edition is an 'art' booklet that Syd Barrett made around 1965 for his friend Andrew Rawlinson. The existence of it was revealed in the Tim Willis biography Madcap that printed 6 out of the 12 pages (although a bit truncated). The remaining 6 could be found in the British Mojo music magazine (BTW, this month's issue of Mojo has a free CD entitled In Search Of Syd, containing 15 Pink Floyd inspired tracks).
One of the first people who confirmed that Fart Enjoy would be included on Piper was Ian Barrett, Syd's nephew. The official reason why the twelfth page of Fart Enjoy is missing is cryptically confirmed on the booklet:
This particular page has been left blank for legal reasons.
For further details see www.pinkfloyd.com.
Of course going to the official website of Pink Floyd doesn't give you extra information at all. Enough reasons for the fans to start speculating. The missing page contains 9 times the word 'fuck' and variations of the same verb such as 'fuk' and 'fuc'. According to a Pink Floyd manager who spoke with Keith Jordan, the webmaster from Neptune Pink Floyd, the reason was not the smutty language on the page but the accompanying copyrighted picture that couldn't be released. Very strange as the missing page has been published in Tim Willis's book before and can be found on the NPF website as well.
We haven't been amused like that since the Publius days.
Some of my Pink Floyd related goodies on this webspace (in Flash):
Syd-a-choo-choo (click-n-play puzzle/game)
Pink Floyd Pie Chart (quiz)
20071001
Astral Pipers Forum Back Online
Entry 342
In the beginning of May the Astral Pipers forum, a place for Syd Barrett fans to meet, was closed down. The reasons why are a bit redundant now, suffice to say that some internal quibbling between members was the source of it all and that at the end Astralpiper1, as we used to know him, pulled the plug. It's a known story that has happened to a lot of fora before.
The homeless members soon started a new forum, Late Night, and this was a nice new haven for all of them, friends and foes, believers and non-believers, who had buried the hatchet. Until a long-time member, who we all know from the old days, decided to resuscitate the original.
Turmoil! Chaos! Mayhem!
Before anyone could say Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict old wounds were opened again. One member, well I guess it was me actually, said it was like sleeping with your ex-wife again, thus paraphrasing David Gilmour when he was asked to do a reunion gig with Pink Floyd. But sleeping with your ex-wife can be jolly good fun, especially when her new husband doesn't know it.
Two days are gone since the reopening of Astral Pipers and there are already a few brand-new members who don't know shit about the past problems. All they are interested in is Syd. And that was the original reason to begin with.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Astral Pipers Forum
20071003
Easter Eggs Lost On An Island
Entry 343
I really haven't found the time yet to listen to the 40 years anniversary cd of The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, why should I, I know it by heart anyway, and there is already a new DVD of David Gilmour, the guitar and voice of Pink Floyd (as opposed to Roger Waters who auto-defines himself as the creative genius of that same band). This leaves me speculating about the two other band members, what could one say about Richard Wright? Or about Nick Mason? Perhaps playboy drummer would be a good epitheton ornans for him. Syd? Syd was and will always be hors catégorie.
For us madcap fans Remember That Night offers some fine treats. Arnold Layne, Pink Floyd's first single, is on it, sung by David Bowie. Bowie has been a Syd Barrett fan since the band's UFO days and, I know everybody has read this already a zillion times, covered the Floyd's seconds single See Emily Play on his Pin Ups album. And that makes us all wonder if we will ever see a Bowie cover of the Floyd's third single Apples And Oranges.
For those that are not too happy with the Bowie rendition of Arnold Layne, and there are quite a few fans like that, there is also a version of the same track sung by Rick Turkish Delight Wright. Actually Rick was already in the band before Barrett joined and he is the only one who had one of his songs covered by Barrett. (For the anoraks: Two Of A Kind was performed by Syd Barrett on the John Peel show of the 24th of February 1970, it can be found on the Barrett compilation Wouldn't You Miss Me.)
And of course David Gilmour sings some Syd Barrett tunes as well. Before anyone dares to utter that David Gilmour is not a founding member of Pink Floyd, I would like to state the fact that Grace Slick was not in the Jefferson Airplane to begin with either. But who the hell remembers who was there before her? Gilmour covers Astronomy Domine (with a little help from Rick), Dominoes (also present on his previous DVD) and Dark Globe.
That last track, Dark Globe, hides an Easter egg on the DVD. If you choose Dark Globe from the individual tracks menu, it will be followed by an acoustic (and fucking brilliant) version of Echoes. Playing the DVD in its entirety will keep this track hidden.
Two other Easter eggs are easier to find. Some of the song title menus on disk 2 have a small firework display about 20 or 30 seconds after the menu starts. Clicking the firework will start a hidden track. On the main menu you will be able to see a home movie of David playing Then I Close My Eyes (about 20 seconds). On the Royal Albert Hall menu a 50 seconds dance version of On An Island will appear. I hope you will not recognise yourself on the video as it is quite distressing in a hilarious way.
There is another distressing fact as well. Nowhere on the DVD I can find a trace of Publius. I hope the fellow isn't sick or something...
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Solidarnosc
20071016
Pink Floyd Mini-Vinyl Studio Box Set
Entry 348
EMI tries to hijack Christmas shopping with a seventeen Pink Floyd cd-set, containing all studio albums (and one live, actually) from the band.
So everything is included starting from The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (that has just been re-re-re-released in a 3 disk deluxe box) till The Division Bell. Perhaps it is better to tell here what is not inside. Not included are the various Pink Floyd compilations (obviously, although they contain enough spare bricks to make it a starting point for a rarities album) and 3 Floyd live albums: Is There Anybody Out There (The Wall), A Delicate Sound Of Thunder and Pulse.
This is what the Brain Damage website has to tell:
Each CD is a faithful reproduction of the original vinyl using original artwork, all the original inserts (posters, stickers, and such like) and LP-style dust jackets. We also understand that there will be a 20" x 30" high quality poster included.
A poster! Wow! I'm so excited I can't hold my piss right now! But wait, there is more:
In addition, there will be a DVD in the box, which looks to feature the individual members of the band discussing the 40th anniversary and landmarks in their career.
A freakin' DVD - with interviews! Wow! I'm gonna shit my pants as well. As usual the Pink Floyd news from E 'we call it riding the gravy train' M I has raised more controversy than Britney Spears's decision not to wear any knickers on her night out.
Because there is a lot of stuff out there. Let's quote Mark Reed from the Echoes community:
There is an enormous amount of stuff lurking undiscovered and the discography needs a damn good tidy up with a full box set of unreleased stuff, demos, alternate versions, the numerous official live recordings in the vaults. I can think of at least 10 full concerts that are currently unreleased that have been officially recorded and mixed and at least 4 concert films rotting in the EMI archives, let alone the aborted "Live at The BBC" Top Gear Sessions album.
Apart from the unreleased material there is some official material as well that never made it on a digital carrier. I would be very happy with a DVD release of A Delicate Sound Of Thunder (only released on video), the soundtrack of La Carrera Panamericana (a video documentary containing 6 unreleased Pink Floyd tracks) or, why not, the (remastered) soundtrack from the Wall movie. The odd Pink Floyd fan would never notice the difference with the original album anyway.
A small Floydian quote to end the day: Wot's Uh The Deal?
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Easter Eggs Lost On An Island
20080308
John Lennon called him 'Normal'....
Entry 507
Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith (February 22, 1923 – March 3, 2008) was part of
the Golden Age at EMI. One of his very first assignments as engineer was
the Johnny
Kidd and the Pirates classic Shakin' All Over in 1960.
Already in his thirties when he began with EMI, Smith came up through
the ranks the hard way, learning the ins and outs of Abbey Road's three
studios. By the time he got to engineering The
Beatles, he'd already learned to compensate for the sometimes
acoustically odd rooms and crude two track recording consoles.
He and others developed some extraordinary techniques; just listen to way Ringo's drums still jump out in She Loves You. EMI’s innovations left the competition baffled by their recordings, which couldn’t imagine Ringo Starr’s distinctive damped snare sound was due to a combination of close miking, compression and tea towels in the bass drum!
Smith had engineered all the Beatles albums through 1965’s Rubber Soul and was adept at the arduous cut-and-paste editing required for their four-track recordings. Having learnt his craft under the tutelage of Beatles’ producer George Martin, he had been promoted from engineer to producer and Piper was to be his first album as producer.
Norman and Pink Floyd
Despite his problems with Syd, (My godfathers, he's an awkward chap, this Syd Barrett) Smith did some incredible work with the Floyd, coaching them through vocal harmonies, sometimes joining in on the recording. note He, Peter Bown (engineer) and Jeff Jarratt (tape operator) rode the technological advances for all they were worth, using limiting and reverb, then moving into flanging, artificial double tracking. Spartan controls disguised the sensitivity of the circuits inside the desk. The TG12345 Curve Bender provided an equalisation curve, which let a sparkling surge of sound through to saturate the recording tape.
Smith’s touches were subtle but powerful, note the rising glissando note, which finishes each chorus on Bike, achieved using a crude oscillator and vari-speeding the tape down while the track was running. Smith was a hands-on producer, spending plenty of time on the studio floor with the band rather than ensconced up in the control booth.
Despite his at time stolid approach to recording, Smith had a wide-ranging ear and an experimental approach. If Mason wanted tympani, Waters wanted to play his bass with a violin bow or Wright wanted to mike up a harmonium, Smith was critical in helping them. Toy clockwork running around the studio floor or miking wooden blocks, these were all done because they had Smith as an ally.
Songs evoking the intensity of their live performances, such as Pow R. Toc H. and Interstellar Overdrive, benefited from Smith and Bown, having the rhythm section of Waters & Mason mixed right to the fore. The mono mix is much punchier, compressed so the midrange jumps out with thunderous drums and bass. If Barrett’s more intricate sonic textures fade into the mix, his guitar rings out sharp as sirens, jumping out like phantoms from under the stairs.
Stereo Piper
Despite purists crowing over the superiority of the mono mix of Piper, the stereo version Smith produced was a feat of engineering. So radical a departure from the mono mix, the stereo version amounts to the first remix album. Smith, in a dazzling display of work, did the entire stereo mix in two sessions totalling nine hours. The 2007 remaster gives the stereo The Piper at the Gates of Dawn great resonance, with a wide horizon of reverb, echo and chorus galore.
On the stereo version of Interstellar Overdrive, the rhythm section of Mason & Waters is mixed to the right, while the melodic team of Wright & Barrett is mixed to the left. The split in the stereo spectrum mirrors the split in the Pink Floyd’s own music; with an edginess that seeps into their tracks from the contention, musical and personal, between the two sides of the group.
Smith was working round the clock, doing double time on the Pink Floyd’s debut and The Pretty Things psychedelic song cycle S.F. Sorrow. Dick Taylor, the Pretty’s guitarist, recalled Smith as wide open to experimentation, and with Smith as producer the Pretty Things let loose with some inspired work. S.F. Sorrow and Piper DEFINE psychedelia, filled chock a brim with sonic invention. These Norman Smith productions sound radical and fresh forty years later.
THE MAN WAS A FUCKING MONUMENT!
Please, in memoriam for Hurricane Smith, crank up Interstellar Overdrive until your bass bins rattle and the council files a noise complaint. In Normanni nos fides. A great producer and one of the last of the old school. RIP old man, you will be missed.
(Written by lulianindica, reprinted with permission)
Note: Norman Smith replaced drummer Nick Mason during the recording sessions for Remember A Day (October 1967, A Saucerful Of Secrets). His vocals are also prominent on the same track. Remember A Day is mostly cited as being one of the very few Five Man Floyd tracks (meaning that both Syd Barrett and David Gilmour played on the track, together with the rest of the band). Back to text.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Pink Floyd Mini-Vinyl Studio Box Set
20080314
Perplexed Orbbery
Entry 515
One of the best Orb disks ever is called Moonlight Orbbery but it
can only partially be credited to LX
P and partners. It is, in fact, a remix-rehash-mash-up
project from Bill Bbroo Brooks that was distributed amongst Orb
fans in the year 2002.
If you are into spacey soundscapes you will not be disappointed provided you could still find the little gem of course somewhere in a forgotten time curve of the wwweb (long time since I’ve seen that word floating by).
After Moonlight Orbbery had received much acclaim, some people even thought it was a genuine Paterson-Brooks-co-operation, Bbroo wrote:
If someone as untalented as I can do this, so can you. I suggest that everyone that plays an instrument, dj's, mixes, etc: GO FOR IT! Don't put it off, create that new sound and I promise you will not be disappointed. You may not become a star, but you will probably have more fun anyway...
So I took the opportunity and created some Orb rip-offs myself and even put these on my MySpace page for a while. Should you bother to care then you can read something about it in an old post called Florbcast.
There are a lot of good home composers in the wild so I won't try to give a listing. Too many of them not enough time to listen to them all. I've got some good memories about Gel Sol (who turned professional after a while) and wet nature project just to name two of them that happen to cross my mind.
When Syd Barrett passed away in 2006 several fans put their feelings into music. Alessandro Cospite put A Man In Cambridge on YouTube and Maynard and the Molemen made the very cute Song For Syd (it could do with a better recording though).
One of the more active (active as in wacky) members of the Syd Barrett Late
Night forum is ~SVG75~ or as we better know him: Stanislav. In the
middle of last year he made a twelve track album called Perplexed
Infinity, that he first advertised on the forum,
and that he made now - it’s about time, isn’t it - public on his blog.
One of the tracks, called Missed Episode can be found as background drone and in a slightly remixed way on my MySpace page, were it will reside ad perpetuum or until I have found something to replace it with.
Oh, by the way, when you are still at it, you can also have a look (or a listen?) at Stanislav’s side project called Syd Save Me. I still have to give that a spin, but I promise I will do that after I have finally listened to The Orb's The Dream.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Dreams come through.
20080411
Astral Pipers Forum Down Under
Entry 618
Hey, is that Charley?
Yes...
Hello Charley...
Great.
This week I have been trying to write a eulogy for the fact that the Astral Pipers #2 forum has disappeared, but alas what is there to say?
The first Astral Piper forum, a very successful spin off of the Astral Piper website, collapsed when some people started to accuse some other members from things that really don't matter anymore. A partial account can be found here but is not always pleasant to read.
What also wasn’t nice was that a few dozen members, including me, had lost their place to ventilate their feelings. Eternal took it upon him to create a new forum, called Late Night, and the game of tracing back the shattered members could start. This was done by mail, by telephone, by letter (some virtual friendships had grown into real-life friendships). Pink Chick, who I will cherish for the rest of her life, warned me through MySpace that a new place had been created. I am just a little proud to say that I could rescue at least one member from oblivion by putting a guerrilla graffiti on the message board from the Astral Pipers website itself.
Days went by and became weeks, weeks went by and became months. A very close friend of the administrator of the original Astral Piper had joined us as well meaning that there was finally some kind of frail truce between both fighting camps.
After a while a second Astral Piper (#2) emerged again, attracting some newcomers who had been looking for Syd Barrett news on the Astral Piper website, that hasn’t updated since March 2007.
But old wounds run deep and this week the plug was again pulled and the second Astral Pipers forum went out again without a single warning. This time it will probably be for good. On the Astral Piper website a message has appeared that the site will be no longer updated and that the subscription will (probably) not be renewed (news that had already reached me almost a year ago).
But life outside cyberworld goes on. It flourishes too. I can only wish J & D and their soon to be born Sydney all the best.
And Dion, that offer is still valid you know… Felix (Piper 24)
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Astral Pipers Forum Back Online or this one Astral Pipers Forum.
20080502
Late Night
Entry 769
The Late Night forum – a haunt for the Syd Barrett obsessed – as it epithets
itself, has changed location and can now be found at http://www.latenightdiscussion.com/.
For the moment there is a discussion going on if this forum should advertise its existence. There are of course pros and cons.
Pros
Pro is that people who are seeking information about the life and works of Roger Keith (Syd) Barrett should be able to find this place. If one googles for Syd Barrett (or even tries Syd Barrett Discussion or Forum) Late Night will not be found, at least not on the first half dozen of pages. The initial website that hosted the forum, Astral Piper, says that that the forum has been deactivated. This is only partially true. It would take me too far her to give – again – a historic overview. Well here it is in a nutshell: first came the Astral Piper forum, it started somewhere in 2005 but was abruptly shut down, due to personal problems, in May 2007. An alternative forum, Late Night, was put into place and is still quite alive and kicking but has never been approved (nor mentioned) by the Astral Piper website.
Cons
Late Night is a small secretive place, I once joked that you practically need a godfather (or godmother) who invites you to become a member. It is a small village with people that know each other very well. This false notion of intimacy sometimes leads to personal disclosures and emotional outbursts. Less and less Barrett issues are discussed by lack of Syd, although from time to time the odd question is asked if Barrett was wearing green or pink trousers on the 2nd of May 1967. It is not that Late Night is a secret society, with strange rules, rituals and relics; everybody is free to join, provided you can find the entrance to the temple.
Wots... uh the deal?
Deciding in favour for the one or the other is what Günter Grass once defined as the einerseits andererseits dilemma in his novel Kopfgeburten. Eternal Isolation, administrator of Late Night, offers us a partial solution to the problem. The forum will remain low key (the posts will not be indexed by search engines for instance) but individual members may promote its existence on their blogs and websites. And that is exactly what I’m doing right now.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Astral Pipers Forum Down Under
20080613
Solidarnosc
Entry 847
Years ago I used to make some fun with those Iron Maiden fans who wanted
to buy every piece of vinyl defecated by their favourite band. Each
album contained at least four singles. Every single existed in different
formats and they all had one or two unreleased numbers. Probably Iron
Maiden has got more unreleased bonus material floating around than
regular album tracks.
"Look.", said one of these metal (although in those days we still called it hardrock) guys when he ran to me out of breath on the schoolyard: "This single is wrapped inside an exclusive Eddie calendar. Wow, an exclusive Eddie calendar! Can you believe it!" What the fuck are you gonna do with an exclusive Eddie calendar, I thought, and my inner reflections wandered back towards that unknown island, somewhere near the Greek coast, were Pink Floyd was believed to have a villa were you could nookie all day long for free.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good chunk of Iron Maiden, especially their recent work that tends to be a bit more - uhm - philosophical. Somewhere on my cd pile I’ve got a DVD-single, and don’t laugh at me now, please, that ‘includes (an) extensive exclusive selection of tour photos’. Never bothered to put it in my player though, I was tempted just a few seconds ago but then I thought: naaah, my life will not be less miserable with or without a bunch of exclusive tour photos. Most metal fans are ugly anyway, not to speak about the Maiden themselves…
Lucky for me I was a fan of Pink Floyd in the Seventies and the band was known for not issuing singles, maxi singles, remixes and additional – previously unreleased – material in any audio format you could dream of. True? Well, as any anoraky knows, not quite…
Follows a small interlude for anoraks. Skip if you don’t want to read it.
Let’s trash a few Pink Floyd myths to begin with…
1. Seventies Pink Floyd never made any singles. Right? Wrong!
It is true that classic Pink Floyd wanted to be known as an album, not as a singles, band and refused to release singles in the United Kingdom (and the USA), but in other European countries their demand was simply ignored by the local subsidiary of EMI (Harvest). Pink Floyd singles have been released in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands and a bunch of other countries.
2. Learning To Fly was the first global cd-only single. Right? Wrong!
Of course Pink Floyd started to bring out singles again in the Eighties and beyond, starting with the smash hit Another Brick In The Wall (for anoraks: Part 2). In 1987 the reformed Pink Floyd made the newspapers by stating that Learning To Fly was the first global cd-only single (with the exception of a few vinyl promo NOT FOR SALE copies for the radio stations)
If this is the case, how does it come that I could purchase a 7-inch 45RPM on pink vinyl at the local record shop? Germany, France and the Netherlands released those.
3. Pink Floyd were ‘first in space’. Right? Wrong!
When Pink Floyd released Delicate Sound Of Thunder in 1988 a copy (on tape) was given to the Soviet (and one French) cosmonauts who played it on board of the MIR space station. Pink Floyd and French president François Mitterand attended the launch of Soyuz TM-7 on the 26th of November 1988. A global press release was made to commemorate the fact that Pink Floyd was the first rock band to have its record played in space.
As a matter of fact French synthesizer composer Didier Marouani whose Space Opera cd was flown to the MIR space station by Soyuz TM-3 on the 22nd of July 1987 beat Floyd with more than a year. (This is not the entire story and I am planning to make a post about it in the future – if you can’t wait you can already check this post on alt.music.pink-floyd).
Interlude End
But if we’re not too nitpicky one could say that Pink Floyd wasn’t a singles band. Period. The good thing about this all was that as a fan with about 100 Belgian francs pocket money per week I could easily get drunk at the pub instead of planning how to beg, borrow or steal this week’s exclusive release. That’s why these metal fans are all criminals to begin with, too many fucking releases, not enough money! (the previous is obviously a joke, I have never met nicer people than on hardrock gigs).
But recently there has been a change in Mr. David Jon Gilmour’s behaviour. Perhaps the metal polish for his CBE medal has taken an unpredicted lump out of his household budget because the man is in an urgent need of money. Our hero, whose epitheton ornans is ‘the voice and guitar of Pink Floyd’, will release his fortcoming album Live In Gdańsk in 5 different formats and or versions. A rather nice overview of these can be found on his blog.
Live In Gdańsk will be the second complete live release from Gilmour’s latest solo album. On An Island isn’t entirely a bad album, but it isn’t groundbraking either. I quite like it, other’s don’t. But does one really need two live versions of it? When I attended a Gilmour show (with Richard Wright on keyboards) a couple of years ago the audience politely applauded after each of his Island songs, that made the first part of the show. When the axe, for the second part, played a hitbox selection of his Pink Floyd tunes the crowd went berserk. Some fans were even spotted dancing without holding tight to their rollator.
Alexis Machine, a member of the Echoes mailing list, describes the On An Island continuing story as follows. It is an excellent overview so I won’t pretend I made this one myself (I have added some comments here and there):
It's amazing how much David Gilmour has been able to generate from one album! While we can say he is generous, would someone else interpret it as greedy? Here's all that I found that is available related to this release:
1. On an Island CD (FA: the green spine cd)
2. On an Island with bonus CD of "Island Jam", available through Best Buy (FA: Island Jam could also be downloaded at Gilmour’s website)
3. On an Island LP
4. On an Island CD + DVD package (FA: the red spine cd)
5. On an Island Single
6. Smile 7" Single
7. Arnold Layne 7" Single (FA: sung by David Bowie)
8. Arnold Layne 10" Single (FA: sung by David Bowie)
9. Arnold Layne CD Single (FA: sung by David Bowie)
10. Remember That Night DVD
11. Remember That Night DVD with bonus CD, available through Best Buy
12. Remember That Night Blu-ray
13. Live at Gdansk 2 disc set
14. Live at Gdansk 3 disc set
15. Live at Gdansk 4 disc set
16. Live at Gdansk 5 disc set
17. Live at Gdansk 5 LP set (FA: to add insult to injury, this one will contain one track not included on the other formats. The official reason is, and I quote the Gilmour blog: "There wasn't enough room for it on the CD". Yeah, sure.)
(.../...) ...removing all the different formats, I still have 2 live shows coming out of one album. Even Pink Floyd were never given that luxury!! I loved Remember That Night and I'm sure I'll enjoy Gdansk as well, but it's just that I HAVE to get everything, so having to buy the 5 different variations of Gdansk, along with the vinyl version is really irritating.
With some of the Gdansk versions comes a Web Pass to download 12 additional live songs (one per month) although 83% of the fans voted against it on the official blog. But here is a fine opportunity to offer other downloads at supplementary rates later on…
So hold on tight, cause gravy train is coming and it is going to hit your wallet very hard. Big man, pig man, charade you are.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Pink Floyd Mini-Vinyl Studio Box Set
20080815
Stardust
Entry 920
1
A couple of days ago Amazon delivered me my semestrial bunch of Pink Floyd related books. It came in a carton box so big that I feared I would have to build a library next to my house. Amazon cares about books, obviously, and that is why they give books enough space to breathe and to stroll around a bit during the journey from Amazon Ville to Felixtown, where I live. But during the adventurous journey two of them not only had made acquaintance in a formal, but also in an amatory way. When I opened the box they were still in a deep orgiastic penetrative mode and I felt a bit ashamed to have to interrupt their ongoing game of love.
I took a picture of the couple in action and send it to Amazon who promptly replied: "The packaging methods we use have proven over time to protect the books effectively. However, in your case it had been proved incorrect."
Now I fail to understand how putting 4 small books in an enormous carton can be called an effective method of packaging. Protecting each book in a brown paper envelop, to name just one of the 3 simple solutions I can immediately think of, would be less damaging, but who am I to think about these things. I am certainly not qualified and there must be a team of package resource managers at Amazon who make a million bucks a year only by contemplating the most effective ways to send books from Z to A.
2
For years Pink Floyd biographers kept on repeating the same story they had probably read in a previous biography of the band. Syd Barrett named Pink Floyd after two obscure Georgia blues singers from his record collection: Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.
This story however was not entirely true.
First: these blues singers
weren’t from Georgia.
Second: Syd Barrett did not have records
from them.
Third. Well let’s start with the third point.
Pink Anderson isn’t really that obscure. He is not BB King of course, but his name does ring some tinkle bells amongst blues collectors. There was a kind of Pink Anderson revival in the Sixties and records of him can still be purchased today. So it was perhaps not that farfetched that Syd Barrett owned a record by him. But only he didn’t.
Floyd Council is an entirely different matter. Now this guy really is a footnote in blues history. He is most known as sideman on about a dozen Blind Boy Fuller songs and only recorded a couple of tracks himself. If you happen to own one of these originals you have hit the jackpot. And even now, with his name tied to the Pink Floyd legacy, it is difficult to find his solo oeuvre. It was nearly impossible, and I dare to say it was entirely impossible, for a Cambridge youngster to find a Floyd Council record in the UK in the early Sixties.
Little by little the Pink Floyd biographies altered the story. Well, perhaps these blues men didn’t come from Georgia, well, perhaps Syd didn’t actually own their records, well… perhaps these names were only mentioned on the sleeve notes of a blues record. A Blind Boy Fuller compilation perhaps?
But it lasted until 2001 before anyone (clearly not a biographer) asked the following question to a bunch of blues collectors: "Does a Blind Boy Fuller record, from before 1965, exists that mentions both Floyd Council and Pink Anderson on its sleeve?" The answer was yes. David Moore from Bristol even had the record in his collection. The rest is history and it has been repeated over and over again in Pink Floyd biographies ever since. It is even repeated in one of the books I received from Amazon a couple of days ago…
All it took to find the answer was, oddly enough, to ask the question to someone who knew, a thing nobody had ever thought of in 35 years.
3
Another thing that has bothered me lately is the who, what and where of the mystery person whose (splendidly shaped) buttocks can be found on the back sleeve of the Syd Barrett album The Madcap Laughs. All we seem to know is that the beautiful people of the Underground used to nickname her Iggy the Eskimo. There is a bit of an Iggy revival going on, not only on the Late Night discussion forum, but also on The City Wakes that gives us a preview of a previously unreleased Iggy Eskimo Girl (home) movie, directed by Anthony Stern.
Maybe the movie will stir some things up, because when Mark Blake wanted to trace her for his Pink Floyd biography Pigs Might Fly all he could come up with was:
There were others, including some of Syd Barrett's ex-girlfriends, whom I couldn't find; not least the fabled Iggy, whose bare arse appeared on the cover of The Madcap Laughs. In these instances, the letters were returned from an overseas address, or the telephone number I'd been given was no longer working. I soon learned that the women were harder to find, as marriage and divorce plays havoc with the names on the electoral register, and nobody could even remember Iggy's surname, or, indeed her real first name. Or they weren't telling. Taken from: Me & Pink Floyd.
Now here’s a biography I still want to buy, so Amazon you better beware!
Why am I writing this, you might think, if thinking is one of your stronger points, well, I am making this little web-thingy that listens to the name The Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit where I will try to publish some facts and rumours about her. It’s time somebody asks some questions before it is too late…
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Solidarnosc
20080917
When the right one walks out of the door...
Entry 981
It has been a sad week for us, music lovers. Rick
Wright, one of the founding fathers of the band Pink
Floyd, died of cancer. Wright was a member of the 1963 R&B cover
band Sigma
6 that would grow, a couple of years later, into the next hip thing
when Syd Barrett joined the gang. The hip thing would soon become a
monster, a gravy train, a dinosaur, it had its up and downs, it was
praised and loathed by the so-called serious music press.
I am not good at obituaries, and who am I to write one anyway, so I’ll pass the word to David Gilmour, not only a colleague but also close friend of him.
In the welter of arguments about who or what was Pink Floyd, Rick's enormous input was frequently forgotten.
He was gentle, unassuming and private but his soulful voice and playing were vital, magical components of our most recognised Pink Floyd sound.
I have never played with anyone quite like him. The blend of his and my voices and our musical telepathy reached their first major flowering in 1971 on 'Echoes'. In my view all the greatest PF moments are the ones where he is in full flow. After all, without 'Us and Them' and 'The Great Gig In The Sky', both of which he wrote, what would 'The Dark Side Of The Moon' have been? Without his quiet touch the Album 'Wish You Were Here' would not quite have worked.
In our middle years, for many reasons he lost his way for a while, but in the early Nineties, with 'The Division Bell', his vitality, spark and humour returned to him and then the audience reaction to his appearances on my tour in 2006 was hugely uplifting and it's a mark of his modesty that those standing ovations came as a huge surprise to him, (though not to the rest of us).
Taken from: http://www.davidgilmour.com/
I admit I was one of those many fans who sheered louder for Rick than for the others on David’s last tour. Hearing him sing Echoes with David was probably my best Floydian encounter ever, topping Dogs that Roger Waters used (and still uses) to sing on his solo tours.
Roger Waters, normally a man of many words, has put the following appropriate statement on his website:
Taken from: http://www.roger-waters.com/
Julianindica wrote some great stuff about Wright at Late Night:
Wright’s keyboard style had a unique melancholic grandeur. He had an ear for exotic sounds, bringing in Middle Eastern Phrygian scales into his mix. Never one to play lightning fast or pound the notes out, Wright conjured up his unique style with patience. What was left out was as important as what stayed in, and Wright took a calm and methodical approach. The influence of Davis sideman Bill Evans introspective, melancholic piano was strong. Modal jazz had minimal chords and relied on melody and intervals of different modes. A slow harmonic rhythm opened space in the music, in contrast to bebop’s frenzy.
The full text can be found at Late Night.
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say...
Wright related comments can be found at the following places on this blog:
2006
The Rough
Guide To Pink Floyd
2007
Easter Eggs
Lost On An Island
2008
Random Blueß
aka sucking for statistics
John
Lennon called him 'Normal'....
Solidarnosc
The
Orb On Mars
Rick Wright portrait by Huug Schipper (1974) from the (unauthorisedl) The Pink Floyd Songbook, ca. 1978.
20080921
Kopfgeburten
Entry 991
This week, sad week,
brought me scattered thoughts, feelings and sensations. Let me empty my
cerebral scrapbook first before I continue with the subject of the day.
Activate cynical mood warning…
1
Three weeks ago a Belgian soldier was killed in Lebanon attempting to dismantle an Israeli bomb. He was posthumously decorated and the big shots praised him for his bravery. Strange enough nobody from the Belgian government had the guts to convene the Israeli ambassador and to officially demand for an explanation what the fuck these bombs were doing there and how on Earth they were going to indemnify the Blue Helmets, the family of the deceased soldier and last but not least the hundreds of innocent victims who have been mutilated and killed and will still be mutilated and killed for years after the initial conflict has taken place.
Whenever a believer of the true Zion faith discovers a swastika on a wall a mind-boggling tidal wave of complaints hits the media. One of the silliest moments of an anti-Semite counter reaction took place decades ago when the Belgian-Israeli Weekly accused Albert Uderzo to be racist because he had caricatured a Jew in Asterix and the Black Gold.
Don’t get me wrong. The Jewish people have suffered a lot, especially in the last century, and I’m not here to minimise or contradict the Holocaust or anti-Semitism. But I don’t like the fact that these historical barbarisms are still used today as a scapegoat to defend military actions against civilians. Just make the following headbirth: what do you think the international reaction would be if a Blue Helmet was be killed in Afghanistan by a Taliban cluster bomb? Catch my drift?
I needed to get this off my chest.
2
Some silly people bombard my mailboxes with funny PowerPoint presentations, funny jokes, funny movies and the odd portion of pornographic material. Depending on the mood I’m in I just delete the crap (with exception of the pornographic material, I confess) and nod very friendly when I meet the senders, mostly at the local pub, when they feel it necessary to loudly analyse what they send me a couple of days before.
This one nearly made me piss my pants: Statue of St George falls and gets beheaded in a church.
But it also made place for another headbirth. Why do I find this Christian blasphemous act rather funny and the bombing of the Afghan Buddhas of Bamyan not?
3
A second movie that cracked me up involves a hidden camera prank that turns bad. A moron with a bucketful of paint decorates a parked car and is promptly attacked by its owner. When the nose bleeding actor explains that the scene was set up for the general amusement of the tv glotzing community this isn’t appreciated by the victim, quite the contrary. The man doesn't feel invited to laugh in front of the camera and kicks the prankster a bit more. I sincerely hope the authorities gave the mental bloke a medal instead of a fine. But at the same time a little silly bird keeps on fluttering in my head.
Time for a headbirth. What if the beating was a scenario driven thing as well? These days it is so hard to trust television.
4
My Live In Gdansk cd/dvd/goodies box arrived yesterday and although I pissed on the concept a couple of weeks ago the situation has somewhat changed since then. Rick Wright, the quietest of the brothers Floyd, is no longer among us and thus this 5 double disc is more or less his musical testament. Friday evening I watched Echoes on disc 3 and cried a bit, alone in front of the computer screen. Thank God my webcam is broken or it would’ve been a hidden camera item all over the world. (Now on YouTube: grown man cries in front of a Pink Floyd song.) The close ups of Ricks Wright’s fingers floating forever and ever over the keyboard keys only strengthened me in my belief that the man was a fucking genius. The last track on the DVD is the obligatory Comfy Numb. Rick sings the parts that are normally done by Roger Waters. Justice is done.
This reminds me of the unchecked fact that somebody, EMI probably, waved a bucketful of dollars in front of the Floyd politely informing if they were interested in doing a sequel to Dark Side of The Moon. Apparently they all said no.
Headbirth: although Roger Waters did sing about a surrogate band in the Eighties he apparently doesn’t realise that the Floyd songs he does on his live shows sound more like a tribute band than anything else.
5
What is it with these sequels and remakes anyway? Those who know me know I am a bit a fan of the original The Wicker Man, a cult horror movie from the early Seventies. The protagonist is a 30 years virgin policeman, not even a wanker, who gets lured to an island where Christopher Lee, dressed like Neil the hippie from The Young Ones, is a pagan high priest. Although the women on the island have the tendency to dance naked in the daylight, dance naked in the moonlight and even dance naked when there is no distinctive source of light present, singing Scottish folksongs, the copper refuses to get involved. When the town’s main hottie, played by Britt Ekland, juggles her bare buttocks in front of him, he still refuses to spill his seed on the ground and thus he is exactly the right spicy man to be sacrificed to their sun god.
Recently I came across the American remake with Nicolas Cage. Frankly, I don’t like the guy and in this movie Cage proves once again that he is not a method actor but merely uses screaming as a method. Somebody should explain him that modern movie sets have hi-tech microphones that can record sweet whispers as well.
HB: Why do people make remakes and sequels if they already know for sure that the result will be worse than the original? Is this some kind of a postmodernism thing?
6
Part 5 was a mere intermezzo, because the real message is here: Eoin Colfer, his name reveals that he probably has been living on The Wicker Man island for too long, has been commissioned by Penguin books and the Adams family to write the sixth sequel of the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy trilogy. The book will be titled And Another Thing and will resuscitate Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Ford Prefect. I’m not sure about Marvin, the paranoid android, as he did the decent thing of dying in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish, but we can’t be too sure with all these parallel universes floating around, can we?
Kopfgeburten. Should I be happy or should I be sad with this news? I’m not sure and I don’t really care.
If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Ringmaster
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